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Image: Roman Duszek © 2003
Conference presentation Video
Keywords
Multimodality, literacy, representation, design, media affordances
Abstract
In this paper I wish to point to what I see as the central issues in the linked shifts in representation and dissemination: that is, from the constellation of mode of writing and medium of book / page, to the constellation of mode of image and medium of screen. In particular I will draw attention to consequent shifts in authority, in changes in forms of reading, shifts in shapes of knowledge and in forms of human engagement with the social and natural world.
Paper
Readers of this journal are experts in design. What I can offer is a particular take on certain issues in design from the perspective of (Social) Semiotics, and more specifically, from the perspective of multimodality, which deals with all the means we have for making meanings – the modes of representation - and considers their specific way of configuring the world. To make this concrete, here is a small example. Say I am designing a biology text-book. The subject matter is ‘plant-cells’. If I use words, I will have to say “Every cell has a nucleus”. If I use an image, I will need to place a large dot somewhere in the circle which indicates the cell to represent the nucleus (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Cell and nucleus
To reflect on this: in writing or speaking I have to use a sentence in which two entities – cell and nucleus – are related by a verb, have, indicating a possessive relation: the cell has something (much like: “I have a car, a house, two kids, etc”). I could use a different verb: “In every cell there is a nucleus”. The meaning is now quite different: about existence, there is and location, in. If I draw, I have to place a large dot representing the nucleus somewhere in a circle which represents the cell. Wherever I place it, someone looking at the image is entitled to assume that the nucleus actually is where I have placed it in the circle/cell – whether I intended to or not, or whether it actually belongs there or not. Each mode forces me into making certain kinds of commitments about meaning, intended or not. The choice of mode has profound effects on meaning, and textbook designers, for instance, need to be aware of such meaning effects of different modes.
Meanings are always disseminated through particular media: the medium of the book; or the medium of the CD-ROM, involving still and moving images, speech, writing, cartoon-like characters in comic strips, music, and so on. It might be the medium of the teacher’s body, involving speech, movement and gesture. All media offer specific possibilities to the designer, and to the reader/user in their reading and / or use.
The approach from Social Semiotics not only draws attention to the many kinds of meanings which are at issue in design, but the “social” in “Social Semiotics” draws attention to the fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those cultures. Semiotics takes the sign - a fusion of a form and a meaning – as its basic unit. In making signs we –embedded in our cultures - select forms in such a way that they expresses the meanings that we ‘have’ always ‘aptly’; hence signs always express, through their form, the meanings that the makers of signs have wished to make.
Take a simple example. I am in an American airport, looking for something to eat. I see a sign Bar and Grille, outlined in lurid red neon lights. Being hungry, I am attracted by “Grille”; I am aware that I am particularly drawn by the “e” on “Grille”. As a semiotician – even a hungry one – I wonder about this ”e”, in part because just the night before I have had a discussion with a colleague about how signs work. I order a brisket sandwich and think about this sign. What the “e” tells me is something about tradition and ‘Englishness’; it relates to many other signs I have seen where the “e” has had similar meanings, as in “Ye olde gifte shoppe”. And, even though I know it is a marketing gimmick, I want to be seduced by its meanings. Of course all the other parts of the sign also mean: the ‘Grill’ – with or without the “e” - speaks of barbeques, of the outdoors, of freshly cooked food. For the sauce I had the choice of mild, medium and make my day (- which I chose; and it did). “Bar” has its specific meanings for Americans reading the sign; and the lurid red neon sign of course ‘means’ to attract my attention, and maybe offer whatever promises ‘lurid red’, in the context of “Bar”, might hold.
All these are social meanings, specific to a particular culture. At the same time they are chosen, put together for their potential to mean, by the deliberate action of the designer. The sign - a complex message of words, of letters, of colour and font-types with all their cultural resonances - reflects the interests of its designer as much as the designer’s imagined sense of those who will see and read the sign. The sign is based on a specific rhetorical purpose, and intent to persuade with all means possible those who pass by and notice it.
Modes and their affordances: the materiality of modes
The kinds of meanings made by the letter “e”, by the word “Grille”, and by the colour “red” are different kinds of meanings. Not only do they mean different things, they mean differently. You can’t look up the meaning of “e”, nor the meaning of “lurid red”. What “e” does is not so much refer to some object, such as a Grill, or a Bar, but rather to evoke by cultural associations. It has a history of use in particular places (in ‘marketing speak’ for instance), and it is knowing its provenance that gives it its meaning. “e” puts me in the world of ‘Olde England’ with all its mythic associations. In one sense, colours work similarly: I have encountered the colour ‘red’ in many instances, as in “red light district”, as a colour of lipsticks: so in this context it is eroticized. Words have their histories, but they also refer; they name things (as nouns) or actions (as verbs) or attributes (as adjectives) or as relations of location (as prepositions), and so on.
One of the present tasks of a social semiotic approach to multimodality is to describe the potentials and limitations for meaning which inhere in different modes. For that, it is essential to consider the materiality of modes. Speech uses the material of (human) sound; writing uses the material of graphic substance. There are things you can do with sound that you cannot do with graphic substance, either easily or at all; not even imitate all that successfully graphically. The up and down of the voice, which produces the melody of (English) speech, makes many meanings, from straightforward questions to highly modulated ones: imagine saying, in a tone of incredulity, ”you did what?”; to many varying forms of emotion and affect. Even highly experienced writers find it impossible to reproduce these meanings in writing and need to take recourse to devices such as “… she said incredulously”. Maybe the major shift in the new landscape of communication in this respect lies in the increasing use of image, even in situations where previously writing would have been used. Consequently an urgent task is understanding the different affordances of writing and image.
In alphabetic cultures writing tends to start, in words, grammar and syntax, as the transcription of speech. It quickly develops its own structures and forms (syntax, punctuation, layout, for instance), so that written English is now very different to spoken English; yet writing does ‘lean on’ speech. Speech happens in time: one sound, one word, one sentence follows another. The ‘logic’ of temporal sequence is the major principle of ordering of languages such as English. Speech and writing are organized by the logic and the ordering principle of sequence in time. This underlies the syntax of English, which is enormously more complex than mere sequence, but is there nonetheless. If I have two simple sentences, such as:
The mists dissolved and the sun rose. It matters in what sequence I place them.
The sun rose and the mists dissolved is very different in meaning from
The mists dissolved and the sun rose.
