YANN NOVAK LARS LUNDEHAVE HANSEN DAMIEN FLOOD NIALL DE BUITLEAR SALOME VOEGELIN ANNETTE MOLONEY SEAMUS NOLAN LUCE DE TETIS KEN OMOM NOEL CULLEN TRACEY COSTELLO KATERINA BODRUNOVA
ZINE.COM STUDENTS ISSUE 2 - 2011
MISSION studentsZINE is Ireland's leading online publication for the International Contemporary Arts, and was founded to readdress the current lack of representation focusing primarily on the development of students, emerging and under represented artists within their creative and research practices. STUDENTS is dedicated to create a platform for discussion for the emerging artist. It aims to be at the forefront of art criticism and theory and to engage and represent the work of committed emerging practitioners within the field of 'Art', to promote their work and related interests to a wider appreciating audience and to create a discursive network between national and international colleges and universities.
SUBMIT studentsZINE are accepting submissions on an ongoing basis, to be considered for future issues please send work to submit@studentszine.com or keep in touch by creating your FREE account at studentsPAD www.studentspad.com
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CONTRIBUTORS INVITED ARTISTS YANN NOVAK LARS LUNDEHAVE HANSEN DAMIEN FLOOD NIALL DE BUITLEAR SALOME VOEGELIN ANNETTE MOLONEY SEAMUES NOLAN
PICK OF THE PAD - WWW.STUDENTSPAD.COM LUCE DE TETIS TRACY COSTELLO KEN OMOM NOEL CULLEN KATERINA BODRUNOVA
LIST OF INTERESTED DISTRIBUTORS FOR FUTURE ISSUES Ireland, Scotland, UK, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Spain, Canada, USA NIVAL, NationalIrish Visual Arts Library, (NCAD, Dublin, Ireland) Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, (Barcelona, Spain) RUA RED, (Tallaght, Dublin, Ireland) The Burren College of Art, (co. Clare, Ireland) Basement project space, (cork, Ireland) Arttrail YMCA, (cork, Ireland) GSA, Gorey School of Art, (co. Wexford, Ireland) Tinahely Courthouse Arts Centre (co. Wicklow, Ireland) The Little Ghost Gallery (co. Kilkenny, Ireland) SOMA Contemporary Art Box, (co. Waterford,Ireland) Basement Project Space, (co Cork, Ireland) NenaghArtsCentre, (co. Tipperary, Ireland) Number OneGallery,(co.Dublin, Ireland) Mothers Tankstation, (co. Dublin, Ireland) Exchange Gallery, (co. Dublin, Ireland) EnnistymonCourthouse Gallery & Studios, (co. Clare, Ireland) Tallaght Community Arts, (co. Dublin, Ireland) Pitzer Art Galleries, (Claremont, CA, USA) Academy of Fine Arts, (Prague, Czeck Republic) CollectiveGallery, (Edinburgh, Scotland) Soundfjord Gallery & ResearchUnit, (London, UK) Trailer project space,(Rotterdam.Netherlands) Arteria Art Gallery,(Montreal,Canada) 221A, (Vancouver, Canada) Draiocht, (Blanchardstown, Ireland) CIT, Crawford School of Art, (Cork, Ireland) Catalyst Arts, (Belfast, Northern Ireland) Filmbase, (Temple Bar, Ireland) Cake Contemporary Arts, (co. Kildare, Ireland) ICPA, Colgate University, (NY, USA) 126 (Galway, Ireland) West Cork Arts Centre (cork, Ireland) Galway Arts Center, (Galway, Ireland) Darc Space, (Dublin, Ireland)
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR THANK YOU - are the words that have been floating around STUDENTS since our inception back in December 2010 with Issue 1 of studentZINE. This is due to the tremendous amount of support and generousity we have received from Irish and International Artists. Since the introduction of Issue 1 of studentsZINE it has received well over 14,000 readers internationally. This has given us at STUDENTS the encouragement and confidence to continue delivering to you a quality zine promoting the work of dedicated students, emerging and under-represented artists within their creative fields, and we now present to you an extremely interesting and exciting Issue 2 of studentsZINE that we hope will become an even bigger success then the previous Issue. In the meantime STUDENTS has also been dedicated in developing our other concerns, promoting and encouraging a universal, open access approach to information and education for International Artists. To achieve this STUDENTS have collaborated with Oxwall open community software and Creative Commons Licenses to develop studentsPAD OPEN LIBRARY & PLATFORM FOR THE ARTS that can be found at www.studentspad.com studentsPAD is a free online, user led, open educational resourse for the Arts where the International Artist can gain access to the work of other national and International Artists, upload their own work, post upcoming events, create blogs, join / create groups, read through the latest Issue of studentsZINE, browse the Open Libray and of course add your own texts. The Open Library includes sections for Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Doctoral Dissertations, aswell as a section for any other text you may have written and also a dedicated section for texts that have landed in the Public Domain. Since its inception just a couple of months ago, studentsPAD has developed into an extremely exciting and thriving International Hub for the Arts & Education with c.600 International Artists participating in this intiative and over 100 texts to hit the shelves at the Open Library. To help develop this initiative further STUDENTS would love to invite you all to join us at studentsPAD, create your FREE accounts today and participate in an initiative that we believe will encourage a new approach to Open Education, one where you do not have to be a current member of an educational institution or pay subscription fees to access educational information. WWW.STUDENTSPAD.COM Within this Issue we have decided to include a brand new section PICK OF THE PAD that will feature the work of selected artists from studentsPAD. We believe this is an extremely exciting platform for STUDENTS to keep up with the work and practices of International Artists that we may never have come into contact with and you with us. As we at STUDENTS are still an extremely new initiative we encourage you to send in your reviews and suggestions so we can keep delivering what you want. Before I leave you I hope you enjoy Issue 2 and it has lived up to your expectations. Hope you all have a happy summer. Thanks Again Richard Carr
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Y A N N N O V A K
Yann Novak (b. 1979 Madison, WI) is a sound, video and installation artist living and working in Los Angeles. His work utilizes different forms of digital documentation as a point of departure. Through the digital manipulation of these sound and image files, his works serve as a translation from documents of personal experiences into an open ended autobiographical narrative. By choosing subject matter that is also relatable to the audience, Novak’s work creates a hybrid state, balancing between his own personal history and that of the audience. Novak has presented his installation work through solo exhibitions at 323 Projects (CA), Armory Center for the Arts (CA), Las Cienegas Projects (CA), Lawrimore Project (WA), Soundfjord (London, UK) and in two person exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery (WA), Pøst (CA) and Soil Art Gallery (WA). His sound works and scores have been presented internationally as part of multiple group exhibitions and sound dispersions at venues and events including the American Academy in Rome (Rome, Italy), Aqua Art Miami (FL), File Hipersonica (Brazil), London International Festival of Exploratory Music (London, UK), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA), Suyama Space (WA), TBA Festival (OR), Western Bridge (WA) and others. Novak’s solo and collaborative sound works have been published on 14 CD and CD-R releases on such labels as Dragon’s Eye Recordings (CA), Infrequency Editions (Canada), Koyuki (Italy), LINE (DC) and White.Line Editions (United Kingdom). His sound works have also appeared on 17 international sound art and electronic music compilations on labels such as Mandorla (Mexico), Untitled & After (CA), The Wire (United Kingdom) and others. Novak’s performance work have been experienced internationally at sound art/electronic music festivals including the Decibel Festival (WA), Forward Festival (DC), Mutek Festival (Montreal, QB), Resonant Forms Festival (CA), Soundwalk (CA) and at art venues and museums including the Fiske Planetarium (CO), Highways Performance Space (CA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), Oboro (Montreal, QB), Torrance Art Museum (CA) and others. As a result of these endeavors, Novak had been invited to numerous residencies including the Environmental Aesthetics Residency (WA), the Espy Foundation Residency (WA), the Jack Straw New Media Art Gallery Residency (WA), the Jental Artist Residency (WY) and the Kasini House Studio A Residency (VT). In 2005, Novak re-launched his father’s Dragon’s Eye Recordings imprint with a new focus on limited edition releases by emerging and mid-carrier sound artists, composers and producers. Since its re-launch, Dragon’s Eye Recordings has published over 60 releases and has received critical acclaim. In recent years Novak has collaborated through select installation, performance and recorded work with Gretchen Bennett, Crispin Spaeth, Robert Crouch, Jamie Drouin, Will Long, Marc Manning, Mise_En_Scene, Alex Schweder, and others.
My work is an exploration of incident, process, and narrative. Central to my practice is the capture and manipulation of audio recordings and photographs. Through various types of digital media, I collect material from a range of sources, initially selected because of the subject matter’s emotional content. The content of these documents is used as a point of departure and a catalyst to recall the experiences͞ it is never used or excluded because of aesthetics. These documents then become highly charged fragments of an ongoing autobiographical text. Dramatic events like relocating from one city to another, or simple day-to-day incidents like being trapped inside during a strong rain, can be equally compelling. I am interested in reconfiguring documents of moments such as these into abstract, open-ended narratives. My intent is to create experiences that give the audience a window into my own personal experiences, but leave enough to the imagination that the viewer has room to relate their own experiences. By subjecting these selected recordings to a series of erasures and treatments, a delicate palette of textures, drones, and subtle melodies emerges. When photographs are incorporated into my work, similar treatments and erasures are used to shape them into videos of slow moving or static color fields intended to tint the listening experience. Each piece is then composed from numerous variations from a single source, meticulously sculpted to highlight some aspect of the original document. Although significant details and artifacts are deliberately eliminated, the narrative and structural elements of the source material are left intact. The final form of my work may be realized as sound installation, sound performance, large-scale projection, video work or recorded work. Each of my works is an investigation into presentation, composition and perception, not just to be heard, but to be felt. By creating situations the audience can relate to, a hybrid state is created, existing somewhere between my own personal history and that of the audience.
