Chris Osterhoudt
LIFE CYCLES
ART 370 Photography, Topics : Resistance Lawrence Brose Spring 2013 The State University of New York at Buffalo Department of Visual Studies
essay analysis:
Seizing the Light
p. 4
precedent analysis:
Robert Smithson
p. 5
precedent analysis:
Andy Goldsworthy
p. 6
life cycles:
Concept Development
p. 8
Chapter 18; Thinking About Photography Robert Hirsch
Final conception birth growth climax wither death
p. 9 p. 10 p. 12 p. 14 p. 22 p. 26 p. 34
essay analysis Seizing the Light
Chapter 18; Thinking About Photography Robert Hirsch
The following is an excerpt from chapter 18 of Robert Hirsch’s book, Seizing the Light (p. 376): Performance Art The conceptual artist Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) used the supposed objectivity of the photograph to give a documentary look to his contrived situations, known as performance art. This term has been retroactively applied to early live-art forms, such as body art and happenings. The progressive disintegration of conventional artist materials and presentation forms led to the engagement of the real body as a forum for cultural critiques as seen in work of artists such as Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Yves Klein, and Carolee Schneemann. Performance art is an open-ended classifi cation for art activities that include elements of dance, music, poetry, theater, and video, presented before a live audience and usually “saved” by photographic methods and shown to larger audiences. One of its purposes is to provide a more interactive experience between artists and audiences.
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Robert Smithson’s (1938–1973) constructed Earth Work projects, like Spiral Jetty (1970), a 1,500-foot long spiral of earth and rock that jutted out into Great Salt Lake, and Christo’s (Vladimirov Javacheff) (b. 1935) temporary projects, such as wrapping a building, or his Running Fence (1976), a 241⁄2-mile fence of fabric, rely on photography to reach larger audiences. Initially, many conceptual artists resisted being documented, claiming that photographs would convert their art into marketable objects, violating their basic concept that such work was supposed to be experienced in person. But soon, Smithson was exhibiting his photographs and Christo and his partner Jeanne-Claude (Denat de Guillebon) (b. 1935) were selling theirs to help fund new projects such as The Gates (2005) in New York City’s Central Park. Artists like Smithson, who created transitory situations that he extracted from nature or left for nature to decompose, fi xed his work with photography, stating: “Photography makes nature obsolete.” Such strategies helped to dissolve the boundaries that divided photography from other media.
Through analysis of this excerpt, it is determined that, in relation to the subject matter of this course (resistance), photography is being used to resist the life cycle of an art piece. The photograph is used to capture a certain moment in time of the piece’s existence, usually the climax of the art piece’s life, and used to promote the artist’s work and allow the piece to reach a broader audience. Not only does this resist the notion of the life cycle concept of an art piece, but it also resists the experience of seeing the art piece in person; by seeing a photograph of the piece, the viewer is neglected from a sort of nostalgic experience that can only be established by seeing the piece in person.
precedent analysis Robert Smithson Robert Smithson (1938-1973) was an American artist famous for his land art. His pieces were often created in nature, where they would stay until eroded by nature itself. Spiral Jetty (left), built in Great Salt Lake, Utah in 1970, is often considered the most central to Smithson’s art. As nature goes through its natural cycles, most considerably the water cycle, Spiral Jetty goes through different phases of exhibition. During periods of heavy precipitation, or during the Spring snowmelt, the piece is completely submerged. Periods of drought, which are not uncommon in the west, reveals the rock and salt crystals. This piece, along with many of his other pieces, exhibit life cycles that reflect the natural cycles of the site in which the piece is located, and is always in a dynamic form of exhibition. For this reason, the pieces are meant to be seen and experienced in their own sites. Photography as a form of representation traps the piece in a specific moment in time, and resists the notion of experiencing the ever changing cycles that each piece goes through.
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precedent analysis: Andy Goldsworthy Andy Goldsworthy (1956-present) is a British sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. The following text is taken directly from the website for Andy Goldsworthy’s work (http://www.
ucblueash.edu/artcomm/web/w2005_2006/ maria_Goldsworthy/philosophy.html). It
explains Goldsworthy’s philosophy for the work he does, and explains itself regarding his stance on installations and the photography of such installations.
For me looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. Place is found by walking, direction determined by weather and season. I take the opportunity each day offers: if it is snowing, I work in snow, at leaf-fall it will be leaves; a blown over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. Movement, change, light growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and the space within. The weather—rain, sun, snow, hail, calm—is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings and the way it sits tells how it came to be there. In an effort to understand why that rock is there and where it is going, I must work with it in the area in which I found it. I have become aware of raw nature is in a state of change and how that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather.
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Often I can only follow a train of thought while a particular weather condition persists. When a change comes, the idea must alter or it will, and often does, fail. I am sometimes left stranded by a change in the weather with half-understood feelings that have to travel with me until conditions are right for them to appear. All forms are to be found in nature, and there are many qualities within any material. By exploring them I hope to understand the whole. My work needs to include the loose and disordered within the nature of material as well as the tight and regular. At its most successful, my ‘touch’ looks into the heart of nature; most days I don’t even get close. These things are all part of the transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient—only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process complete. I cannot explain the importance to me of being part of the place, its seasons and changes. Fourteen years ago I made a line of stones in Morecambe Bay. It is still there, buried under the sand, unseen. All my work still exists in some form. My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays—integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit.
