The Strycker

My Michael Jackson Post

Because the world has been abuzz about Michael Jackson since his passing on Thursday-- This American Life titled its acts after Michael Jackson hits; Jamie Foxx was moonwalking at the BET awards, every bar I've been in has played a string of MJ hits, and because my boss at SVA is Bob Giraldi, who directed the music video, Beat It as well as the New Generation Pepsi spots with Michael, I feel compelled to blog something about the man in the mirror. What's more, Michael was nothing if not controversial, and I love to blog about controversy in the arts.

No one, save the now grown children involved, can ever truly know if anything sinister happened with Michael, who was accused and ultimately acquitted of child molestation charges. However, he was extensively investigated for over a decade, and although some odd things were discovered, no definitive evidence of foul play was ever unearthed. What's more, people like to fear what's different. Thus, it's my belief that Michael was accused of pedophilia for much of the same reason that homosexuals are often accused of it.

On Monday, Bob twittered, "Time 2 put MJ to rest-forget the rumors, move on 2 remembrance. USA lost 1 of its greatest artists, like Britain's Lennon, Spain's Picasso." Indeed, Michael should be remembered for groundbreaking music, for his thirteen #1 singles and thirteen Grammy Awards, for "I'll be there," and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," for Thriller, the top selling original album of all time, and for "We are the World", which raised $50 million for hunger-relief in Africa. But more than that, he was in many ways an artist who should be placed in both the canon of pop musicians and that of performance artists like Marina Abramović, Bruce Nauman, and Vito Acconci, artists who's bodies are their medium. Indeed, most obviously, Michael's voice was his art. So too was dance, how he made his body move. He perfected and popularized the moonwalk; his dance was integral to the evolution of music video production style.

But, in addition to these things that made him an American icon, the multiple plastic surgeries that were the cause of debate in the African American community, contributed to his reputation as an eccentric, and were the subject of many jokes, were also a part of his art. And yes, they may have been art fueled by such things as vitiligo, a troubled youth, depression, even a body dysmorphic disorder, but much great art comes from personal struggle. Throughout his songs and videos is the theme of transformation-- transformation from person to werewolf ("Thriller"), or from person to spaceship ("Moonwalker"), transformation of the world with music and dance ("Beat it;" "We are the World"), thinking beyond racial stereotypes (Dangerous). His surgeries were not, as some believe, an attempt to transform himself into a "white" person. Instead, with each surgery he further metamorphosized into a person who was neither black nor white, masculine nor feminine, but someone who transcended these classifications: he worked to be aracial and agender. And, though this is not my own ideal, I have to respect someone who so fully embodied his art.

Labels: Michael Jackson, performance art

posted by Jacquelyn @ 1:10 PM 0 comments

The role of the NEA: Is there a place for controverial art in the government's budget?

A piece about arts funding by David Smith, author of Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy, was run in the Wall Street Journal today. The column discusses President Obama’s selections of Jim Leach and Rocco Landesman to head the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), respectively. Many in the arts community are disappointed with these choices, as they seem to signal that there will be no change from the somewhat conservative status quo. But Smith embraces these choices; indeed, he argues:

Privately funded art need not steer clear of controversy, but publicly funded art should. In addition to hurting the endowments' standing in Congress, controversy undermines in the public eye the idea that the arts and humanities are important to civic life and are worthy of public funds.

What’s more, he distinguishes between grants made to individual artists, and grants made to programs:

On the surface there's certainly nothing wrong with either cultural agency disbursing grants to individuals. But the debate over such grants highlights the question of who should be the real beneficiary of the endowments: artists and scholars or the public? In truth, the NEA functions just fine without making individual grants. In fact, absent this practice it's easier to see the agency as its creators back in 1965 intended: one whose primary beneficiary is to be the American people as a whole.

The foundation for each of these positions is the belief that the American public as a whole does not benefit from controversial art. But is this assertion true?

