A little of this, a little of that: hunting & gathering

I’ve been spending some time doing research for a class I’m teaching this Fall 09 at UC Berkeley: “Temporal Structures” is a new genres studio art class and It’s been an interesting challenge to drum up a whole new syllabus. In the past I’ve focussed primarily on object-based (as opposed to time or temporal-based works), and I’m trying to rise to the occasion by not just pulling from my archive of resources but find new (to me) things as well. Some potential class topics I’m brainstorming include:

Media Jamming as Culture Jamming

(Mis)Translations: Systems Reinterpretations and Cross-Media Resynthesis

Participatory Structures: Social Practice as Creative Catalyst

Public Interventions

Snapshot Sculptures: Temporal and Temporary Objects

Shareware Everywhere: Utilizing Found or Free Networks in an Ad Hoc World

Hacking Objects

Capitalism as Public Discourse: The Storefront as Creative Metaphor

Ongoing and Endless: invisible and Total artworks

Duration and Minutiae (long-length and insanely short artworks)

The Mashup as Cultural Critique: Reading Between the Lineages

In the process of thinking on these (never mind if it works for my class!) I’ve found some interesting links and spaces online. Maybe in some way most deal with issues of “temporality” or even performative action. Maybe not. But I’m linking them here because I want to revisit these in some way in the near future:

The online Significant Objects project is a really interesting experiment in value-added objecthood: writers are paired with a tchotchke object to give it some form of fictional history and then auctioned on ebay. Whether the object sells for a lot or a little is always curious… (thanks to Rob Walker of Murketing fame)

Oakland-based artist Joseph del Pesco is an insane fountain of ideas, and we are lucky enough to have him share them with us on an almost nonstop basis. His latest project, Anecdote Archive, celebrates the idea of how stories about art and artworks become themselves the means for documentation and distribution. I have yet to peruse all of them, but am looking forward to the project building and… uh… getting passed along by word of mouth, too.

A quote from the “about” page:

“The fact that works of art to a large extent are tales, points to the folkloristic aspect of the artworld. In other words, the art world is a place for transmissions: someone has seen or heard of someone who has done something. The story is told and retold. As in any other oral culture there are misunderstandings, adjunctions, displacements and falsifications. The dependence on ‘what is on every lip’ creates a situation where works that are difficult to talk about run the risk of being neglected and ‘disappearing’. Sometimes an art practice escapes omission through stories about the artist as a person. Whatever one may think of this oral circulation of art — through formal seminars, think tanks, staged conversations, informal discussions, and not least through chatting at bars and cafés — it should be recognized as a place for art distribution equally important as the exhibition space and printed matter.”

—Magnus Bärtås from his essay Talk Talk in Geist

Allan Kaprow’s essay “Tail Wagging Dog” is probably something that I read when I was a fresh young undergraduate at the San Francisco Art Institute back in the early 90s (ack!), but for the life of me, I don’t remember it. And reading it now is like a bit of fresh air, since how we look at “performance art” today seems to have considerably shifted from the theatrical stagings of the 80s (think Laurie Anderson) back towards a super-ephemeral or everyday-like activity. Methinks it’s because the newfound, renamed genre of “Social Practice” has come to engulf notions of performance and temporality more so than how performance work was lumped in with “new genres” and video programs in the past. Either way, I used to think Kaprow was outmoded and a romantic hippie (yes, that was my 17-year old brain at the time). But now I realize it’s come full circle and it was a fun re-read

Rickrolling is a phenomena that I somehow missed out on during its heydey but I’m still getting a kick out of learning of it (oh, that was SO 2008, right?)… Thank you, wikipedia:

Rickrolling is an Internet meme typically involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a web link that he or she claims is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true destination of the link without clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been “Rickrolled” (also spelled Rickroll’d).

Oh, the wonders of the internet. Such joy, such terror!

UC Berkeley commencement speech

I had the insanely amazing honor to be invited to deliver the commencement speech for the Art Department at UC Berkeley this year. In attendance were over 100 graduating undergraduates and a graduate class of six students. Along with their proud families and faculty members, it took place on a sunny day in the sculpture garden of the Berkeley Art Museum. I took the responsibility very seriously — this was the first graduating class after last year’s historic presidential election, along with a recession that is coloring the outlook of college students everywhere. I wanted to address what I see as a potential opening of sorts, a way to encourage and promote cultural capital in a time of faltering economic capital.

Following is a transcript of the speech…

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“Cultural Capital in a Time of Recession”
by Stephanie Syjuco
Commencement Speech for UC Berkeley Art Department, May 2009

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS class of 2009! It is an honor and a privilege to be addressing you on this day, at this lovely museum, surrounded by your friends and families, your faculty and the UC Berkeley academic system. We have all come together to express our deepest pride in your commitment to your artistic practice and your pursuit of a degree of high value. Graduates, look around you and know that we stand by you to witness this day, and that we support you in your future. As an artist and teacher myself, I look forward to seeing you out in that place they call “the real world” as a creative peer within the greater art community. Again, my heartfelt congratulations to you all!

We are living in tough times and you must forgive me if I choose to structure this commencement speech for the art department in the language of economics. Indeed, it seems both appropriate and inappropriate – how to link together what goes on within an artist’s private space of production with the outside world of recession, politics, and restructuring. At times these spheres of existing seem vastly indifferent to each other. But I do think it’s possible, perhaps entertaining, and I’ll attempt to do so in a way that hopefully opens a dialogue about what your future challenges may entail.

I will not repeat to you the facts and figures of the current economic situation, this recession with a capital “R”. These things you probably already know, but if you find yourself blissfully unawares, you may be in for a bit of a shock after graduating and entering the job market. It is a daunting task to face a future in which economic prospects seem uncertain and the art market is contracting. Sales are down. Museums and galleries are cutting back expenses, art programs are laying off faculty and staff, while nonprofit arts organizations, that golden support system and lifeblood of young artists everywhere, are squeezing their resources to make ends meet. The international economic art party as it’s been known for the past decade or so is OVER and the reality is beginning to sink in. It was a grand speculation, a bubble, a fleeting moment that piggy-backed onto a larger wave of globalized flows of money. Not anymore.