Seminar: Sign & System
Three Writing Examples
One: Andrea Fraser’s Museum Highlights
Andrea Fraser’s performance was one that took my exceptions and completely had me reevaluate them. Upon reading the title of her video, “Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk” I was lead to think that I would be seeing the artist walk through the Philadelphia Museum of Art and stop to show her audience portions of the museum that has for some time become highlights to her has an artist and visitor of the institution. Objects, rooms, and exhibitions that she finds to be the most fascinating and worth seeing. However, my exceptions for the content of the video tour were completely wrong and blindsided me from the moment that Fraser introduced herself under a false name and began to list the highlights of the museum that she would be taking us to visit. Her highlights included “The Period Rooms”: the coat room, restrooms, reception areas, etc. From that moment I wasn’t sure what to expect from Fraser. Whether she was just joking about what she had said at the beginning of the video or if we would really be taking a tour of the places she listed. As a viewer of her performance, I tried to keep myself open to anything that Fraser would try to throw at her audience. However, throughout the entire tour of the museum, Fraser does not speak about the artwork within the gallery rooms. She does not mention any artists, sculptures, painting, etc. Instead, the artwork that she speaks of, are the unnoticed objects and settings of people’s everyday lives. She focuses on the stool in the corner of a gallery that a security guard would most likely be seated. She focuses on the frames of paintings instead of the painting within the frame. A portion of Fraser’s gallery tour that surprised me the most was the moment that she seemed to finally begin to describe a piece of art on exhibition but instead, her detailed descriptions took a rapid turn to show me that she was really just speaking about herself in the second person. “Notice how the light catches the fabric…” is what Fraser began to say as she held her arm out as if pointing to the elegant sculpture by her only to have us realize that the sculpture was not what she was speaking of but instead she speaks of the suit she wears and the way she turns her head to the side for a profile view. She takes a moment to speak about herself as if she were the elegant sculpture. This isn’t the only thing that Fraser said that has stood out to me. Something that I had noticed about her performance is that throughout the video she consecutively tells her audience that she wants to be graceful (“I want to be graceful”). The character that she has created and is portraying to us is one that is fascinated by human interactions with regular objects and spaces. She finds those things to be the most valuable in the entire museum and communicates her thoughts and ideas about them in a way that a true tour guide would in the museum. In a way, Fraser has made me stop and think about what are really the true exhibitions of a museum. The way the building is set up, the spaces and objects it posses are what make it unique. Only, in this case, she points out that the “work” in an “exhibition” isn’t the only work that is present in a museum. The people that come to visit, the “period rooms” that are places around the area and the objects that people interact with without realizing are also works of art within themselves. I believe the message that Fraser tries to give us is that the smallest things in a museum are what gives it some of its most important characteristics.
Two: Theory of Art
Boris Groys “Under the Gaze of Theory” is an essay on the belief and ideology that with the beginning of modern art comes the beginning of understanding the theory that produces the art we see. Today’s art engages it’s audience and is activated by the viewers. Modern art is pushed to pull people in and draw them closer to the image rather than further away. However, even though the artwork we see today is beauty to us, aesthetic, Groys points out that “Today’s public accepts contemporary art even when it does not always “understand” this art”. As the years have passed the approach to art has changed drastically due to our societies advancement in technologies. People had once used their free time to communicate with one another in person whether it was the theater, cinemas, museums or books. Today’s society is invested in communication through the digital world. We find the pleasure of interacting with one another without actually have to see the people we carry a conversation with thanks to media such as Twitter and Facebook. Technology has changed our interests and as stated in the text we are “the era dominated by moving images”. Aesthetics have begun to be the most important and Boris Groys makes a repetitive point that in today’s society artists strive to be under the gaze of the “Other”. What we think, plan or hope has become irrelevant and instead what becomes relevant is how we move in space under the gaze of the “other” and only then do they see the work we do. The “other” is the new “theorist”. However, artists themselves seem to have mixed feeling of this order that today’s society has created around the field or making art. Artists are grateful for the “theorist” for promoting their work and legitimizing it in society but “irritated by the fact that their art is presented to the public with a certain theoretical perspective that, as a rule, seems to the artists to be too narrow, dogmatic, even intimidating.” In a way, I believe that today’s society looks for larger meanings and explanations which is why contemporary art and many minimalists artists works are challenged because to make modern art today is the protest against and a challenge of what previous generations did. Today art is being depicted in many mediums and focuses on straying from traditional methods. However, no matter how much society has changed in the last few decades viewers continue to look and focus on finding traditional aspects in artists works, therefore, I ask if viewers purposely look for a single definition as to why an artist produced a piece of work? Does society simply seem to struggle to adapt to artists straying from traditional roots, them breaking the boundaries? And as artists do we ask ourselves if what we make is art because will it be art to others? And in that question, we bounce back to see that today’s artists, although they practice braking what is a tradition they still focus on appealing to the “other” and what they can do to be realized by society.
Three: The Poor Image
A poor image is something that is seen as possibly unfortunate and unwanted because, in simple words, it looks bad to the viewers. However Steyerl takes our definition of a poor image and throws it away to talk to us about how the poor image in today’s society is all around us even if we think it is a good image. He explains to us that the poor image isn’t just a select few objects and in space physically or digitally. Steyerl comes forth to say that the poor image is a “copy in motion”. It isn’t just bad quality and standard resolution. The poor image is the “ghost” of an original image. It is a “preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.” Steyerl starts off his essay by explaining to us that the poor image is in our daily lives and that we come in contact with it regularly by uploading, downloading, sharing, reformatting and even re-editing things we see. We are then pointed to understand that as humans with access to technology we are the people who produce a poor image every day. We are the users that become the editors, critics, translators and authors of poor imagery. The most important aspect of the text is revealed at the very end. After explaining the two aspects above Steyerl concludes that the poor image is poor because it is heavily compressed and travels quickly. The image gains speed and loses matter quickly. Today’s society is all about speed. It thrives on how fast we can react and do things no matter whether it is a short or long distance, which is why Hito Steyerl concluded with the simple sentence that the poor image is all about reality. The reality we live in today no matter what the content is.
Throughout the reading, there were definitely moments that Steyerl made me question what I was reading. There were moments that I had began to question whether what she was writing was wrong or right however by the end of the passage there was no miscommunication for me in the article. All aspects of the text flowed for me and although I had questioned for example what he had meant by “Poor images are thus the popular image”, by the end of the reading I understood the stance of which Steyerl was approaching the idea of the presence of a poor image. However, although I understood the text I now question why the author decided to discuss this topic of the poor image. Is it something that has been bothering him since this generation of young people seems to be engrossed in technology? Does he think that people have ruined aspects of art? While reading the end of point number four on page seven I began to ask myself if Steyerl is angry? And if he genuinely thinks that images shouldn’t be available that quickly, so instantly.