In fact, some of the most valuable artistic contributions that have been made have also been controversial, in style, subject matter, or both. These include Goya's Naked Maya and Los Caprichos, Turner's The Slave Ship, the works of the Impressionists, Picasso's Guernica, and Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans.

In literature, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Ulysses by James Joyce have all sparked debate and been banned or censored from various institutions.

In fact, one appeal of a lot of good art is its ability to provoke controversy, because this often indicates that it is also provoking thought. Certainly there is work that shocks gratuitously, but the fact that an artist presents something shocking or controversial does not make it gratuitous. Nor does it make it self-serving. I can think of no better way to benefit American society than to encourage and stimulate thought.

Smith trumpets such NEA sponsored programs as Shakespeare in American Communities and Poetry Out Loud because these programs foster a sense of appreciation for the arts, which he believes is in keeping with the spirit of the original NEA mission. But, the NEA's stated mission is:

to foster the excellence, diversity, and vitality of the arts in the United States, and help broaden the availability and appreciation of such excellence, diversity, and vitality.

If we are to foster excellence, diversity, and vitality of the arts, then we are to encourage not just appreciation, but also actual making. And, to be fair, the NEA does do that, in the form of grants to organizations that then redistribute the grants to individual artists. The Vermont Studio Center, The Women's Studio Workshop, Aljira Inc, Art in General, and Public Art Fund Inc are examples of organizations that have received NEA grants for "Access to Artistic Excellence," in other words, money that they will pass along to individual artists, often to do a specific project.

I don't know that returning to a system in which artists apply directly to the NEA for money would be the best way to pomote and advance new work. However, I would be interested in exploring whether eliminating some of the middle-men could be a cost-saving measure that doesn't undermine the integrity of arts funding.

Furthermore, Smith ignores the fact that grants for art appreciation could also spark contoversy. In fact, the poets whose work is included in the Poetry Out Loud program include Jimmy Santiago Baca, who spent 6 years in prison for drug possession and intent to sell, Allen Ginsberg, whose work Howl, was the catalyst for an obscenity trial against San Francisco book dealers, and Gertrude Stein, the lesbian author of one of the earliest coming-out stories, Q.E.D, and whose other works, like Tender Buttons, often commented on lesbian sexuality.

Indeed, many of the museums and arts institutions received NEA grants specifically for exhibitions that might be deemed controversial. The Williams College Museum of Art funded the exhibition of controversial African American artist Kara Walker with a $40,000 grant from the NEA. The recent Jenny Holzer exhibition at the Whitney, Protect Protect, which is highly critical of the Iraq war, was made possible with a grant from the NEA.

And that's a good thing. The government should not deny funding to artists or organizations that promote artists simply because the artwork is critical of a societal institution. To do so is indirect censorship. That is, it encourages those in the arts community to abstain from riskier, controversial endeavors in favor of safer, less critical projects that will more readily receive funding. And if we do that, then what we are not "fostering a vitality of the arts in the United States," but rather a degeneration of American culture.

Labels: arts funding, controversy in art, David A. Smith, David Smith, National Endowment for the Arts, NEA, NEH, Wall Street Journal, WSJ

posted by Jacquelyn @ 11:20 AM 0 comments

Art and Privilege

This past weekend, while checking out my friend Joe Borelli’s work as part of the Bushwick Open Studios event, we got in a conversation about art and privilege: Simply, creative pursuits require money and time. Connections help too. As such, those who come from money and an upper class background have an advantage. They can take off for three months to do a residency that allows them to make more work and more relationships in the art world without worrying about how to pay rent and loans and bills. They can take low paying or even unpaid positions because they offer an opportunity to work with a well-known artist or at a prestigious institution. Or they can work part-time, not be burdened by an inflexible 40+ hr a week schedule; they can go into their studios fresh, rather than exhausted after a long day of work for someone else. They can make projects on a scale or with materials that others simply can’t afford to realize. Those projects then get recognition and more funding for even larger projects—the whole thing is cyclical. The rich really do get richer.

