CRIT Magazine is the ultimate graduate magazine that celebrates and explores the abstract institutionality of Central Saint Martins. Inspired by the spirit of self-entrepreneurship, fame, freedom, anxiety, student loan debt and the prospective unemployment that the CSM experience encapsulates, CRIT, a one-off publication, aspires to empower, diagnose and highlight the deep precarity of contemporary creative education in the UK. At once an exhibition text, high fashion magazine, and mail-order catalogue, we invite you to get lost in the void that exists between sincerity/irony, education/commerce, complicity or/and freedom. We believe that, more than anything, attending art school in a time of neoliberalism is characterised by a sense of ambivalence. Here, we imagine what might happen when ambivalence is formalised as a language and turned against itself.
Editors: Adriana Rodrigues Alysha Lee Anastasia Perahia Gabriela Davies Imogen Harland Jeppe Ugelvig
Enjoy! By the graduating class of BA (Hons.) Communication, Curation, Criticism BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism and Curation offers an exceptionally wide-ranging arts education that embraces art, design, architecture, fashion, film, performance and literature. The course takes advantage of its position in a world-famous art school where the development of each student’s identity and independence is the focal point of all the teaching and learning. In their final year students work collaboratively towards the realisation of the Degree Show, a major opportunity to curate an exhibition, produce an online publication and organise events.
tim&tom brittany rochford & julia muccio critmag’s janice mitchell
reflecting on our final year as graduating students a line made by flour the ultimate CSM workout no one cares about your struggle unless it’s a project
gabriela davies
ba criticism, communication and... i don’t think i want to be a curator anymore
karim boujimar
what i upload is not what i want to download
håkon lillegraven imogen harland tom barratt
the aesthetics of failure places i never really paid attention to during these past three years horoscopes
Concept by A. Rodrigues, A. Lee, A. Perahia, G. Davies, I. Harland, J. Ugelvid. Introduction by J. Ugelvid. Interview with tim&tom and brittany rochfor & julia muccio by A. Rodrigues. The Ultimate CSM workout by G. Davies, I, Harland, N. Cuvelier. Karim Boujimar selected by A. Lee. Håkon Lillegraven and Janice Mitchell selected by J. Ugelvid. Horoscopes by Tom Barratt. Cover Design by A. Rodrigues. Fake ads by G. Davies. Proof-read by I. Harland. Formatting by A. Rodrigues, A. Lee, A. Perahia, I. Harland, G. Davies, J. Ugelvid.
tim & tom
Reflecting o n o u r f i n a l y e a r as graduating students. CRIT MAG: Hi Tim & Tom, I’m so glad you could take time out of your busy schedule to talk to me. Tom: As long as we can be done before four o’clock. We’re hosting a Tea Party later and Tim needs to clean out his commode before Dorothy, Albert and Beatrice arrive. Tim: Beatrice isn’t bringing that menacing youth of a grandson again is she? The last time that little bugger was here, he mistook my Viagra for smarties. He’s still as solid as our shed from Series 2. Tom: Don’t strain yourself Tim, I’ve told you unnecessary stress will go straight to your pacemaker! I think his uncles Anthony and Gary are currently babysitting him. I’ve heard from Bill that... Tim: Bill Jackson? Old Bill who used to sell those salmon sofas out the back of his allotment? Tom: No no, Bill from No.10, recently widowed, had an affair with Dot’s young girl. You know, Ben’s brother! Tim: Oh yes! Big Bill! Has a kind of limp in his right leg, probably got it from working in Ben’s garden, I swear those two are never separate, taped at the hips they are!
Tom: Ignore him, he’s been refusing to wear his hearing aid ever since we graduated. He found himself falling into a ‘Free The Ear’ movement at Central Saint Martins. Two months in and I couldn’t recognize him. That was around the time he went through his mute phase; no one could get a word out of him. I reckon the worst time was when he had us wandering around for hours with pots on our heads. Before I knew it, we were wearing Dorris’ tights! Tim: That takes me back to when we were wearing them tights over our faces, you remember, when we were searching for that space? It was just around the time when we realized you were riddled with arthritis and the two of us completely forgot all about the tights! We took a stroll through the Tate and couldn’t understand why security were harassing us. Tom: They were so very understanding though, it was ever so lovely of them to escort us to the exit, we would have been lost in there for days otherwise.