Relocation.Vacant, 2009 - Photo: Steven Miller
Relocation.Mobile, 2009 - Photo: Steven Miller
Yann Novak - Relocation.Vacant Click Above to Play
Stillness.Oceanic, 2010 - Photo: Adam Goodison
Yann Novak - Stillness.Oceanic Click Above to Play
Stillness.Subtropical, 2010 - Photo: Adam Goodison
Yann Novak - Stillness Subtropical Click Above to Play
NOISE, PONDERING A PARADOX BY: SALOME VOEGELIN Pondering a Paradox: the Seduction of Noise, paper presented at NoiseTheoryNoise2 conference organised by the Centre of Research in Modern European Philosophy, London 20.11.05
Pondering a paradox: The seduction of noise The context of this paper is a concern with the articulation of an aesthetics of sound art. The suggestion is that the nature of sound refutes not only the application of a modernist aesthetics, which judges the artwork in relation to its substantial and categorisable appearance, but that it challenges current postmodern theories of a fragmented and performative aesthetics even. In my research I seek to present that the immersive and insistent nature of sound demands a different aesthetic discourse. Subsequently I attempt to draft proposals for the articulation of such an aesthetics of sound art. In relation to this broader research project, this particular paper is one such proposal. The aim of this presentation, in the spirit of this event, is to articulate an aesthetics of sound art in terms of the noise it makes rather than the meaning it produces. Fully aware that there are many different definitions of noise, my paper identifies noise in relation but not in opposition to a visual sensibility, which comes to its aesthetic judgement through distance and objectivity; orientation and the notion of meaning.
The identification of the sonic within a visual vocabulary limits what can be heard. Sound work needs a different vocabulary if it aspires to engender a sonic listening. However, my over-all desire to develop an aesthetic of sound art is not the desire to distil, categorize and frieze what is being practiced under that name. Rather, the aim is to produce a vocabulary that witnesses, documents, narrates and takes measure of what is going on in this field and thus aids to critically develop what is being practiced and heard. This critical vocabulary is itself not fixed but is constantly evolving. The need for such a vocabulary is based on two main points: One is the issue that sound art still finds its vocabulary often only in relation to a visual practice and its processes of production and perception. The invisible sound object is described and grasped in visual comparisons: in relation to a visual source or space; or in terms of a visual ‘equivalent’. This dependency affirms and in a sense condones the sublimation of sound to the visual and limits any truly sonic perception to visual boundaries. That of the sonic experience, which finds no acknowledgment in such a visual vocabulary, eludes its discussion, or under the name of noise, becomes its dialectical opposite. In relation to such theories noise simply manifests the failure to communicate, it becomes the negative of what is beautiful, permissive and harmonic. Considering the soundtrack of film and video works I debate how noise’s aesthetic function lies outside such systemic conventions and compositional interpretations, in the contingent perception of the listener, who performs what I will call an innovative listening.
The second is the problem, and the two are intrinsically linked, that most people are very visually literate: we know how to read an image; to make sense of it; to understands its references and context. In other words we know how to look at and view artwork. However, we are often literally in the dark as to how to listen to work. Not knowing how to understand, reference and listen to a sonic artwork frustrates any attempts by even the most generous of audiences to engage. Consequently all a potential listener does is either walk away or look for visual clues: the sound work remains unheard, the sonic artwork unrealised. And is particularly noise, understood as sound which exists outside the conventional musical framework or the ‘meaningful’ sounds of the diegetic soundtrack, that needs its own critical language in order to stimulate and orientate an engaged listening. In this sense noise forces the sonic discourse towards an ‘outward’ orientation, into the context of perception, in opposition to the ‘inward’ understanding of a systemic, musical, and hence quasi visual, interpretation. Noise is not radical, however, it simply amplifies the demands of any sound to be considered in its immersive contingency rather than in relation to a pre-conceived system. Noise is not a special case, it is simply more insistent on its particularity. And through its particularity it provokes a more general shift in thinking about sound. The need for such a shift in thinking is the motivation for this project in general and this paper in particular. My starting point lies in the development of aesthetic theory from modernism to post-modernism. I see the relationship between modernism and postmodernism as one of continuation rather than of discontinuation and break. I feel it is necessary to briefly outline my understanding of the status, content and consequences
of both aesthetic discourses in order to argue why noise challenges both methods of criticality and to illustrate how it demands a further development of aesthetic discourse. The modernist aesthetic, understood in relation to early 20th Century modernism in Europe and America, most prominently articulated in relation to visual arts by Clement Greenberg, focuses on the production of form, the substantial, the essential, the categorisable artwork. In search of objectivism the modernist art critique sets down clear rules as to what is good art in respect to clearly typified and categorised manifestations. From this principle identification modernism purports the idea of discilpline and unity, deliberating the qualities and characteristics of the total artwork. According to Jean-François Lyotard modernist art theory seeks ‘to preserve various consciousnesses from doubt.’ (Lyotard, 1994, p74) Its aim is to establish the artwork as certain and knowable in relation to a transcendental a priori. Its vocabulary consequently accommodates the description and judgment of spatial and substantial work: painting and sculpture, at some distance from the viewer. In relation to music, it is the score that substantiates and qualifies the work in an a priori. The score visualises and thus spatialises and arrests the individual performance in an ideal temporality. The score is proof of its existence and determines its value. According to Theodor W. Adorno, it is the quasi objective relationship between tones in harmonic intervals in relation to the compositional totality of the work that renders the musical work ideal. The temporal quality of music, which could be seen as its critical edge vis-à-vis spatial art practices, is for Adorno a problem, unless it is compositionally controlled; the temporal sounds fixed in what he terms a Notenbild (an image of notes).
Such modernist criteria for discussing and judging a piece of work, visual or sonic, sees the process of viewing/listening as having no impact on the appearance of the artwork nor on the subject perceiving it. The viewing subject is assumed as a fixed identity, it too is totalised and unified as a transcendental subject.
within a solid consensus of meaning. In fact post-modernism never abandons the notion of consensual meaning, good taste and form, in the first place, it queries the nominality and homogeneity of those who participate in the meaning making process, never however the possibility of meaning making per se.
Postmodernism is not opposed to this way of discussing art but rather is a logical interpretation and development of such a modernist idealism of totality and unity via the consideration of perception: challenging modernism via a temporal and individual dimension. According to Lyotard postmodernism puts forward that which in modernism remains unrepresentable. I interprete this ‘unrepresentable’ as the moment when the modernist objective vocabulary clashes with the momentary perception of the individual viewer/listener and fails to account for his/her experience.
And this is the main point for my argument: Noise, not as a temporary abandonment of taste and good form, imminently redeemed in a new (visual) referential framework, but as radically and always just simply noise, upsets not meaning but the system of meaning making. And I believe that is the true criticality of noise.
Consequently the postmodern reading reflects not the understanding of the artwork as supplying or representing one total and ideal artwork. Rather, it discusses artistic experience as ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ in the sense in which the audience connects it to a personal and individual experience of the real, constructing a multitude of re-presentations. Post-modernism is to modernism the noise of heterogeneity and incompetence, working outside and across disciplines, squandering its systemic valuation in decadent centrifugality. In this sense, the postmodern is a radicalisation of the modernist understanding of the artwork. However, in the overall context of modernism the post-modern excursion into decadence is ultimately redeemed. Lyotard’s interpretation of the post-modern as language game highlights this state of affairs. As a game it is ultimately halted or at least paused, and its players go back to the pragmatics of everyday living, where homogeneity is produced in order to get on. Any noisy nonsense produced is recuperated
It is invisible sound in the sense that it is not regulated by the Notenbild of the composition, nor helped along by the speech track of the film. It does not present bad taste to be redeemed once we leave the language game of post-modernity. Rather, noise simply is sound considered in its own right and no visual metadiscourse can evaluate its soundings. Rudolph Arnheim in his demand for a blind radio has always challenged and confused me on this point. I can understand and follow his suggestion that such a radio would not be a relay apparatus for football games or musical performances, etc. But it is much harder to imagine what it would be. One thing it could be I guess is Noise. Noise radio in the sense that the sounds coming from the box in my living room would have nothing to do with the visual world around me. They would not be accousmatic in the sense of a reduction of the visual referent by removing the attack and the envelop of a sound, performing the compositional equivalent of a phenomenological époché. Noise is not a reduction of visuality, it is not less than the image, it is radically different, and possible rather more. Noise in this sense is sound that is truly and never was related to any visual source.
It seems an impossible but exciting demand, this desire for sound to be only referenced to sound rather than to a visual thing. I suppose this would mean they are sounds of things that do not exist and that is I guess one way of understanding noise. Such a blind ‘noise’ radio surpasses and stretches the visual imagination out of its representational and also out of its re-presentational task into a generative presentation: intensively always now, clasped in a continuous present, nothing else and nowhere else. - And if such a noise radio is not genuinely realisable it articulates certainly an interesting motivation for artistic production.