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life cycles Life cycle of an art exhibition / installation:
Concept Development
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“Life Cycles� is an art piece that seeks to exemplify the life cycle of an art installation, in all of its phases, through the use of documentation. The specific intent is to use photography to resist the natural life cycle of the project, as well as the experience of seeing it in person.
CONCEPTION BIRTH GROWTH CLIMAX WITHER DEATH
The artist derives a concept, imagines the art piece, and develops a plan for installment
The artist picks a location for the piece, accumulates materials, and acquires any assistance
The artist assembles the materials in accordance with the concept
The piece is finished, documented, and marketed and displayed to the public The piece loses publicity and enters the tear down phase, where it is closed and disassembled.
The piece ceases to exist, except in the form of documentation
life cycles Final
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conception Inspiration was taken from a project done in a previous semester, where hundreds of golf balls were strung in a white room to establish an experience of nostalgic euphoria. This sort of experience is difficult, if not impossible, to replicate through photography alone; the documentation of such a project can never do it justice, when compared to seeing it in person. Photography, therefore, is resisting the experience.
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birth Glow sticks were chosen for the exhibition because of their already temporary nature. As soon as they are lit, they would only last hours before they are completely dead. This strengthens the importance of documentation and compacts the life cycle to a more perceptible and documentable form. Hundreds of suspended glow sticks also makes for an experience which is difficult to capture through photography alone.
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growth The installment of the exhibit spanned over nearly 24 hours of continuous set up. Hooks were embedded into the ceiling of a blank white room, the two ends of a black thread were each taped to the ends of two glow sticks, and then threaded through the hooks. This was repeated hundreds of times, until 500+ glow sticks were hanging at varying heights throughout the space. The following pages show time lapse series which depict the entire ‘growth’ phase of the project, with each photo taken at uniform time intervals; every 30 minutes for hanging the glowsticks and every 5 minutes for the lighting of the glowsticks.
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time lapse series : growth
growth
1
2 9:00 am 4.17.13
7
9:30 am
8 12:00 pm
13 16
3
9 12:30 pm
14 3:00 pm
10:00 am
1:00 pm
15 3:30 pm
4:00 pm
set up
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5
10
11:00 am
11 1:30 pm
16
12 2:00 pm
17 4:30 pm
11:30 am
2:30 pm
growth
10:30 am
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18 5:00 pm
5:30 pm
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time lapse series : growth
growth
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20 6:00 pm 4.17.13
25
6:30 pm
26 9:00 pm
31 18
21
27 9:30 pm
32 12:00 am 4.18.13
7:00 pm
10:00 pm
33 12:30 am
1:00 am
set up
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23
28
8:00 pm
29 10:30 pm
34
30 11:00 pm
35 1:30 am
8:30 pm
11:30 pm
growth
7:30 pm
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36 2:00 am
7:00 am 4.18.13
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time lapse series : growth
growth
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38 7:15 am 4.18.13
43
7:20 am
44 7:45 am
49 20
39
45 7:50 am
50 8:15 am
7:25 am
8:20 am
7:55 am
lighting
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41
46
7:35 am
47 8:00 am
7:40 am
48 8:05 am
8:10 am
growth
7:30 am
42
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climax
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10:00 am 4.18.13 23
11:00 am 4.18.13 24
11:00 am 4.18.13 25
wither
8:30 pm 4.18.13 26
10:30 am 4.19.13 27
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wither/death Although the glow sticks themselves have now reached their “death” phase, the exhibit still exists in the space, and is therefore still “withering”, albeit pitch black with no light. The following pages show a time lapse series depicting the tear down phase of the installation (the final part of the “wither” phase of the installation), wear scissors were used chaotically to cut down the glow sticks.
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wither 30
6:00 pm 4.19.13
6:01 pm
6:03 pm
6:04 pm
6:06 pm
6:07 pm
6:05 pm
6:08 pm
wither
6:02 pm
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wither 32
6:09 pm
6:10 pm
6:12 pm
6:13 pm
6:15 pm
6:16 pm
6:14 pm
6:17 pm
wither
6:11 pm
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death The glow sticks are now completely cut down and swept into the trash. The exhibition space is returned to its original state. Although the “conception” stage of the installation’s life cycle was developed throughout the entire semester, the rest of the installation’s life was rather short. From “birth” to “death”, the installation only existed for 58 hours, allowing for a compact life cycle that could easily be perceptible and understood by many.
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6:20 pm 4.19.13 35
Special thanks to: Lawrence Brose (Course Instructor) Will Bergmann (photos on p. 9, 14-15) Kevin Schildwaster (assistance in tear down) (time lapse series, p. 30-33) Helena Rosentrauch (photo on p. 11)
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