My Kilometre

My kilometer is the smallest distance between my first home and where I call home now. Usually when you hear a kilometer you think about a long distance, maybe a long walk or at least a couple minutes of driving, but for me a kilometer is actually really really tiny, compared to how far I’ve come, how far I’ve traveled. I wrote this little thing in my notebook the other day: I’ve taken millions of steps, from east, to west, from south, to north. I feel the wounds, I’m walking on them. I think in that moment, I felt all the pain that comes from being away. Away to me means that I can’t go back. That even if I do, I can’t call it home anymore. I wonder where my home is now. Like a traveller that never finds home.

I wasn’t allowed to go and visit my family, my friends and my home for the past holidays. All I had left was to visit my neighbourhood on google maps, try to remember what it looked like before I left a year and a half ago.

My kilometer is 1 out of 9932.

For my video projects, I had tons of ideas, and as I was discussing it with my boyfriend, we kept thinking of more and more ideas. One of the first Ideas I had, especially for the One Shot video, was to start painting myself a certain color, and don’t stop until I have covered all of my body. And of course the color that I was imagining was red, just because life feels that way. I don’t know if it’s the experience of living as a woman, or a human, or even an animal or something else, but red has always illustrated my emotions very well. I don’t know how to exactly put it, but red has pain, but also persistence, and strength. Red reminds me of the exact moment when I feel the first drop of period blood. And what a beautiful, majestic experience it is. I’m just realizing as I’m writing this, how amazing of an experience it is, even the pain. In my experience, I have the worst pain right before my blood flows out. It feels powerful, to be able to stand up, go out, work, study, create while I’m going through this pain. And there comes the persistence, it’s just so beautiful how humans can adapt and fight through every obstacle that comes their way, just to stay alive. It’s all just animal instinct, but we humans bleed and break and fall and drown, but find the way out. At least most of the time.
Red reminds me of blood, of anger, of passion, and of love.

But unfortunately that idea was just a bit too messy, so we started trying different ideas we had. One of the ideas I liked to look into was peeling fruit. Especially for my Sequence video, I wanted to start from an easy fruit to peel, like a banana or a clementine, and maybe work my way up to a watermelon , or even a coconut. Of course all of them were supposed to be peeled with bare hands.
I also thought about filming the movement of specific parts of my body when I’m breathing, like my shoulders, or my stomach, or my chest. Breathing is an interesting exercise, and we do it without even thinking too much of it. We inhale, separate and absorb some little thing called oxygen, turn it to a useless (to us) other little thing and send it on its way. It all happens in a couple seconds, and so we have done that billions and billions of times without even acknowledging it. Again, animal instincts that come without even thinking or noticing are just fascinating.

As my loop video, we have this little quirky thing we do when there’s a tiny bit of a joint left. We put it backwards in our mouth, so the lit part is actually super close to our tongue, and then blow it through our mouth and the other person gets really close and inhales the smoke we just blew. Anyway, that was a funny thing to do as a loop. It’s also kinda awkward to get that close to someone if you’re not really close to them, emotionally, but that’s kind of a party trick for me. Always breaks the ice when your nose is almost touching a stranger nose while you’re blowing smoke in their face.

all of these ideas are something I will definitely pursue, but we had an enlightenment when we saw this fox trap my boyfriend had hung up on his wall. We grabbed the fruits and started experimenting this little old trap.

Then we found the chest.

How To Not Set A Trap (One Shot)

Peel My Banana (A Loop)

Snapping Turtle (A Sequence)

On September 16th, 2022, while traveling with family to visit Tehran, a girl named Mahsa Amini was brutally beaten to death by the morality police. What’s that, you ask? They are a group of police that their job is to kidnap women in daylight and take them to this building, and keeping them hostage until their dads, or husbands, or honestly any man show up and bring the woman “proper clothes” and then the woman sign some papers against herself like she’s a dangerous criminal, and hopefully then she can leave.

It wasn’t an overnight accident that got people angry, in fact for around 45 years, people have been silenced, especially women, and if they spoke up they were brutally killed. In 2019, in a span of 3 days, the government of Iran killed more than 1500 people, because they were protesting. How did nobody hear about it? They shut down the internet for a whole week. Imagine not even being able to use google. Anyway, after Mahsa Amini was killed, people, especially women once again became furious. They started protesting, and of course, the government started killing people again.

This piece is called 190 days, because in the past 190 days, women stood up and men, finally stood beside them. But unfortunately, we lost so many brave souls. The first part of the audio is an edited version of the siren that was played when Iran and Iraq were in a war and Iran was under attack. The woman says: “This is a red status warning, it is time for revolution.”

The crying, mourning voices that come after are all from women who experienced the loss of their loved ones, because the government killed them. In the past 190 days, this is how every person has felt.