L A R S L U N D E H A V E H A N S E N
Lars Lundehave Hansen has been working in the fields of ambient/drones and noise for the past 14 years - as a sound artist, enthusiastic promotor of and dedicated performer in these fields. The usual works of Lars L. Hansen are often constructions, making a point of being constructions, that emit or react to sounds or noise. An attempt to explore the relations between timbre / room and action / reaction. He also co-founded legendary organization Noisejihad and is the catalyst behind danish renowned drone-act W채ldchengarten. The latter having a batch of highly acclaimed releases under their belt as well as having toured extensively in Central-Europe, Scandinavia, China, Japan, Brazil and performed at major Danish festivals such as Roskilde Festival and SPOT Festival. Lars L. Hansen graduated from Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in 2006. Here he recieved the award of distinction for his work with sound in artistic contexts.
Lars Lundehave Hansen - Spiderbytes Click Above to Play
with sound work of John Duncan, Sarah Boothroyd, Leo Bettinelli, 2l2code (Merran Laginestra & Pedro Lopez), Antanas Kucinskas, Philip Julian, Jefferson Boss, Robin Parmar, Richard Carr, Marc Egea, Ola Ståhl, Seth Guy, Charlie Williams and Wolfgang Peter Menzel The unique Samuel Becketts work, plays, novels and poetry, rendering him the nobel prize in literature, is characterized by a deep expression of human silence, in spite of his figures´ sometimes endless babbling. With the starting point in that crackling silence I saw the challenge for sound artists to respond to. There are not so many sound works corresponding to Becketts work, but a lot of experimental sound together with texts of the author. When asking the artists for contributions to these two CD's I want them to conduct themselves more to what they felt being the essence of Becketts work than to illustrate a text based on intellectual understanding. The pieces include a wide range of different interpretations, possibilities of understanding Becketts work in sound, from using the authors text changing into a sound atmosphere, from language destruction down to a noise level, from rhythmic repetition to epic width. Finally the SOUNDING NOTHING project turned out as a double CD as it was ment to be. The question of words, literature, and music is enigmatic, perhaps the question of words and sound is even more enigmatic. Fifteen sound artists try to handle this on “out of silence”, which can be regarded both a presentation and documentation. When asking the artists for a sound reflection the only relation demanded was the Beckett affiliation, nothing more, nothing less, the rest was up to each of them.
Out of Silence is OUT NOW Please visit http://modisti.com/netlabel/?p=557 or http://www.podalida.com/podalida_in_progress.html to listen to the tracks or purchase your very own copy
Whether sonorous images or compositional pieces, there were no restrictions. Generally the sound pieces are not translations neither literally rendered. They just bear parallel witness, as soundtracks, of what Beckett was writing about. Whether these works of sound art will be experienced as music or not is a secondary question. a careful deep listening will transpose them somewhere to the farthest edge, in the centre of the listener – out of silence. fail again, try again, fail better (Samuel Beckett).
D A M I E N F L O O D
Damien Flood’s work situates itself between fact and fiction. The paintings he creates are modern landscapes that reference the history of painting with an underlying, otherworldly element. These paintings can be seen as visual contradictions and incomplete metaphors. We are not sure what time period we are in, what place we are facing or even what planet we are on. The scenes Flood creates often don’t add up. This can be because the depicted world is in an immeasurable microscopic scale or that it is carefully incomplete. The paintings appear paradoxical in nature. This tactic of incompleteness leaves the work open to the viewer, thus asking more questions than providing answers. Flood is interested in the language of paint and how it can be employed to suggest many different notions and can be used in such a way as to transport the viewer to another time and place. As the work moves from landscape and ventures into near complete abstraction, Flood utilizes mountains and trees as signifiers and anchoring points for the viewer giving the viewer a grounding in an ever shifting landscape. Damien Flood graduated from the MA in Fine Art in NCAD in 2008. He has been selected for the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize in 2008 and 2010. In 2008 he was also selected for the Saatchi Space in London during Frieze '08. He has been in numerous other group exhibitions including Futures 10 at RHA, Dublin; ‘Unbuiling’ Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray; Five Hundred Dollars Gallery, London and previous group exhibitions in Green On Red Gallery, Dublin. Damien is represented by Green On Red Gallery and had his first solo exhibition with them in January 2010. Most recently he has exhibited in New York at Theodore:Art as part of a three person show. He is currently working towards his second solo show at Green on Red Gallery for November this year.
Dome (2009), Oil on half oil ground, 25 x 20 cm
Ground (2010), Oil and marker on canvas, 25 x 20 cm
Knot (2009), Oil on canvas, 46 x 36cm
Rainbow (2010), Oil on canvas, 25 x 35 cm
Recurring Vortex (2010), Oil on canvas, 25 x 30 cm
N I A L L D E B U I T L E A R
Niall de Buitléar was born in 1983 in Dublin and graduated with a Degree in Fine Art in 2006 from the Dublin Institute of Technology. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Wexford Arts Centre; 126, Galway; and The Lab, Dublin. He has participated in two-person exhibitions at the Wexford Arts Centre, 2009 and Queen Street Studios, Belfast, 2007. His work has been included in many group exhibitions including Futures 10, RHA, Dublin, 2010; Material Worlds: Contemporary Sculpture from Ireland and the UK, FE McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, 2010; Dawning of an Aspect, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin 2009; Bookish: When Books Become Art, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 2008; and An Exhibition In 5 Chapters, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, 2007. He was the 2009-2010 winner of both the Red Stables Irish Residential Studio Award and the Wexford Arts Centre's Emerging Visual Artist's Award. He is currently based at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin.
Installation view wexford arts centre - 2010
untitled cardboard - 2010
untitled cardboard - 2010
untitled cardboard - 2010
untitled paper, work in progress
ANNETTE MOLONEY
Annette Moloney is a practitioner, curator and collaborator based in Limerick, Ireland. Her curatorial practice includes talks and writing, particularly on how artists and practitioners are making use of vacant city centre spaces; exhibitions, artists peer crits; mentoring and public art commissions. Recent roles include working as a project manager at the Irish Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale; as Artistic Director of Clare County Council’s Public Art Programme and as Public Art Specialist with the Arts Council of Ireland. More than anything she tries to retain an artist centred and idea centred approach to her practice.
For more information please visit: http://www.artinslackspaces.ie/index.html
S E A M U S N O L A N
Seamus Nolan is an artist based in Dublin, chosen to represent Ireland for Europalia in Brussels, Artist in residence in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the recipient of Wexford County Council’s inaugural Emerging Visual Artist Award. Recent works includes,Neighbo(u)rhood, in The Mattress Factory Pittsburgh, 'Terminal Convention' in association with Static gallery Liverpool and The NSF Cork, 'The Trades Club Revival' in association with The Model Gallery Sligo and CREATE Dublin, 'Noughties but Nice', Limerick City Gallery touring show, R.H.A. 'Futures show', 'Corrib Gas Project Art Centre' Project Arts Centre Dublin, 'if art could save your life' Droichead Arts Centre Drogheda, Ev+a Limerick, '1968 If you could change the world at last' the Goethe Institute, 'Docks Tour' National Sculpture Factory Cork, 'Art in the life world' Ballymun Dublin, 'Demesne' at the Lab Dublin, 'Phoenix Park' The Kerlin Gallery, 'Demesne' Wexford Art Centre, 'Nature Reserve' Europalia Brussels, and 'Hotel Ballymun' a temporary public art work commissioned by Breaking Ground, Ballymun Dublin. My practice questions the legitimacy of its own appropriation, seeking an involvement within the fabric of our social and cultural make up and often operates in conjunction with local community groups, inviting the audience to interact on a very personal level with this local activity, with the piece of work itself, and most importantly, with the context of its presentation. The subject of these works often operates somewhere between object and performance, between a politic and a meaning, operating upon the terms of articulation and assimilation, of community, consensus, and subjectivity, and at how these ideas are mediated concurrently within the public and private domain.
Flight NM7104 Performance intervention and Installation Commissioned by Statis Gallery Liverpool and the National Sculpture Factory Cork, to produce a new work for the project 'Terminal Convention' 17-27 March 2011, with curator Peter Gorschl端ter (Deputy Director of MMK Museum f端r Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main) set in the former Cork International Airport, Ireland. The regular internal flight to Cork airport was block booked to its full capacity by the artist using the names of a number of participants who agreed to have their details used to book on line for flight NM 7104. The passengers who offered their consent were requested not to show up for the flight and consequently render the flight empty. The flight which was due for arrival at Cork Airport for 12:10 on the 18th of March at the discretion of the airline in accordance with the pre scheduled flight plan and timetable. However due to the tragic crash of the airlines planes on the route earlier this year the route has been permanently pulled and the flight was cancelled, a life size painting of the booked out aircraft was made on the floor of the terminal along with details of the project. http://www.showerofkunst.com/2011/05/decommissioned.html for more info
Trades Club Revival A recent ongoing project in Sligo 'Trades Club Revival' commissioned by The Model Art centre and jointly funded by CREATE's Artist in the Community scheme, is an off site public work based on the idea of the social centre and the activity which facilitates cooperative interaction, and responsibility. Working with the owner of the premises and the local community the club premiss was reopened after some extensive up-cycling and building repairs it now operates as a local arts centre where members of the club host parties, exhibitions, music events, meetings, markets etc. The revival of the club and its premises has initiated the formation of a working management group who are overseeing the enlivenment of the club as a social and cultural art space. The responsibility towards the Trades Club Revival lies in the formality of this historical ideal, the building imbued with the history of what the club represents, a marker of social involvement, of class consciousness and contemporary manifestations of such. Please see www.themodel.ie or visit www.facebook.com/TheTradesClubSligo
310-312 Sampsonia way, For sale by owner, great opportunity
310-312 Sampsonia way, For sale by owner, great opportunity A current project in the Mattress factory in Pittsburgh for the exhibition Neighbo(u)rhood curated by Georgina Jackson, the exhibition that the project is part of considers the idea of Neighbourhood and how the idea of the neighbourhood containing the complexities of both local and global interrelations. The project involves an attempt to sell the director of the museums house, I worked in the house to photograph the space, and present the property on a real estate web site. Presenting the sale of the house as the art work, the private property which facilitates the development of the cultural program, looking at ideas of development, speculation and optimism in a post industrial future. www.zillow.com/homes/210.dash.312-sampsonia-way-pittsburgh-pa_rb/
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PICK OF THE PAD WWW.STUDENTSPAD.COM LUCE DE TETIS, TRACEY COSTELLO, KEN OMOM, NOEL CULLEN & KATERINA BODRUNOVA Selected by Richard Carr, Artist and founding director of STUDENTS. Recent exhibions include Soundgate Online and Onsite Streaming MOMA, The Architectural Centre & Platform 4, Denmark. SoundArt Now, curated by Soundfjord at The Dragonfly Festival Sweden. Sonic Vigil V sound station, curated by The Quiet Club Ireland and Sonic Art Juke Box, Soundfjord Gallery & Research Unit London. Richard is currently living and working Co. Wexford, Ireland.
