non-literal NO

Today is sprung upon us at 5pm yesterday(?)...again, a last minute (we don't have plans or anything, we're only students!) Steve Hollingsworth is joining us from Glasgow today and tomorrow. It's great, I am glad he's coming, but again, a little forward planning might help, after all, we do have to present work and Ideas to him, and knowing what you want to say (not just what you are going to say!).

Needless to say, Susie and I work on the Video (Beech on Beach (working title)) as there are a few tweaks, before the Aberdeen Artists hand in today...but, when we get into Gray's Mary is conversing with Steve about her proposed "negotiation" performance with me at AA... he seems strangely interested, engaged, alert when talking about the work. Strangely? (unfair of me to say?). Perhaps Iain has had a word with Steve about his "apparent" (perceived by us, anyway, and that's good enough for it to be true) disdain, when talking to us.

Susie also has a positive experience with him. It's sounding good, too good to be true? Lets hope not, lets just hope he had a bad week last time, and he's a new, invigorated person. I do enjoy chatting with him, but he still intimidates and often talks down (or is dismissive) of me, I can cope with that, I am learning to become stronger to (not general criticism), but one persons (informed) yet bored reaction to my work, it's the worst you could ever get, Like / Dislike are nothing, it's "bored, rather be somewhere else" that's the killer...

Steve brings us 5 videos to watch, he stays with us (Mary, Lois and I). We watch a great video from 1995 of the curator Jeremy Millar talking about the show "The Institute of Cultural Anxiety" (ICA). He speaks eloquently, plainly, incredibly calculated about the works in the show. Sort of museum come art gallery, where mixed objects (art, historical and scientific) inhabit a space, to inform us of our obsession, dependency and reliance on "technology" with out fully understanding it (I think this is for my benefit? I certainly am taking it as just that). He talks so absolutely about the properties and positions of some of the objects, Charles Sandison's out dated computers, spewing out black and white texts, geometric patterns and shapes, programmed in a now defunct language dutifully "doing their thing", Jake and Dinos Chapman's "Little Death Machine (Castrated)" talking of it's now "defunct" (castrated) state, broken from use in a previous exhibition, Donald Campbell's helmet he wore when he died on the attempt at the water speed record...many objects, all disparate, but linked by an obsession of collection, science, technology. He certainly talks the talk, but in a very understandable fashion, quite refreshing to hear. He talks of the need to collate and document as a reaction to fear, through needing to understand our world better by collecting. He likened the show to Victorian methodologies. Killing animals, to dissect, to gain further knowledge, but ultimately destroying the thing that you wish to understand. A sadness, or darkness (depending on your humour, funny too) threads through the show. Ugly objects, a poor armless woman struggles with her distraught baby, as she re-dresses her wearing "old-school" prosthetic arms, a dying canary in a bell jar, again, the helmet that a national "hero" died in...It would have been an excellent show to see, and yet, still timeless in its content, it's as fresh watching it on a video in 2007 as I am sure it was when it came to light in 1995.

We're also shown the Matt Collings video of Donald Judd's Life and work. Soooo many points raised in these videos, a blog can't do them justice. Some of the most salient points were that Judd could not find "context" for his work, refusal to conform to Galleries constraints and limitations, he bought many houses in Marfa, Texas and turned his space (vast buildings, open hangars in the desert etc) into "his gallery", where he and like minded artists could show their work...permanently. The video is inspirational, it's a dream come true, but the reality of the situation is (or was) that the only way he could do this (indulge, should I say), is that he was already a multi millionaire from selling his works constrained by galleries! Tales of disconnection rom the community, whilst still residing there, building walls, putting up signs to tell truck drivers (the previous "life force" of the town) to keep quiet Etc, alienated the population. Fear of land being taken "for that hippy artist" were rife (classic American fears, territory and money). One old timer thought it was great that Judd did bring artists and audience in, as it meant the almighty dollar flooded into the town..."we all gotta eat". Judd's work, I thought was an exemplar of the message Steve is trying to tell us all. Judd prepared 100 steel boxes, all 6ft * 4ft * 4ft, with varying differences (some with openings, some closed, some with shelves, slopes etc inside them). This is the embodiment of an exploration of a theme, rigorous and uncompromising in its exploration of possibilities within a given set of parameters. Subtle, yes, but exponential non the less. It's this very message that Steve is telling us every time we see him. Make sure we get the most out of our Ideas, before committing to them as a physical embodiment... i couldn't agree more.

I walk into town, as I don't have enough change for a bus (I hate buses, exact change, shit drivers (grumpy bastards, who make me grumpy, curse them.).)
But, from a negative, comes a positive (or several, depending on the scrutiny). I walk past a torn trampoline, still in a back garden, and it makes me think of "NO". I start trying to think of work, based around the word, or "concept" of "NO". denial, brutal, firm, resolute, defiant (and "positively" : guidance, protection, education, choice...) I try to imagine works that might inhabit a show, curated around the word. The trampoline "as is", A porno, with a hysterical woman screaming "yes yes yes" (in my mind, is always "no no no"), A playful "yes" upside down, under an upturned table ("NO" upside-down/opposite is "ON"). I disappoint myself for being to literal, I have my little Steve on my shoulder, in his devil suit saying "well, that's a simple way of looking at it"). So I strive to think of "NO" in a non literal sense, but I can't. Perhaps the concept of "NO" is too ingrained in my psyche to think of it in any other way. What could "NO" mean, how are we affected by the word. I wondered "what is no?" (the opposite of "yes", and in turn, what is "yes"? the opposite of no...helpful! NO!) I think I might discuss this with the other MFAers..perhaps there might be a show in this>?

Listening to : Bill Evans - Everybody digs Bill Evans : Jocelyn Pook - untold things