190 Days (audio project)

This is my cigarette project. As soon as I heard about the project and watched the videos and pictures with the class, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
As you can probably tell, I smoke, and I smoke a lot, at least more than a non-smoker. Each cigarette I smoke has a story behind it, a character. There are a few things that a cigarette shows me about myself. When did I smoke that cigarette? How did I light it up? Where were I when I smoked it? How many cigarettes did I smoke yesterday? Is it getting more everyday? Were I wearing lipstick? How did I put it out? And considering that I wrote the date and the time on the cigarette, how was I feeling physically? Were I cold and is my handwriting all shaky? Or were I too focused and my handwriting is clean and neat? How long did it take for me to smoke this one? How much was left of my cigarette? These are all questions that lead to at least one answer about me, and I believe it is the most successful self portrait I have created.
I documented 30 cigarettes in 8 days, although I thought it would take me 30 days to smoke it. Each cigarette comes with the date and the time I put it out. Ideally this project was just a demo of a project I will pursue later, and the goal of that project is to document each cigarette I smoke until I quit smoking.

Which one us would go first?

For the Artist’s Button project, I went with a very simple idea. At first I tried to keep all of my buttons together on a long piece of yarn, but the button maker kept cutting my yarn. On the buttons, I spelled out “زن، زندگی، آزادی” which means “Woman, Life, Freedom”. Like the self portrait project, this was a demo of a project I have in mind. To make many sets of this buttons, and to give them away if I travel back to Iran. One button on its own is meaningless and confusing, but if they all come together, they make a powerful connection. Which is very much what we need as Iranians if we want to change the system.

Solidarity

Kilometre (Jan 12, 2023)

Really inspired by Erwin Wurm’s OHNE TITEL (RED SWEATERS FROM ONE MINUTE SCULPTURES), 2000–2003.

Also really enjoyed the irony that I could see in a lot of works, or how they acknowledge what they are in some way. As well, I took note of the importance that simplicity and deduction can play in conceptual works. Of course, the idea being the main focus of what the art is, there was a lot that I had not considered to be a part of the idea, like the words/definition that make up an object, or even a photo of an object, rather than just an object itself. To try and make my work align with what we learned about conceptual art, I want to have my work be titled in a way that bluntly, but possibly humorously, says exactly what is happening. As well, I want the work to have a sense of irony, or totally play around with how I can actually represent a kilometre in the most obvious yet non-obvious way. I like that this kind of art seems to push any boundary set upon it. In being inspired by the layout of Wurm’s work, I want to use a sequence of photos to represent a kilometre. I somehow would like to incorporate mycelium into this, as mycelium can span MANY kilometres but all without being seen. If not mycelium, I am also thinking of using math and sizing of images to be my kilometre. In this, I mean walking a kilometre without walking a kilometre at all. 1 kilometre is 1000 metres, and I was originally thinking that maybe I would use a bunch of pictures for each metre, but taking 1000 photos, or even compiling 1000 photos, doesn’t seem like a feasible task. I was also thinking about stop motion animation in this, and thought maybe instead of actual stop motion, I could just repeat 3-4 photos of me walking (a photo of each part of walking, one leg stepping, then up, next leg stepping, then up… etc). trying to figure out the math in how to do this. I feel like by making this math based, it simplifies the idea down into simple numbers but also still is a representation of the kilometre to an exact.

(Jan 13, 2023)

Could not figure out how to execute anything with mycelium, especially since it’s the winter. As well, I realized I was trying to create my work that it is too math oriented for me to properly figure out how to execute it, so in trying to figure out how to portray a kilometre, I thought more about how I can provide evidence of a walked kilometre. Then started thinking about how walking a kilometre is measured, and how a driven kilometre is way different in timing than a walked one. I realized that kilometres always stay the same in terms of distance but the time it takes to travel that distance can change based on many different things, even the person who is walking. Even the way you feel or the weather outside can make you walk faster or slower, and this is what allowed me come to the thought of how music often influences how I feel and how quickly I walk too. With this, I decided to record how long it took me to walk a kilometre listening to music I wanted to listen to in that time. The music I listened to was much more upbeat but also very fun for me to move around to, so I definitely walked a kilometre longer than the average person would. I also happen to be a very slow walker so that added onto my time. To take elements of what we have learned about conceptual works, I decided to use a very obvious, telling, and simple title for my work. I also chose to use a layout of collaged photos as I was still inspired by Erwin Wurm and wanted to see how I could depict things through photo still.