L U C E D E T E T I S
This year Luce de Tetis is finishing her Master Degree at the Beaux Arts in Besanรงon France. After exploring various currents of artistic fields she finds her endogen expression in sculpture. Her plastic universe, through gender studies, defines her socially as well as sexually. Her primal reference is womanhood, probing with apetite into its origins, flesh and blood. From the first rock paintings through the shapes of bodybuilding and baroque volumes, Luce de Tetis deforms, reforms identities and transforms boundaries. She questions the forces that define a male-female relationship in the erotic sphere, perfomance or power struggle. Her work, discreet and full of humor disturbs and destabilizes male fantasies, liberating what Freud named" the libido".
Cuisses de Nymphes Emues
Terra incognita
Trophy
CRITICS CHOICE studentsPAD OPEN LIBRARY RE-SEXING THE CHERRY: JEANETTE WINTERSON'S REVISION OF GENDER AND HISTORY BY: TRACEY COSTELLO Introduction Upon reading Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry I have come to believe that much of the narrative is based around feminist texts particularly arising from the concept that Julia Kristeva terms as “second phase” feminists. This generation of feminist thinkers surfaced at a time when many uprisings were taking place across Europe and America most prominently in France. These protests were based mainly on two things: the Vietnam War and the resistance to it, and theBlack liberation movement. Change was in the air and so, as Joel Geier said in a speech he gave at the University of Illinois on March 26th 2008, “with the eating comes the appetite.”(Geier, 2008) People wanted an end to the exploitation and oppression and with these demands new movements were born that didn’t previously exist such as the women’s and gay movement. Following the riots early in the year of 1968, the world saw that things could be changed and so it was this among others that may have sparked a small group called New YorkRadical Women to get out and actively protest on the Atlantic City boardwalk outside the convention hall where the Miss America beauty pageant was being held. Women threw girdles, bras, mops, Playboy magazines etc. into rubbish bins, discarding what they felt were tools of female oppression.1 It was this small event that launched the movement into the public consciousness initiating critical analysis of the movement and its concepts.
This led to the development of a new area of critique known as Queer Theory. At first, I must admit, I didn’t feel the undercurrent of feminism running beneath the narrative of Sexing the Cherry quite as strong as I do now.Although feminism and lesbianism is apparent I had no idea that what I believed was a fantastically creative reshuffling of the structure of plot and narrative wasa trait carried by feminist writers. It is an element used by women writers to strike at the tyranny of patriarchal culture and society. An example of this style of writing is seen in Winterson’s revision of history and the conditioning ofheterosexuality throughout her novel. It is through Winterson’s protagonists that I wish to discuss these ideas and will do in subsequent chapters. I will also clarify throughout this dissertation the inevitable link between Winterson and what Kristeva terms as “second wave” feminism, pointing out certain attributes Winterson’s protagonists hold in common with women of this generation of feminism. Having illuminated an imperative theme that Sexing the Cherry blossoms from I would like to briefly discuss why I must point out this topic and why such a topic of analysis exists. Queer theory is as Paul Burston and Colin Richardson describe an area allowing the investigation of the relationships held by gay and lesbians with popular culture that largely excludes them. (Burston and Richardson as cited by J.Storey, 2001) A common misunderstanding, in which I myself was guilty of, about Queer Theory is that it is a discipline that focuses upon lesbians and gays, no more than my uneducated assumption that women studies was exclusively about women. Corey K. Creekmur and Alexander Doty discuss queer theory as drawing attention to the relationship that occurs between homosexual individuals and popular culture.
A particular concern in regards to the gay community is how to participate in mainstream culture without having to reject their identities whilst also taking pleasure in these non queer experiences or meanings. Creekmur and Doty clarify, “a central issue is how to be “out in culture”: how to occupy a place in mass culture, yet maintain a perspective on it that does not accept its homophobic and heterocentrist definitions, images and terms of analysis.” (Creekmur and Doty as cited by J.Storey, 2001) Dotycontinues by discussing the term “queer” as not confined to gays and lesbians as all kinds of people share alternating degrees of the term in varying levels of constancy and strength. He acknowledges that those who identify themselves as straight can experience moments of queerness and so it is this reason that Doty uses the word to mark a flexible space for the expression of all aspects of non (anti-, contra-) straight cultural production and reception. As such, this “queer space” recognizes the possibility that various and fluctuating queer positions might be occupied whenever anyone responds to culture. (Creekmur and Doty as cited by J.Storey, 2001) What Queer Theory seeks to do is break down the barriers that signify “strictly for straights only” and by extension to attack the notion of compulsory heterosexuality as natural. This idea alludes to Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and I will discuss this further throughout the essay. Winterson’s fetish with rewriting history and fairytales in a less than linear fashion than is traditional is an attempt to reconfigure the didactic nature of the masculine plot. Julia Kristeva discusses the aspiration that women have to be retrieved from the lost narratives of history and so I will investigate this idea while also
considering what it is the author, Jeanette Winterson, is trying to imbue within these refigured post-modern narratives.
Life based on the instability of language Jeanette Winterson uses language like a mouldable, tactile substance from which she develops a platform allowing her to mine and exploit the techniques of post-modern histiographic metafiction (such as intertexuality, parody, pastiche, self reflexivity, fragmentation, the rewriting of history, and frame breaks) as well as its ideology (questioning “grand narratives”, problematising closure, valorising instability, suspecting coherence, and so forth) in order to challenge and subvert patriarchal and heterosexist discourses.(Laura Doan as cited by M. Makinen, 2005, p.90) It is through Winterson’s novel Sexing the Cherry, 1989, that I will be discussing her use of such methods to investigate gender and sexuality. Her exploration of these issues through fiction allows her to search beyond the scientific tradition and so as David Simpson discusses of writers using this approach, we find Winterson “more relaxed about giving up on rationality and objectivity, hoping instead for some empirical resolution, in performed experience, of the tension between different interests.”(D. Simpson, 1994, p.58) It is out of this tactic that a highly sophisticated and creative plot unfolds for the reader to imbue energy to the narrative through the summoning of personal experiences. Winterson’s play with language and narrative is a characteristic ofpost-modern and feminist writing alike rooting her story within the instability of history and time.2 Winterson equates history and time with the flux of languageand its continuous deferral.
