New Shows by Old Hats

[George]

1. Mathew Barney

Mr Bjork's been at the Vaseline again:



A few whores might of heard of Matthew Barney, for those who don't, the best summary befitting the so called ''George Lucas of Contemporary art'' would be ''whatthefuck?'' because he really does excel in reinventing lexicons and leaves so many questions unanswered in his work: namely, what the fuck am I looking at here? But after a while the visual language takes on a meaning of its own and becomes an elocution lesson in luscious mythical symbols and disturbing displays of natural entropy.



Barney trained as a doctor but decided to pack it in favour of producing art that preoccupied itself with a certain biological obsession. People have speculated that he had a nervous breakdown and went a bit lolly in the trolley and so took up bodybuilding and Sculpture as a means to exorcise his inner demons. If that is the case then fuck me, or indeed Whatthefuck?, as his works are some of the most measured displays of contemporary art I have ever seen.

He's best known for the lavish Cremaster Series: http://www.cremaster.net/ , 5 instalments of dialogue-bereft, opulently baroque genius. The cremaster series owes its namesake to the recoiling instinct us men get in our balls when met with cold or fear. Suspension of disbelief indeed.



There's an eerie sense of organic resistance with this set of films but when it's fused with his sculptural Vaseline installations, you start to get the feeling that Barney and Bjork are a match made in Hades. Nearly all of his videos are bereft of a linear narrative and dialogue in the conventional sense; it's been likened to the thinking man's eye candy and that's a fair summary in my view.



Anyway, Barney's back at it again with Drawing Restraint 9 :

This features Bjork and Barney in a film that mirrors much of Barney's and Bjork's back catalogues. This is taken from Bjork's site

core idea is the relationship between self-imposed resistance and creativity, a theme it symbolically tracks through the construction and transformation of a vast sculpture of liquid Vaseline, called "The Field", which is moulded, poured, bisected and reformed on the deck of the ship over the course of the film.

Barriers hold form in place, and when they are removed, the film tracks the descent of form into states of sensual surrender and formal atrophy; this shift in the physical state of the sculpture is symbolically mirrored through the narrative of The Guests, two occidental visitors to the ship played in the film by Matthew Barney and Björk, who we first see taken on board, groomed, bathed and dressed in mammal fur costumes based upon traditional Shinto marriage costumes.

They take part in a tea ceremony in which, in the film's only moment of spoken dialogue, they are informed about the history of the vessel, and then, as an increasingly powerful lightning storm breaks out overhead, the tatami mat room they occupy floods with liquid vaseline, a fluid which we sense has emanated from The Field sculpture itself.

In a harrowing liebestod which is the climax and centerpiece of the film, the Guests, locked in an embrace and breathing through blowhole-like orifices on the back of their necks, take out flensing knives and cut away each other's feet and thighs. The remains of their lower body are revealed to contain traces of whale tails at an early stage of development, suggesting rebirth, physical transformation, and the possibility of new forms.

Having reached a state of maximum disintegration, the sculpture of The Field
is then reorganized and the ship emerges from the storm, sailing through a field
of icebergs towards the open southern ocean. In the last shot, two whales can be
seen swimming behind the ship, headed for Antarctica.

More links here:

http://unit.bjork.com/specials/dr9/

http://www.kanazawa21.jp/barney/e/movie.html

Anyway. I've started this thread for those with an interest in Con Art, especially as it's the start of the pre-Turner silly season with all of the art stags rutting horns and locking toilet cubicle doors with one another.



Lloyd, it's over to ewe.

[splattermac]

No surprise if there's an art turd I've been sniffing around it :)

I downloaded Cremaster two, four and five as so so video rips and I own number three on DVD. Just to be an awkward twat number three is newer than four and five.

It felt that watching them on a TV didn't do them justice. To me they should be exhibited in a nice gallery cloister on a sizable viewing area where the onscreen performers are at least 1:1, preferably where the audience has had the edge taken off them by a glass or two of red.

I don't know anyone else who's seen the Cremaster films let alone sat and watched one in company. If Drawing Restraint 9 gets a cinema release I'm going to drag along a friend so that I can listen to someone else's opinion. Art infuriates me when I feel like I'm its only witness. That's just a grand way of saying I wish I had someone to discuss it with.