(Jan 16, 2023)

This is my kilometre that I presented in class (edit: now to be remade) ^^^. You can see that I described my thought process about it above the photo. Somethnig I spoke about in class which i thought would be an interesting addition here is that it can be interesting to use music to track how long something takes or use it as a part of travel and timing. When I was in middle school I would see how many times it would take me to listen to “Money” by Pink Floyd on repeat until I got home, and then in the future I would know it would take me a certain amount of times of listening to get back, and would just count how many times it would repeat, or even then in the last repeat, where in the song my walk would end.

(Jan 18, 2023)

After the critique, I have taken on the task of figuring out how I can make my work more physical and a more tangible, felt kilometre. I am thinking I will either record my feet walking for the amount of time it takes me to walk a kilometre with the music I listen to layered over top, maybe with screenshots of each song edited into the video? Or I may just have the music laid over the video because it is still obvious what I’m telling. Was really excited to see how Chelsea did her kilometre, I’ll be taking a look at everyone’s blog pages to see what others did since I missed the rest of class sadly :(.

“…idea determines the work”… how can I make my kilometre actually be determined by my idea? If I were to put my idea very simply, it would be how music can track time.

For our one-shot video, we wanted to do something that somewhat told a story. We also thought it would be fun for the sound to get very aggressive, and then slow down, to help create some interest and tension.

We were not quite sure how we wanted to approach this video as the footage we had captured did not seem like they would have easy cut scenes, but when we realized we could do this, we were very excited. We loved the idea of being able to create tension, and we were happy to hear the little residual strums that lingered in the video.

For this loop video, we also made the choice to consistently play the same note, rather than get aggressive and quite over and over, as so to really hammer in the monotony of the gesture and sound, but also because it would be good footage for a loop. In this video, we have looped the scene multiple times so you basically cant tell where the loop starts and stops. We were lucky to find a beginning and end that meshed perfectly to seem like it was a constant video rather than a loop.

Overall: For this project, Beck and I wanted to do something with an instrument and did our best to reduce down our gesture into something incredibly simple yet fun. We immediately knew what kind of footage to film for each video, except for the second video (the cut video), as it wasn’t as obvious as the other two videos were. In the end, we thought it would be fun to only include all of the moments before we strum the Guqin to create as much tension as possible to make it a constant build-up with no release. We enjoyed how our idea was a duet, which is also why we chose to name all of our videos “___ duet”, except for our sequence video which we thought the title was fitting for. We also really enjoyed that both of us were needed for the duet, it made it feel like a story or like a conversation between eachother. We took inspiration from Marina Abramovic especially.

(Feb 17th)

I loved going on our field trip on the 15th!!! At the Powerplant, by far, my favourite work was the installation by Amartey Golding “In the comfort of embers”. Immediately, I was shocked by how interestingly it was set up, with the dark entryway, deep red room, and low booming looping video, all brought it together to be both comfortable and enclosed yet daunting. Specifically, I loved one of the pieces hung on the walls, which I did not get the title of (below).

Beyond this installation, I also loved the interactive installation we went to at TPW. This was probably my favourite thing we saw throughout the whole fieldtrip. It was so meditative which I loved, and the environment was so perfectly curated to add to it feeling like it was a calm, comforting space. The music played was moving, and stuck in my head for a couple days after the field trip actually. I thought it was neat how if you could both pick apart each song from eachother as they played at the same time but also meshed together perfectly. I really value collectiveness, community, and connection, so this installation also made me feel really whole and happy. I did not get a single picture of this sadly, as I was too deeply immersed in the sound bath of it all to take my phone out.

(March 1st)

For my audio project, I have had two ideas circulating. I was inspired on our class on Feb 13, where we looked at some different examples of audio works, and noted John Cage and Janet Cardiff.

John Cage: sound gives us deep pleasure, music and laughter are only sounds of true pleasure

Janet Cardiff: music’s effect on us emotionally

I also took from our painting II class, where we have been looking at how technology can affect art, where I have used this idea mixed with what I took from Cage and Cardiff to create the idea to look at how technology both ruins and makes music better. With that, I came up with my first idea to play a song out loud, record that, and then play that recording out loud and record that, and so on. I wanted to do this 8 or so times, then splitting the song up into 8 different sections, and playing the part of each recording to line up with each eighth of the song, to become the song playing one time that slowly becomes further distorted and deteriorated as the song goes on.

This idea made me think about using music in a way that juxtaposes the point of music, where music is usually made to sound better, not worse, and that started me thinking about how I can create contrast in the sound I’m making vs the idea. Then, I remembered that I always carry a kazoo around in my jacket pocket, and thought it would be funny to see how i can integrate that. The kazoo has a terrible sound that is also quite distinct, and if I played something or said something serious using it, it would create a very funny juxtaposition. Talking mote about it with others, Oh Canada became the best song I could play that would not only be serious, recognizable, and funny, but also comment on having to sing Oh Canada every day through the first 18 years of your life, do playing it on the kazoo gets to make fun of it. No one likes to sing Oh Canada, and most people find it weird that you have to stand for it, take your hat off, and pause everything you’re doing for it.

