CASE STUDIES


ART PARLOUR AT WCA

 
13.02.2013 - 15.02.2013

This was a three day long investigation of the London Art Ecology, with CCW alumni Scott Mason (ex Wimbledon MA Fine Art), Holly Stevenson (ex Chelsea MA Fine Art)) and Anna Baker (ex Camberwell MA Fine Art). We were split into 3 groups of approximately 18 students (MFA and MA part-time 2d year) and I was allocated in to Anna's group. Furthermore, each group was split into 3 smaller groups to present their findings collectively afterwards 

             

Following websites were useful:

www.deankenning.com
http://www.southlondonartmap.com/galleries/area/bermondsey
http://www.futureproofhandbook.co.uk
www.woodmill.org



1st Day


Mapping with Dean Kenning

in the Gallery SPACE STATION SIXTY-FIVE, Kennington Rd, London SE11 4PS



Dean Kenning's presentation of his work to the students from MFA WCA







Projects: Prospects for Growth    Keyboards  Plants    Metallurgy of the Subject    Dulwich Horror

   Metallurgy of the Subject


Dean Kenning constructs hermetic sociopath-political systems based on mental maps or diagrammatic structures (memory, imagination, intellect, reality): The individual as a privatized being is opposed to a common being and being-in-common. Kenning shows engagement with the political philosophy of Bataille and Deleuse by incorporating mythology of the subject's sacrifice (in form of beheading) to be absorbed in 'common being' and  to "represent  unrepresentable". He calls this "Metallurgy of the Subject" following the free masonic language. Symbols and diagrams play an important part in his mystical world construction.

In his moving machines (plants and keyboards), Dean Kenning is influenced by Yves Tanguy and Alexander Calder's kinetic sculptures. His keyboards installation uses sound to construct a kind of compulsive aesthetics of random movements caused by rubbers hitting the keys.

"Dean Kenning works as an artist, researcher, curator and writer. He has exhibited work recently at Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh; ASC Gallery, London; James Taylor Gallery, London and Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea and in art collective ‘The Work in Progress’ as part of Whitechapel Gallery’s commissioning programme of art outside the gallery space. Kenning’s artworks create a non-contemplative aesthetic of material compulsion, B-movie horror and idiocy.
Often working in a directly communicative manner, concerned with political subject matter or used in pedagogical situations.This combination of cognitive recognition (communication and humour) and non-recognition (strangeness) as a dialectical method of production relates to the question of specific artistic function.
Previous works include paintings of monsters on estate agent signs for The Dulwich Horror: HP Lovecraft and the Crisis in British Housing (Space Station Sixty-Five), Sunset Over Civilization, a psychedelic slide-show lecture by a decrepit kinetic art professor, and Metallurgy of the Subject, a project encompassing animation, drawings and performance which allegorizes recent philosophical re-conceptions of ‘community’ and communism (Nancy, Badiou, Agamben, etc) as a process of alchemical sacrificial transmutation." from: Space Release #9, Dean Kenning— Double Dip Depression, 2012


Drawing the Mind Map with Dean Kenning

Context of the artwork: structures, organizations, social-work, feelings, fiends - social body mind maps


3 Models how art (a symbolic system) works:

1. Origin: brain - art  ------------   Expression: artwork

2. Origin: studio practice: object -----------   Outside - art world: galleries, critics, collectors, audience

3. Social world: cultural practices, norms, social structures, hierarchies, distribution mechanisms ------------ Reflection theory: artwork (Peter Burger)

Splitting of artwork (from Renaissance - abstract)  ------- Reflection: subjective works, structure criticism, reflecting the system 

Iconography: imagination, instinct, drive, insanity, strength, obsession, cognitive capacities, language, other human social structures


     
     
     

                                                                                                                                                                                            Dean Kenning's mind map


MFA students drawing their mind maps


     
     
     

                             

    
my mind map on 13.02.2013


My mind map on that day aims to encompass the whole world, from nature to theory / intellect, from processes to randomness, from science and rational to occult, from life to death and includes also the Unknown as a big black hole. Within this diagrammatic structure, my art is symbolically depicted as a big canvas lying on the desert soil surrounded by sand, sea, sound, music and the horizon. In the vertical position, the canvas is subjected to the law of gravitation that causes the flowing materials on it to slide down leading to gaps, folds and shifts - the preliminary states of entropy and like all tectonic processes on Earth and presumably in the entire Universe - thus my canvas is also a window into a bigger something / the whole and is a world in itself.



2d Day

Travel with a Text

Journey on the District Line


           

Text on the tube was 'A Protest Against Forgetting' with Gavin Wade interviewing Hans-Ulrich Obrist, a Swiss curator and a former Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London.


 

'A Protest Against Forgetting'
                                                                                                                                                         Hans-Ulrich Obrist's position on curating

- An exhibition is a complex dynamic system, an ongoing conversation. For me, an exhibition is always a performance space, rather than a space of representation.

- Out of the conversation, I started to organize an exhibition in my kitchen - in a more clandestine context.

- What I've been doing has always been an infinite conversation and nothing else, really.

- Interesting works of art develop a dynamic form of standstill.

- If we want to understand the forces which are effective in the visual arts than we have to look at what happens in other landscapes (science, mathematics, architecture etc.) 

- The interview is a compelling element in my curatorial practice, which verges on the role of the archiving artist - absorbing and sharing the knowledge of curators, artists, and other creative practitioners.

- It's very much about a post-planning condition. It's a way of being an ongoing flaneur.

- The curator should be invisible, behind the scene.




Tutorial with students from the Hovering 6th Form College


     
      


The one-to-one tutorial with the student, Sunaina Patel, from the Hovering 6th Form College highlighted the other side of the tutorial processes and gave me an opportunity to proof my ability to be a responsible and attentive mentor / listener to a younger aspiring artist in the making.

 

3d Day

Evaluation

with Anna Baker, Holly Stevenson and Scott Mason


in WOODMILL GP, 6-8 Drummond Rd, Bermonsey, LondonSE16 4BU


      

 
 
 Some MFA students from Anna Baker's group exhausted after the intense 3-days long 'Art parlour' experience


The 3 days long, off-site project 'Art Parlour' differed from the usual studio practice routine as it aimed to broaden one's mind by ways of expanding the boundaries of the own perception of the London Art ecology, equally, strengthening  the sense of community in the group through the same experiences during this 3-days' long event.  For me personally, the investigation of the London Art ecology was highlighted by the artist talk with Dean Kenning and my interview with the 6-form college student, Sunaina Patel. They both are quite characters and artistically gifted, being at different moments in their life and art carrier. Dean is an established artist with an enormous treasure of work and experience and Sunaina is a very young student, just starting to explore and develop her artistic potential. I wish her the best for her application to the Foundation Course: Art&Design at Camberwell. Unfortunately, the very intense and time-consuming 'Art parlour' off-site project and its follow-up: the presentation of findings a week later, coincided with the Assessment preparation and, above all, with my own project, the sculpture-installation 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'; with the consequence that this work was interrupted in its natural progression and not finished.