Although it's possibly worse when you do see something with someone and they are still the same placid pond they entered as, 'whaaaa a dirty great shape has just been thrown in and not even a ripple!'

I find it very difficult to converse with people about art in the real world. It's hard to find a person or people who are comfortable with my pace of thought, which is chin stroking/pipe packing at best. When I see a provocative art work it sets off an explosion of thought and cross referencing, everything rushes past and I'm left grabbing at the smoke. So if people will stick around to see if I can pat and cup together anything out of the smoke then maybe we can explore some ideas. Another conversation killer is that I use my ears more than my mouth so I'm happy for other people to do the talking, which often means I go home with my thoughts still in my seed bag and none sewn in the collective brain furrows as it were. Of course by comparison some people's thoughts are as rampant as ivy, crawling all over you uninvited :(

Anyhoo, I'm holding out for the release of a boxed set and then that boxed set falling off the shelf into the bargain bin :)

I look forward to the spectacle of Drawing Restraint 9, fingers crossed it will be on a large screen.

[slim]

[dot]

woz gaaaan on, ay? wanna cap a tea shehw?

why are the two posts above this blank? Have I got a new show then or what?

[George]

I'll get me coat then...

[slim]

why are the two posts above this blank? Have I got a new show then or what?

I saw splat posting (what I presume is) a speechless post, and I just had to know how to do it. I asked, then I figured it out and edited it into a speechless post of my own.

Nah, don't go, George. It was interesting, even if I wasn't personally impressed by the art.

[splattermac]

I edited mine out because I'd reached my 3.27 posts for the day, but if you rub a crayon over the top you should be able to make out what was written.

I'm off to mix up some lemon juice for a couple more posts before bed.

And what about the old cremaster after a hot shower, know what I'm saying lads, you could trip on them and stumble face first into the bathroom cabinet.

Barney article http://tinyurl.com/d25as

[sproggy]

Stunning thread George.

I knew it was inside you, eruption pending trigger.

The Barney images do have a certain needle-in-the-eye abruptness.

[George]

Danke Sprogs,  

I own number three on DVD.

I thought Barney only released 10 DVD's of each cycle, making his output incredbly rare and sought after, also maintaining his exclusive control on distribution as well as keeping his artist stock value buoyant? Single discs have sold at auction for over $385,000 so if you do own a copy, what other toys have you bought Splattertrump? Or do you own The order that's part of C3 they released as a teaser (the mini segment that has the apprentice scale the Guggenheim doing weird, kinky tests)?

It felt that watching them on a TV didn't do them justice. To me they should be exhibited in a nice gallery cloister on a sizable viewing area where the onscreen performers are at least 1:1

Right on and damn right. Conversly, many curatorial decision making and artistic blunders happen when the flip side of that happens and the viewer is bombarded with massed-out enlarged video pieces that would work just as well on a monitor or on telly.

I look forward to the spectacle of Drawing Restraint 9, fingers crossed it will be on a large screen.

Well the good news is that it's being premiered writ large, the bad is that it's going to be in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, fucking well Japan. Of course, this is Barney's way of being extra site specific as the film sources Japanese music and culture quite deeply. Re Screening: I know that for the CS, showings are always announced on cremaster.net about 4 months (yes..a quarterly *cycle*) ahead but as DS has no official site apart from Bjork's extra page, you're guess is as good as mine. Actually, has anyone bought Bjork's soundtrack yet? Scroll halfway down the special  page ( http://unit.bjork.com/specials/dr9/ ) and you can hear some sneaky samples from the dame of Weird herself. I like it, and I think it will grow on me in a not too fungal kinda way, but I dig Autechre too.

I find it very difficult to converse with people about art in the real world. It's hard to find a person or people who are comfortable with my pace of thought, which is chin stroking/pipe packing at best. When I see a provocative art work it sets off an explosion of thought and cross referencing, everything rushes past and I'm left grabbing at the smoke.

Where are we, Narnia? I see what you mean. Digging con art or studying it at uni or god forbid practicing it as I do is much like living the Jedi way. It's such an adroit endeavour that it gets very lonely. As sol lewitt said many moons ago:

Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach...

