Yoko Ono: early video works in the 1960s

https://youtu.be/lYJ3dPwa2tI

During the first 11 years of her career, Ono moved among New York, Tokyo, and London, serving a pioneering role in the international development of Conceptual art, experimental film, and performance art. Her earliest works were often based on instructions that Ono communicated to viewers in verbal or written form. Though easily overlooked, the work radically questioned the division between art and the everyday by asking viewers to participate in its completion.

In the above video Cut Piece, Ono confronted issues of gender, class, and cultural identity by asking viewers to cut away pieces of her clothing as she sat quietly on stage.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon collaborated on a number of works, often in response to global politics and conflict. At the end of the decade, Ono’s collaborations with John Lennon, including Bed-In (1969) and the WAR IS OVER! if you want it (1969–) campaign, boldly communicated her commitment to promoting world peace.

“I think that conceptual art – it works in many ways. What I think it does the most is when it opens up things within people’s mind. And they will follow it and do something that is conceptual – but it would create reality in their life.”

Bruce Naumann: early video works

https://youtu.be/D6LppuVHlus

Bruce Nauman was one of the most prominent, influential, and versatile American artists to emerge in the 1960s.   For more than 50 years Naumann has worked in every conceivable artistic medium, dissolving established genres and inventing new ones in the process. “I’ve always had overlapping ways of going about my work,” Bruce Nauman once remarked. “I’ve never been able to stick to one thing.”His expanded notion of sculpture admits wax casts and neon signs, bodily contortions and immersive video environments. Using his body to explore the limits of everday situations, Nauman explored video as a theatrical stage and a surveillance device within an installation context, blending ideas from conceptualism, minimalism, performance art, and video art.

Some of Nauman’s earliest work was shaped by ideas that arose in the wake of Minimalism in the late 1960s. In particular, the way he treated the body – often his own, shown on video completing repetitive tasks – and the way he related the body to surrounding objects show the impact of Minimalism’s new ideas about the relationship between the viewer and the sculptural object. Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s ideas about language have been an important influence on his work, shaping his interest in the way words succeed or fail in referring to objects in the world.

Much of Nauman’s work reflects the disappearance of the old modernist belief in the ability of the artist to express his ideas clearly and powerfully. Art, for him, is a haphazard system of codes and signs, just like any other form of communication. Aside from informing his use of words, it has also encouraged him to use “readymade” objects – objects that, unlike paintings or traditional sculptures, already carry meanings and associations from their use in the world – and to make casts of objects ranging from the space underneath chairs to human body parts.

Andy Warhol

In 1963 he acquired his first motion picture camera, a hand held 16mm Bolex, and shortly after he claimed an ‘abandoning’ of painting. Disingenuous this claim might have been but his expansion into filmmaking was no passing jaunt. Between 1964 and 1968 the artist was particularly prolific, producing literally hundreds of films of varying length and style. Nearly 650 films were produced, including hundreds of silent Screen Tests, or portrait films, and dozens of full-length movies, in styles ranging from minimalist avant-garde to commercial “sexploitation.”

Warhol’s films have been highly regarded for their radical explorations beyond the frontiers of conventional cinema. One such film, Empire 1964, his eight-hour, static-shot of New York’s most recognisable skyscraper, is included in the exhibition at Tate Liverpool.

Warhol began to take an interest in the avant-garde film in 1963 when it was at the height of the mythic stage. He quickly made himself familiar with the latest works of Brakhage, Markopoulos, Anger, and especially Jack Smith, who had a direct influence on him. On one level at least Warhol turned his genius for parody and reduction against the American avant-garde film itself.

The first film that he seriously engaged himself in was a monumental inversion of the dream tradition within the avant-garde film. His Sleep (1962) was no trance film or mythic dream but six hours of a man sleeping.

Planning Response

I plan on taking inspiration from these videos by producing my own video recordings of the same task everyday. I will then edit these recoding together so the video dress the theme repetition. I think by doing this I will develop more ideas for my project and will inspire me to produce more video responses. By recoding a task I do everyday will produce the same shot in different variations i.e. different lighting, compositions.

Video art is an art form that relies on using visual technology as a way of creating a visual and/or audio medium.

One pioneer of video artists I found interesting is Bruce Nauman.

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is an American artist. His work ranges from creating sculptures, photography, neon, videos, drawing, printmaking and performance. He lives near Mexico and give up painting to focus his work on sculptures. A lot of his work is characterised by an interest in language, often involving itself in a playful, mischievous manner. He has a strong interest in setting the metaphoric and descriptive functions of language against each other. Nauman began working in film with Robert Nelson and William Allen whilst teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. He produced his first videotapes in 1968. He describes the transition of film to video as: “With the films, I would work over an idea until there was something that I wanted to do. Then I would rent the equipment for a day or two, so I was more likely to have a specific idea of what I wanted to do. With the videotapes, I had the equipment in the studio for almost a year; I could make test tapes and look at them, watch myself on the monitor or have somebody else there to help. Lots of times I would do a whole performance or tape a whole hour and then change it. I don’t think I would ever edit but I would redo the whole thing if I didn’t like it.” Nauman uses his body to explore the limits of everyday situations. He explored video as a theatrical stage and used the camera as a close observation device. He was influenced to produce this video art through the experimental work of Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and Phillip Glass.

Here are a few links to some of Bruce Nauman’s video art:

 

Another pioneer of video art that I have researched due to my interest of capturing something similar is Martha Rosler.

Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler was born in 1943 in Brooklyn, New York. Roster grew up in New York and was involved in poetry, as well as participating in civil rights and anti-war protests. Looking at the outcome of her career, a lot of Rosler’s art reflected her interest in consciousness and awareness, raising a variety of social issues. ‘A budding gourmet’ inspired Rosler’s first video piece, which features the silhouette of a woman describing how gourmet cooking facilitates a better and easier life. Her seminal feminist work, ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’ (1975), expands upon these issues but is involved with more direct angst and frustration. In several videos that confront the viewer with a range of spliced scenes, Rosler critiqued the coercive and dishonest effects of the relationship between the media, politics, and the private society circle. Some examples of this work is: ‘Domination and the Everyday’ (1978) and ‘If It’s Too Bad to Be True, It Could Be DISINFORMATION ‘(1985).

Here is a link to one of Martha Rosler’s video art:

I want to experiment with video art in a similar way to Rosler as I want to portray an everyday task and routine that I do.

Roni Horn

Dictionary of Water
Still Water (The River Thames, for Example) is a series of fifteen large photo-lithographs of water, printed on white paper. Each of the images focuses on a small area of the surface of the river Thames. The colour and texture of these watery surfaces varies dramatically between images: colours range from black to blue and from dark green to khaki-yellow, and in each case the water’s texture is differently augmented by tidal movement and the play of light.

“The Thames has this incredible moodiness, and that’s what the camera picks up. [I]t has these vertical changes and it moves very quickly. It’s actually a very dangerous river and you sense that just by looking at it … [E]very photograph is wildly different – even though you could be photographing the same thing from one minute to the next. It’s almost got the complexity of a portrait.” (Quoted in ‘Roni Horn Interview: Water’)

Horn’s work, which has an emotional and psychological dimension, can be seen an engagement with post-Minimalist forms as containers for affective perception. She talks about her work being ‘moody’ and ‘site-dependent’. Her attention to the specific qualities of certain materials spans all mediums, from the textured pigment drawings, to the use solid gold or cast glass, and rubber.

Sigfried Hansen: Hold the Line  

Street photography exploring colour, shapes, geometry

Siegfried Hansen traces visual compositions from graphics and colours and creates street photography the main point of which is not body’s or faces, but graphic connections and formal relations. It shows the aesthetics of coincidence in a public area, which is full of surprises.

Siegfried Hansen’s Hold the Line is a playful examination of the city as a graphic playground of color, line, and form. Filled with bold geometric images and brightly colored pages. The book’s key design elements echo the graphic content of the images and give it rhythmic presence. Color pages are interspersed throughout, accentuating the bold colors that dot the city and contrasting the city’s monochromatic stone.

While people are present, this work is not entirely about the dynamism of the street and its inhabitants in a way that typifies classic street photography. Instead, it is about the city as a graphic force and how it not only shapes the way we move, but also frames what we see.

I chose this photographer to look at to generate ideas as his work reminds me of the photos I produced in the ‘Future of St Helier’ project where i focused on bold lines and bright colours. Looking at this photographer in this project could develop the style of work I was producing then, looking at industrial structures and the shapes they make to address the theme of variation and similarity in buildings.

Li Hui

Li Hui is a young Chinese photographer based in the city of Hangzhou, capital of the province of Zhejiang, China. Since 2009 she has used photography to see a different world and get the courage to “explore things her own way.” Her images are a blissful mix of sensuality and purity that disclose a unique artistic sensibility. She expresses her feelings through her sensitive personality. Mostly influenced by cinema, music, nature and human body, this photographer keeps learning by experimenting the ideas that cross her mind.

The “leit-motif” in your work seems to be sensuality (through light, details and feminine lines). What motivates you to capture this subject and what do you want to say through it?

“I have a great interest in simply observing, I can be very quiet just looking at the sky, the water, a plant, or an animal for hours. I would like to motivate myself more to shoot this themes because they are just all around me. ”  I am mostly inspired by my natural surroundings, such as the patterns of a flower, the shape of the trees after a strong wind, thick clouds in the sky before a storm, the rain hitting the ground, the sun and the way its rays shine on my hand and the palm of my hand becomes transparent. I am touched by these subtle things. “- Li Hui

“I think watching films is a way to improve the overall aesthetic of my work. But music can also evoke images that float around in my head. Different types of music have different associations.”

She doesn’t show her models faces in her photos as she wants the viewer to find their own feelings and experiences in them. She says it’s ‘interesting to hear different opinions and what different people take away from the pictures’, leaving the story up to the viewers imagination. What people take away from an image depends on their personality and their own background.

I particularly liked this photographer when I came across her work as I liked how she focused on beauty in landscape and her use of movement and light. If I were to take inspiration from her in my project I would focus on producing images that looked at light and delicate shapes that expressed a specific emotion.

Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi’s work is characterized by a serene, poetic style, depicting the ordinary moments in life.
Kawauchi’s art is rooted in Shinto, the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. According to Shinto, all things on earth have a spirit, hence no subject is too small or mundane for Kawauchi’s work; she also photographs “small events glimpsed in passing, conveying a sense of the transient. Kawauchi sees her images as parts of series that allow the viewer to juxtapose images in the imagination, thereby making the photograph a work of art^[ and allowing a whole to emerge at the end; she likes working in photo books because they allow the viewer to engage intimately with her images.

Her attention to small gestures and coincidental details enables her to cast a gaze of enchantment upon her daily surroundings that is always fresh and new. With her camera, she captures elementary and casual moments, all with the same passionate concentration.
Rinko Diary is a visual diary that includes photographs of everything from sandwiches and Patti Smith to the poignant butterfly/flower/leaf set against a concrete pavement. 

I like this photographer and think I will take inspiration from her in my project as I like how she portrays casual moments with a lot of meaning. I also like how she views nature in her photos, emphasising the sunlight and beauty. She ‘creates compelling portraits of everyday life, rendering the mundane as sublime through her lens’ (ignant.com) which is an aspect I would like to interpret. Her works radiates a sense of fragility and emotion.