The one tells us how weather works; the other puts us in the magical, mysterious world of Lord of the Rings maybe. Sequence implies causality: the sentence which comes first seems to be causally prior to that which comes after. But notice that that is so whether I want that meaning or not: I cannot but order them in some way. If I have two friends, Amanda and Josh, and they have jus got married, I might want to say either Amanda married Josh or Josh married Amanda; the two are different in causal terms – who was responsible for what. They are also different in terms of affective ‘proximity’: I may be closer to Amanda than to Josh, and so I place that person’s name first.
In speech as in writing we use words. Yet only that for which there is a word can be brought into communication: no word, no communication about it. In image, if there is something that we wish to depict, we can depict whatever we want. We don’t ask: ”Is there an appropriate image we can use?” Contrary to common sense assumptions about language, words are vague. You have no doubt fully understood the sentences about Josh and Amanda, yet you know very little about either of them: how tall Josh is, what age Amanda, what colour hair they have, and so on. If you saw a photo of them, or even a drawing, much of this would be clear. Words are (relatively) vague, often nearly empty of meanings; by contrast images are full, ‘plain’ with meaning. With image the placement of the depicted entities relative to one another in the image-space is the principle used for making meaning. Take the two images below, drawn by the then four year-old Georgia.
Figure 2a, 2b. Georgia at the side of her mother, and Georgia between her parents
The difference in meaning depends on the relation of the depicted entities to each other in the frame of the picture-space: the resultant difference in Georgia’s sense of herself and her family is an effect of these spatial relations. In drawing the materiality of sound is not available for making, to indicate just how ‘being’ Georgia’s parents seem to her, instead the affordance of space is used – making things taller or shorter, broader or thinner. In fact, Georgia was quite a bit taller than she drew herself here; and her father was quite a bit shorter than her mother. Size here shows the metaphoric use of vertical extension: Georgia sees her parents as affectively /psychically much taller than they actually were; and she makes her father seem as tall as her mother by ‘lifting him off the ground’ somewhat. That leaves aside the meanings of colour.
One further point needs to be mentioned here; it follows from the distinct ordering principles of the two modes. The written text – as indeed the spoken – forces the reader (and the listener) to stick to its order: the elements have to be read in the sequence in which they occur. That is not the case, or far less so, with the image text. Yes, the elements are there in certain spatial relations, but how the reader reconstitutes them is largely up to the reader. The order of the written text is fixed; the order of the image text is (relatively) open.
Media and their interrelation with modes
Modes and media exist in culturally and historically shaped ‘constellations’. The one that has dominated the alphabetic cultures of the ‘West’ over the last 300 years or so is that of mode of writing with medium of book and page. Writing as mode and book as medium have shaped western imagination, forms of knowledge, practices of reading; the technology of writing has shaped the book, and the technology of the book has shaped how writing has developed. The traditional book represented the work of the author, who had laboured to produce a text, which in its ordering represented a ‘body of knowledge’ or the shape of the world – whether fictional or actual. Chapters in the book were coherent and complete in themselves; paragraphs had their logic; and sentences derived their form and purpose from the organization of the paragraph and the larger text.
In that world the reader’s task was to attempt to follow the pre-given ordering of the written text, embodying the authority of the author, working assiduously to reproduce the meaning which the author had intended for the reader. In that world, authors could confidently speak and act on behalf of the reader, as did the author of the example in Figure 3, The Boy Electrician: “The prime instinct of almost any boy is to make and to create… At seven he will wire the whole house with his telephone system made from empty tins connected with varying lengths of string. His older brother will improve on that by purchasing a crystal, a telephone receiver, and a few pieces of insulated copper wire…” (p 5)
Figure 3. Spread from “The Boy Electrician”
Certain texts – novels for instance – encourage the reader to engage in the semiotic work of imagination, following the given order of words on the line but filling the relatively ‘empty’ words with the reader’s meaning. Contemporary texts - whether information books of all kinds, web-pages, the screens of CD ROMs, and so on - in their increasingly often image-like textual organization, ask the reader to perform different semiotic work, namely to design the order of the text for themselves. Consequently two phenomena are now becoming noticeable, as in Figure 4, which had been present but never noticed before: the entry point of the ‘page’ and its reading path.
Figure 4. Home page of the University of London Institute of Education (www.ioe.ac.uk)
The page of The Boy Electrician has one entry point, at the top left of the page; it had long become naturalized and therefore was no longer visible. Nor was the reading path: it asked the reader to follow the lines, in the order in which the culture had determined. The page/screen in Figure 4 has, by contrast, about 13 entry points. The reader interest determines where he or she wishes to enter the page. The same applies to the ‘reading path’ which the reader (now usually called a ‘visitor’) wishes to construct: it too is determined by the reader’s interest.
For design this is a crucial factor, and a profound change. The designer of such ‘pages’ / sites is no longer the ‘author’ of an authoritative text, but is a provider of material arranged in relation to the assumed characteristics of the imagined audience. The power of the designer is to assemble materials which can become ‘information’ for the visitor, in arrangements which might correspond to the interests of the visitor. For the visitor however “Information is material which is selected by individuals to be transformed by them into knowledge to solve a problem in their life world” (Boeck, 2002)
Making texts and reading texts
In the conception outlined here, the processes of making texts and reading texts are both are processes of design; and both are in important sense inversions of the social and semiotic arrangements of the era of the dominance of the constellation of writing and book. It has now been overtaken by the new constellation of image and screen. The (at least mythically) dominant media are now those of the screen - whether of the Gameboy, the mobile telephone, the PC, or still the TV and video. The book and its page had been the site of writing and the logic of writing had shaped the order of the page and the book; the screen is the site of the image and the logic of the image is shaping the order and the arrangements of the screen.
Writing can appear on the screen; but when it does it is subordinated to the logic of the image; just as image could appear on the page, though subordinated to the logic of writing. The logic image will more and more shape the appearance and the uses of writing, a process which is already apparent in many instances of public communication. In the former arrangement, the figure of the author and the mode of writing dominated; in the new arrangements the designer and the mode of image dominate; the story-board is an apt metaphor for this change - image led, and very often the product of a design-team.
