Melbourne-based sculptor; DF's former housemate.
I remember the first time I went to their house on Johnston St in early 2007, the studio was full of weapons he was making from found objects, which I thought were frikken awesome.
Also especially liked: Lost Dog and Your Best Friend.
Joshua Sofaer (b. 1972 Cambridge, England) is an artist who is centrally concerned with modes of collaboration and participation.
From Perform Every Day:
In a world of natural look makeup where people spend hours putting on various different applications in an attempt to look like they are wearing none at all, is it any wonder that there is some confusion over what reality might really be?
Part of this confusion is to do with performance; how to discern ‘what is’ and ‘what is performance’? From the global ramifications of party and nation politics to the esoteric world of live art, from the tragic spectacular of international terrorism to the undergraduate drama student, from the stock-market to soap-opera, from high performance drugs to performance studies – ‘performance’ is the modus operandi of contemporary culture. It seems now that there is only performance.
Do not despair!
If we begin to understand the things we take for granted in our everyday lives as constructs of performance in and of themselves, if we relish these everyday performances for what they offer us, then there is hope. We become the audience of our very own private theatre.
Also: Any Questions; Seven Reasons Why Live Art Gives Great Value.
"As an artist, I have a big problem," he said to me once. "I don't really like art. I just love fucking with peoples' heads."
Yeah.
"Interventionist performance art", he's calling it now. Previously known as "interactive public theatre". I still like "reality art". Whatever it is, it's something else.
Interesting review of "Sherrie". Origin of the spycam. Missing Person --> Who Is Robert Henley?. Oh, and then there's this. Changed my life, y'know.
I miss the evil bastard. He's never dull.
(Previously.)
Googling on the phrase "telepathy project", I found this. See also.
I think most people would call this psychosis, not art. But like many manifestations of delusional paranoia, it's also recognisable as beautiful art, even if it wasn't created with that intent.
We all live in our own dreamworld(s) - some people's are just more divergent from the norm (and, for better or worse, a lot more interesting) than others'.
Whilst on the subject of interactional installations involving post-its mounted in windows as part of Next Wave '08, there's this.
(Sidenote: Another term for 'telepathy' is 'thought transference'. Both refer to a 'paranormal' phenomenon. But even the most hardened materialist skeptic with half a brain would concede that we all 'transfer thoughts' all the time, in all kinds of ways. Some very obvious and direct; some extremely subtle and amorphous.)
(Via DF.)
Absence was a performance installation mounted in the Degraves St Subway as part of last year's Next Wave.
Japanese born, Brisbane based artist Hiromi Tango is inhabiting Vitrine at Platform in the Campbell Arcade subway throughout the 2008 Festival. During her time there her objective is to hand-stitch collected ‘feelings and voices’ and develop a collaborative sculpture with the theme of ‘absence’. Her personal engagement with the site, situation and the community that passes will determine the final outcome of the artwork.In 2006 and 2007, Hiromi undertook 18 months of research in Hong Kong, New Zealand, the USA, Japan and Australia, which involved meeting people, listening to their stories and recording her interactions. Hiromi also received photos, personal letters, writings, drawings, diaries and personal items from the people she met. For the past six months Hiromi has been hand-stitching these stories and objects, while considering the authors’ absence.
Absence will contribute to a more critical understanding of how artist and public engagement is defined, and how the artist can intervene into a particular space, potentially generating unexpected moments of intimacy and tension.
How much of the exchange is me and how much of it is you? Is it possible to understand each other?
Age article. Time magazine article (!). Flickr set of Craig's work.
It soon emerged that Craig is actually a ripoff of Chris, aka New Yorker Todd Lamb.
But I still like Craig better (and not just because he's local).
Link.
Blurb:
By taking a perspective usually limited to looking at art in the museum to the everyday world I interact with existing public situations. The consequences of these encounters are interventions or temporary installations which are often abandoned. In this process the artist subjugates himself to the act of perception by being anonymous.
Yes.
From Wikipedia:
Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature. She claims that as a small child she suffered severe physical abuse by her mother.
Early in Kusama's career, she began covering surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots that would become a trademark of her work. The vast fields of polka dots, or "infinity nets," as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations.
She left her native country at the age of 27 for New York City, after years of correspondence with Georgia O'Keeffe in which she became interested in joining the limelight in the city. During her time in the U.S., she quickly established her reputation as a leader in the avant-garde movement. She organized outlandish happenings in conspicuous spots like Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge, often involving nudity and designed to protest the Vietnam War. She was enormously productive, but did not profit financially from her work. She returned to Japan in ill health in 1973.
Today she lives, by choice, in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital. "If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago," Kusama is often quoted as saying.
Well, despite a surprisingly effortless and ostensibly quite successful interview, I didn't get into VCA. Stranger Of The Month aren't returning my calls. Rob Hely asked me to help him with a project of his, but I think he's decided he doesn't like me any more. (He called me a manipulative psychopath, which was so funny it was almost worth alienating him for.) Beloved Freakley has moved to Perth and dedicated herself to talking in quotes absolutely all of the time. I admire her commitment, but our conversations just aren't the same somehow.
It's hard not to go "Well, The Legitimate Art World, I did my best to be your friend but at the end of the day you just couldn't love me for me." Or maybe it's the other way around. Who knows.
So what now? Maybe I'll do this course. Maybe I'll do a part-time course at PSC. Although I'm primarily interested in more conceptual forms of art, I think I need a better grounding in a conventional visual art form as a means of entry into the field. Or something.
Hmmm.
Update (March '09): What I need to do - what I should have applied for in 2007, instead of a BFA which was stupid-overambitious - is a Diploma of Visual Art. Duh.
I'll be done just in time for the apocalypse; it'll be great.