(March 6th, 2023) O’ Canada Kazoo’d

In the end, I did end up deciding on the the kazoo, which I think was a great idea. I really wanted to play into it being really silly and weird and I felt like the best way I could do that without being able to see me (since it is only audio) was by playing the kazoo terribly. I made it super screechy and almost like I was screaming into it, allowing for notes to be wrong or off, and just super out of key and awful sounding. This combined with the very serious Oh Canada that we’re supposed to have respect and seriousness for created the exact juxtaposition I was hoping for. The recording was actually so loud that the mic couldn’t properly pick up the sound so it was clipped, making the sound very abrasive. Im not quite sure if this is bad, but for the piece specifically, I actually do like it because I feel like it adds to how unserious it is, because any serious or good piece of music, including all of the Oh Canadas we hear in school, are all nicely recorded and have much better sound. I wanted my Oh Canada to be nothing like those that we listen to in school and I don’t think this will ever be played on any schools morning announcements.

(March 13th, 2023)

For my self-portrait, I have a couple of ideas I am considering. First, is to create a sculpture or take a photo of a bunch of Jewish related objects that are arranged to look like a face. These items are those I’ve collected over the years and represents my partaking in the culture and how it is a part of my identity that is always growing. Also represents how I am very cluttered and sentimental, I keep everything, even if I may never use it again. Next idea is to record myself singing my Parsha from my Bat Mitzvah. I don’t remember the whole thing very well but I remember a lot of it, and I want to capture what of it that I do remember. this also represents my jewish identity and that it is ingrained in who I am and will always be a part of me and my memory, and that regardless of how much or little of my parsha I remember, I am always still jewish. Remembering less of my parsha the fact that I have a Canadian accent while singing it I also want to speak to my being reform Jewish. Further, another idea I have is to have a jar of my thoughts, or something that represents me. I often view my thoughts as a scrambling massive chaotic space of screaming flying thoughts racing around, and when I am trying to sleep at night and they get in my way, I try to visualize taking all of those thoughts and shoving them in a jar. I want to somehow represent myself in a contained space, maybe consider how I can also represent the difficulty I have in containing my thoughts. I also like the idea of containment because I tend to suppress and mask parts of myself, like thoughts or actions or parts of how I behave, so maybe I could use the jar as both representation of myself and the things in me but also of how I choose to keep parts of myself contained. Thinking of maybe filling a tomato pasta jar filled with my rooms garbage. Garbage is a physical display of a bunch of different things about me.

(March 15th, 2023)

I am still cycling through ideas for my conceptual portrait. While I like a lot of my ideas, I don’t feel like I like them enough to really solidify any plans. I want to do something I feel connected to, especially because its a self portrait. I think this assignment is kind of hard for me because I never know how to depict myself to others. I said previously that I often find myself suppressing or hiding aspects of myself, and doing that for my whole life has made it hard to really know who I am. Things I am currently liking from each idea is doing a task on video, speaking over the video somehow, and using a jar to represent my mind. The more I think about it, the more I feel like Id like to take a video of myself putting a bunch of my own garbage, trash, and scraps from my bedroom into a jar while speaking over the video either saying what item I’m putting in, or maybe Id speak over it and just say a string of my racing thoughts. Ive been thinking about representing my racing thoughts, so I could do it like that, and maybe I could put in specific pieces of trash I can find of mine that really say something about who I am. and somehow put in items that connect to each other in the same way my thoughts somehow connect to each other. for example, if I said to someone that I liked their shirt and they said thanks I got it from Florida, and then the next thing I say is “I love plane food for some reason its so good”. that seems like it came from nowhere, but in my head, since my thoughts are going so fast, ill have 3 different connected thoughts to the original thought, and then will carry on with one of those 3 to then have another 3 and so on. so in that example, what went through my head between shirt from Florida and I love plane food would be something like “yeah that’s a great colour and ooh I love going to Florida. I really miss Florida. I haven’t been there for years actually wow. I haven’t travelled much since covid. I haven’t even been on a plane actually. I love planes. I loves planes especially for plane food idk why but I always like it even though its gross”, and somehow Id think all of that in the amount of time it would take for me to respond to the person. even the way I write is incredibly similar to how I think, I write way too much and usually go on tangents. if I spoke over the video I think it would also speak to how I have multiple things going on in my head at the same time. while I’m having those quick thoughts, I also have other thoughts that respond to the original thoughts, and also usually have a song playing in my head behind everything else. sometimes there are so many thoughts I can’t hear any of them. maybe I could do an audio piece where I start talking like I think and then start responding to that with another voice that keeps talking over the other and then another voice and another until you can’t hear anyone or anything almost at all and its just clutter. my self portrait could just be that, and then I could even play a song lightly in the background too. or I could make that audio and then put a speaker that plays it inside of a jar. again, I still can just record myself putting specific trash into a jar, and then speaking over it just saying my racing string of thoughts, maybe info dumping about a topic I like? or maybe just talking a string of thoughts that are exactly like how I think. if I do that ill need to try to take note of what the actual processes of thoughts I am having are. anyways, sorry for the spelling and grammatical errors, I’m just using this to help me brainstorm and put my thoughts outside my head so I don’t forget them before I think of the next thing.