Language always betrays us…dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise. And so we cannot move back and forth in time, but we can experience it in a different way. If all time ispresent, there is no reason why we should not step out of one present into another. (Winterson, 1989, p.90) This idea is in connection to post-structuralism and is rooted in the rejection of language and culture pertaining to any rules or conventions which structuralists believe govern the production of meaning. “What we call the ‘meaning’ of the text is only a momentary stop in a continuing flow of interpretations following interpretations.”(J. Storey, 1988, p.71) For Ferdinand de Saussure, the sign (which is the word in this case) is made significant by its position in a structure of differences. However, Jacques Derrida, synonymous with post-structuralism builds on this idea by further noting that the interpretation is continuously suspended therefore language is “never fully present, always both absent and present.”(Storey, 1988, p. 73) John Storey uses the following example, of usinga dictionary, to breakdown this idea. If we consider when looking up a word in a dictionary we are often met with numerous possibilities of interpretations depending upon context and so if we are to choose one of these definitions we are led to a number of other signifiers attempting to communicate a specific meaning. Each of these signifiers continue on to produce “a relentless intertextual deferment of meaning, ‘the infinite referral of signifier tosignifier… which gives the signified, meaning no respite… so that it always signifies again’.”(Storey citing Derrida, 1988, p.73)
Sexing the Cherry further alludes to this concept of language in reference to Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author, 1977, in the form of “the city of words”. The reader travels with Jordan through this cityscape alongside the “men and women in balloons [who] fly up from the main square and, armed with mops and scrubbing brushes, do battle with the canopy of words trapped under the sun.”(Winterson, 1989, p.17) Winterson shares with Barthes the opinion that the “author is never more than the instance writing.” (Barthes,1977, p.25) Jordan makes this apparent when retelling one famous lawsuit [when] a woman whose mop had been eaten and whose hand was badly mauled by a vicious row sought to bring the original antagonists to court. The men responsible made their defence on the grounds that the words no longer belonged to them. (Winterson, 1989, p.17) It is quite obvious that the “antagonists” are imparting the theory that “as soon as a fact is narrated…the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.”(Barthes, 1977, p.26) However, Winterson isaware that to do away with the sole authority of the writer would be the undoing of many women writers who up until recently were invisible as contributors to literature. This was much to the disdain of many feminist scholars who saw no coincidence in the call for an end to authorship and the eventual rise of womenwriters taking place at this time.3 This reaction is referred to by the victimsirrational response of “lining the chimneys of her accused with vitriol.” Not satisfied, the cleaner takes matters into her own hands maintaining a postmodernist consideration of all the ways a subject can be responded to whilst maintaining an actively strong grounding in second wave politics. The cleaner acknowledges through her questionable actions that to dissolve the subject of authorship would be the removal of a strand
of required analysis. By not addressing this reaction further, Winterson does not add closure which by extension is probably the most appropriate closure concerning this theory. Another means in her revision of conventional plots, in which she uses to further question the volatility of language and culture, is Winterson’s method of jolting the reader from out of the depths of the imagination into a situation that positions the reader between the story and reality as we know it. She introduces these interruptions like an unexpected but knowing whisper in your ear such as “Lies 2: Time is a straight line.” There are seven statements in alljust like this one which Winterson uses to further imply the ideas that we as a society take as truths unconditionally. These interludes act as markers of where the reader applies Winterson’s model in which she revises historical events. The reader acknowledges these theories and reconsiders what they have just read, alternating their perspective of the story. Furthermore, the withdrawal of the reader from the story into the imaginations or thought process of a character proves yet another dimension emphasising the multifaceted structures of narrative women must wade through in search of their own unique composition thus pointing out the pliability of text. Winterson continues to address this through her shaping of the plot which in turn resembles the instability of language and culture. She overlaps the characters’ subjective experience creating a montage which defies andrejects traditional linear time. For example, the opening paragraph of Sexing the Cherry is an account in which Jordan, our male protagonist, gives of the first things he remembers seeing. The fourth paragraph closes this memory as he describes how he walked sleepily through fog and discloses that “for the first time, I traced the lineaments of my own face opposite me.” (Winterson, 1989, p.9)
The story proceeds as he and his mother the Dog Woman relay to us their stories in past tense giving the reader the impression that what they are textually witnessing is a development from Jordan’s first memory. However, this is notthe case. It is amidst the chaotic setting of what calls to mind as being The Great Fire of London and towards the end of the written story as given by the Dog Woman, do we discover Jordan in a very similar setting, “arms outstretched he had suddenly touched another face… he saw that the stranger was himself.”(Winterson, 1989, p. 143) The reader is struck by the familiarity of this scene and finds him/herself returning to the beginning in order to retrace the origin of this occurrence. What the reader faces is the combination of attempting to read forward in linear time whilst being called backwards and forwards throughout the book in order to gain an understanding of the complexity of the plot. This actively engages the reader in the model of time in which Sexing the Cherry is written around alluding to the notion of fragmentary time. Winterson also evokes this idea of fragmentation with illustrations of fruit throughout the novel denoting each narrator with a different symbol of fruit. I will clarify this in the third chapter and discuss how she jostles unexpected imagery to coincide with the pre-supposed notions of gender. Using this approach to plot and narrative Jeanette Winterson echoes values and ideas conceded by post-modernist and feminist writers. Winterson employs the richness of language, very much aware of its refusal to remain static which translates to the reader the instability to be found within the pre- supposed notions of gender through conditioned history. It allows the writer to flesh out theories in circulation with much more ease in the unconditional and limitless space of the fictitious novel. However, this is just one of the ways Sexing the Cherry utilizes in order to effectively challenge traditional plots and narratives. Winterson reworks not only the aesthetic and shape of the text butalso its content and
context which I will illustrate in the next chapter concerning her exercise in rewriting fairytales and historical events from a patriarchal view point.
Reconstructing the plot of history and the history of plot First that of identity, which is brought about byhistorical sedimentation, and second, the loss of identity, which is caused by memory links that bypass history in favour of anthropology. In other words, we are confronted with two temporal dimensions: the time of linear, cursive history, and the time of another history, that is, another time, a monumental time. (Kristeva,1999, p.352) Winterson’s complete rejection of the patriarchal sequence that is linear time is an acknowledgement of her affiliation to second wave feminism. The author is very much aware of the problems a conventional narrative poses for women and so through a variety of techniques she conveys to the reader a more disjunctive image of the past. To implement this method the author retells some of the Grimm’s Brothers’ best known fairy tales, refiguring what has always appeared to have been an immoveable structure of no alternative reading. The consistency of these myths and fables that for so long have stood the test of time, preserving their basic composition, lead us to believe that gender inequalities and family structures are inexorable, cementing the concept that a patriarchal culture is on par with nature and basic instinct. Using these well known fables as a universal language she takes the text far beyond the traditionally more didactic template, outside the brackets of “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” of a masculine plot in search of the lost female narrative. (Elizabeth Wanning Harries, 2003, p.13)
“Postmodern fictions, then, hold mirrors to the magicmirror of fairy tale, playing with its framed images out of a desire to multiply its refractions and to expose its artifices.” (C. Bacchilega as cited by E.W. Harries,2003, p.15) Winterson reworks these ideas continuously throughout the text not only moving outside of traditional plot but also stepping out of her own narrative reiterating the fragmentary nature of history through her interruptions and content. Winterson casts off the shackles of time, much like Jordan relieves himself of the burdens of gender, creating a plot that spans over four centuries and yet appears simultaneous. The novel is rooted within the 17th century in which the author conjures her narrative. Winterson is attempting to recover a history that has been discarded and lost along with women’s identity and so the two are inevitably linked. The Dog Woman’s 20th century counterpart, the nameless ecologist, appears at first like a modern day embodiment of womanhousing the metaphorical being that could be the Dog Woman but as we go further it seems less apparent as to who is the fictitious being of whose mind. The Dog Woman’s blatant disgust induced by the state of England’s immorally polluted and corrupt society ensuing in the manifestation of a disease ridden city prompts her to consider its annihilation: “burn and burn until there is nothing left but the cooling wind.” (Winterson, 1989, p.142) The unnamed ecologist emulates these musings of her 17th century alter-ego when she decides aloud to “burn the factory down” (Winterson, 1989, p.142) in a similar responseto the modern day corruption and abuse of corporate power. It is the congregation of these two moments in time that exemplifies Sexing the Cherry’s “effort to interlace past and present, to conceive and enact an historical practice that challenges a linear history upholding the interests of the powerful.”(A.M Smith, 2005)
Smith considers an evident link with Winterson’s knitting of two distant occurrences across time with “Walter Benjamin’s concept of constellations of past and present as revolutionary, potentially redemptory moments.”(A.M Smith, 2005) In his essay Theses on the Philosophy of History Benjamin calls for a revision of how history is understood considering its residence in textual format inevitably deploying a very limited and narrow historical view. What connects Winterson and Benjamin as writers is their mutual conviction concerning “a hybridic historical narrative pieced together from the fragments buried by historicism.” (A.M Smith, 2005) Dog Woman’s time is a telling of history that is set in the now and so remains current whereas the ecologist has a “memory of a time” (Winterson,1989, p.128) that echoes the current plot and so Winterson places linear time askew through the juxtaposition of present and past. The ecologist’s act of remembering a time comparable to the Dog Woman’s is an allusion to Kristeva’s concept of monumental time and a desire to retrieve this forgotten past or at least recognize it. “Perhaps this is the only one and the rest is rich imaginings… We have to protect both possibilities. They seem to be interdependent.” (Winterson, 1989, p.128) Winterson further insinuates this idea through what seems to be the ecologists rejection of hereditary history; “It comforts them to recognize a twist of a head or a way of talking.” (Winterson, 1989, p.124) The ecologist refusesto conform to what would please her parents in how they find security in the familiar, as do many people and so it is through this gesture that the ecologist is shaking off the traditional sequence of history.
Winterson continues her quest in seeking new ways of envisioning the past all the while searching for an alternative plot in which women can experiment and identify with, liberating themselves from oppressive storylines, none more despotic than the traditional bedtime story. Winterson takes it upon herself to revise and reevaluate these patriarchal notions beginning with well known fairytales such as The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Rapunzel among other myths and legends. During Jordan’s search for Fortunata he comes to meet her other eleven dancing sisters in hope of gaining an insight into the princess’s whereabouts. Jordan introduces himself and he is immediately drawn into the eldest of the twelve sisters’ story. Winterson has brought Jordan outside of the fairytale structure and into post-ever-after where we discover the less than conventional lives of twelve princesses. Each tale is one of a desire to be liberated from their unloving circumstances within the patriarchal constraints ofmarriage 4 and violence sometimes veiled in humour appears to be the mostlikely solution. The fifth oldest sister tells her story which is intimately linked with the story of Rapunzel. Rapunzel’s family refuse to acknowledge the two women’s relationship to be a legitimate one and so they vilify the couple spreading malicious rumours forcing the two to build a door-less tower as refuge fromthem.5 The proposed prince to marry Rapunzel, who is known for cross-dressing, tricks the two women, forcing one to watch the other be brutally assaulted and left blind while he then takes Rapunzel away with him to live “happily ever after of course.” Rapunzel’s lover adds “of course” which evokes an air of sarcasm insinuating their fate is unknown as was the true story of Rapunzel. The violence endured by the fifth princess is made light, when asked of the whereabouts of her own husband, through her humorous response: “My own husband?