Design as choice in context
In the multimodal landscape of communication, choice and therefore design become central issues. If I have a number of ways of expressing and shaping my message, then the questions that confront me are: which mode is best, most apt, for the content / meaning I wish to communicate? Which mode most appeals to the audience whom I intend to address? Which mode most corresponds to my own interest at this point in shaping the message for communication? Which medium is preferred by my audience? Or by me? How am I positioning myself if I choose this medium or this mode rather than those others? All of these call for choices to be made, resting on my assessment of the environment in which communication takes place, in all its complexity, in its widest sense, in which a commodity – the smell of my shampoo, the packaging of the bag of flour, the shape of the bottle of soft-drink – are all ‘messages’ to interpret. The question of choice is illustrated by the contrast of say, Figure 3 with Figure 4, or of Figure 3 with Figure 5.
Figure 5. Visual geography-tectonics
The page in Figure 3 is the realization of choices – of stylistic choices in relation to writing, choices of font (though for any one publishing house there might not have been choice), the framings of the text through syntax (marked by punctuation) and in text (marked by paragraphing, for instance), and by layout in spacings, as well as the frame around the ‘densely printed page’ (Reading Images, 1996). However, these choices had nearly faded into invisibility through the two aspects of habituation and convention. By contrast, the page in Figure 5 shows a plethora of choices made and realized through the modes of writing, layout, colour, and image.
Design is a prospective enterprise. The question it asks is: “what, in this environment, with this kind of audience, with these resources that are available for implementing my design, given these social, economic, ‘political’ constraints, and with my interests now at this moment, is the best way of shaping that which I wish to make, whether as ‘message’ or as any object (of design)?” Here, briefly, are two examples, showing choices made and interests expressed. Figure 6 is the result of the request of the teacher of a class of six year-olds to “make me a drawing and write me a story of our trip to the British museum.”
Figure 6. Notes from a trip to the British Museum
The different ‘take’ on the representation of the day in writing and drawing is startling (all the images and stories showed this contrast): salient object-entities in spatial relation in the visually represented world, contrasted with salient events/actions in temporal relations. We might dismiss this as childish representation. Or we might say that these six-year olds are using the two modes of writing and image in line with their inherent affordances – the (transformed) recollection of the visually encountered world through the spatially organized mode; and the (transformed) recollection of the actionally experienced world through the temporally organized mode. If we take that approach we see that the children have made apt use of the affordances of each mode. The facts of the representational world are certainly moving in the same direction.
In the next example two modes co-exist in one integrated textual object, the question is the same one: what are the principles for the use the modes (the question of “principled use” can and needs to be asked of all my examples). At the end of four lessons on ‘plant cells’, the teacher had asked the 14 year old students, working in groups of four, to prepare a slide of the epidermis of an onion, look at it through a microscope, and then “write what you did” and “draw what you saw”.
Figure 7a, 7b. Eye-piece of the microscope, and Cells as a “brick wall”
The teacher had given two additional instructions: ”put your writing at the top of the page, and the drawing at the bottom”, and “use only black pencils in your drawing”. Apart from the different responses to this instruction (7 b used colour pencils) there is the startling difference in what each “saw” and what each wrote. One written text is a recount, the other a procedure. The recount, generically speaking, says: “this is what happened”; the procedure, generically speaking, says: “this is what ought to happen”. The drawings differ equally profoundly. One declares “this is what theory tells us is the case” (on a worksheet there had been a comment “what you should see is something like a brick wall; each cell is a brick”); the other declares “this is what I actually observed and recorded”. The first is the "truth" of theory; the second is the "truth" of the empirical, reliably recorded.
The question of design is in the center here. The matter at issue is of course ‘plant cells’; but maybe even more than that it is: ”what is it to be scientific?” In each case the answer is broadly the same (though differently realized modally): “to be scientific is to adhere to the "truth" of theory”. In Figure 7 a, the student lodges the "truth" of the facts of the empirical world in the drawing, and the "truth" of theory through the replicability of scientific practice in the written text. In Figure 7 b, the student lodges the "truth" of scientific theory in the drawing, and the "truth" of actual practice in the written. In each case event-like representation uses the mode of writing; and the representation of object-entities is lodged in drawing.
Design as a part of rhetoric of communication
The contemporary social world is marked by increasing fragmentation and individuation (Beck, 1986); in stark contrast to the world of the 19th and early 20th century, the world of stable structures and of individual integration and definition in those structures. Strong frames, and integration into strong frames had their analogues in communication through stable genres, and through stable modal ‘choices’. In periods of stability the question of effective communication is answered by the idea of convention and of competent action in relation to those conventions. In periods of fragmentation and individuation communication is fraught: each environment of communication asks that social and ‘political’ relations, tastes, needs and desires be newly assessed. The question of rhetoric – how to make my communication most effective in relation to this audience, here and now - has moved newly, urgently into the center. Rhetoric has become a major issue for design.
Bibliography Kress, G.R. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: RoutledgeFalmer
Kress, G.R. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design. London: Routledge
Kress, G.R. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2002). Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Edward Arnold
Jewitt, C. and G.R. Kress (eds) (2003). Multimodal Literacie. New York: Peter Lang
Burn, A. and Parker, D. (2003). Analysing media texts. London: Continuum
Gunther Kress
Gunther Kress is professor of Education/English at the Institute of Education, University of London. He has a specific interest in the interrelations in contemporary texts of different modes of communication - writing, image, speech, music - and their effects on forms of learning and knowing. He is interested in the changes - and their effects and consequences - brought by the shift in the major media of communication from the page to the screen. Some of his recent publications are: Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design; Before Writing: rethinking the paths to literacy; (both published by Routledge); Multimodal teaching and learning: the rhetorics of the Science Classroom (Continuum); Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication (Edward Arnold); and Literacy in the New Media Age (Routledge).