Rational judgements repeat rational judgements, irrational judgements lead to new experience

So the interest in con art can be likewise. A bit cloistered and perhaps a bit geeky, and yes very much Obi-Wan-U-like too, a belief in the force (concept) over matter and all that.. Actually Splatts, that's what this thread is for, I mean is it really possible to discuss with a bloke at a bus stop, a muscle that raises and lowers the testicles and the descension of it as a metaphor for the appearance of male sexuality, a hidden self portrait of the artist himself? Nah, but hey, at least we're not paedos!


-An actual Cremaster muscle, donating itself to science


-Ursula Andress as The Queen of chain, cremaster 5.

[splattermac]

eww dirty scrotal mollusc! I wonder if Rick Stein cooks them up in his Padstow restaurant? I can imagine him tucking into one with Feldman like eyes rolling ecstatically.

Ah, I thought Cremaster 3 'The order' was an odd disjointed affair (more so than normal), with it's scenes taking place on higher and higher platforms much like a computer game. The fact it's a DVD teaser makes sense now as I've read that his films are sold in small numbers to institutes, museums and libraries and occasionally a showing will bubble to the surface. I thought he was just branching out to see how well it sold and if he had a market in releasing his work to the masses via DVD. I feel quite lucky to have the copies I have then, I might covet their glitchy pixels when I get home.

Doesn't the Ursula remind you of one of the religious order from the film Dune or a Giger? At the risk of repeating what's already been written in the many comprehensive criticisms and biographies, his films would possibly make better stills. In fact I believe there are Cremaster books comprising of exactly that. I know my local library search turned up a weirdy book from me recently so I might give them a try. A bit of eye candy should the notion take me. Actually that's probably too much of an effort, I'll probably just spill coffee on them and get cake crumbs in the spine.

Perhaps if I worked in con-art I'd swoon over the glossies but as an everyman I'm not really that involved in his cryptic processions (Now if they had more nudity and played kazoos!) I imagine fashion and photography students make up the bulk of his audience, strange asexual things with horn-rimmed specs, Warhol hair and ethic layers. It's good publicity to involve Bjork but does this mean we can expect a music video, after all they are almost the perfect short film.

Anyhoo, can't think – at work - back later

[Cheese bored]

I keep looking through this post. Never heard of Barney before but quite like
(most) of Bjork's stuff so was tempted enough to go look through the links provided.
I can't say that I've ever, (consciously)  had any dealings with con art before.
Sure I've wandered galleries and exhibitions with everyone else,
probably pointing at things that made no sense to me (and I suspect 90% of the other people around me) and wondering:
a.   how the hell have they come up with the idea
b.   where the funding came from
c.   whats the bloody point?
d.   What the hell is it anyway?

And if that was the whole point, then great.
Warmsmugnessshakeyhandiesgrinnybackslapping all round.

I've just watched the trailer for the Cremaster cycle (bits of all of them?) and I have to say that it's one of the first things that I've
watched in a long time which felt quite unsettling.

"]an explosion of thought and cross referencing, everything rushes past”

Not sure that I could sit through hours of it though.

That said, if Drawing Restraint 9 does reach these windy shores I'd be tempted to go along and see it.

Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach...

Are Con Artists (no pun intended) manic depressive as well?


I'm sorry, I'm babbling.

Really liked this tho... Thanks George

[dot]

Mr Bjork

BASTARD!!!!!

I mean, I hope they're very happy together.
Except for him

[George]

Hey look everyone, more crazy shit

Thames Water threatened him with legal action after he left a tap running at a gallery for a month, while water shortages were forcing it to consider a hosepipe ban.

Never heard of this McGowan chappy before but he seems to have caught a hell of a lot of media attention for what  is essentially quite a 70's, rehashed brand of performance art. He now plans to keep a car running every day for a whole year to apparently highlight our environmental flippancy and general fat arsed laziness. I kind of admire the obvious nature to it but don't think it has any more worth than an inventive political stunt by Greenpeace.

If any London whores want to go and meditate on the aesthetic vs the conceptual conundrum of sticking a banana up his exhaust-pipe then it's planned for this November, set in a Peckham carpark. This sort of thing is just dying for a bit of art on art action in my view, namely getting a 24/7 security guard to stand next to this performance during it's duration to out-trump and out-weird his playfull yet topically mundane performance. But that'd be as silly as standing in a bath full of baked beans with chips stuffed up your nostrils and dynamite strapped to your head.