But, is this an issue that is unique to artists? Indeed, hasn’t the disparity between the upper and middle and working classes been growing? Hasn’t the cost of higher education been increasing exponentially? Isn’t this just indicative of a larger societal issue?

The answer is of course, yes. But, the issue is even more exaggerated in the arts for the following reasons:

1) Art is the artist’s job. Everything else, at least in terms of employment and career, is secondary. The goal is not to advance in the job or jobs that pay the bills. Those jobs, often only tangentially related to one’s real job of being an artist, offer little help in terms of advancement in the art world, and in fact, take away time from the research, making, schmoozing, and applying that is all part of being an artist—(No, I am not so romantic as to think that being an artist is only about making artwork). So, those with the means to pursue art without having to hold down another job or jobs are able to spend more time on their job of being an artist, and will have an advantage in advancing in that job.

Also, this is different from the lawyer who has to put in her time at a corporate law firm to pay off her student loans before she can start a small practice that focuses on domestic violence issues. She still gets to be a lawyer at the big firm, and is practicing and learning law-related things there. Or, she can choose to ultimately stick with the big firm, and join the ranks of the wealthy. Sticking with art brings no financial security.

2) Related to this, artists are more likely to be freelancers. This means that they have little security in their means of income. Freelancers aren’t eligible for unemployment when their contracts end, and they’ve often been working without health insurance or other benefits. The artist who lives paycheck to paycheck can quickly spiral into severe debt when he becomes un or underemployed, which leads to anxiety and depression, neither of which is good for artmaking (despite the tortured artist myth).

3) Education. The costs of education are rising, and the idea of studying to be an artist doesn’t seem like a viable way to pay back the loans that are often necessary to pay for school. And, many of the best art schools are also among the most expensive. But, unlike, say, the best engineering schools, or law schools, or business schools, a degree from one of the best art schools is still little assurance of making major career advancement as an artist (but it is not worthless— that MFA is a requisite for many galleries now.) This was the case before the economic recession (which admittedly has made job searches more difficult for most disciplines), and now the economy’s downturn has only exaggerated the issue for artists, as galleries close or scale back on shows, or cut down on the artists they represent. So, students without means can abandon the idea of becoming an artist, downgrading art from career to hobby, and pursue something else. Or, they can saddle themselves with the loans that make it necessary for them to take jobs that distract from their real job of being an artist.

The result is that the pool of working artists becomes less economically diverse. Because it takes a certain amount of privilege, or a certain amount of delusion that one can break into such privilege, to identify as an artist. There was an article in the NY Times yesterday about the collapse of Williamsburg, a trendy Brooklyn neighborhood that has found favor with many of the city’s artists, now that so many of the hipsters’ trust funds have dried up. (Full disclosure: my apartment and studio are in the burg) I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’d like to think that it’s the start of putting artists from different financial backgrounds on more equal footing, but in reality, it may just make it even harder for those of us who never had money to make art.

Labels: art and finance, art and recession, Williamsburg artists

posted by Jacquelyn @ 9:42 AM 0 comments

The Art of Cupcakes

I might have to go Rirkrit Tiravanija on everyone and start making and serving food as my art. But, instead of the Thai curries that Tiravanija made for his "Free" and "Still" shows, my medium will be cupcakes. Baking has always been a relaxing, creative activity for me, and I'm still jazzed from my victories this past Monday night at the Brooklyn Kitchen's 3rd Annual Cupcake Cookoff, a fundraiser for the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen. I had no idea that there would be so many entries-- almost sixty, many of them beautifully and meticulously decorated. I was a bit embarrassed by the open, flimsy aluminum trays I showed up with carrying my decidely not uniform sweets. But, soon I was in a drunken sugar shock after tasting so many delicious confections. Two of my favorites were the Pineapple with Spicy Cilantro Icing Cupcakes and the Mini Vanilla Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Filling.