CRIT MAG: Sorry to interrupt you two reminiscing. I’m not sure if you remember, but a couple of weeks ago I proposed to you two a one off publication, about the diverse graduating class of Central Saint Martins 2016. I will be one of many publications that will be on display during the CCC Degree Show. Now that I have materialized as a fully functional publication, I would again like to invite you two to provide 5 pages about your practice. Would you be interested in this? Tim: I thought you looked familiar! Were you by any chance raving your booty off at that rave cave we hosted a few week ago on the street? CRIT MAG: I have no recollection of this, as I Tom: Anyway, so I’ve heard from Bill that... am merely a publication. What was I saying? It’s completely left me now! Tom: That was a fun old shindig we had going Honestly this Alzheimer’s got me tripping these on there. Tim was knee deep in cardboard and days! techno-vibing off his Zimmer frame. Tim: Huh? What’s that? Albert’s taken up Tim: I felt 63 again! spinning with some gays?!
CRIT MAG: How lovely. Regarding the 5 pages, would you two still be up for submitting a conversation about yourselves? Tom: That reminds me, Tim did you manage to send a birthday card to Rob Base? CRIT MAG: It could take the form of writing, something visual, or a combination of the two. It would be great if you could explain further what it is like to be a mature student in a youthful environment and how this has affected your practice? Tim: I did actually send his card! Speaking of which, E-Z got back to me yesterday about DJing at the birthday party. He said he’d be up for it providing we offer his carer accommodation for the evening. I told him it wouldn’t be an issue, that we’d be more than happy to let her stay in the confessional booth for as long as she requires. I am having difficulty keeping up with the attendees though, I tried to use that silver Apple thing to make a list, but I couldn’t find a pen to hand. Tom: Don’t worry, we’ll add it to that to-do list that you insist on wheeling alongside you. Anyway, it should be a smashing event, I’m ever so glad the retirement home is fully on board with the live band playing extra loudly in order to penetrate LJ’s faulty hearing aid. That young receptionist was a delight to speak to, she really did have a soothing tone to her voice. What was her name again? Tim: Tom, it’s a he and his name is Ian, we’ve had tea with him at least 31 times now. You really ought to have your hair trimmed you know; your cataract is detrimental enough without that hair
of yours getting in the way of your vision. Tom: I’m dreadfully sorry! It’s ever since that proposal for those gender fluid loos at St. Martins was passed, my pronouns have been fluctuating almost as much as my cholesterol levels.
CRIT MAG: So, in terms of the publication, I thought... Tim: Oh fiddle sticks! Jennifer has just RSVP’d, what does that make the guest numbers now? Tom: 420 isn’t it? Well, 421 including CRIT MAG. Shall you be attending? CRIT MAG: I’ll consult my PR person, have them check my plans for that evening, it does sound rather tempting. Perhaps we could discuss this in terms of your post-grad social aspirations. Does it allude to an overwhelming sense of a loss of innocence? Perhaps the two of you could address the... Tim: Excellent! 421 it is then; I really must say it’s been a lifetime since I’ve had a good boogie. I’m awfully excited for us all to get down! Tom: Just be careful Tim, last time you got down, it took two paramedics and a 4-month stint in hospital for you and your popped hip to get back up again.
a line made by flour
brittany rochford & julia muccio
It’s gone everywhere
People have started walking through it already
Have you got a risk assessment done?
Who are your tutors?
No
It’s a hazard
There needs to be a risk assessment done
There needs to be a risk assessment carried out especially for a busy street like this
Where?
If you haven’t done a risk assessment, it’s
dangerous, your tutor
should have told you that
Can I have your ID’s please You should have had permission Just do me a favour, don’t do it again
Ohhhhhh is this art?