(March 27th) Conceptual Portrait

For my self-portrait, I decided the best way to show off my brain is by showing my many racing thoughts. I feel like racing thoughts and the clutter of thoughts is something many people experience, but these thoughts are representative of my brain and how my brain makes connections and strings things together. I was heavily inspired by 40 Part Motet, by Jane Cardiff, for the way in which I wanted to present this to people, where I am having 1 of 3 different audios play on all of our computers in the experimental studio lab. I want people to be able to hear all the clutter of my different thought strings while also being able to hear specific things in each audio, which is why being able to move around from sound to sound is how I want people interacting with this piece. I was considering finding some kind of vessel to represent my head or brain but this was so much more relatable and universal and interesting, and honestly, even more true to me because I am always moving around so having the chaos of everyone moving around through the noise is accurate to my brain’s chaos. Moreover, I have always been someone to be easily distracted, so much so that I cant even hear people over my focus, so this work being very loud and making it hard to hear anything other than the clutter also speaks to my inability to quite hear people when Im thinking or focused. I am unsure how to upload the piece to here, but I will once I figure out the best way to do so, maybe using my original audio I wanted to put in a vessel. The name of this work is “Sorry, I cant hear you, I’m thinking”.

(March 27th, 2023) “Sorry, I can’t hear you, I’m thinking”

This first audio is a mishmash of all 3 audios, with a bit of editing. This was my original audio before I decided to make it more interactive.

This second audio is one of three layers I wrote and recorded.

This third audio is the second of three layers I wrote and recorded.

This fourth, and final, audio is the third of three layers I wrote and recorded.

(April 3rd, 2023)

For my artist buttons, I have a few ideas circulating. The first idea is to make buttons that tell what you’re feeling, so you can change the button as you feel differently so people know you’re going to be really angry when they start talking to you maybe lol – or maybe you change your button when someone says something sad and makes you feel sad. Next, I was thinking of doing buttons with images of mushrooms of my favourite mushrooms, just because it would be a cool collection of a specific pin. Maybe I could just do pins of mushrooms in the Amanita family specifically, rather than all of my favourite specific ones. Another idea I was thinking of doing just a collage of images of either a literal heart or hearts like <3 and then wear it on my sleeve just to play on the “wear my heart on my sleeve” saying. Also, I was thinking of doing really self-aware buttons that question their own characteristics that don’t need to be the way they are, sort of a commentary of being aware of parts of yourself that are forcefully put into types of categories. It’s kind of like an indirect comment on how we are put into categories and given labels, and what the experience is like to have the awareness that you exist outside of these standards even though you aren’t viewed that way. This can apply to so many things too. Examples of what the buttons could say are “Why am I a round button?”, “I am a button to wear on the chest”, “I am a button to put on a bag”, “I am made of plastic, metal, and paper”, and “Why am I a button?”. Or could be a self-aware button by just saying “button”, or maybe it’s a button that is aware of its told purpose “Why are buttons only meant to be worn?”. I also had the idea of having a button that has a picture of a button you would sew onto clothing so it just looks like a big button. Looks at how a button is more than one thing. Also maybe buttons with an instruction like “wear me on your leg” “wear me on your chest” “give me to someone else”. Maybe it’s a pin that says give me to someone else and they just continue to float around as people pass them around.

Artist Buttons – Instructional Buttons

For my buttons, I ended up deciding on instructional buttons. I chose to make the button talk about the instructions like the button was sentient, saying “wear me”, “give me”, etc. This felt like the button became personified, so it literally was telling wearers/hager’s what to do. The main and first button I wanted to create was “give me to someone else”, as I was considering how a button can be shared and passed on, and kind of came from my thinking about the sister hood of the travelling pants. I then decided that instructional pins on HOW to wear them would be interesting, as we usually don’t think about other ways to wear a pin other than on your chest or on a bag.. but the limits of how you can wear them are massive and we never consider that. I was lucky to get some photos of fellow classmates wearing my buttons!

^^ it was in fact Wednesday when this pin was worn.

