In 2011, artist Tenzing Rigdol transported over twenty-four tons of soil from Tibet into the exile Tibetan community of Dharamsala, India, for a temporary installation-a site-specific work-titled Our ...Land, Our People. The exile community walked on, held, and sometimes ingested the soil (a clear marker of the importance of this work to this particular audience), the soil signaling the would-be permanent home of the audience. Despite the increase in global site-specific works over the past decades, few of these projects have navigated the issue of temporality as it relates to audiences in exile communities. By evaluating Rigdol's contribution through the lens of site-specificity as theorized by Miwon Kwon, this essay shows how Our Land, Our People expands the site-specific paradigm as it challenges notions of what makes art site specific; it proposes diasporic communities-communities with implied temporality and often tenuous relationships to their current homes-can serve as the foremost component of the work. I also propose Rigdol's Our Land, Our People breaks with the conventional label "contemporary Tibetan art," the phrase currently used to describe art created in Tibet and in exile spaces. Our Land, Our People is primarily in dialogue with one audience in particular-the exile community in Dharamsala.
This article discusses the performative art of Władysław Hasior, particularly his actions in the urban space. Initially expressed only in his artworks, since the 1970s Hasior’s need for dialogue with ...the spectator took the form of very expressive artistic manifestations involving audience participation, direct involvement of spectators in the creation of the performative event, and abolition of the distance between the artist and society. Due to the ontological status of these events, their ephemeral and fleeting nature, they have been the least explored area of Hasior’s work. The article analyzes his most important urban and open-air performances, such as the Procesja sztandarów (Banner Procession) in Łącko (1973), Solspann in Södertälje (1973–1976), and finally the ceremonial Przeprowadzka (Move) from the dormitory of Antoni Kenar school of fine arts to a new atelier in Zakopane (1984). These actions are considered in the context of contemporary discussions on participatory art: Claire Bishop’s antagonistic theory of participation and Grant H. Kester’s concept of dialogical art. It is argued that Hasior’s performative projects combined two strategies of participatory art; he was able to co-create ephemeral works together with the audience, while at the same time directing the spectators’ actions.
The military dictatorship in Chile (1973-1989) promoted an ideology of the individual body, dismantling all social and collective matrices. The various artistic expressions discussed in the following ...text can be seen as practices of situated memory, that link the violence of that period to the exercise of a necessary intersubjectivity between different spaces of intervention and bodies. In doing this, and by taking as a starting point collective and the notion of alienated space, the aim is to reconstitute a conscious corporeality of memory and collectivity. This paper seeks to revise interpretations of these performative and photographic exercises and to ask how meaning can be produced without subjecting memory to a process of reification or immobilisation.
Several contemporary architects have designed architectural objects that are closely linked to their particular sites. An in-depth study of the relevant relationship holding between those objects and ...their sites is, however, missing. This paper addresses the issue, arguing that those architectural objects are akin to works of site-specific art. In section (1), I introduce the topic of the paper. In section (2), I critically analyse the debate on the categorisation of artworks as site-specific. In section (3), I apply to architecture the lesson learned from the analysis of the art debate.
Artykuł poświęcony jest performatywnej twórczości Władysława Hasiora, w szczególności jego działaniom aranżowanym w przestrzeni miejskiej. Potrzeba dialogowania z odbiorcą, początkowo wyrażana przez ...Hasiora jedynie w eksponatach, począwszy od lat siedemdziesiątych przybiera formę bardzo wyrazistych manifestacji artystycznych zakładających bezpośredni udział widzów w kreowaniu zdarzenia performatywnego, a także znoszenie dystansu między artystą a społeczeństwem. Ze względu na ontologiczny status tych zdarzeń, ich efemeryczny i ulotny charakter, stanowią one jak dotąd najmniej zbadany obszar twórczości artysty. W artykule analizie poddane zostały najważniejsze miejskie i plenerowe performanse Władysława Hasiora, takie jak Pochód sztandarów w Łącku (1973), realizacja Solspann w Södertälje (1973–1976) czy wreszcie uroczysta Przeprowadzka z internatu „Szkoły Kenara” do nowej pracowni w Zakopanem (1984). Działania te autorka rozpatruje w kontekście współczesnych rozważań nad sztuką partycypacyjną, zarówno w świetle antagonistycznej teorii partycypacji Claire Bishop, jak i koncepcji sztuki dialogicznej Granta H. Kestera, zauważając, że Hasior w swoich projektach performatywnych łączył dwie strategie sztuki partycypacyjnej: potrafił współtworzyć efemeryczne dzieła razem z publicznością, a jednocześnie reżyserować działania odbiorców.