Is this an artwork?
job Can I run through? You alright to deal with this yeah? No, don’t worry, that’s their
Anyway don’t worry about it
Just anything like that needs to be risk assessed
the
ULTIMATE
guide
to
ut o k r wo M CS the lay
the strut
it is not as easy as it seems. 1. lie down on your side make sure all parts of your body are stretched, using arms and hands as support. 2. open your upper leg up to the maximum limit keeping it all straight, and down. 3. repeat this movement 10 times. 4. switch to the other side. best places in CSM: the grey sofas on the bridges, or any other sofas around the building. If in case you are feeling sassy, in need of some attention, you can do it over the tables in the canteen.
the
model: nadia cuvelier
tch
best place in CSM: the street, for its wide straight length. If you want to take it up a notch, take a chance on the stairs. For the lazier ones, use the lift and stay in place.
stre
walking is part of our routine - make use of it 1. keep your posture straight, and raise your right leg in a 90o angle. 2. step down and raise your left leg also at 90o. 3. repeat until you have done 20 leg raises on each side.
stretching is always very important. 1. find a railing about 1 metre tall. 2. stretch your leg over the top of the railing. 3. it is ideal that both legs are kept straight, even though it may seem impossible. 4. count until 12 slowly and switch legs. best places in CSM: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floor, between both sides of the buildings. Stairs are also an option in case you feel an urgent need for the ‘stretch’ but please do not become cause for blocked stairs frustration.
outfit for the season: neon tops, supernova explosion leggings and matching trainers
project i t ’ s a
n o o n e c a r e s about your struggles unless
janice mitchell Last year German-American artist Hans Haacke’s equestrian statue Gift Horse was unveiled on the Fourth Plinth, at Trafalgar Square in London. Haacke, known for his work within the realm of institutional critique, transforming the principles he applied to his real-time systems to the analysis and exposure of social structures, often investigating the connections and exchanges between the art world, finance, government and real estate. Gift Horse follows a similar trajectory, though some seem to be oblivious to the point. When the 13ft bronze sculpture of a skeletal horse with a bow tied to one of its forelegs that displays a live-ticker of the London stock market was unveiled, Mayor Boris Johnson commented on how it “encapsulated the dynamic mix of history and the contemporary that make London such an exciting cultural capital”.1 The statue’s title is taken from the German saying “Einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul”2, meaning you should accept a present as it is and not contemplate its value. The saying has its origin in the fact that in order to determine its value when buying a horse, the buyer would look the horse in the mouth to determine age. In this context, Haacke has given the most worthless gift of them all: a dead horse. Gift Horse is without doubt a critique of the relation between power, money, art, privilege and history; the bow referencing Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market”, pointing out how close the art market has grown to finance and politics.
The art world, specifically the market, has changed significantly since the 1980s. In the new millennium, the art market has grown as new players have come onto the scene and the demand for contemporary art hit the roof. Collectors are no longer predominantly from the West, European or American, but more and more come from the former Soviet Union, Asia or the Middle East. The Hans Haacke, “Gift Horse” (2015) classic art market model where transactions take place in the gallery became secondary with the rise of the art fair and an increasing shift towards the auction as the main space for the selling and buying of art. Art consultancies assist collectors in building and expanding their collections, guiding them on who to buy and when to sell, working closely with auction houses, who sell works with guarantees, ensuring that the seller makes a profit. Art galleries are expanding into mega-galleries, opening new spaces around the world and publicly funded museums are joined by private museums, built to house and show the collections of high-profile buyers. Art fairs and biennales have become the symbol of globalization in the art world. While there is no shortage of contemporary art, the interest of those buying is focused on already well-known and established artists and in 2015, the
art market reached its peak, with several record-breaking sales of works of contemporary and modern art. This has not only led to an expansion of the market, but has also turned art into a lifestyle; creating a new global jet set that gathers at the major art fairs, an exclusive circle that is only accessible with the right connections, the right networks or a significant amount of capital. The majority of practitioners in the art world don’t benefit from these developments. For them, the art world has not expanded, but shrunken. It seems as if there are fewer and fewer opportunities despite this expansion and demands/ expectations of future employers are higher than ever. Precarious working conditions are abound, with many working in low-paid positions, on fixed term contracts or as freelancers, moving from project to project. Working in the arts means fluid working hours, overtime, a high demand of mobility and short-term contracts. Wages are low and barely cover rent, bills and living expenses. Artists face a similar situations. One would assume they are the centre of the art world, it revolves around the product of their work and labour, but most don’t benefit from the value of their work and struggle to receive exposure and recognition, banishing them to the sidelines. Graduates are often stuck in unpaid, “voluntary” internships. Unpaid internships have been problematized within the discourses of the art world, yet they are still the norm. In 2014, Marina Abramović was called out for advertising several part-time positions at the Marina Abramović Institute as voluntary, while demanding extensive professional experience from applicants. Calling such positions ‘work experience’ is misleading, it’s plain and simple unpaid labour, in which institutions use their reputation and name to take advantage of young people who are willing and able to work for free while profiting from their unpaid labour. Undertaking several internships is common and is seen as requirement for future employment. This makes it nearly impossible for those who cannot afford to work for free to break into the creative sector, excluding those from lowincome backgrounds and minority background who often not only lack the financial means but also the connections and network necessary to get ahead. And work never stops; every event, every social gathering is an opportunity to network, to put yourself out there, to market yourself. Just like any other sector, the art world is a global industry built on corporate structure and wage labour with a (un)healthy dose of self-marketing. Because you are your own brand, you are your own capital. For her recent exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery in London, German artist Maria Eichhorn closed the gallery for five weeks, the entire duration of the exhibition. While still being paid, the staff did not go to work, did not work from home
Maria Eichhorn, 5 weeks, 25 days, 175 hours (2016). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 2016.