^^me and Johanna with all of our pins from classmates

One Kilometre

For my 1km assignment my roommates and I geared up in some accessories to make this walk a little different/more fun than our regular walks and went on a 1 km walk with our dog Willow. This was at the end of the first week of classes and was a great way for us to decompress after a long first week back to school after the break and a chance to get some fresh air. This walk was great for both our mental and physical health and was also a way to help get some energy out of our hyper dog. During our walk we talked about ways we could be more successful this semester and ways to help manage our stress as a household. We monitored our distance on my phone’s health app to ensure our walk was exactly 1 kilometre.

Heading off:

On the walk:

Home:

Three feats, Three ways:

one shot:

Loop:

Sequence:

Audio Assignment- Drowned Out Thoughts

For my audio assignment I made a piece about my anxiety. I struggle with a lot of anxiety, especially social anxiety and low self esteem. My audio recording includes a list of anxious and negative thoughts that loop through my head throughout the day. I included an overlay of the voices to resemble the feeling when your thoughts feel like they are crowded and jumbled in your brain. As a way to calm my anxiety down I find the sound of water in many different forms soothing. When I couldn’t settle as a baby my mom would put me on top of the washing machine and run it and I would immediately calm down. Although I no longer get on top of my washing machine when I am anxious, a different form of water I find very soothing for my anxiety is the shower. Whether I actually get in the shower or just listen to the sound of the running water it helps me ground myself and quiet my negative thoughts. The sound of the shower running in my piece gets louder to over power the thoughts and literally drown them out so you can no longer hear them.

Conceptual Portrait- A life Description in Prescriptions

For my conceptual portrait I created a portrait of what it is like to be chronically ill by creating a presentation of all the medications I have been prescribed. I have various health conditions, I have had five surgeries, many different treatments and many different infections from having a weakened immune system. From those reasons I have been prescribed a lot of medications throughout my health journey so I created a list of all the medications I’ve been prescribed with their uses. I also included the medications’ side effects as I find it interesting that something that is used to help your body can also cause harm to it in a different regard. I also find it interesting how there is a lot of overlap between the use of one medication, is the side effect of another. 

Button Project – Trapped in a Button

For my button assignment I was inspired by the practice buttons I created of Ana Mendieta. The photos I used for the practice buttons are photos where she is pressed up against glass and once I turned the photos into buttons it made it look like she was trapped in the button. For my assignment I used photos of my friends and family where they are pressed up against windows with their hands pressed up against the window (or their faces as well in some cases). This makes it seem as though my friends and family are also trapped in the buttons. For presenting these buttons I’d like to put them in a frame or shadow box as a way to trap the buttons as well and in doing so the buttons can no longer be used as their function and are more put on display. It makes it feel as though the people in the buttons as well as the buttons themselves are a spectacle on display. For the sake of presenting the buttons today and wanting to portray that idea I placed the buttons in a tool box. 

*Trial buttons

Conceptual Portrait: My Face For One Week

When contemplating self-expression, I believe that the manner in which we present ourselves to the world can take on various forms. Our bodies serve as vessels for our thoughts and emotions. For many individuals, makeup is a tool that enables us to express ourselves externally. Personally, I view makeup as a means of highlighting my internal confidence and enhancing my features to feel more self-assured. There is a symbolic element to this practice as I remove my makeup at the end of each day with a wipe. Each wipe represents a day in my life, and the amount of makeup removed reflects the level of confidence or desire to feel special I had for that day. While these wipes are individual pieces, together they represent how our internal qualities manifest in our external appearance. I hope that even those who do not wear makeup can relate to this idea of self-awareness in how we present ourselves to others in the world.

Stella Ella Ola

This is a recorded audio of my roommates and I playing “Stella, Ella, Ola”, a clapping game played by many throughout my childhood. There were 5 females playing. Within the audio, you can hear the girls singing the song with an underlying consistent clapping rhythm throughout. Players were asked to sit in a circle and overlay their hands. When the players count down from 5 at the end of the song, the player’s hand that gets clapped is the one that is eliminated. The game ends when there is only one player left. I asked that we play this game on the floor, and for the participants to sing what they could remember. You can hear the shuffling on the carpet and subtle laughter throughout the game, all things that brought me back to the nostolgic feeling of what playing this game was like as a child. This piece is intended to make the listener feel a sense of nostalgia while listening to the recording, potentially even making them feel like they are in the room playing with us.

A Kilometre in my Student House

1 kilometre. 1000 metres. 100,000 centimetres. We walk them, run them, transport them on wheels, in the air, or perhaps on a track. Over the past 3 years of my life, I have thought about where a lot of my unnoticed kilometres lie; in my own student house. This is a place where I have had experienced some of the happiest days of my life, and the saddest days of my life. This is a place where I have danced for hours, and also stressfully paced around before writing my exam. I walk around the kitchen putting together some of the best meals I have ever made. I walk around my bedroom getting ready for the bar, stressfully yet eagerly between my closet and makeup desk. I walk across the living room to reenact a funny situation that happened on the weekend. The walking in this house is not just a dirty pair of socks after 1000 meters on my feet, but it is a literal walk down memory lane. Perhaps maybe a wake-up call to wash and vacuum the floors, but I will not remember my dirty floors, I will remember the situations and memories that got them to this point.