Oh well, the first time I kissed him he turned into a frog. Therehe is by your foot. His name’s Anton.”(Winterson, 1989, p.52) Presenting us her husband in such a pastiche way is an attempt to deride all other narrativeswithin this genre reminding the reader that it is all make-believe and open to interpretation formulating a parody in order to destabilize a force that has, for so long, been understood to be set in stone. These tales’ strategies of reversal and humor reconfigure power structures: the women violently reclaim theirright to freedom and to self-narrative, and their narratives question mythical norms. The violence of these stories demands acknowledgement of what is at stake in narrative and historiography. (A.M.Smith,2005) Not only does Winterson succeed in this through the reconstruction of the narrative but also by intertextually relating Rapunzel to the Twelve Dancing Princesses and to a morsel of The Frog Prince she gives us a deeper more threedimensional view of the narrative. This perception of narrative is heedful of the way in which feminists desire to have their histories read and not just from one flat perspective heavily reliant on patriarchal memory. As Jordan continues on in his journey through each of the sisters’ stories we are made aware of the exceptionality and psychoanalytical complexity of each one’s tale. One sister discusses her estranged husband’s sexual thirst for mentally ill virgins, another’s husband had a strange obsessionwith falcons and the eleventh sister’s husband felt he was a trapped and tortured soul in a cage that the only way to liberate him was through death;
“I smashed his skull with a silver candle-stick and I heard a hissing like damp wood on the fire… dragged his body into the air, and in the air he flew away.” (Winterson,1989, p.59) Here we get a glimpse of Winterson’s roots in second generation feminism. Each princess has onto them a unique and complex character enthralled in a comparable home-life and their equally specific methods of overcoming the patriarchal laws of marriage. There is no universality of any of their stories and so we are reminded of what this generation of feminists are chiefly interested in “the specificity of feminine psychology and its symbolic manifestations… which have been silenced by the past.” (Kristeva, 2002, p.357) The future and the present and the past exist only in our minds and fade like borders of hostile countries seen from a floating city in the sky. The river runs from one country to another without stopping. (Winterson, 1989, p.144) Jordan looks down from a “floating city” contemplating the culturally structured temperament of time and its shared characteristics of the structured formations of borders denoting territories. He acknowledges the restraints time places upon a society by comparing the two against the nature of rivers and their inability to differentiate one land from the other. However, the hostilityconceded by these countries has developed through the narrow vein of history and Jordan does not offer any precise solution merely the consideration of the situation. As he continues higher and higher out of the realm of language and culture within the imagined space the perimeters of time and space decline but only from such a standpoint. In reality he can not escape these borders but through creativity he can at least weaken them.
So in conclusion, regardless as to whether cursive time can accommodate women’s experience we can not avoid or discard it. Instead I am in agreement with Marilyn Farwell (as cited by R. Felski, 2003), women must come to terms with the lumber of history and embrace the text in it’s malleable form, stretching and reshaping it in order to fit gender and issue comprehensively. Yet it is not an issue of exchanging heterosexual characters for homosexual ones and likewise with gender, as Judith Roof believes this will do “nothing to challenge the tyranny of narrative form.” (as cited by R. Felski,2003, p.104) Instead it is a much more sophisticated process in which we see in Sexing the Cherry, a process that involves taking what we can not escape from and re-adjusting it to fit a female plot. Change in literature, as in life, usually happens in piecemeal fashion, with people tinkering, adapting, and gluing new parts onto old. Those who insist that a truly liberating women’s writing must be radically new and without precedent, that women must be born again in order to be saved, are doomed to disappointment. (R. Felski, 2003, p.108) It is this type of attitude to text that allows women writers to move forward all the while retrieving what has been disregarded and lost for so long. Scholars, as Rita Felski (2003) points out, continue to mourn the maleness of plot all the while many women are “embracing narrative as indispensable device, they draw on old plots to fashion new meanings.”(Felski, 2003, p.132)
It is of ill spent energies that any person should try to bypass age old male-authored texts, as to attempt to flee these methods is as delusional as our escape from culture. However this does not mean accepting categorically what has for so long been disguised as our fate but instead to use this genre of academia to question the norms of text and how it is read in order to open up new possibilities and broaden our horizons. Winterson’s fetish with amending history helps negotiate our way to this enlightenment alongside many more agendas that feminists wish to draw attention to. In my next chapter I will outline Sexing the Cherry’s position concerning gender roles through the main protagonists the Dog Womanand her son Jordan.
Sexing the Monstrous In the introduction I alighted on the subject matter of “second phase women” as termed by Julia Kristeva in her essay Women’s Time. This second generation of feminist thinkers, although still remaining loyal to their predecessors who fought relentlessly for such basic rights as the vote, have come to realise that it is much more than a fight for equality but a fight to be seen as an individual person who coincidentally happens to be female. Due to the long history in which women have been pushed aside as second rate citizens an enormous concentration of resentment has come to bubble at the surface and it is aconcern that many queer theorists bear that perhaps these second generation feminists may cross the line into what Sandra Bermann describes (as cited by J.Roessner, 2002) as “counter-sexism… either violent or mystic… but ethically no better than the patriarchy from which they emerge.” Julia Kristeva does not appear to be as suspicious but does discuss the cycle in which women may become tools of their own oppression resulting in a “reverse sexism”. (Kristeva,2002, p.363 By “reverse sexism” she means that these feminists may unintentionally develop the same strategies used in patriarchal rule, becoming “the guardians of the status quo, and most fervent protectors of the established order.” (Kristeva, 2002, p.362)
However, although this extremist view threatens the work of these women, Jeanette Winterson threads a very thin line inapparent support of this movement. On this basis Winterson revisits the mid seventeenth century amidst the Puritan Revolution, re-figuring historical events, as we have just seen in the previous chapter, firmly rooted in a world based on this inverted sexism. One of Winterson’s main protagonists, the Dog Woman, whose character embodies many attributes pertaining to this sexism, is illustrated by a measurement of how hideous she is through a reflection of herself; “How hideous am I? My nose is flat, my eyebrows are heavy. I have only a few teeth and they are a poor show.” (Winterson, 1989, p.24) This portrays Winterson’s acknowledgement of her affiliation towards this legion of feminists but she retorts through the Dog Woman restoring faith and belief in the cause; “But I have fine blue eyes that can see in the dark.” (Winterson, 1989, p.24) This line reads on its own in confidence and clarity to allow for the reader to have considered the ugliness of the Dog Woman and so in a new sentence purity is restored to her allowing the continuity of Winterson’s quest. The Dog Woman’s twentieth century alter ego, the un-named ecologist also considers her own symbolic grotesquery but is quickly reminded of an even uglier prospect of marrying a man on the basis that she is “pretty” while the voice of her mother not so convincingly reassures her “You don’t try… it’s not so bad.” (Winterson, 1989, p.127) In Is the Rectum a Grave? (1987), Leo Bersani cites Catherine A. Mackinnon’s view of the power relation extolled in the portrayal of sex in pornography. Mackinnon sees the dominating male’s view of female sexuality as the “lust for self-annihilation.”
( C. A. Mackinnon as cited by L Bersani,1987) Mackinnon goes on to discuss how it is pornography that not only suggests this idea but validates it through institutionalizing “the sexuality of the male supremacy, fusing the eroticization of dominance and submission with the social construction of male and female.” ( C.Mackinnon as cited by L Bersani,1987) It is here where I discovered my next clue concerning the Dog Woman’s stance as a second phase feminist.
Winterson also makes a point of portraying the problems that arise when sexuality is rejected entirely and the perverse effects that can take hold if society is not willing to deal with the issues at hand. “I looked back and saw that one had already had Scroggs on theremains of the bed. He was mounting him from behind, all the while furiously kissing the severed head.” (Winterson, 1989, p.89)
At this point we have determined Winterson’s world as a world containing a counteraction of the roles held by the sexes6 and so it is with this conviction that Winterson unites and restores power to the female role within the act of, what is deemed to be between man and woman as, straight sex. Mackinnon proposes that in order to diminish the culturally constructed hierarchy of sex, there “must be no more penetration” until sex has been reinvented. Winterson refers to this when portraying the Monk’s and theWhore’s attempt to build a society upon the “criminalization of sex”(C.Mackinnon as cited by L. Bersani, 1987) but wholly rejects this idea through Jordan’s naivety of unlawfully playing the guitar to which the townspeople react to by remembering the joy and ruination of sex. Instead Winterson embraces the sexual act but reverses the victimization of the female and places her in a much stronger and wiser position.