and whoever sent an email received an automatic response that emails would be deleted and to please resend the message after the 29th of May. With 5 Weeks, 25 Days, 175 Hours, Eichhorn wanted the gallery staff to withdraw their labour while in turn she gave them time; substituting work with free time. In an interview she stated, that she was “interested in the fundamental possibility of suspending the capitalist logic of exchange by giving time and making life without wage labour imaginable”. Her projects poses the question of why work should always be synonymous with production, but it also highlights precariousness life, specifically the reality of low-paid jobs in a neoliberal economy, that makes labour and work the focus of life. In the publication that accompanies 5 Weeks, 25 Days, 175 Hours, German political theorist Isabell Lorey writes: “In contemporary capitalism, we are experiencing a diffusion of work into life and at the same time an increasing de-waging of work. Wages are sinking, while hours spent working are on the rise. Working time no longer covers only tasks that are paid, but tends to encompass all social doing.” This echoes Hannah Arendt’s theory of the rise of the social, in which she states that labour as a means of survival is increasingly moving into the public sphere that was once dominated by work and action, that shape the social. Arendt distinguished between labour, work and action. For her, these are three distinct types of activity, separated by private and public, social and political and are key to understanding how agency is achieved. Labour, as a biological necessity, is what we do to survive. Its products are meant to be consumed immediately and to fulfill our needs, leaving behind no trace. E.g. we labour to feed and clothe ourselves, to pay our rent and or bills to ensure that we have a roof
over our heads. Every living being labours. Work on the other hand is a distinctly human activity. It differs from labour in that it shapes and alters nature according to the needs and desires of humans. Work is what creates the human world physically and institutionally, it leaves behind traces in the shape of actual things as well as thoughts and ideas, rules and regulations. Action, according to Arendt, is the full exercise of our liberty. It means to create something new; to create action is to create politics. Unlike labour, work and action take place in the public realm, whereas labour takes place in the private. While they do operate in different sphere, they are not separate: action necessitates work to lay the foundation for a social public, and both depend on labour, as without it we cannot survive. But labour needs neither work nor action and in what Arendt calls the rise of the social, she describes how it is increasingly moving into the public sphere occupied by work and action. This makes the pursuits of higher ends in the form of work and a meaningful political agency increasingly impossible. Today, the rise of the social is reflected in the precarious working conditions that we live in, where we do not work, but labour to pay our bills, our rent, our food, to survive and fulfill our needs for enjoyment and leisure. Daniel Buren and Guido Le Noci in front of Galerie Apollinaire’s entrance sealed shut by the installation.