After viewing (and tasting) the competition, I was floored when I heard Taylor Erkkinen announce my PB & J Cakes as the winner of the plain and simple flavor category. Minutes later, I was even more surprised to hear my name called again; this time my Bananas Foster Cakes had taken first prize in the exotic flavor category! I didn't think to bring a camera, but, Not Eating Out in New York has an unidentified pic of me on her blog, along with a recipe for some delicious looking Green Tea Coconut Minicakes that I'll have to try.

I had a great time; I have "Sugar High" ala Renee Zellweger in Empire Records playing in my head, big plans to learn how to decorate my mini-cakes, and am still pondering how I can incorporate all of this into my art.

Labels: brooklyn cupcake, Brooklyn Kitchen, cupcake bakeoff, cupcake cook-off, cupcake cookoff, cupcakes, Union Pool

posted by Jacquelyn @ 4:10 PM 2 comments

Archiving Digital Media

Last month, I downloaded a trial version of the most recent Adobe After Effects, CS4, so that I could work on the titles for a short film project. A couple of days after my 30-day trial expired, a few adjustments had to be made. I have the previous version of After Effects, CS3, on my personal laptop, so I saved it on a flash drive and brought it home to make the changes. But when I tried to open the file, I was informed that it was not compatible with the program. What followed was a multiple-hour frenzy of finding another computer on which I could download another trial version (using an alternate e-mail address) so that I could open up the file, make the changes, and resave it. All for two lines! This got me thinking about the notion of backwards compatibility and of archiving digital/ new media artwork in general.

As artists, we are encouraged to use archival materials: ph neutral paper, reversible glues that won’t yellow over time, acrylics under oils. Yet, what happens when we choose to work in a medium whose materials are rapidly and perpetually changing?

One issue is how to store digital media. In 2007, DSG International and PC World announced that they would no longer stock the once ubiquitous floppy disks. Consumers now use cds, dvds, and flash drives to store and transport data. Indeed, computers today do not even have a place to insert a floppy.

For video, dvds have replaced VHS tapes, and now new technologies, like the Apple TV, may soon replace dvds. Ipods and MP3 players hold our music, which was previously held on cd's, and before that, on cassette tapes. Even under optimal storage conditions, digital media is fragile. In fact, there is much debate over the life expectancy of dvds and cds; some estimates claim they will last for up to two-hundred years, but a researcher at IBM has said that most have an anticipated life expectancy of just two to five years, far less than the hundred-year standard that makes something archival. What's more, the rapid updating of operating systems and programs renders much information that does survive obsolete.

And, presently, there's no standard for preserving or archiving artwork that is created from digital media. This includes digital photos and prints, and the obvious solution there is to preserve the physical print. But, more complicated is what happens when the work in need of preservation is not printed, not physical, but was originally created and viewed using some new technology? Such work includes projections, art-project websites, multi-media time-based works, etc. How do we best preserve or archive an artwork created using a digital media?

So, archiving digital media is not simply problematic because the technology used to create the work is constantly being rendered obsolete, but also because the materials used to hold data integral to the work are not necessarily archival. In an effort to overcome both the ephemeral nature of the media and the problem of technological obsolescence, many archivists periodically refresh digital information; that is, they copy it onto a newer media. But this necessitates two things: that the information is independent of the software and hardware used to create it, and that the software and hardware used to create the work is still viable, or at the very least, that new software is backwards compatible with the original software. Migration, in which information is transferred but it's formatting, etc are not always maintained (imagine what happens when you open a word document in text edit, for example), is even more problematic in terms of artwork, where the formatting of a work may be fundamental to the piece.