This visual essay presents a set of stories written for a performative walk in public space, complemented with a short reflection and documentary graphic material. The art intervention, titled 'False ...stories from the history of Mostar', was conceived and performed by Abart - an art production platform started in the city of Mostar in 2008 to work on contextual forms of socially engaged art practices. The intervention addressed eight problematic sites in the city, through fictional stories which aimed to expose the underlying processes shaping the transitional management of space in Mostar.
Architecture – the buildings and the spaces they invent – crystallise a particular chain of thought from conception to realisation. But the thought inscribed in mater and space is masked by the ...building’s functionalities. To pursue the postulate of Konrad Fiedler, (1841-1895), a pioneering art theoretician, the aim of art is a question of ‘thought’ and not of ‘beauty’, an idea also formulated Paul Klee in the Creative Confession (1920): ‘Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible’. Autumn in Peking (1987), Planches (1989), Ligeti (1993), Rayon (1986), Lumen poème (1984), Sculptures de visées (1986): six interventions of Jean-Max Albert (born in 1942), sculptor, painter, musician and writer, and one installation by Sara Holt (born in 1946), sculptor, painter, photographer and ceramist, reflect an aspect of the thought of architects as different as Joseph-Antoine Froelicher (1790-1866), Irving Gill (1870-1936), Cuno Brullmann (born in 1945) and Arnaud Fougeras Lavergnolle (born in 1943), José Oubrerie (born in 1932) or Bernard Tschumi (born in 1944).
Art and science so often inspire each other because they share a common denominator; the quest to understand and express deeper meaning in the universe. Art and science explore the same space, ...attempting to explain, comprehend, and provide perspective to the universe encountered. Giant Step is an interdisciplinary site-specific artwork celebrating Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon. It asks the question: Can the tools of science become the tools of art? On July 21, 2019, using different technology I tested the concept at two locations: The Cote d'Azur Observatory's Lunar Laser-Ranging Station, high above the French Riviera on the Plateau de Calern, and the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in The Netherlands. At 02:56:15 UTC, precisely the time of Armstrong's first step on the Moon, a powerful green laser beam, targeted the Moon from the Cote d'Azur Observatory's Lunar Laser-Ranging Station, with Armstrong's acclaimed words: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” pulsed in Morse code. This was the first time in the 35-year history of this observatory that a laser beam had been used to carry a message to the Apollo 11 retroreflector. At the same time, from the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory, using different astronomical tools an Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) Moonbounce, transmitted and reflected additional information about Neil Armstrong to the lunar surface. The inspiration for this project first emerged while doing research for Giant Step in 2015. Pouring through the Apollo Archives at NASA HQ, I made an unexpected discovery; a 2-D Electrocardiogram (EKG) of Neil Armstrong's heartbeat captured as he took his first step on the lunar surface. Looking something like a musical score, the question arose, was there music in that EKG? Connecting with Dr. Ryan Compton, whose specialty is the sonification of data, (currently employed by Google), I engaged him to create a 2-min single tone from Armstrong's 2-D EKG. This 120-s tone was then given to Roberto Miranda, Los Angeles jazz double-bassist and UCLA professor, who recorded two improvised tracks over Compton's single EKG tone along with Neil Armstrong's acclaimed words: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” In 2019, Dr. Compton was able to create a heartbeat sound from Armstrong's EKG, which offered a second opportunity to meld art and science. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, a historic first for America and the world, it was Armstrong's words as he stepped onto the lunar surface that like art, connected all humankind.
•Site-Specific Interdisciplinary Artwork Celebrating the Apollo 11 50th Anniversary.•Apollo 11 retroreflector.•Lunar surface Laser-Ranging.•Encoded laser beam carrying Armstrong's message to the Apollo 11 retroreflector.•Neil Armstrong's sonified EKG heartbeat as he took his first step on the lunar surface.
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