Eichhorns project is also reminiscent of Daniel Buren’s 1968 exhibition at Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, where he sealed off the doors of the gallery with his signature vinyl stripes, each measuring exactly 8.7cm and each placed exactly 8.7cm apart, for the entire duration of the exhibition. Pulling the exhibition from the confined space of the white cube, he opened the gallery space up to critical inquiry. 5 Weeks, 25 Days, 175 Hours does something similar, but it is not the space of the white cube that she is opening up to critical inquiry, but art’s involvement and entanglement in the spheres of capitalism and neoliberalism, specifically in the context of work and labour. Artist Hito Steyerl takes a similar approach when she suggests to relate politics to art not via representation, but by looking at “the politics of the field of art as a place of work”.3 Art work or producing a work of art is synonymous with strike work for her: “affective labour at insane speeds, enthusiastic, hyperactive and deeply compromised”4 and “thrives on accelerated exploitation”, evident in the precarious working conditions that we encounter in the arts and other creative industries. What Arendt calls the rise of the social and what Eichhorn criticised in 5 Weeks, 25 Days, 175 Hours, is a development driven by a society in which commodity and corporate culture have taken over, going hand in hand with the rise of governmentality and biopolitics: what was private (labour) has been propelled into the public sphere (of work and action). Culture is sold to us as a commodity produced by labour and it is work that produces and reproduces government as a form of regulation throughout the social order by which a population becomes subject to
bureaucratic regimes and other modes of discipline. The acceleration of commodity and corporate culture, the financial sector and the increasing governmentality has seeped into the art world. This is evident in the rise of the market, which has become the driving force within the art world and in the precarious working conditions we find ourselves in. But also in the way museums and other institutions conduct themselves and in the way in which funding is allocated, leading to them more and more resembling corporations than spaces in which questions can be asked and the possibilities and limitations of life as expression explored. The current work of both Haacke and Eichhorn highlights and emphasizes these developments, in a similar as way as the institutional critique of the second half of the 20th century did. Institutional critique as an artistic practice within conceptual art that was not concerned with the object but with the spaces and places in which art is presented, namely exhibition space of the gallery and the museum. Understanding the museum and the gallery as spaces of power and control their work looked at how they not only used their power to shape the canon of art and history as academic disciplines, but also at how they exerted it into the art world itself as well as into other areas of our lives on an economic, social, cultural and political level. Drawing from critical theory, institutional critique does not only want to point out and call attention to these matters, but also wants to demand and strive towards change. The aim of critical theory, in the words of Max Horkheimer, “is to liberate human beings from the forces that enslave them”, the same human beings that according to him are also responsible for the situation that we find ourselves in and that only we ourselves have the power to change it. In this sense, institutional critique needs to be an all-encompassing theoretical, descriptive and practice-oriented approach, that follows similar notions as Horkheimer describes as being a vital part of critical theory: 1. offering an explanation of what is wrong with the current social situation 2. identifying the actors to change it 3. providing clear norms for criticism as well as achievable practical goals for social transformation It would now be easy to assume that this change, keeping in accordance with the Marxist tradition of the Frankfurt School from where critical theory emerged, must happen through revolution, by the people overthrowing the powers that be to create a socialist utopia. Critical theory can certainly be and is often understood in this way, but within institutional critique the goal is to achieve change by altering the language of discourse as Daniel Buren did in 1968 and Maria Eichhorn did by closing the gallery and instating a “human strike”, the idea of acting in a way that deviates from the norm with the goal of disrupting the “natural” order of things. The idea is to achieve change by destroying established
Daniel Buren et Guido Le Noci devant la porte d’entrée de la galerie Apollinaire condamnée par le travail in situ.
hierarchies through disrupting the discursive formations in which they are created. The discursive formations in which institutional critique operates are clearly those of the art world, but the art world itself consists of many “sub-discourses” and, as shown, is tied into just as many other that lie outside its boundaries. Thus, its focus must be on the points in which art, politics and finance intersect, standing in constant dialogue with these spheres, like Haacke’s Gift Horse and acting in opposition to their intentions, as Eichhorn’s closing of the gallery can be interpreted; by giving the staff time, she also gives them the opportunity to do something that goes beyond labour.
Andrea Fraser, stills from “Official Welcome” (2001-3)
At the heart of institutional critique lies a crisis of representation. It is not Adorno’s crisis of representation in which he questioned how to make art after Auschwitz (how, not if) on an aesthetic and moral level, but the crisis of how to make art that is capable of investigating and criticizing the workings of the art world, while creating and offering alternative at the same time. If institutional critique is to have any meaning or impact today, then we must expand its definition and make use of it as an analytical tool, as Simon Sheikh says; “a method of spatial and political criticism and articulation that can be applied not only to the art world, but to disciplinary spaces and institutions in general”. We need a (new) institutional critique that can develop a language that has the power to initiate actual change and reinstate art as the aesthetic and cultural expressions of a group of people and not just as a mere commodity. And the first step, to put it in the words of Andrea Fraser that still ring true, might just be to realise that: “every time we speak of the ‘institution’ as other than ‘us’ we disavow our role in the creation and perpetuation of its conditions. We avoid responsibility for, or action against, the every day complicities, compromises and censorship – above all, self-censorship – which are driven by our own interest in the field and the benefits we derive from it”.5
1. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/hans-haacke-horseplay-city 2. Transl. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” 3. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-art-contemporary-art-and-the-transition-to-post-democracy/ 4. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-art-contemporary-art-and-the-transition-to-post-democracy/ 5. From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique Andrea Fraser. Artforum. New York: Sep 2005. Vol. 44, Iss. 1; pg. 278, 8
criticism, communication and ... i don’t think i want to
b e a c u r a t o r
anymore!
