Can you spot me? What am I, within this overwhelming sight? Am I a humble creature? Do I not see myself? Or is it but a false humility, a false erasing of the onlooker's look? -- I was told twice in the last two days that one should not make art in anyone else's name but her own. You want it - you have it. Hank Schmidt In Der Beek, you have just made my day.
Other candidates can be found here. Also check out their blog.
Le Monde des Montagnes (The World of Mountains), an ECAL graduate project by Camille Scherrer
Nothing to stop us from getting lost. From deciding we no longer belong here, and using all our knowledge and craft to make this place just confusing enough to dream. Be it an augmented reality, be it a book, a picture that can actually be moving. Be it our imposing of what's in our head, or rather, what dropped by for just a second, only to fool us into believing we own it, we are it. Nothing to stop us from finding our way. With every single hesitating step we so confidently make into this our augmented reality, with more of you than I could ever have hoped for, with less of me than you would expect, with just enough of us to get the picture. And move on. As if nothing really happened. As if.
I love the CRA$H jewellery collection by Super Fertile because it's impossible to wear. Poor people can't afford it. Rich people would never dare. So who is it for? For us, of course.
Who is it for? Oh, what a dreadful question. How embarrassing, how belittling, how pitiful.
1: what is the music? 2: can't we think of circumstances where it doesn't matter? 3 (with some leftovers): but aren't we losing something essential here? Some mistery we break to put it all into the social gesture, as if art really could be effective, as if it ever were, but what does that mean, how do we measure it, but doesn't it become too close to being measurable? 4: can't it be enjoyable? Can't it be blatantly focused on the audience?
This, of course, does not mean it can't be personal. On the contrary, one could openly use this focus and transform it through the connection of the two sides, as in Dan Graham's Performer/Audience/Mirror. But this ever-sacriligeous focus on the audience need not be objectifying, or at least not so openly. Think of applying the conceptto the personal, the intimate. What sort of audience are we then?
How close to us. Ever closer. Until, say, we reach the peak, we go beyond the intimate, beyond the sapiens, we give the monkey a camera, dreamfuly believing this is what the monkey sees, dreamfuly hoping (with a tad of gentle self-irony) that this picture, taken by our object, of us, brings us closer, tells us something more about this subject, when in fact it once again brings us back to who we are, as an audience, an audience that acts. (more pictures taken by Nonja can be found here)
What I like most are the hands. And the neck. It's tense. See the two lines suavely drawing their way into the chest. And the hands, a pianist's hands, playing out their protagonism, exploring the absent look to shine, and yet tense, they remain, maybe, it's what they hold, and not who? (via)
