CONCISE CONTEXTUAL DOCUMENT FRASER STEWART-www.con-doc.blogspot.com
Research supporting this document is archived on the above website. This archive comprises references to external sources that have influenced my practice, including articles, images, video, and links to other relevant websites
My work is an exploration of my interests in the everyday. I use simple actions and scenarios, dealing with themes of humour and inevitability. These actions reference Minimalism and stress the importance of simple structure and stripped back conceptual approaches. I strive to work spontaneously with immediacy and concision. Through these minimalist actions I hope to question the general matters of social behaviour. These undertones communicate a message of the fear of the mundane, mortality, and the torpor of ‘nine to five’ existence.
“It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do” Moliere.
The question behind what I do is often, whether we gain humour from the misfortunes of others. Can we live on the satisfaction of getting one over on another person? Is this the source of a lot of the British sense of humour? Is it now socially acceptable or shocking to laugh at someone’s downfall? I make for me, I make what I make to keep me sane and to transform what is in my head into something that describes what makes me tick.
MODERN ART
My films are about the inevitability of a particular moment. In this I am trying to comment on the similarity between entertainment and art. Does art practice draw upon the methods of entertainment, and is this reciprocal? I’m trying to make people think about the nature of entertainment and its longevity and how our attention is held, consciously or sub-consciously, by advertisement. The speed of audiovisual media and its fleeting yet memorable quality is something I attempt to mirror and parody in my work.
MODERN ENTERTAINMENT “The ancestor of every action is a thought” Ralph Waldo Emerson
SEQUENTIAL SHORT ACTION BALLON SERIES
“Humour has been central to the cultural politics of movements such as Dada, Surrealism, situationism, Fluxus, Performance and Feminism, and of course much recent art practice that defies categroization - indeed, if humour has a common characteristic, it is to thumb its nose at pigeonholes� Jennifer Higgie
Recently I have been intrigued in making the viewer laugh, and in turn, question what they are laughing at. Can it be possible to make people laugh through endeavour? Can this endeavour be art? Am I as the artist allowed to make Jokes? This is also controlled by the context and positioning of a video work, where and when they are shown, how the audience views it. For example an audience in a cinema, watching short films will react differently to that of an audience in a clinical white gallery space. Will people be humoured by an artwork? In my mind this is just another approach to a diverse range of techniques in the world of contemporary art.
“Jokes have not received nearly as much philosophical consideration as they deserve in the view of the part they play in our mental life” Sigmund Freud, 1905
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” Marcel Duchamp.
In a similar way to Roman Signer, who makes what he calls “action sculptures” my work draws upon the aesthetics of scientific experimentation. His so-called “sculptural movements”
are carefully arranged and meticulously planned processes that create a transitory but highly spectacular event.” Art Works, PERFORM, Jens Hoffmann and Joan Jonas. I make them to convey an essence of the spur-of-the-moment. I attempt to show behaviour that is natural and unconstrained and spontaneous. However these films are often premeditated and designed around control. There is also a strong sense of “relationship of cause and effect” and also a
Images. Roman Signa’s work
comment on “scientific investigations” like that in the work of Signer.
“Why are we laughing. Me as the entertainer. In your eyes the artist. Go on laugh, I want you to and I want you to critise. Why else would you be here” FRASER STEWART
“Parodox: I would give my right arm to be ambidextrous” GRAFFITI
I also think there is a strong spirit of staying power and patience, as in the film entitled “BLOW” and also “What goes in must come out” which essentially work on the idea of repeating an action over and over and seeing how long I last. The “Balloon series” also works on a recurrence and replication of an exploit in the way it explores how many times a similar but different joke can be made to be humorous.
Images. Left:Poster for what goes in must come out. Right: Poster for Blow
A concern for me recently has been the effectiveness and difference between film and live performance. Perhaps this is about control, tension, and condition. Once filmed a performance can be shown repeatedly and installed the same way over and over, where as when something is performed live it will always be different. Film can edit and direct a viewer as to what exactly we are meant to look at.
“Performance (art or not) is a medium that has a very emotional quality, because it happens in the present as a direct experience” Xavier Le Roy
Another important influence that I have been looking at is the performance duo, Paul Harrison and John Wood. What I think is similar to their approach is that they don’t only try to make art but create works that “are enjoyable to watch and invite appreciation on many levels” they consciously bind “art and modern life”. It has also been said that they are “characterised by a refreshing economy of means” and that “Only that which is absolutely needed is used, and the pieces last exactly as long as they must”.