Paulina Palmer (as cited by Merja Makinen, 2005) questions whether this novel qualifies as a lesbian text. Her first impression, as is mine, is that the two main characters appear heterosexual and that there is no explicit reference to lesbianism. However, this is not the case. Winterson subtly interweaves the subject, amongst others, into the narrative through a more “indirect” route. The Dog Woman’s sexuality is never fully revealed but she does divulge within the story that she was once in love. The Dog Woman’s sheer scale and strength donot prevent her from falling in love; it is in fact the pure inadequacy of her lover that thwarts this affair. “who graced me with all of his teeth at once and swore that if only he could reach my mouth he would kiss me there.” (Winterson,1989, p.36) The focus is upon the diminutive scale of the male but also works symbolically enforcing the belief system carried by more extremist feminists that men are perhaps intellectually inferior to women. Anatomically, her lover’s meagreness is a display of derision regarding his phallic power in relation to the feminine. If the writer bore a phallocentric perspective the Dog Woman would have become the source of mockery. (Paulina Palmer, as cited by M. Makinen et al. 2005) Winterson overcomes this and writes in true lesbian/feminist fashion concentrating on all that is heroic and strong about this woman. The delicate, wispy woman that has, throughout many love stories, been the pursuit of many a wanting male has been replaced by a woman who prides herself on being “built to proportion” (Winterson, 1989). Winterson goes further to counter
We see this in particular when the Dog Woman describes herencounter with an unlikely fellow. The man requests, in a most patronising way, oral sex from the Dog Woman. Being someone, as she describes herself, who likes to expand her ideas, does so. “I did as he suggested, swallowing it up entirely and biting it off with a snap.”(Winterson, 1989, p.41) Not only does the Dog Woman signify an intense vulnerability in relation to the male but she also emasculates him. She takes from him his ability to seed, his gender, rendering him ineffective as a man. He has been “made a eunuch” therefore the female has confiscated and now retains the power.
the traditionally strong male with a slight hearted man who found that the image of the Dog Woman was too much and so “fainted dead away.” Sexing the Cherry rejoices in the considerable size, physically and metaphorically, of its female protagonists, disarming the potency and negative projection of what is regarded in society as grotesquery. Sara Martin writes “By creating grotesque female monsters they deny men the privilege of being the sole producers of monstrous portraits of women…taking female monstrosity away from the hands of patriarchy.”(S. Martin, 1999) Both, seventeenth century Dog Woman and her alter ego, the twentieth century ecologist, take very activist and physical roles in their search for an end to the evil they come up against. The ecologist’s waging of war, against the pollution of a river from big businesses, by camping day and night beside the undulating mercury is a reflection of the Dog Woman’s battle against the “unrepentant vermin” (Winterson, 1989, p.87) that are the Puritans. DogWoman takes on a much more vicious approach when she comes across two highly accredited male affiliates of Puritanism partaking in gay sex, the very practice they themselves have scorned and preached against. She is quick to smite the hypocrites and casually remarks “unconscious was better for him, my axe having lost its edge so that I was obliged to use two strokes before I could fully sever the head.” (Winterson, 1989, p.88) She shows no tolerance for these men and is intent on ridding them and all their kind from the world. Twentieth century Dog woman echoes these rather extreme actions within her mercury solicited hallucinations, “I pick them up… by the scruff of their necks. Their legs wriggle in their Gucci suits… I drop them in my sack.”(Winterson, 1989, p.122) This type of sadistic radical activism is morally questionable concerning
both these women. This method does not undo the excessiveness of patriarchy but merely elicits a further development of such tactics. Winterson’s overwhelming anger has inflated these characters and she risks doing in an injustice to this stem of feminism. However, she recovers the human within these monstrosities through tenderness and love for another. Sexing the Cherry could be read as a celebration of violent man bashing, that is if Dog Woman’s immense love for Jordon were to be overlooked. When she finds him in the bulrushes he is encrusted in mud and so she takes some warm water and cleanses him of this thick brown shell. She digs into the caked dirt in search of his innocence in hopes of starting again. She is baptising him, rinsing his soul of any socially predetermined notions of gender. An extension of this immeasurable love she has for her son is comparable to the love shared between Dog Woman and her own mother. Dog Woman discusses on the topic of her sheer size the pure raw strength of her mother who, shedescribes as “so light she that she dared not go out in a wind, could swing me on her back and carry me for miles.” (Winterson, 1989, p.25) Dog Womanemulates this power when she takes Jordan and her thirty hounds to Wimbledon by foot from their hut by the Thames; “And when Jordan was tired I carried him.” (Winterson, 1989, p.29) The strength of what has always been acknowledged as the weaker sex is an element used in the reversal of gender roles within the narrative. Winterson considers this and poses the question through Jordan. In Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler discusses the idea that perhaps we are not bound to our gender biologically and suggests that this is a socially constructed system that coincides with anatomical differences. Although Butler considered this a year after Sexing the Cherry was published I do not doubt that ideas such as these were not already beginning to flourish before Butler articulated it so well.
Although I cannot be sure as to whether or not Winterson was entirely aware of what, I believe, her character Jordan is clearly implying, she does make a remarkable comment that could be viewed in reference to a rather groundbreaking concept that was not to be published, by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble, until the following year in 1990. “To escape from the weight of the world, I leave my body where it is…” (Winterson, 1989, p.17) An example Butler uses to explain the insubstantiality rife in a dual gender system is drag. This concept of shedding one’s gender through the changing of their clothes establishes the idea that “reality” is not as predetermined as we like to assume. Jordan plays with this idea whilst in search of the dancing princess. Having had to be disguised in feminine wear through necessity, Jordan decides to continue dressing this way for some time afterwards. He declares that he has come across people who have alternated between male and female clothing and have found them to have been “anxious to be free of the burden of their gender.” (Winterson, 1989, p. 31) As Jordan journeys on as a female, his innocence regarding the ways of women is seen as suspicious and in an attempt to educate him he is given a rulebook in order to teach him about men in relation to women. Jordan is very much surprised by what he considers is conspiring women and is deeply troubled by this. Once again he discards his gender to be carried off by birds in search of some other solution to his queries. It is from here, through Jordan, that twentieth century Dog Woman is granted her wish; “…and all the men line up for compulsory training in feminism and ecology.” (Winterson, 1989, p.123) Although it may appear that Jordan is somewhat disillusioned by the repositioning of woman as he sees now are highly independent of men, instead of attempting to renegotiate himself back into the female narrative he rather continues his search for the twelfth dancing princess, Fortunata.
However, this is not in search of a woman he intends to make his partner or is attracted to inany way sexually instead it is Jordan’s investigation into his own femininity and perhaps alternative gender. Fortunata does not exist as a real person as she actually is Jordan. When we first meet Jordan he introduces himself in the following way; “My name is Jordan. This is the first thing I saw.” (Winterson,1989, p.9) Fortunata establishes herself in the exact same way; “My name is Fortunata. This is the first thing I saw.” (Winterson, 1989, p.93) They exist simultaneously to each other. This becomes more and more obvious as the narrative unfolds. The two characters disenchanted by what society has to offer them set off in their own vessels, unknowingly in search of each other. Jordan’s first encounter of Fortunata is at a dinner party in the city of words. He references the journey he must take to speak to her and is unsure if he has the valour to make such a passage. “I noticed a woman whose face was asea voyage I had not the courage to attempt.” (Winterson, 1989, p.21) Jordan is always aware of the possibility that the dancer whom he seeks may not exist physically or not autonomous to him; “An effort to catch up with my fleet- footed self, living another life in a different way.”(Winterson, 1989, p.80) It is quite clear how Jordan wishes to customise his own gender and not just fasten himself to any one category that may limit his growth to a particular way. He discusses this towards the end, listing off all the different groups he wants to be a part of such as be one of the boys who enjoy a joke or two, a family whom hewaves to when he is setting off as a hero but also like his mother unconventional and strong. This reminds us of the agenda second wave feminists carry withthem now, their search for individual symbolic distinction.
His mother who contains some elements likened to the stereotypical man lacking in communicational skills; “She is silent, the way men are”, has no real understanding of this as she is, as Jordan describes her, “a mathematical equation”. She is further mystified by him when he reaches out into the black smog and touches another face to find it is his own. In this reordering of roles Winterson alights the confusion that lies between what society denotes as male and female and the complexities that each gender finds difficult to grasp of the other. The Dog Woman’s perplexity concerning Jordan highlights the need to address this basic categorization of people and to inform society of the multiple layers of being each of us carry with us that a binary system such as male/female cannot describe for us adequately. IMAGES NOT INCLUDED (Fig.1) Pineapple denoting Jordan as narrator (Fig.2) Banana denoting Dog Woman as narrator (Fig.3) A split pineapple denoting Dog Woman’s 20th century alter ego. Broken image references fragmented time. (Fig.4) A split banana denoting Nicholas Jordan, Jordan’s 20th century alter ego. Broken image references fragmented time. Winterson is adamant in reversing the time-honoured roles of man and woman and continues to do so with the imagery of fruit throughout the book. Pineapples and bananas adorn the beginning of a new narrator within the novel. (See fig.1-4) The Dog Woman is noted through the more conventionally phallic symbol of the banana as she describes it herself as resembling “the private parts of an oriental” whereas Jordan, her adopted heterosexual son, is associated with a picture of, what is deemed as a more feminine fruit, a pineapple. It is through this imagery that the reader links Jordan and Fortunata as the one person. Only
when Jordan has finally met with the princess does he return home from his quest bearing the first pineapple. The pineapple symbolises woman and so Jordan has completed this quest. The Dog Woman who narrates this occasion, not understanding the importance of Jordan’s treasure dismisses it quite blatantly “It was, after all, only a fruit.” (Winterson, 1989, p.104) This kind of dismissal is reminiscent of an attitude that may have been displayed to women and prolongs the struggle between man and woman, the Dog Woman and Jordan, upholding tensions and contradictions. The characters that inhabit Sexing the Cherry succeed in their retelling of an alternative world that destabilizes the gender codes. Winterson not only reverses them but then confuses them in an effort to expose the erroneous assumption that human life contains clarity that succumbs to a heterosexual system based on biological differences. Although there are elements in which Winterson risks compromising feminism within the narrative she quickly regains the readers trust and enhances the complexity of her novel using this as another reflection of the second wave feminist values she holds and references.