[9]

I definitely think Barney does deserves the hype he's been getting; his work has had a pretty major influence on me in recent times and I think he puts a tremendous amount of care and love into his works. I'd highly recommend Norman Mailer's mammoth Executioner's Song for anyone who who wants to find out more about the life of Gary Gilmore - the man that Barney portrayed in C2

I saw all the Cremaster films in one go at a local filmhouse a while back and it was a pretty spectacular experience. The sound design in particular is truly astonishing. The chorus of drones at the start of C2 took my breath away. Having got hold of the soundtracks I have to say that the music isn't anywhere near as powerful with out the images that accompany it. Conversely the images from the films work brilliantly as stills. There's lots of lush photography and behind the scenes info to be found in The Cremaster Cycle, published by the Guggenheim museum. I think I enjoy his stuff so much because he brings a really beautiful kind of painstaking craft to his work which is often lacking in much conceptual art.

He's one of those rare folk who have the capacity to alter the way that you perceive things, and i think that's really the benchmark for good art.

Haven't seen/heard his latest stuff yet but i'm looking forward to catching it even though I'm not a huge Bjork fan.



Richard Serra as The Architect in C3.

[slim]

Thames Water threatened him with legal action after he left a tap running at a gallery for a month, while water shortages were forcing it to consider a hosepipe ban.

[...]
He now plans to keep a car running every day for a whole year to apparently highlight our environmental flippancy and general fat arsed laziness.

What a fucking twat.

[Borboski]

How do I watch these?  I read all about one in the guardian ages ago and forgot about it? Can you buy - you seem to be saying they aren't available... can you download them?

is there actually a narrative to them?

[sproggy]

I believe a boxed set has been on the cards for some time but the release date keeps slipping.

I'm keen to find downloads if available too.

[dot]

the creymaster cycle 1-5, 4.64 gb though EDITED - You're a fucking massive pillock, Steven
Getting good speeds off it.

[George]

You rippah!

[George]

It was only a matter of time for imitation to be the greatest form of Flatley.



It features the 'London eye' as well.

I believe a boxed set has been on the cards for some time but the release date keeps slipping.

hmmmmmmmmm?



Interestingly this I never seen nivah.

From here (and check out Dax van Aalten's 'The Mammarymaster Cycle' on those pages. It's owt now).

[dot]

I've just watched the first one, started with male sexuality, ended with male sexuality, didn't go anywhere in between, didn't say anything to me, looked very drab, studentish, I was looking at the clock throughout, nothing to keep my attention, nothing enjoyable, looked crap, shite. A whole load of bollocks, not even pretty bollocks. I may as well watch the second one seen as that's finished, cancelled the others even though they were half way through.

[Neil]

DO NOT post torrents of copyrighted movies on here!!  Never mind torrents of FIVE movies!  You really are an absolute fucking prick, Rats.

[George]

OK. This is better fare (for the gamers out there).



May you live in interesting Times features various techno-orientated stuff (Cardiff's first ever Festival of Creative Technology). This particular piece involving a game that is played with people running through the streets, rigged with PDAs, GPS and phones, usually with online players as well.

Online players log onto the website to be dropped into a virtual Cardiff. Blast Theory runners will search for you on the real streets using GPS, tracking your avatar down as you run away from them online. Use your arrow keys to flee down the virtual streets, send messages and exchange tactics with other online players. An audio stream from Blast Theory's walkie talkies lets you eavesdrop on your pursuers, getting lost and out of breath.

Game times (GMT):
Friday 28: 10.00 - 12.00 and 14.00 - 16.00
Saturday 29: 11.00 - 13.00 and 17.00 - 19.00
Sunday 30: 11.00 - 13.00 and 14.00 - 16.00


May You Live in Interesting Times, Cardiff. Saturday 29th, a talk by Ju Row Farr from Blast Theory will be streamed live. The phrase itself is also a Chinese curse, apparently.

[slim]

The phrase itself is also a Chinese curse, apparently.

Interesting stuff. I thought it was a Pratchettism (or someone like that)?

[Suttonpubcrawl]

There's some confusion about it, but Pratchett didn't invent it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times

[slim]

Next you'll be telling me Stephen King didn't invent fireworks.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Next you'll be telling me Stephen King didn't invent fireworks.

Nope. It was Dave Brock.