Making Buttons

My One Kilometre Journey Inspired by Marina Abramović

I was inspired to do this piece after examining Marina Abramović’s work. I was intrigued how she used her body in her art and tested the limits of her physical endurance. I thought about using my own body to measure one kilometre, wondering what it would be like to feel every metre of that journey. 

I started my journey at a local park, laying down my outstretched body to mark the two metres. I placed a red stick over my head so I could mark the next two metres. I performed the process a total of five hundred times to achieve a one-kilometre journey. My husband, Tom Bishop, documented the event using Stop Motion on an iPad. Later, I inputted the document into iMovie and then formatted it on YouTube.

I was surprised how very long one kilometre is. I appreciated how tactile the experience was – feeling stones, bushes, gravel, and mud under my body. There were some sweet moments too – like looking up at birds, tree branches, and planes overhead. I wished I could have an extra camera to film from that perspective too. Another project maybe… 

One Feat Three Ways

Creating this series reminded me of the video that we saw in class of the woman eating cherries. The first few mouthfuls seem like pure delight… but the task appears increasingly difficult the longer she eats. It was like that when we filmed this video. At the beginning, I felt the delighted surprise and deep satisfaction of blowing that perfect bubble. It brought back happy memories from childhood, eating bubble gum with a friend. However, the longer we chewed, the harder the task became; we ran out of the ‘good’ bubble gum; our jaws started getting tired; and we got tired. Like Diane says, sometimes art is hard. But even though it’s hard, it is still worth doing and admittedly can still be a lot of fun.

The Loop: The Perfect Bubble ….

The One-Shot: Hubba Bubba

Each bubble blown is unpredictable and temporal – and a beautiful little sculpture on its own…

The Sequence: PoP

This was my favourite film. It felt very intimate to do this film; we were physically close and at times our bubbles touched. It felt especially poignant given our hyper awareness of physical proximity during COVID. There was a lot of unpredictability doing this piece. Could we blow a perfect bubble? What would happen when they touched? And when the bubbles did touch, there was something subversive about sharing chewed bubble gum; it felt like a special connection to share the gum with a friend, throwing away conventional ideas about hygiene and the proper way to behave.

Audio Project: You’re so smart. You’re so clever.

Praise is something that many people have heard and given. It is something that is culturally engrained, a social nicety intended to be positive and affirming. I often find myself sometimes mindlessly uttering praises throughout my day. Sometimes it is unconsciously said and other times it pops out when I want to be positive but feel lost as to what to say. Yet, when receiving praise, I am sometimes reminded how meaningless the words are. Or, I feel confused as to what the speaker’s real intention.

This audio piece is intended to comment about the giving and receiving praise. I emptied the power of my words by reading them in alphabetical order using a monotone voice.

Trip to the Power Plant: Brenda Draney

I have been thinking a lot about Brenda Draney’s exhibit, Drink from the river. She examines the complex nature of intimacy, referencing her own memories and experiences. I find it fascinating how Draney explores how meanings of these memories can shift and even the memory itself can not always be completely recalled. The viewer is invited to use their own interpretations when viewing her deliberately unfinished canvases. Sometimes, there are noticeable corrections to the paintings, creating a halo-like effect above the portrait. On one of her works, the canvas has not been stretched tight, causing a ripply sensation like the wobbly effects of a memory. Her work makes me consider just how much memory can wobble and morph over time.

Zavitz Gallery: Better late than never

Sarah Fabrizi stresses the importance of experimentation and risk-taking in her body of work. She is pushing herself to try something different, trying new techniques in every painting. I admire the confidence not only in her words, but in her bold markings and colour palette. In her artist statement, she relates how her pursuit of art has come at the end of her undergraduate degree. Fabrizi’s work resonated deeply within me. I realize that my own artistic studies at Guelph have also been two years of experimentation and risk-taking. I have tried new forms of expression such as video, audio, sculpture, and printmaking. Even in the areas of painting and drawing where I have some experience, I have been wildly changing and experimenting with style and colour and form. Like Fabrizi, I have come to study art later but as she states “better late than never”.