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漂洋上海 陳期 藝術有什麼用
2010年5月13日
今年五十三歲的蔡國強，以他獨特的火藥草圖和裝置藝術，成為國際當代藝術圈認知度最高的中國藝術家之一，他的作品在各大拍賣行屢屢拍出天價，用最庸俗的說法，是名成利就了，所以我並沒有預期他是這樣平實的人。看起來比實際年輕，穿風褸、卡其褲，一臉陽光笑容。
他介紹自己的創作經歷，提及一個火藥爆破習作，他坐在一塊空地上，醫學儀器監測着他的心跳和腦電波，他保持着平靜，如腳下的大地一樣沉穩，然後，他預先裝置好的火藥爆炸，儀器顯示，他的心跳腦電波和大地同一頻率震動。他在這時候回歸大地，和自然成為一體。
有時他要收起自己，做很自我的創作，有時他又希望展示自己給很多人看，所以他策劃一些大型活動。他說自己就是這樣時內時外，忽左忽右，亦中亦西。
一方面他會為自己有所成就，並可以幫助他人而高興，一方面他又覺得成就這東西很虛。一般人早上起來知道自己那一天會做什麼，但他就漫無目的。在他演說時，他的助手兼傳譯把他作品的拍賣價七千萬元說成是七十萬，他笑說，少一兩個零會覺得比較安全。
說到批評政府，會場突然斷電，米高風嘎然靜默，全場人都在調笑會場裏是不是有監聽。器材修復，他不忘幽一默，說這不過是技術故障，有時候我們也要負起責任，不能一味責怪政府。
我並不認為他這樣的觀點模稜兩可，態度騎牆，我反而樂見一個藝術家這樣充滿人性，在庸俗世界中遊刃有餘，一點沒顯得曲高和寡。
這可能和他個人在不同文化中的生活經歷有關，蔡國強出生在福建，在上海學舞台設計，一九八六年去了日本，開始了他的爆破藝術習作，一九九五年移居紐約。
蔡國強說，藝術可以表達自己的感情，也可啟發他人，我還覺得，藝術之偉大在於可以令人思想更深刻，而胸懷更開闊。
「蔡國強：農民達芬奇」要表現在集體意願和集體行為以外的這些農民個體的創造力。集體和個人，看似矛盾，其實也並非相生相剋。
世博已經開幕了，你一定看到不少混亂場面，然後尖刻地批判，以中國的國民素質，這是意料中事。你可能覺得世博會只是另一個國際笑話，不值得看。
但是你也可以想想，像蔡國強這樣的個體，作品中宣洩着傳統藝術和社會制度的壓抑，搞個農民創作展覽看似和世博唱反調，卻又獲邀策劃亞太高峰會和奧運等官方活動。
你可以並且應該繼續批判，因為這樣的批判在推動着某種進步，很有必要。但置身在這個社會中，我又不由得感到一點安慰，上海有世博，同時也有「農民達芬奇」，包容性正在逐漸擴大，這就是改變，而且看似方向正確。就算你不來看世博，至少也值得來看看這種改變。
今年五十三歲的蔡國強，以他獨特的火藥草圖和裝置藝術，成為國際當代藝術圈認知度最高的中國藝術家之一，他的作品在各大拍賣行屢屢拍出天價，用最庸俗的說法，是名成利就了，所以我並沒有預期他是這樣平實的人。看起來比實際年輕，穿風褸、卡其褲，一臉陽光笑容。
他介紹自己的創作經歷，提及一個火藥爆破習作，他坐在一塊空地上，醫學儀器監測着他的心跳和腦電波，他保持着平靜，如腳下的大地一樣沉穩，然後，他預先裝置好的火藥爆炸，儀器顯示，他的心跳腦電波和大地同一頻率震動。他在這時候回歸大地，和自然成為一體。
有時他要收起自己，做很自我的創作，有時他又希望展示自己給很多人看，所以他策劃一些大型活動。他說自己就是這樣時內時外，忽左忽右，亦中亦西。
一方面他會為自己有所成就，並可以幫助他人而高興，一方面他又覺得成就這東西很虛。一般人早上起來知道自己那一天會做什麼，但他就漫無目的。在他演說時，他的助手兼傳譯把他作品的拍賣價七千萬元說成是七十萬，他笑說，少一兩個零會覺得比較安全。
說到批評政府，會場突然斷電，米高風嘎然靜默，全場人都在調笑會場裏是不是有監聽。器材修復，他不忘幽一默，說這不過是技術故障，有時候我們也要負起責任，不能一味責怪政府。
我並不認為他這樣的觀點模稜兩可，態度騎牆，我反而樂見一個藝術家這樣充滿人性，在庸俗世界中遊刃有餘，一點沒顯得曲高和寡。
這可能和他個人在不同文化中的生活經歷有關，蔡國強出生在福建，在上海學舞台設計，一九八六年去了日本，開始了他的爆破藝術習作，一九九五年移居紐約。
蔡國強說，藝術可以表達自己的感情，也可啟發他人，我還覺得，藝術之偉大在於可以令人思想更深刻，而胸懷更開闊。
「蔡國強：農民達芬奇」要表現在集體意願和集體行為以外的這些農民個體的創造力。集體和個人，看似矛盾，其實也並非相生相剋。
世博已經開幕了，你一定看到不少混亂場面，然後尖刻地批判，以中國的國民素質，這是意料中事。你可能覺得世博會只是另一個國際笑話，不值得看。
但是你也可以想想，像蔡國強這樣的個體，作品中宣洩着傳統藝術和社會制度的壓抑，搞個農民創作展覽看似和世博唱反調，卻又獲邀策劃亞太高峰會和奧運等官方活動。
你可以並且應該繼續批判，因為這樣的批判在推動着某種進步，很有必要。但置身在這個社會中，我又不由得感到一點安慰，上海有世博，同時也有「農民達芬奇」，包容性正在逐漸擴大，這就是改變，而且看似方向正確。就算你不來看世博，至少也值得來看看這種改變。
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Why artists are turning to video as a medium
Jonathan Brooks-Jones explores a burgeoning art form
Artes Mundi is a biennial competition that showcases the work of emerging artists from around the world. It celebrates art that discusses the human condition and/or the human form. Within that broader area of interest each individual competition, or ‘cycle’, has a central theme that links the artworks. Two new selectors are enlisted each time, who determine each cycle’s theme. This year, its fourth, the selectors are curators Viktor Misiano from Russia and Levent Çalikoğlu from Turkey. Both have a keen interest in political art, and a belief in its capacity to encourage debate. This year, the theme is migration and social mobility, although many others permeate the works, such as globalisation, and the fall of communism.
From over 500 nominations, Misiano and Çalikoğlu short-listed eight artists. A new panel of independent judges from around the world is selected each year, made up of artists, art historians, critics, theorists and curators. The winner of the £40,000 prize will be announced on the 19 May. It is the largest arts prize in the UK and is dedicated to providing a platform for emerging artists.
While there are paintings, drawings and photographic works, it is video art that has the most gallery space. This has drawn a mixed reaction from the public, many of whom complain that there is ‘too much video’.
This might have been expected, but it does seem a little odd that people aren’t excited about the chance to experience what is to many a new art form. In fact it’s not even that new. Video art has existed in the contemporary form since the 1960s, and in other forms even longer. However, the Welsh audience is rarely exposed to it, as there is a lack of modern art galleries in Wales. Video art can be difficult to interpret for one who is not acquainted with it, so I will here try to explain some of the central ideas explored in video art, and why artists are turning to video as a medium.