And, even if this constant resaving of digital information onto the newest technologies does work as a method of preservation, it’s incredibly time consuming and expensive. New media artists need a better way to document and preserve their works. Fortunately, there are myriad groups working on this: Jane Hunter and Sharmin Choudhury's PANIC (Preservation and Archival of Newmedia and Interactive Collections) model aspires to be capable of preserving all forms of digital media, including composite, mixed-media digital objects, and even uses mixed-media digital art as its three major case studies; Richard Rinehart's MANS (Media Art Notation System) uses a musical score as its conceptual model. Rinehart has created a standardized system for notating and reading digital media in the way that we notate and read music. It's particularly interesting because such a system gives us the ability to recreate works without actually having to recreate them in a specific code or language.

Yet, even if MANS is the optimal model to archive digital and variable media, does it actually succeed in doing what conservators and archivists of more traditional media seek to do, which is to not simply document, but to preserve the artwork? Archiving is record keeping, and different methods (Refreshing, PANIC, MANS, our own memories) may be more accurate than others at correctly documenting what a work was like. This documentation may make it possible to recreate or reperform a work, but is that recreation also the artwork?

Certainly the creator system such as MANS that uses musical notation as its model likely thinks this is so. When we go to a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony we believe that we are experiencing the artwork and not just a documentation or copy of the artwork. The Philadelphia Philharmonic’s version of Beethoven’s Fifth is just as much the art as it was when Beethoven was alive to perform it on his piano or conduct an orchestra.

Precedent for a sort of archive as artwork also exists in the visual arts canon. Marcel’s Duchamp’s first readymade, Bicycle Wheel, consisted of two common objects: a bicycle wheel mounted upside down on a kitchen stool. The Museum of Modern Art houses a Bicycle Wheel, but it is DuChamp’s third version of the piece. The first two were lost. However, the museum states:

the fact that this version of the piece is not the original seems inconsequential, at least in terms of visual experience.

Indeed, more important was the fact that the items used to create Bicycle Wheel were mass produced, anonymous. Twelve Bicycle Wheels were created, four, and then an authorized edition of eight. The later versions, produced more than forty years after the first, look more modern because they used the contemporary, mass produced wheels and stools available at that time, following the spirit of the work. In this way, once could say that a digital artwork that looks different than it had originally because it’s utilizing updated technologies is still, in fact, the artwork.

Yet, more similar to the idea of an archiving model for digital media than instructions for making a physical work is an archive of another ephemeral media: performance art. In November of 2005, performance artist Marina Abramovic presented Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim, in which she reenacted, with the artists’ permission, five famous performance pieces by other artists, and two of her own. Much of the concept of Seven Easy Pieces lies in the fact that performance is such an ephemeral medium, and documentation of these performances are few. In this way, Seven Easy Pieces is able to exist simultaneously as an archive and as an artwork, one that comments on the nature of performance art, documentation and archive. However, when the audience saw Abramovic reperform Bruce Nauman's Body Pressure they were not seeing the artwork, Body Pressure. Instead they were seeing an archive of Body Pressure and a portion of an entirely new artwork, Seven Easy Pieces. It is my belief that at its best, an archive of digital media will do this as well: act as a record of a necessarily ephemeral medium and, while doing this, become an entirely new piece of art.

Labels: archiving digital media, digital

posted by Jacquelyn @ 10:37 AM 1 comments

Parsons Resolution?

Yesterday, less than twenty-four hours before a planned rally in support of the fired/ non-retained fine arts faculty at Parsons The New School of Design, Art Info reports on a new press release issued in which the school apologizes for the lack of poor communication and also promises to "make every effort to offer appropriate teaching assignments to non-annual [i.e., adjunct] faculty."

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/31233/on-eve-of-planned-protest-parsons-provost-tries-to-stem-faculty-layoff-controversy/

Labels: Parsons, Parsons faculty cuts, The New School

posted by Jacquelyn @ 12:03 PM 0 comments

More on Parsons...

... an update from Artnet, in which they also mention the particular relevancy of Columbia faculty criticizing Coco Fusco, (also mentioned in my previous post).

and a blog from Parsons' fine art faculty

Labels: Coco Fusco, Parsons, Parsons faculty cuts

posted by Jacquelyn @ 11:47 AM 0 comments