Don't Look Back Kryzsztof Fijalkowski

Video lecture September 2012

She's an artist, She don't look back. Bob Dylan
The notion of an artist moving on, but we can't help looking back, like Orpheus to Eurydice.
Art is new, but artists always refer to previous art - reinventing.
Looking at Surrealism and Dadaism, as the basis of contemporary art notions, still relevant
and continuing to resonate with artists.
Collapse between referring/ irony/ critique - Jon Rafman.

Surrealism and Dada both group collaborations,based on notions, ideas and ideals, through manifesos and engagement with the world - not confined to art, or objects and images,

Surrealism
Dreams/ unconscious, eroticism, the body, gender, identity and the object.
Alfred Barr's model of surrealism.

Redraw constraints of society, reconnect with the true self.
Not imaginary world, but inner real world.
Illogical and absurd - play of real and imaginary - opposing things reconciled in new reality - ideas direct to contemporary art.

Tony Ousler
http://www.tonyoursler.com/
Video - uncanny objects. Real yet unfamiliar, so troubling, revealing hidden things - the psychodrama about the self. Dismembered body parts, eyes, etc - dream/ nightmare secrets.

Anna Gaskell
http://www.postmedia.net/999/gaskell.htm
Psycho/ childhood dramas, using lighting, props, disoriented spaces.
Mixing the familiar and unexpected - unsettling and beautiful.
Freud - the unconscious - pleasure and desire.

Surrealists redrew maps of reality, and can be political, disturbing the order - radical -
promoting an ethical position - (largely vanished from contemporary practice). Politics now more muted.

Surrealism - eroticism and the body
Hans Belmer
http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=452
radical and drastic - sexuality and gender - criticised by feminists for representation of female body.
explores who we are.
Desire/ fear in everything.
Fetishised object - object saturated with ideas of subjective desire.
Breton - manifesto - pure psychic automation.
Repression - hiding what is authentic.
Automatic writing - mitigating inner self.
Conscious/ rational - deliberate/ automatic.
Sexual identity.

Discussed Surrealism and Dadaism, as the seminal art movements whose ideas are still relevant and still resonate into contemporary art practice.


Reflection

This was a really interesting and useful lecture, and is definitely one to refer to.
However, I am finding it increasingly and ludicrously difficult to get to grips with video lectures.
Listening, taking notes, understanding, taking screenshots, I just can't keep it up for more than a minute or 90 secs at a time. Very frustrating. Usually with a little dyslexic insight, I find a way through, and some sort of strategy that works, but strangely, the more effort and strategising I put into this one, the worse I get.

20th September 2012