A common objection is that the artist could have or should have made a movie instead. It is true that artists could make movies instead, but why should they? It is not the sole right of movie-makers in Hollywood and such places to use the medium of film, and it has always been a part of artistic creation to take advantage of new technologies and ways of working. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of video art is its capacity to deconstruct our experience and understanding of moving images on a screen, making us think about how we view television and movies.
Most people are well acquainted with the protocol of visiting the cinema. You sit in your seat, watch the film and keep quiet until the end, when you are once again allowed to talk and move around. While you are entitled to leave whenever you like, there is a tendency to sit it out to the end and ‘get your moneys worth’. Video art, on the other hand, grants the viewer much more freedom.
Bulgarian Ergin Çavuşoğlu is one of the short-listed artists whose work deconstructs our understanding of video and film. He takes up the theme of migration and boundaries in two pieces, Voyage of No Return and Liminal Crossing. The former uses five screens, which are separated, placed at different heights with one placed on the floor, facing up and angled slightly towards the viewer. The central screen features the dialogue and beneath it is the fifth screen, with Welsh subtitles projected onto it.
This film is about migration and questions surrounding identification with a particular place, and seeing it as ‘home’. Voyage of No Return was filmed on location on Oban, an island historically used as a pit-stop when travelling on to the Hebrides, or back to mainland Scotland. Migration is therefore a key part of the island’s history and character. Here, the method of splitting the film onto different screens is used to establish locality, and to try and capture the atmosphere of Oban. This fragmentation of the screens encourages the viewer to interact with the work, perhaps walking up close to a screen and blocking the shaft of light, causing a silhouette, thus in some way becoming a part of the piece. In previous exhibitions he has projected the film directly onto the floor, so the audience can literally walk through it.
One of the interesting aspects in his other piece, Liminal Crossing, is the use of sound. In this film, a group pushes a piano across the Captain Andreevo border between Bulgaria and Turkey. The video is projected onto two screens, which face each other at a 45 – 90 degree angle, with a gap where the two edges meet. The only sound to be heard is that of the wheels turning as the piano is pushed along. This, coupled with the absence of human voices chatting, points to the sombre and somewhat lonely atmosphere. This use of diagetic sound adds realism, and in turn, tension to the piece. This contrasts with his use of a musical score in Voyage of No Return.
For me, the most interesting aspect of the soundtrack is his use of reflections. The purpose of the gap between the two screens is to encourage the viewer to walk behind the screens where only the soundtrack is perceptible. If we venture deep enough into the empty space, we hear the sound as it hits the back wall and reflect back to our ears. This amounts to a rather strange and unique sensation, one rarely experienced outside an acousmatic music event.
Here, Çavuşoğlu is at once deconstructing our understanding of video and film (which really is a post-modern pass-time), and also reforming an idea that has been in circulation since the impressionists, that of light and its reflective qualities.
In all art, light must first of all play a physical, and perhaps rather obvious role, in that it enables us to see the works in the first place. This is true in painting and other forms of art, but its role is extended in video art. Light must first hit the subject, reflect into the artist’s eye and the lens of the camera. Light is then shone through the film in order to project the image onto the screen. From there it is reflected into the eyes of the audience. As with the impressionists, the importance of light has taken on a role of conceptual importance, in which the art comes to discuss light.
For example, Per Speculum by Albanian artist Adrian Paci, draws our attention to the importance of light. In the final, wide-angle shot, a group of children sit in amongst the branches of a tree and use the broken pieces of a mirror to reflect the sunlight back to the camera. This draws our attention to the distance travelled by light, especially in video art. Paci also draws our attention to the projector, a unique feature of video art. He does this by using a particularly old-fashioned and noisy one (however, against the artist’s intentions, for health and safety reasons it had to be sealed in a metal box, thus trapping much of its sound).
The importance of light and the projector may also be seen in Çavuşoğlu’s choice of where to mount the plaque with his name and title of the work (Voyage…). It is placed on the wall onto which the projectors are mounted. This suggests that the projector, and the role it performs, is of equal importance to the installation as a whole.
For many, video and film seems too commercial, because we are so used to it being used for commercial purposes such as adverts, television, movies and music videos. While some of these may be termed ‘artistic’, video art’s focus is directed exclusively on the artistic capacity of video.
Part of video art’s power comes from the fact that we are so used to seeing video and film in other forms. This means that when we are asked to look at video as an artistic form, and it contains images we are not expecting, the effect is automatically, at first, surreal. Imagine tuning into the Chris Moyles show and hearing the music of Arnold Schoenberg! Hearing music without a tonal centre is likely to be a new and unsettling experience for the average Radio 1 listener in any case, but it is doubly surprising because that is the last place one would expect to hear atonal music. Similarly, we are so used to the kind of content normally contained on video, that when we see something more artistic and adventurous than, say, Coronation Street or Big Brother, it tends to shock. This gives video art added depth of impact.
As Çavuşoğlu demonstrates with his experimental approach, one thing video art does is reference other forms, styles and techniques. In a sense this makes them ‘antique’. The new, reformed use of an old style can bring us a new awareness of it. Previously we just took it for granted and didn’t normally think about where it had come from, it simply exists. When something is presented to us again, and we are asked to look at it afresh, we tend to understand it differently.
While some artists dispense with the use of a narrative plot, others make use of a reformed narrative style in order to get their point across. Israeli artist, Yael Bartana, makes use of narrative form in her piece Wall and Tower, which is, in my opinion, one of the strongest pieces at this year’s Artes Mundi. This piece, which is the second in a trilogy, raises questions about nationalism and Zionism by depicting the construction of a kibbutz (which has a striking resemblance to a concentration camp) in what used to be the Warsaw ghetto. The film opens with a speech written and delivered by (real-life left-wing activist and campaigner) Slawomir Sierakowski, calling all Jews to return to Poland.
This piece is one of the most thorough and comprehensive works in the exhibition, in which each part bears the weight of the whole. The enlistment of a real-life political activist, the use of propaganda film styles, through to the printing and supplication of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland’s manifesto, as well as instructions on how to build a wall and tower like the one in the film. The artist’s instructions are to ‘take and distribute’, adding yet another layer to an already complex piece. It is also interesting because the movement did not exist before the first film had been made, and Bartana apparently did not even intend to start the movement by creating this artwork. She was merely trying to “ask questions, not tell people what to think”. A likely story! In any case, those questions are being raised, about nationalism, Zionism, the situation in Israel and Palestine, and also Poland (an interesting blog about the Polish reaction to this piece can be read here).