Conclusion Writing is the painstaking act of carving bodies, movements, spaces, and rhythms out of an amorphous flux of words. Literature gives us a world that is profoundly particular, that is utterly this and not that. (R. Felski, 2003, p.17) Jeanette Winterson achieves a very specific world through Sexing the Cherry providing a platform for the consideration of a more dynamic and fluid concept of gender and time. It is now quite clear as to why her characters and the situations they find themselves in are so unique. This is in order to portray concerns arising from feminist texts which conform in particular to second wave feminist ideals. Winterson subtly references the desire in which feminists hold for the recognition as distinct beings not just modelled on their gender. These ideas, in which I have discussed extensively, include acknowledging linear time as a problem in regards to the retrieval of the neglected and lost narratives and histories belonging to women. As we have seen in chapter two and three Winterson presses these issues using her main characters, Dog Woman and Jordan, in dealing with the difficulty of moving through time and space in this fashion. It is in response to this that we see the development of a more fragmentary experience of history. Sexing the Cherry does not just considerthese notions purely in the content of its narrative but also within the very layout of the text. The reader physically experiences the text in context to its narrative, continuously negotiating their way around and through a complex revision of masculine plot. Winterson’s use of parody in her reevaluation of patriarchal narratives, fairytales in particular, allows the reader to reflect upon their fictitious qualities and by extension the constructed norms in society. Jordan’s desire to transcend the body in an attempt to escape sexuality in theend is an unquenchable one as we are made aware that we can never truly break away from the sway of patrilineal history.
Winterson recognizes thisinescapable truth nevertheless she continues to challenge this notion through her novel in an attempt to embrace what women have been dealt in time and history. Rather than discard of the male plot she takes it and reshapes it blending postmodern traits with feminist values as a way of creating a platform for the discussion of three key topics in Sexing the Cherry which we now know include gender norms, history as an obstacle in the reclaim of the female narrative and the instability such constructed histories and pre-supposed notions of sexuality contain. It is within this sophisticated narrative that these concepts merge and diverge throughout, relaying to the reader an incredible alternative to the signs and codes we find ourselves immersed in daily, posing questions that allow fora reconsidered view of the dull and didactic system we inhabit even if our escape is only a short-lived one. The topics I have discussed through the critical analysis of Sexing the Cherry (1989) are vast subjects in there own right and what I have touched upon with them alludes to my limited knowledge of them. This also accounts for the large amount of critique that has been completed on the novel in question in which countless perspectives and readings have taken place of it. It isimpossible to include all of these theories without compromising my analysis of the work however this only adds to notion that each time the text is read it is rewritten through “an embodied perspective in space and time; it is a nodalpoint at which infinite influences converge to create a unique combination of traits.” (R. Felski, 2003, p.60) Or as Jeanette Winterson so eloquently puts it; “Empty space and points of light.” (Winterson, 1989, p.144)
FOOTNOTES 1 It is interesting to note that no bras were actually burned at this protest. The media referenced the burning of draft cards, drawing on similarities in turn coining the term “bra burners” 2 This will be discussed in detail in the second chapter 3 I suspect that those who were behind Barthes were mostly indifferent to this notion but there were many feminists who also sided with this school of thought. Toril Moi argued that to reject this would add to the “very long history of equating the male with the universal and seeing the female as the special case” (R. Felski, 2003, p.14), once again leaving women behind in progress. 4 However I must add, although marriage is born out of a male dominated culture it should not be dismissed so quickly as merely oppressive. If we look to nineteenth century African Americans who have not so long ago been released from slavery and the long denial of family and married life we should acknowledge that marriage for people in this situation would have been a sign of “liberation and entitlement to democracy and desire.” (R. Felski, 2003, p.107) 5 This in turn results in the well known tale that is Rapunzel. It seems Winterson has used this fable to smuggle in subtle references to the largely bad press received by feminists throughout the media. 6 I do not want to verify the “presumption of a binary gender system” in accordance with Judith Butler. (2003)
REFERENCES Cockal, S. (2004) Expression in a diffuse landscape: Contexts for Jeanette Winterson’s lyricism. Style, 38.1, pp.16-23. Retrieved 1st October 2008 from internet database Infotrac. Barthes, R. (1977) The Death of the Author. Image, Music, Text. (pp. 25-30) Trans. Stephen Heath, New York: Hill and Wang. Belsey, C. (2002) Poststructuralism, A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Bersani, L. (1987) Is the Rectum a Grave? October. 43, 197-222. Retrieved 25thOctober 2008 from database JSTOR. Butler, J. (2006) Gender Trouble (3rd ed.) London and New York: RoutledgeClassics. Butler, J. (2006) The Judith Butler Reader. Sara Salih & Judith Butler(Ed’s). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Felski, R. (2003) Literature after Feminism. Chicago and London: TheUniversity of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1977) What is an Author? Trans. Donald F. Bouchard & Sherry Simon. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. (pp.124-127) Donald F. Bouchard (Ed.) New York: Cornell University Press. Geier, J. (2008) 1968: Year of the Revolt. Speech given at the University of Illinois, Champaign, IL on the March 26th 2008. Retrieved 20th November 2008 from PeaceJournal.org
Kristeva, J. (2002) Women's Time. In Kelly Oliver (Ed.), The PortableKristeva, (pp.351-370) New York: Columbia University Press. Makinen, M. (2005) The Novels of Jeanette Winterson. M. Makinen (Ed.) N.Tredell (consultant Ed.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan Martin, S. (1999) The Power of Monstrous Women: Fay Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a SheDevil (1983), Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry(1989), Journal of Gender Studies, 8, 193-210. Retrieved 5thFebruary 2009 from database Academic Premier. Mc Clintock, A. (1994) Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law, M.Ferguson and J. Wicke (Ed’s) Feminism and Postmodernism,(pp. 103-128) Durham and London: Duke University Press. Nicholson, Linda. (1994) Feminism and the Politics of Postmodernism, M.Ferguson and J. Wicke (Ed’s) Feminism and Postmodernism,(pp. 69-85) Durham and London: Duke University Press. Roessner, Jeffrey. (2002) Writing a history of difference: Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and Angela Carter’s Wise Children, College Literature, 29.1, 102-21. Retrieved 1st October 2008 from internet database Infotrac. Schiffer, C. (2004) You see, I am no stranger to love: Jeanette Winterson and the extasy of the word. College Literature. 25.2, 21-30. Retrieved 28th October 2008 from internet database Infotrac. Simpson, D. (1994) Feminisms and Feminizations in the Postmodern, M.Ferguson and J. Wicke (Ed’s) Feminism and Postmodernism,(pp. 53-68) Durham and London: Duke University Press. Smith, A. M. (2005) Fiery Constellations: Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry andBenjamins materialist histography, College Literature. 32.3,21-30. Retrieved 28th October 2008 from internet databaseInfotrac. Storey, J. (2001) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction.Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, Prentice Hall. Tuck Rozett, M. (1996) Constructing a World: How postmodern historicalfiction reimagines the past. CLIO. 25.2, 145-160. Retrieved 25thOctober 2008 from internet database Infotrac. Wanning Harries, E. (2003) Twice Upon a Time: Women writers and the History of the Fairytale. New Jersey and Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press. Winterson, J. (1989) Sexing the Cherry. London: Vintage. Winterson, J. (1989) Oranges are not the Only Fruit. London: Vintage.
K E N O M O M
Ken Omom born 1985 and recently graduated with B.A in Fine Art with First class honours from University of Worcester Recent Exhibitions include a Group Exhibition September 2009 at the garage and a Solo exhibition November 2010 PITT studio Worcester. Omom was also included in the publication of International students Newsletter Summer 2010. My Fine Art has taken a long journey to develop in ways that I never expected I have been influenced with things that I see and the relationship between drawing and 3D objects, what intrigues me is the mixture 3D and drawings. My early work was strongly influenced by architectural drawings and what I saw around me and colours and lines, coming from a different culture has entailed adapting and adopting different cultural values. My work links the two cultures through a variety of ways余 colour surface, sculpture and texture.
N O E L C U L L E N
Born on the 5th October 1985 Noel Cullen is an Irish multi-disciplinary artist, based in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Ireland. He is currently in his final year at Waterford Institute of Technology for the qualification of Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Visual Art. "Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail." '360 degree panoramic pinhole camera and image' (2011) The 360 degree hand-made pinhole camera images are representations of faded, distorted and merging memories. Captured by the passing of time. 'Salt Jenga Tower' (2011) The 'salt jenga tower' piece looks at the preservation, and formation of a memory. It also looks at the fragility of a memory and how over time memories can fade and disintegrate until it becomes a shadow of what it was (the tower is made with salt and water, so when the water evaporates it will start to crumble).
K A T E R I N A B O D R U N O V A
Katerina Bodrunova Born July 25th, 1985 Currently live in Moscow (Russian Federation) Self-educated and freelance photographer Published in "Photographer's Forum Magazine" annual book in 2009 (Santa-Barbara, CA) Group-exhibition "33" in March 2010 (Moscow) Solo-exhibition "Theoryofcolour" in July 2010 (Moscow) Solo-exhibition "Just" in October 2010 (Moscow) Solo-exhibition "Alternativereality" in January 2011 (Moscow) www.theoryofcolour.com Creation. Of unreal. Denying. Of rules and laws. Thoughts and dreams realisation. Imagery.
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