University of Guelph Art Gallery

Last week our class took a trip to the University of Guelph’s art gallery. The exhibits were very thought-provoking. I found Insoon Ha’s installation, Dirige, especially moving. Dirige was inspired by the isolation and grief experienced by Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns and deaths of people who were close to her including her father and a friend. At the same time, information was being released in the media about the discovery of bodies at the residential schools. It reminded me of my own feelings of isolation and grief at this time. This installation acknowledges these enormity of feelings, offering a space for grief and mourning. Each sculptured head is created as unique and different. Sometimes when we hear of loss in the media, these deaths are thought of collectively. Ha insists in this installation that each life lost is worthy of honouring and remembering.

Conceptual Project: Pythagorean Theorem in Five Minutes

Feat: Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem Explained and Understood in Five Minutes

Mathematics is my son’s love language. There is nothing more that he loves than to explain to others a difficult mathematical concept. The challenge that I face is that mathematics is not a language that I understand or speak very well. I often struggle to understand. However, the trying is the important part because I want to connect with him.

For the purposes of this conceptual project, I set the task for Jack to explain a challenging mathematical concept in just five minutes (usually his explanations are closer to 40 minutes). Jack chose to surprise me with the proof behind the pythagorean theorem, something he thought would be manageable to accomplish in five minutes. This is a video about building connection through language and relationship, despite the challenge of the set time limit.

University of Guelph Studio Tours

This afternoon, the MFA and Specialized Studio Students opened their studio doors to the public. Wow! It was such a great experience to see and talk to the students about their work. I was especially excited to Samuelle Grande’s work. Samuelle has a very exciting colour palette and brushwork style. I was fascinated to hear how she worked on larger canvases. Although they look like they were painted in a short time period, each one took her around three months. She often puts away work, and then pulls it out later to see the canvas with a fresh set of eyes.

It was also very interesting to hear about the specialized studio courses. Every student that I talked to spoke passionately about being in the program, and was excited to talk about their works.

Tatoo Party!

Big thank you to the Experimental 2/3 studio class. It was so much fun to see your tatoos and put them on!

Artist Multiple: Buttons

I decided to do something intimate and personal for my button project, printmaking art work using my own body. Each button holds work that is personal and one of a kind. The sensual pleasure of touching the paper used is enhanced by using watercolour paper with no plastic covering. These buttons could be worn as special occasion, to be handled with care and treasured. Alternatively, they could go out and be exposed to the elements, celebrating their temporal nature like kisses and bodies.

Read My Lips

This button series was inspired by by Joyce Wieland’s O Canada (1970). I touched my lips to each button as I made the sounds of the phrases – I love you, Hey sexy, Kiss me, No. Each button in the phrase could be worn as a multiple or on its own, passing on the kisses to the viewer.

Boob Buttons

I was inspired to create my second body printmaking button work from Yves Kline’s Anthropometries series. I decided to reclaim Kline’s work, printing my own breasts. The nipples look like eyes staring back at you, reminiscent of some of the paintings like Manet’s Olympia where the naked female directly confronts the gaze of the viewer. I choose to do some boobs in blue, as Kline did. Some are also in red, referring to how breasts can be different temperatures for a variety of reasons! This piece became a personal celebration about my own breasts.

Art is Har….

I couldn’t resist ending my blog with this button. It is a little bit funny; I was totally unaware when creating it that the words would be backwards or that the type would not all fit in. Art is like that – it’s hard, full of trial and error and sometimes things don’t quite turn out the way that you might expect. But there is beauty and realness to the trying, which can also sometimes be reflected in the product. A big thank you to our instructor, Diane, and to all of you for opening my mind further to what art can be.

Monday:

Introductions

Syllabus

Tour of lab and equipment

Class blog – invites, demo post

Lecture: Intro to Conceptual Art

Intro to Conceptual Art and art forms we explore in Experimental Studio:

Assignment: Make a KILOMETRE

Make a KILOMETRE*

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Bring in a KILOMETRE next week.

Document a kilometre. Walk it. Sculpt it. Talk it. Write it. Draw it. Video record it. Perform it. Get your mom to perform it. Conjure a kilometre in any media.

It could be a walk down the street, a path down an intestine, a line going up into the air, a kilometre’s worth of rocks. It can be a kilometre made of chewing gum. Made of telephone conversations. Made of complaints. Made of a walk with a cat. Made with light. It can be a distance between two points. It can be imagined, traced, documented, listed, performed, evidenced on the bottom of your shoe, rolled up into a ball.

Make sure to measure your kilometre in some way, and be prepared to discuss your process, and justify how it is precisely a kilometre.

You have up to 5 minutes next week to present your kilometre to the class.

Bring it, or show us documentation of it.

IT MUST BE PRECISELY A KILOMETRE – EXPLAIN HOW YOU KNOW IT IS!

Due for discussion on MONDAY next week.

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Wednesday:

Marina Abramovic Watch the film: The Artist is Present, Marina Abramovic Popcorn and discussion on Performance Art at the museum.