It has been three years and a half since I wrote BA CCC’s reference number on my UCAS application, and to reflect on it now it is irrelevant since it’s not a criticism about this course but the doubt I am holding on my choice of profession. I wanted to be (or at least learn about being) a curator. Throughout this course, I have read books on the theory of curating, ways of curating, white cubes and gallery spaces, and written about styles of hanging and exhibition narratives. I learned about incredible historical exhibitions and amazing, innovative curators working worldwide. I produced exhibition proposals collectively and individually inside and out of Central Saint Martins, and even proposed an open-call, which ended up being showcased through two weeks in a gallery. So… can I call myself a curator now?
gabriela davies
ba
Somehow I start feeling less and less comfortable with that title as time passes. Maybe it is the fear of losing the “student” label, allowing it to become a grown up, real – sort of – “job”. But the fact that the exponential increase in the use of the word Curation, and the criticism focused on how its concept grew does not help. For what was once a word I hadn’t heard of a little under a year before applying, it is now on every corner – and this sucks. It sucks because the role of a curator is not just that of a selector, as it is becoming common to perceive. The role of the curator is that of a specialist, a researcher, as well as of a caretaker of the values of the art institution and its artists. And after reading through David Balzer’s Curationism,1 I felt immediately depressed through the cheekily-written words that stated Hans Ulrich Obrist is the last true curator the world would see due to his absurdly busy schedule, and being in more than five places at the same time. More recently even, Francesco Bonami’s interview on ArtNet also points out how the job of the curator is now completely irrelevant since artists and other famous people are taking charge of exhibition-making.2 Also, the ‘stardom’ concept which attached to the notion of being a Curator does not help either. It might be that Klaus Biesenbach’s 200k Instagram followers are due to his career as MoMA’s Curator, or maybe it’s because of the selfies he shares with James Franco and Marina Abramović. If you want to be as famous as Beyoncé (nobody will), it should not be through Curation. It is not to say that artists should not curate, nor Hollywood collectors (cough Steve Martin), nor anyone else with other professions. Matter-of-factly, after talking to the former curator of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio, Luiz Camillo Osório, he mentioned how curators should not be people’s titles, but secondary doings, so these professionals are always upto-date in the latest research of their specifications. He, himself, is a Philosophy professor at a Brazilian University, a way he has to continue philosophical dialogues with younger generations. I plea “art-enthusiasts” to take a step back and reevaluate the position of the curator. A curator should not be worried about reaching fame since his success is whether his projects communicates his ideas, and proposes new dialogues and ways of thinking. With all of that in mind, I still don’t think I can call myself a curator. 1. David Balzer, Curationism - How Curating Took over the Art World and Everything Else, 1st edition, Paperback (London: Pluto Press, 2015). 2. Henri Neuendorf, “Francesco Bonami Says Curators Are ‘Self-Delusional’ and ‘Irrelevant’ in Today’s Art World,” ArtNet News, June 7, 2016, Online edition, sec. People, https://news.artnet.com/people/francesco-bonami-says-curators-self-delusional-irrelevant-todays-art-world-512705.
i asked my parents to buy me a shirt with marijuana signs and they brought me one with palm trees. i was disappointed.
karim boujimar
I love everyone. Thank you for your support. Due to travel problems with the weather I almost got harassed on the bus.
