Annotation
Photofairs Shanghai. “Audiences enjoyed large-scale installations, moving image and new technologies, alongside works by the masters of photography.” (Photofairs 2018 [Online])
Cai Dong Dong, Two Doors. Projector, Wooden door, Curtain, 15`00``, 320x280x200 cm, 1/5, 2018 [Photofairs, Shanghai 20.09.2018]
Hu Yun, Not my intention to break it. Archival inkjet print, 40x60 cm, 2013 [Photofairs, Shanghai 20.09.2018]
Xu Yong, The wavelength is around 600cm/120cm x 120cm x 4, Canvas, Tempered glass, Stainless steel, Inkjet print, UV Printing. Version number 3, 2017 [Photofairs, Shanghai 20.09.2018]
Hu Jieming, Multi-channel video, Installation, IPS screen, PC host [Photofairs, Shanghai 20.09.2018]
The film integrates various types of artist manifestos from different time periods with contemporary scenarios. Manifestos are depicted by 13 different characters, among them a school teacher, factory worker, choreographer, punk, newsreader, scientist, puppeteer, widow, and a homeless man.
The film consists of 13 segments, each 10:30 minutes long. In each, a character recites parts of manifestos of various political or artistic movements. (Wikipedia [Online])
Formed in 2000, Punchdrunk's award-winning production Sleep No More tells Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Macbeth through a darkly cinematic lens, offering an audience experience unlike anything else. Audiences move freely through the epic story, creating their own journeys through a film noir world. (Punchdrunk [Online])
Felix Barrett is the founder and artistic director of the theater company Punchdrunk:
Aaron Funk ... known as Venetian Snares, is a Canadian electronic musician ... He is widely known for innovating and popularising the breakcore genre... (Wikipedia [Online])
Venetian Snares [Online] Available from: Listen here: https://venetiansnares.bandcamp.com/track/night-mxcmpv1-p74 [Accessed 17/10/18]
Akram Hossain Khan... is an English dancer of Bangladeshi descent. His background is rooted in his classical kathak training and contemporary dance. (Wikipedia [Online])
Akram Khan XENOS / Akram Khan Company - trailer
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre (Wikipedia [Online]) Borne … – after the biotech apocalypse Flying bears and diagnostic beetles: a thrilling vision of life in its most radical forms explores the question of non-human sentience (The Guardian [Online])
Ultraviolet a ‘Molecular Gastronomy’ 3 Michelin stars Restaurant by Paul Pairet
Mysticism, loneliness, the search for self, neglect - manifestations of the popular art of the last decade. If there are positive colours and irony – they are turned towards a reflection on society which is still in a search of self-identification. Art University students seem to be in the race of creativity and imagination forming dozens of pieces of art. I think that this is a matter of time and over years they anyway transform into the first.
Experience of a Photofairs Shanghai, a film by Julian Rosefeldt, Punchdrunk's theatre, the music of Aaron Funk, Akram Khan’s dance, Jeff VanderMeer’s perspective of the world and long research about representational means, I came to realize the absence of boundaries in art.
Art was special and specific, but the transformation of art into a visual and audio culture erased all the boundaries between disciplines and led to a culture in general. Sounds, colours, shapes, materials, languages, architecture, digital forms, body, textures all can be everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere. Art in the past was a specific area – “I’m creating an art piece” and now life itself or thoughts can be recognized as an art. Here we are facing the situation when art in a particular area transformed into a bigger meaning – CULTURE.
Culture - the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time (Cambridge dictionary, online)
If there are no boundaries in art then appeal to intangible is a logical step. Thus, the thought, the idea, the concept remains on the surface of the analysis, as things that are possible to define boundaries. Is understanding and knowledge of culture then depends on the definition of these elements? How does thought arise and an idea emerges? What drives a person to create? Interests? Politics? Criticism of society? ...?
“Being an artist now means to question the nature of art” Joseph Kosuth
Pure art may not be necessary. If there is a chance of usage in art or an element of “loveliness” or wish to craft something or art needed in the sake of art therapy, or figurativeness appears, then there is no culture. It is replaced with another priority like profit, decoration, needlework, therapy, storytelling. For example, if you have a white wall and the "wish" of putting something on it is dictated by the decorative motive – let’s call it “wish of the loveliness” on the wall. Or another example, when an artist paints a New Year tree or water lilies in a pond and applies the green oil from a tube directly on the canvas with “dramatic” volume that “it looks like a real”, it means that the artist spends time on such technical work, makes, adjusts, and in such a complex process there is no place for the purity or actually any culture behind. Another story - when a woman in the process of divorcing and splitting children between herself and husband, decides to paint the canvas with blue paint - like the sea in Turkey, she will certainly think about the wonderful time when she meditated with the whole family on the beach. In this process, again, there is no place for creating a pure culture, this process is excellent as an art therapy it will help with the motivation of the women to relieve pain and discontentment.
The purity of culture can be found in the search for answers to questions that do not arise in ordinary areas - beauty, skill, enjoyment, health, nature ...
Culture can contain elements of metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, esoterics, cosmism and all the rest ... But! These disciplines and terms are systematized, learned, in other words, they contain a certain set of experiences of previous generations. They are aimed to create something concrete for which they were isolated from the general mass of sciences and disciplines. Shouldn't a culture then remain free from the encroachments of thoughts, ideas, concepts and extraneous disciplines which are searching the ephemeral truth in a particular field? Ideas (and everything connected with them) transform art into objects which are designed to solve specific problems or answer specific questions. Therefore, pure culture cannot contain an idea as it is impossible, for example, to define zero, or the beginning of consciousness, or the boundaries of the cosmos, or the understanding of the spirit. Culture should remain free out of anything logical and understandable. For example, for the believer it would be conscious - to come to the spiritual house and meditate or pray, but unconscious would be to reach the enlightenment – it is so to say a place for the culture. Atheist consciously can take strong psychotropic substances to unconsciously reach the same enlightenment, but the last example dangerous for life.
We should leave the VISUAL culture as the only possible discipline, a field of activity for the high, purity, 0, everything and nothing in composition, colour, form, embodiment, conscious and unconscious, canvas and not canvas, black and white, sounds and silence, words and characters, shapes and space...
p.s. This reflection was written at the beginning of my course. Now I would have formulated everything differently.
Bibliography and references
1. Photofairs 2018 [Online] Available from: https://www.photofairs.org/news/photofairs-shanghai%E2%80%99s-fifth-anniversary-boosts-asia-pacific%E2%80%99s-photography-market [Accessed 16/10/18]
2. Wikipedia [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_(2015_film) [Accessed 16/10/18]
3. Manifesto (2015 film) Official Trailer [Online] Available from: https://youtu.be/_QvI4cFGft8 [Accessed 16/10/18]
4. Punchdrunk, Sleep no more [Online] Available from: https://www.punchdrunk.com/sleep-no-more/ [Accessed 16/10/18]
5. Felix Barrett Punchdrunk [Online] Available from: https://youtu.be/6ktpes0qMZ0 [Accessed 16/10/18]
6. Wikipedia Venetian Snares [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Snares [Accessed 18/10/18]
7. Wikipedia Akram Khan [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akram_Khan_(dancer) [Accessed 18/10/18]
8. Wikipedia Jeff VanderMeer [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_VanderMeer [Accessed 18/10/18]
9. The Guardian, Book of the day, Borne by Jeff VanderMeer review – after the biotech apocalypse https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/15/borne-by-jeff-vandermeer-review [Accessed 18/10/18]
10. Ultraviolet https://uvbypp.cc [Accessed 03/12/18]
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