2/25, The producer and the performer

Marcel Duchamp confused for the world the concept of worthiness of art. Vito Acconci furthered the discussion by confusing the spaces in which art was exhibited. The four films viewed in succession on Monday 25 February, especially Tree, ask the question of authorship and artist's participation. The Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher site Learning to love you more, begs to ask the questions: "who is the artist? what is the art?"

In Tree the performer is a part of the landscape that is being filmed. The tree dances whenever there is wind, by holding the camera, swinging it gently, surveying the landscape as only a member of that landscape can, the tree is offering its unique perspective through the camera as provided by Chris Welsby, author. Despite the performance of a tree dancing in the wind regardless, Welsby, less writer or director, stepped into the role of producer to make the technical elements coincide with the performance. Welsby enabled the film with out writing, directing or even operating the camera.

However, July and Fletcher have put their names to the website www.learningtoloveyoumore.com which is maintained by a third party, and all of the content is provided by users, consumers, those who do not identify as artists. All of the art is created off of prompts issued to the users by the cite. Whether July and Fletcher personally come up with the assignments is unclear, however, they certainly put all of the pieces in place on line for this "consumer created art" to be created and displayed. If July and Fletcher we're viewed as the "authors" of this site, it would be easy to fault them for being exploitative. However, they choose not to inflect the project with any possible interpretations. They simply provide the venue and prompts, each of the participants is so by his or her own will. The project is produced by the artists, the art is made by what would traditionally be called the audience.

Althea Thauberger

Discussion of emotion in art to come.

2/11, On art in the everyday

Vito Acconci elevated what amounted to little more than morning exercises in his apartment to the realm of performance art. However, he kept it separate from simple calisthenics by only performing during alternating months. The distribution of fliers as invitation and instruction on the performances, as Helen Molesworth pointed out, moved Acconci into the role of manager and curator. He was, indeed, the manager and curator of his studio and gallery space, which also happened to overlap with his living space. This expansion of the art world to include an artist's apartment, and the expansion art to include a man stepping on to a stool every morning poses the question of "What cannot be art and where cannot art take place?"

Robert Morris seemed to be occupied with a similar question when he made his 1969 film Mirror. As an agent of artwork Morris seems to have felt that, like Acconci, he directed what we see. His artistic choice, again like Acconci, is not to show us a carefully crafted and composed image but a simple reflection. Indeed, Mirror shows a very literal interpretation of that choice: the artist is holding the mirror that haphazardly reflects the landscape, and a few occasions reveals the camera and Morris holding the mirror. The piece seems to be a declaration of what Morris feels art should be and do. Just as Acconci could have chosen to perform any physical act in any venue, Morris chose to raise a metaphoric middle finger to established art by documenting a landscape as seen by a mirror he arbitrarily controls.

2/4, Cohl and Deren on the absurdity of movement

Maya Deren writes that the concern of the motion photographer lies with a body in motion through time. Still photography, she argues, has claim on the capturing of a body in an instant, frozen. The movie camera should explore its own strengths. One of its strengths is its ability to create the illusion of continuity.

Emil Cohl explored this relationship of movement through time and space in his "trick" movie The Great Pumpkin Race. As a cart load of pumpkins began rolling down a hill, there seems to be little spectacle in the employment of gravity. However, these particular renegade pumpkins have little regard for any laws of nature. They chase each other, run over innocent pedestrians, and escape a mob of people trying to restore order: even when the escape required rolling uphill, jumping over obstacles and climbing through chimneys. The bodies in motion that Cohl concerns himself with are not human, as Deren mainly did, but are traditionally inanimate. The pumpkins behave as humans and even interact with them, outsmart them.

A still photograph could not capture the absurdity and humor of watching the pumpkins move of their own accord. If the pumpkin was immobile in mid air, the viewer would rationalize that it was under the influence of gravity or propelled by an intervening party. Only the medium of moving pictures can illustrate the thought that pumpkins could flee under no influence but their own.