This film makes use of cinematic, documentary, and propaganda film techniques. It is a highly effecting piece, due to the polished acting and musical soundtrack, featuring the triumphant sounding Polish national anthem. The use of cinematic formulae probably makes it easier to digest for the uninitiated, while the content remains highly engaging and requires the viewer to keep watching in order to see where it is going. This is also an example, by the way, of a film that probably should be seen all the way through in order to fully appreciate the meaning, which is not immediately given to the viewer on a plate, but is slowly teased out as the events unfold.
Another idea at work in video art is the performative aspect. Considering a piece of video as a performance raises the question of which part, exactly, does the art consist in – is it the subject? The film of the subject? The (temporary) projection of the film? Which part is valuable? Is it the film itself, or the moment at which it is projected onto a screen? Is the screening to be considered a ‘performance’?
Video art differs from other forms of art because paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings etc. are physically there, mounted on the wall, or placed on a stand or otherwise. Of course, a projected video is in some way ‘physically’ there, but in a different way, it is, rather, the projection of something which has happened before that has been captured on film, and is not actually happening any more. Note the difference between this and a play or performance art piece, which are viewed as they happen.
Artists have always been interested in the elements that are unique to a particular form of art. For example, sculpture has the greatest capacity for three-dimensional work. However, it is also interesting that some painters have taken their work in a three-dimensional direction. Expressionist painter Frank Auerbach layers oil paints onto the canvas in thick measure (‘impasto’), thus creating works that have a three-dimensional quality. This links in with the earlier point about the practice of reforming other styles, which much modern art is concerned with.
So, for artists making video, the materials that are unique to them are movement and time. No other art form has the capacity to explore those materials in quite the same way. Performance art, of course, features movement, and is often referred to as ‘time-based art’. However, video has a greater control over these materials, as video can be sped up or slowed down to any degree. An interesting example in which this is done is the film See you later / Au Revoir, by Michael Snow, in which a 30 second interaction is slowed down to last twelve minutes. Video art has a somewhat stronger hold over the manipulation of time as a material than performance art. However, performance artists have a stronger hold on the performative aspect, which video art sometimes tries to incorporate, as touched on above.
Finally, something must be said about the political nature of much of the work at this year’s Artes Mundi. It was suggested during one of the lunchtime tours, that the serious political nature of many of the pieces makes it difficult for those who are new to video art to get the most out of them. The fact that it overwhelms some may be taken to show that video is worthy of political art, in that it has the capacity to convey the seriousness and magnitude of social and political problems, themselves often overwhelming.
The crucial point to make here is that for political art to be successful in raising awareness and encouraging debate, it must refuse to offer any resolution. If a work of art has a political impetus, and that political issue remains unresolved, the film must end without having supplied resolution. If a film supplies resolution, it makes it far easier for the viewer to walk away and forget all about it.
Many of the pieces at the Artes Mundi resist the supplication of resolution. In particular, Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen’s work features the staunchest resistance to resolution, and is unlikely to leave the viewer’s conscience for some time once it has been absorbed. His films entitled Empire’s Borders 1 & 2, feature women from Taiwan telling the stories of how their husbands have been detained for no good reason whilst traveling to in and out of Taiwan. There is no resolution, because the men are still detained, and their wives have no idea when they will see them again. Bartana’s work also resists the supplication of resolution, partly due to the fact that the final part of the trilogy is yet to have been made. It will be interesting to see how the final installment turns out.
In conclusion, we have seen that there are a great number of ideas at work in this burgeoning art form. We can see that it is valid, not least because it has often been thoroughly worked and reworked at all stages from conception to production to screening. Avant-garde film is almost always designed to confront the viewer, who is often forced to concentrate and think about what it is they’re viewing.
It is also important to remember that as it is a new form, there is an element of experimentation to video art. This can cause problems, such as the overflow of sound between pieces in close proximity to one another. The worst case of this at the Artes Mundi is that the soundtrack from Wall and Tower can be heard when one is watching Chieh-jen’s other piece, Factory, which is meant to be a silent film. However, I would say that while this is unfortunate, it is perhaps to be expected, as the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff was never designed to exhibit video works, and was not purpose built to prevent such overspill. It is also indicative of something larger and more exciting happening in the world of art, the growth of something that feels like a new form.
The public’s unfavourable reaction may be put down to a general reluctance to appreciate something new and crucially, unfamiliar. In a world where we are bombarded with the eternal sameness of mainstream art, music, theatre and film it can be difficult for people to accept something more or less unprecedented in their cultural experience. It requires more ‘cultural capital’, to use Bourdieu’s phrase, than dominant mainstream culture provides us. However, the galleries were busy on many of the occasions that I visited. This is down to the good work of the Artes Mundi association, which no-doubt encourages interest in the avant-garde.
Indeed, as a burgeoning art form video is conceptually and aesthetically rich. It provides the artist with unique opportunities to experiment with a vast array of elements: screen, soundtrack, projector, content, style, and others. While it may require a little more effort to unravel the meaning of a piece, it can be a highly rewarding and unique experience, one that is likely to become easier the more often we’re exposed to it. It is helpful, therefore, that Artes Mundi employs a team of ‘live guides’ who have met the artists and discussed the pieces with them. They act as the link between the artist and the public that is all-too-often missing from modern art galleries. They provide a valuable insight into the meaning and history behind the works.
Bookmark and Share
Tags: Artes Mundi, cinema, Deconstruction, Ergin Cavusoglu, Impressionism, Migration and Social Mobility, performance art, Video art, Yael Bartana
Jonathan Brooks-Jones is an intern with the IWA
Artes Mundi is a biennial competition that showcases the work of emerging artists from around the world. It celebrates art that discusses the human condition and/or the human form. Within that broader area of interest each individual competition, or ‘cycle’, has a central theme that links the artworks. Two new selectors are enlisted each time, who determine each cycle’s theme. This year, its fourth, the selectors are curators Viktor Misiano from Russia and Levent Çalikoğlu from Turkey. Both have a keen interest in political art, and a belief in its capacity to encourage debate. This year, the theme is migration and social mobility, although many others permeate the works, such as globalisation, and the fall of communism.