better learn how to swim before you surf
what i upload
want
to
download
is not what i
How we want to be healthy but often aren’t so to make ourselves feel better about it there’s this whole active lifestyle where people wear yoga pants and tracksuits and jogging shoes but do no exercise
1. turn off WiFi or Internet. 2. drink some water 3. install tinder 4. block everyone 5. go to mcdonalds and cry in the bathroom
hĂĽkon lillegraven
the aesthetics of f a i l u r e “Failure.” The word leaves a bitter taste in your mouth - like an iron supplement that you know you need but tastes bad nonetheless. Maybe you could just eat more strawberries? Unfortunately for those of us with a sweet tooth, creative endeavours are often like a blind tasting competition - with the best of intentions, we never know if we’re biting into a piece of fruit or a jagged little pill. As curators of You Are Not a Failure, a student-produced exhibition by the UAL Curation Society which highlighted the work of students from London College of Fashion, curators Maryam Afiya Parez and I had to ask ourselves the question: “what does failure mean?” In the dictionary, failure is simply defined as a ‘lack of success’ - arguably the antithesis to any creative product. By default, failure is synonymous with embarrassment and shame, be it over a lack of technical accomplishment or the breakdown of intellectual inquiry. But looking at creative development, failure is so glaringly essential; it acts as incubator, as antagonist, as critic. How do we as creative practitioners ever improve if we don’t fail? From the inception of You Are Not a Failure, we joked that we could always host an empty or dishevelled gallery space, declaring our exhibition a willing conceptual embrace of the risk of any creative endeavour. That was plan B, and as most artistic evacuation plans, it would take a lot of curatorial wrangling. On a good day however, we’d high five and make our motto: “We are not a failure!” The paradox being that we were producing a show with high stakes relative to a student exhibition, in terms of funding and institutional support, ergo with little room for failure. Simultaneously, we were trying to understand and embrace what failure could mean. We wanted to celebrate failure as part of the student experience and artistic praxis, but we realised we were not as willing to fail ourselves. The range of “failures” we received through student submissions ranged from deep philosophical dissatisfactions to banal lack of technical success. A series of analogue film prints which had been damaged and wrongly exposed was my favourite work in the show, because of the endearing admittance to a lack of technical knowledge, while the work remained looking like something that could easily be published in i-D magazine if given some conceptual intent. “What does failure look like?” Curating this exhibition made me think about the aesthetics of failure, what counts as failure - or if it even exists at all. What came to mind was the emergence of #fail on video platforms such as Vine and YouTube. To a generation, the brand of failure has taken on an almost athletic element, a kind of slogan for a generation raised on MTV’s Jackass, who are then given tools such as Vine to become stars of their own reality. On social media, especially the accounts of fashion brands, we are also witnessing a shift far left of the filtered street-style aesthetic which promised internet stardom in the early 2010’s. Filters are now becoming faux-pas and we are moving towards a “new normal”; the cult of personality, eccentric features, the desirable projections of a generation who have the post-mortem hots for Kurt Cobain and subscribe to the Vetements aesthetic tribe. Yet, have either of these forms really ever contained any risk amidst the calculations made to attain their inherent ‘ugliness?’ Even though ideals of classic beauty and aesthetics seem to be dissolving by the day, I fear that the fashion exhibition, social media, and all that we are hailing as new and ‘raw’ is here as a Trojan horse of branding. On the outside, it is allowing us to communicate
through our eccentricities, our everyday lives. Simultaneously, it is commodifying our emotions and capitalising on our flaws. A failure which brands itself as a triumph, doesn’t open up the conversation about the vulnerability which created it, and as young practitioners, we could do each other a big favour by ‘fessing up. That’s what You Are Not a Failure was about - daring students, including ourselves, to talk about it. We are process works; in both our craft and our identities. I think a question to ask oneself when the fear of failing becomes overwhelming is: who is watching? It would seem that for our generation, the word “failure” has taken on new dimension of terror, because the answer to that question is that anyone could be, and often is, watching. As a generation, it seems our experience of the present is constructed by an acute awareness of ourselves within time and space - the sensation that we are somehow inevitably a result of history, and moving towards an unpredictable, unstable future. And what better way to amalgamate nostalgia and impending doom than declaring to the world what you do in #mycalvins? It would seem that we as students often compare ourselves to, and frame ourselves in relation to, artist retrospectives, established designer collections and other visions with a support systems hemispheres away from our own. No matter how many times we hear about the self-destructive nature of those who create fashion or those who wear it, they are somehow always part of a bigger, more glamorous picture. In the wider cultural conversation, failure and ugliness still remain privileges for those who can afford it. It remains hard to be open about one’s vulnerabilities at an early stage in one’s career. Here, the filters still very much apply. Ultimately, success is a flimsy bed-mate. Like a lover in the digital age, success will, without hesitating, turn its back to you while still in bed to use Tinder, looking for the next perfect accumulation of talent and vision. Failure, however grim, will want to stay to cuddle, and make you breakfast the next morning while you’re trying to forget its name. We may be learning to live with ‘ugliness,’ but a way to present failure openly, to benefit and educate others, still evades us. Perhaps because as opposed to #thenewnormal, #failure cannot be branded. One must simply rebrand it as a new form of success and hope the label sticks.