“The dilemma is our inability to understand. The dilemma is so alien to us that it smells of insanity” Paul Mcarthy I saw the work “Rocky” by Paul McCarthy around ten years ago and it significantly affected my thinking about the function of art. The piece shows the artist naked and wearing a rubber mask, identifiable as a burglar. He is wearing boxing gloves and during the piece punches himself and smothers him self with ketchup. When seeing this I thought deeply about the affect that it had on the people passing through Tate Modern, where it was housed. These were mostly tourists, the Tate on their site seeing list of places to go. Clearly the scene of a fully-grown man performing in such a way made people laugh. I stayed watching the reactions of people for some time and was intrigued by the length it took for people to stop being amused and start to be disturbed by the abusive nature of the activity.
“McCarthy eliminates the possibility of psychologically distancing oneself from what is taking place; the viewer laughs and recoils at the same time” Jennifer Higgie
“What we are celebrating is at once buffoonery and a requiem mass...the Dadaist...knows that life asserts itself in contradictions, and that his age, more than any preceding it, aims at the destruction of all generous impulses. Every kind of mask is therefore welcome to him, every play at hide and seek in which there is a inherent power of deception.” Hugo Ball, One of the founding members of Dada, 12 march 1916
I had been making one-minute films and live performances in the summer leading up to the beginning of this year. This was during the European Exchange Academy in Beelitz Germany. After arriving back, I worked on several long performance films based on dreams. This was connected with the theory that they have a cause and effect on how we live out our day-to-day lives. These films where often surreal in nature. I drew Reference from the film “Un chien andalou” (1929) directed by Luis Buñuel and Dali. I often collaborated with Danny Mcguinness who was working with similar ideas and issues. Often each of us would come up with a concept for a work and we would then set about constructing it collaboratively. These performances could last up to an hour in length. They were often made to the length of the tape and the props and objects we used were recycled in the next film.
Above images: Left:set of the film springsteen. notice elements of previous props from performances. Right: Image from Paintbrushheadman. A performance orginally conceived by Danny Mcguinness which I particated in.
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing”. Salvador Dali
Images: Stills taken from ““Un
chien andalou” (1929) directed by Luis Buñuel and Dali. I began to become increasingly aware that the films that where of this length failed in holding peoples attention. Through making these films I began to gather an excess of material and what we called short trailers. These originally were an attempt at advertising exhibitions that were being put on and to show multiple films in presentation. However I later added music to these and edited them in such away to change the meaning. I researched trailers that have been remade from films and made into completely different narratives and attempted this with my filmed performances. These often created juxtapositions between the film and the music, which I found interesting. I also began to make posters and images to go along side the performances. This documentation was interesting for me, as the objects could not have existed without first the film or performance being made and again it suggested the similarity between entertainment and art, in its advertising and media representation.
“Everything is in motion, everything is changing, everything is being transformed and yet nothing changes” Jean Baudrillard
All of my films this year are made under economic restraints that are integral to their production. Props are taken from the environment and ideas are sourced around these. Using my body, paint, objects, furniture, clothes and low-tech visual tricks and actions to create tension and provoke thought. Also what Interests me is how abusing my self-image in menial ways makes others think about themselves and their position as the viewer. This became an attempt in creating slapstick with a connection
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE SOME ART THAT IS COURAGEOUSLY SILLY Dave Hickey, “Frivolity and Unction�, 1996
between the viewer and me. Can I express a portion of my personality through these films?
I also began to think about the nature of filming performance. When making the earlier films I started to examine the way I achieved this. I was specifically framing and setting films in certain places and ways in order to convey a certain message. This wasn’t necessarily a bad method and came quite naturally to me, having a strong interest in film. But I was concerned that this wasn’t really the most important thing to the direction of my work. I was spending a lot of time on the set up and method of filming when to me the most important thing was the concept of the film and the event that was taking place. So I have evolved away from this and made more of an effort to perform actions over filming. Filming is secondary and for me should not drive what action is taking place.
“In art, impurity is not a mortal sin”
Raymond Pettibon
“Any time you slice a salami, you take a risk!... Why do people think artists are special? It’s just another job!”. Andy Warhol
I also began to make these films in the studio and began to frame from one fixed position that indicated in exactly what type of environment these activities where being made. I stopped being concerned so much with background sound as something that was a burden but rather accepted it as part of the film. Unlike the earlier films I also started to move away from costume and decorated props and tried to create more natural experimental elements. These films have now started to have to the feel that they are created in a short time and are very quick in both production and viewing though in truth this sometimes take many times to get to a satisfactory conclusion.