From over 500 nominations, Misiano and Çalikoğlu short-listed eight artists. A new panel of independent judges from around the world is selected each year, made up of artists, art historians, critics, theorists and curators. The winner of the £40,000 prize will be announced on the 19 May. It is the largest arts prize in the UK and is dedicated to providing a platform for emerging artists.
While there are paintings, drawings and photographic works, it is video art that has the most gallery space. This has drawn a mixed reaction from the public, many of whom complain that there is ‘too much video’.
This might have been expected, but it does seem a little odd that people aren’t excited about the chance to experience what is to many a new art form. In fact it’s not even that new. Video art has existed in the contemporary form since the 1960s, and in other forms even longer. However, the Welsh audience is rarely exposed to it, as there is a lack of modern art galleries in Wales. Video art can be difficult to interpret for one who is not acquainted with it, so I will here try to explain some of the central ideas explored in video art, and why artists are turning to video as a medium.
A common objection is that the artist could have or should have made a movie instead. It is true that artists could make movies instead, but why should they? It is not the sole right of movie-makers in Hollywood and such places to use the medium of film, and it has always been a part of artistic creation to take advantage of new technologies and ways of working. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of video art is its capacity to deconstruct our experience and understanding of moving images on a screen, making us think about how we view television and movies.
Most people are well acquainted with the protocol of visiting the cinema. You sit in your seat, watch the film and keep quiet until the end, when you are once again allowed to talk and move around. While you are entitled to leave whenever you like, there is a tendency to sit it out to the end and ‘get your moneys worth’. Video art, on the other hand, grants the viewer much more freedom.
Bulgarian Ergin Çavuşoğlu is one of the short-listed artists whose work deconstructs our understanding of video and film. He takes up the theme of migration and boundaries in two pieces, Voyage of No Return and Liminal Crossing. The former uses five screens, which are separated, placed at different heights with one placed on the floor, facing up and angled slightly towards the viewer. The central screen features the dialogue and beneath it is the fifth screen, with Welsh subtitles projected onto it.
This film is about migration and questions surrounding identification with a particular place, and seeing it as ‘home’. Voyage of No Return was filmed on location on Oban, an island historically used as a pit-stop when travelling on to the Hebrides, or back to mainland Scotland. Migration is therefore a key part of the island’s history and character. Here, the method of splitting the film onto different screens is used to establish locality, and to try and capture the atmosphere of Oban. This fragmentation of the screens encourages the viewer to interact with the work, perhaps walking up close to a screen and blocking the shaft of light, causing a silhouette, thus in some way becoming a part of the piece. In previous exhibitions he has projected the film directly onto the floor, so the audience can literally walk through it.
One of the interesting aspects in his other piece, Liminal Crossing, is the use of sound. In this film, a group pushes a piano across the Captain Andreevo border between Bulgaria and Turkey. The video is projected onto two screens, which face each other at a 45 – 90 degree angle, with a gap where the two edges meet. The only sound to be heard is that of the wheels turning as the piano is pushed along. This, coupled with the absence of human voices chatting, points to the sombre and somewhat lonely atmosphere. This use of diagetic sound adds realism, and in turn, tension to the piece. This contrasts with his use of a musical score in Voyage of No Return.
For me, the most interesting aspect of the soundtrack is his use of reflections. The purpose of the gap between the two screens is to encourage the viewer to walk behind the screens where only the soundtrack is perceptible. If we venture deep enough into the empty space, we hear the sound as it hits the back wall and reflect back to our ears. This amounts to a rather strange and unique sensation, one rarely experienced outside an acousmatic music event.
Here, Çavuşoğlu is at once deconstructing our understanding of video and film (which really is a post-modern pass-time), and also reforming an idea that has been in circulation since the impressionists, that of light and its reflective qualities.
In all art, light must first of all play a physical, and perhaps rather obvious role, in that it enables us to see the works in the first place. This is true in painting and other forms of art, but its role is extended in video art. Light must first hit the subject, reflect into the artist’s eye and the lens of the camera. Light is then shone through the film in order to project the image onto the screen. From there it is reflected into the eyes of the audience. As with the impressionists, the importance of light has taken on a role of conceptual importance, in which the art comes to discuss light.
For example, Per Speculum by Albanian artist Adrian Paci, draws our attention to the importance of light. In the final, wide-angle shot, a group of children sit in amongst the branches of a tree and use the broken pieces of a mirror to reflect the sunlight back to the camera. This draws our attention to the distance travelled by light, especially in video art. Paci also draws our attention to the projector, a unique feature of video art. He does this by using a particularly old-fashioned and noisy one (however, against the artist’s intentions, for health and safety reasons it had to be sealed in a metal box, thus trapping much of its sound).
The importance of light and the projector may also be seen in Çavuşoğlu’s choice of where to mount the plaque with his name and title of the work (Voyage…). It is placed on the wall onto which the projectors are mounted. This suggests that the projector, and the role it performs, is of equal importance to the installation as a whole.
For many, video and film seems too commercial, because we are so used to it being used for commercial purposes such as adverts, television, movies and music videos. While some of these may be termed ‘artistic’, video art’s focus is directed exclusively on the artistic capacity of video.
Part of video art’s power comes from the fact that we are so used to seeing video and film in other forms. This means that when we are asked to look at video as an artistic form, and it contains images we are not expecting, the effect is automatically, at first, surreal. Imagine tuning into the Chris Moyles show and hearing the music of Arnold Schoenberg! Hearing music without a tonal centre is likely to be a new and unsettling experience for the average Radio 1 listener in any case, but it is doubly surprising because that is the last place one would expect to hear atonal music. Similarly, we are so used to the kind of content normally contained on video, that when we see something more artistic and adventurous than, say, Coronation Street or Big Brother, it tends to shock. This gives video art added depth of impact.
As Çavuşoğlu demonstrates with his experimental approach, one thing video art does is reference other forms, styles and techniques. In a sense this makes them ‘antique’. The new, reformed use of an old style can bring us a new awareness of it. Previously we just took it for granted and didn’t normally think about where it had come from, it simply exists. When something is presented to us again, and we are asked to look at it afresh, we tend to understand it differently.
While some artists dispense with the use of a narrative plot, others make use of a reformed narrative style in order to get their point across. Israeli artist, Yael Bartana, makes use of narrative form in her piece Wall and Tower, which is, in my opinion, one of the strongest pieces at this year’s Artes Mundi. This piece, which is the second in a trilogy, raises questions about nationalism and Zionism by depicting the construction of a kibbutz (which has a striking resemblance to a concentration camp) in what used to be the Warsaw ghetto. The film opens with a speech written and delivered by (real-life left-wing activist and campaigner) Slawomir Sierakowski, calling all Jews to return to Poland.