places i never r e a l l y p a i d past three
attention to during these years
imogen harland
tom barratt
horoscopes
AQUARIUS (JANUARY 20 – FEBRUARY 18) You recently submit a think piece to ArtForum, but when they wanted to publish it, it occurred to you that you plagiarised the entire article from JStor but who knows who Louisa Buck is anyway? You are offered a job at the magazine and become an art critic sensation! You awake from this dream to realise you are Louisa Buck.
ARIES (MARCH 21 – APRIL 19) You may have considered booking yourself into a mental hospital, like fellow Aries Yayoi Kusama, yet instead of hallucinating dots you’ve taken to watching your own reflection in a mirror for seven hours straight listening to Taylor Swift b-sides. Try breaking free from this cycle, you know it’s not healthy.
LEO (JULY 23 – AUGUST 22) FREE LOVE NOW and ONLY HOPE NEVER DIES are written on your fridge in McDonald’s Happy Meal magnets. Yes, Jenny Holzer is a Leo like you but you are not Jenny Holzer. Uninstall that stickynote installation you’ve constructed in the communal area of your flat and for god’s sake take off that neon scrolling belt buckle.
CAPRICORN (DECEMBER 22 - JANUARY 19) You’ve started nude modelling and making your own jam. Good for you.
TAURUS (APRIL 20 – MAY 20) John Waters and Donatella Versace, like yourself, are Taurus and are both considered to be aesthetically revolting. Consider this when you address your current shoe situation.
CANCER (JUNE 21 – JULY 22) You may be thinking of doing an M.A. in Fine Art because your B.A. hasn’t satisfied your emotional ego enough. All art has been done before, Cancer, especially that involving a VHS camera and an anxious inner monologue. Get a job.
VIRGO (AUGUST 23 – SEPTEMBER 22) Guilt has been weighing on you, as another week goes by without returning that copy of Chicago to the CSM library. However, if you stopped renting out musicals on DVD you’re life quality would significantly reduce, so keep practicing that stepballchange baby, you’re heading for the stars!
SAGITTARIUS (NOVEMBER 22 – DECEMBER 21) Your signmate Marina Abramović also believes her life is Art. Or that life imitates art. Or that imitating lions farts is good for the heart. Either way she once thought she was communicating with an eagle so tread lightly with that one, Sagittarius.
SCORPIO (OCTOBER 23 – NOVEMBER 21) You sensed a moon rising into your forgotten realm, which prompted you to head to the clinic for a check-up. En route, you spotted a previously uncharted charity shop in Finsbury Park. Should you overhaul your wardrobe for an assortment of bedazzled hats and tiger print boob tubes or whether to remain in your current phase of Sad Witch Goes to Aldi? They are, of course, one and the same. Keep doing you.
PISCES (FEBRUARY 19 – MARCH 20) The void is what keeps your passion ignited, Pisces. The theory, the ideas, the holes! You may have spent all night digging in that patch of grass outside the Tate Modern, convinced there lies an undiscovered work of art. Time to climb out of that hole and watch it become an overnight artistic sensation! Any old hole is better than that unfortunate greenhouse they’re touting in the Turbine, it seems.
GEMINI (MAY 21 – JUNE 20) Consider the possibility that you’re getting coffee at Caravan again because you weren’t loved enough when you were a child. Don’t buy into the hype, Gemini, get a Waitrose card like everybody else. You’re not that special.
LIBRA (SEPTEMBER 23 – OCTOBER 22) You’ve been helping a third year Fashion Design student with their collection by beading a thousand tiny earlobes onto a tie-dyed chiffon gown and your hunch wasn’t wrong it’s horrible. At night, you envision your third-year up in flames whilst cradling a jar of Nutella. It’s even more awful when you stop to consider that you graduated two years ago. The cult of youth, I suppose!