good day - thursday 22nd feb

After a doldrums day yesterday (wed 21st),a non event of a day, general apathy and lethargy in the mfa room, no motivation, inspiration or direction from the tutors, we seem to have the complete opposite today.

Morning = seminar by Stewart McDonald (head of grays, former lighthouse director)about curatorial developments in the architectural / design worlds, aided by fine artists and curators. Application of new ways of display, information relay and layout. Some fantastic visuals of shows (mostly architectural) that have been given a "fine art spin" by the curatorial process. Stewart also talked about relevance, where the audience needs to feel engaged, enough to actually bring the audience in to the space. "vertiginous" was a show, costing near a million pounds, to showcase modern architecture and design, it failed miserably to engage the public, and drew in meager audiences. A failure in everything but the excellent work on show. In the same space "love hotel" (a show about the phenomena in japan) drew in massive crowds, the content, nearly the "same" as vertiginous, but the title, advertisement of the show appealed to the populace...sex sells. (or the hint of sex).

guest at grays : Kevin Henderson (link)
A very interesting guest at grays. Performance art meets land art ? (walks / cycles documented) + "traditional" performance art, with audiences (poland, france, belfast etc). One of the satisfying aspects of the lecture for me was the discussion around "documentation" and the "work". I'd written in the notes, "is the documentation the work, or is the work a documentation" (research). The "audience" peices were a traditional concept of "work", for other people to consume, digest and understand, where as Kevin's "cycles" were actually personal research methods, which became work, when documented and displayed. Akin to Hamis Foulton's "walks". It's the documentation and display of the documentation that "makes it art". Some fascinating ideas about what documentation can and can not do (or how a photograph changes memory, through false lighting (flash) etc).

Afternoon in the whitespace (C3)
Finally! some direction and planning from the tutors! Moira shows her "yellow wallpaper" work (two projectors, one static showing a picture of a dolls house chair, mirror + reflection of door and said chair), and the other a constant blank / photographs of the same dolls house from different angles / set ups). The work is subtle, yet deep, opening up ideas of memory, time, scale, projection (self, light and imagination). An excellent first week, and something that's going to be hard to follow!

Listening to : tom waits - various interviews on youtube : big black - songs about fucking : carcass - symphonies of sickness