This piece is one of the most thorough and comprehensive works in the exhibition, in which each part bears the weight of the whole. The enlistment of a real-life political activist, the use of propaganda film styles, through to the printing and supplication of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland’s manifesto, as well as instructions on how to build a wall and tower like the one in the film. The artist’s instructions are to ‘take and distribute’, adding yet another layer to an already complex piece. It is also interesting because the movement did not exist before the first film had been made, and Bartana apparently did not even intend to start the movement by creating this artwork. She was merely trying to “ask questions, not tell people what to think”. A likely story! In any case, those questions are being raised, about nationalism, Zionism, the situation in Israel and Palestine, and also Poland (an interesting blog about the Polish reaction to this piece can be read here).
This film makes use of cinematic, documentary, and propaganda film techniques. It is a highly effecting piece, due to the polished acting and musical soundtrack, featuring the triumphant sounding Polish national anthem. The use of cinematic formulae probably makes it easier to digest for the uninitiated, while the content remains highly engaging and requires the viewer to keep watching in order to see where it is going. This is also an example, by the way, of a film that probably should be seen all the way through in order to fully appreciate the meaning, which is not immediately given to the viewer on a plate, but is slowly teased out as the events unfold.
Another idea at work in video art is the performative aspect. Considering a piece of video as a performance raises the question of which part, exactly, does the art consist in – is it the subject? The film of the subject? The (temporary) projection of the film? Which part is valuable? Is it the film itself, or the moment at which it is projected onto a screen? Is the screening to be considered a ‘performance’?
Video art differs from other forms of art because paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings etc. are physically there, mounted on the wall, or placed on a stand or otherwise. Of course, a projected video is in some way ‘physically’ there, but in a different way, it is, rather, the projection of something which has happened before that has been captured on film, and is not actually happening any more. Note the difference between this and a play or performance art piece, which are viewed as they happen.
Artists have always been interested in the elements that are unique to a particular form of art. For example, sculpture has the greatest capacity for three-dimensional work. However, it is also interesting that some painters have taken their work in a three-dimensional direction. Expressionist painter Frank Auerbach layers oil paints onto the canvas in thick measure (‘impasto’), thus creating works that have a three-dimensional quality. This links in with the earlier point about the practice of reforming other styles, which much modern art is concerned with.
So, for artists making video, the materials that are unique to them are movement and time. No other art form has the capacity to explore those materials in quite the same way. Performance art, of course, features movement, and is often referred to as ‘time-based art’. However, video has a greater control over these materials, as video can be sped up or slowed down to any degree. An interesting example in which this is done is the film See you later / Au Revoir, by Michael Snow, in which a 30 second interaction is slowed down to last twelve minutes. Video art has a somewhat stronger hold over the manipulation of time as a material than performance art. However, performance artists have a stronger hold on the performative aspect, which video art sometimes tries to incorporate, as touched on above.
Finally, something must be said about the political nature of much of the work at this year’s Artes Mundi. It was suggested during one of the lunchtime tours, that the serious political nature of many of the pieces makes it difficult for those who are new to video art to get the most out of them. The fact that it overwhelms some may be taken to show that video is worthy of political art, in that it has the capacity to convey the seriousness and magnitude of social and political problems, themselves often overwhelming.
The crucial point to make here is that for political art to be successful in raising awareness and encouraging debate, it must refuse to offer any resolution. If a work of art has a political impetus, and that political issue remains unresolved, the film must end without having supplied resolution. If a film supplies resolution, it makes it far easier for the viewer to walk away and forget all about it.
Many of the pieces at the Artes Mundi resist the supplication of resolution. In particular, Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen’s work features the staunchest resistance to resolution, and is unlikely to leave the viewer’s conscience for some time once it has been absorbed. His films entitled Empire’s Borders 1 & 2, feature women from Taiwan telling the stories of how their husbands have been detained for no good reason whilst traveling to in and out of Taiwan. There is no resolution, because the men are still detained, and their wives have no idea when they will see them again. Bartana’s work also resists the supplication of resolution, partly due to the fact that the final part of the trilogy is yet to have been made. It will be interesting to see how the final installment turns out.
In conclusion, we have seen that there are a great number of ideas at work in this burgeoning art form. We can see that it is valid, not least because it has often been thoroughly worked and reworked at all stages from conception to production to screening. Avant-garde film is almost always designed to confront the viewer, who is often forced to concentrate and think about what it is they’re viewing.
It is also important to remember that as it is a new form, there is an element of experimentation to video art. This can cause problems, such as the overflow of sound between pieces in close proximity to one another. The worst case of this at the Artes Mundi is that the soundtrack from Wall and Tower can be heard when one is watching Chieh-jen’s other piece, Factory, which is meant to be a silent film. However, I would say that while this is unfortunate, it is perhaps to be expected, as the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff was never designed to exhibit video works, and was not purpose built to prevent such overspill. It is also indicative of something larger and more exciting happening in the world of art, the growth of something that feels like a new form.
The public’s unfavourable reaction may be put down to a general reluctance to appreciate something new and crucially, unfamiliar. In a world where we are bombarded with the eternal sameness of mainstream art, music, theatre and film it can be difficult for people to accept something more or less unprecedented in their cultural experience. It requires more ‘cultural capital’, to use Bourdieu’s phrase, than dominant mainstream culture provides us. However, the galleries were busy on many of the occasions that I visited. This is down to the good work of the Artes Mundi association, which no-doubt encourages interest in the avant-garde.
Indeed, as a burgeoning art form video is conceptually and aesthetically rich. It provides the artist with unique opportunities to experiment with a vast array of elements: screen, soundtrack, projector, content, style, and others. While it may require a little more effort to unravel the meaning of a piece, it can be a highly rewarding and unique experience, one that is likely to become easier the more often we’re exposed to it. It is helpful, therefore, that Artes Mundi employs a team of ‘live guides’ who have met the artists and discussed the pieces with them. They act as the link between the artist and the public that is all-too-often missing from modern art galleries. They provide a valuable insight into the meaning and history behind the works.
Bookmark and Share
Tags: Artes Mundi, cinema, Deconstruction, Ergin Cavusoglu, Impressionism, Migration and Social Mobility, performance art, Video art, Yael Bartana
Jonathan Brooks-Jones is an intern with the IWA
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