Aimlessness

" In Buddhism, there is a word, apranibita. It means wishlessness or aimlessness. The idea is that we do not put anything ahead of ourselves and run after it. When we practice walking meditation, we walk in this spirit. We just enjoy the walking, with no particular aim or destination. Our walking is not a means to an end. We walk for the sake of walking" (The Long Road Turns to Joy: A Guide to Walking Meditation p 6). 

"This world has many paths. Some are lined with beautiful trees, some wind around fragrant fields; some are covered with leaves and blossoms. But if we walk on them with a heavy heart, we will not appreciate them at all" (p 9).

I just found out about the philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh the other day in my Religions class. A lot of his teachings are going to be very helpful when it comes to my work. The above quotes are from his book about walking meditation. This directly ties into what I am doing this semester. I guess I had just never realized that my project is based around walking meditation. I spend a lot of time wandering around in my various environments, getting a feel for what's around me. The idea of aimlessness is very appealing to me when it comes to making my images. I don't like having a set direction for where I'm going. I just start walking and see where I end up. I can't wait till I have a full day or a full weekend to be able to lose myself in a new place, wandering aimlessly. I feel like this will have a huge impact on my work and hopefully will help it grow. Today during the mid-crit I almost felt at a dead-end. I'm satisfied with my images but I feel like I need to go in a new direction, whether it's a completely different environment or a different method of working, or both. I'm excited to keep researching this philosopher and his various teachings.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Long Road Turns to Joy: a Guide to Walking Meditation. Berkeley, CA: Parallax, 1996. Print.

Flowers, Trees, Birds, Bees: Nature Explored Call for Entries

 

DONE DID

Zoe Beloff Question/Response

1. Why is it important that the viewer be able to interact with some of your installation pieces and films and not others?
2. How is your work that is psychically based related to your personal, autobiographical work? Do you even relate the two?

I was really excited to see Zoe Beloff speak yesterday. I already felt attracted to her work because it delves into the paranormal, psychological, and the unconscious mind. I became a bit disinterested when she was describing her current work. I thought her idea with the five dioramas was really interesting but when I saw the piece with the actors acting out the hysteria it just felt a bit ridiculous. Finally, in the end when she came out and said that everything was made up in her head and Albert Grass was actually "her" I reversed my decision. The idea that all of her work is made up is really interesting to me, especially the fact that many people don't know it's all fake. They might have an idea because a lot of her work is so fantastical but many just take her word for it and believe that the psychoanalytic society is real or that Albert Grass was a real person in the movement. The whole concept behind Beloff's work is manifesting the unconscious and probing what is real and unreal. She tries to create a dialogue with the past, filming scenes that occurred in the 19th century and using the same equipment or film that would have been used then. I really liked the exhibit at Coney Island. I think the diagrams and models for the Dreamland were really interesting. I also enjoyed the films for the Contemporary Psychoanalytic Society. Filming your dreams is another way of probing the distance between real and unreal. Sometimes our dreams can seem so realistic that when we wake up we have a hard time distinguishing what really happened and what didn't. Beloff was able to answer one of my questions in her lecture. I wondered how all of her work related to each other, not knowing that her work that was more based in the psychic world was completely fabricated by her and what she considered a part of herself. She stated that a lot of her work is biographical, just not in the literal sense. She and Albert Grass are the same person, therefore she able to project her views through him and through the rest of the project. Zoe Beloff's lecture was definitely one of my favorite lectures that I have seen at VCU.

Ned Kahn

Ned Kahn is an environmental artist and sculptor. His work usually involves "capturing an invisible aspect of nature and making it visible; examples include building facades that move in waves in response to wind; indoor tornadoes and vortices made of fog, steam, or fire; a transparent sphere containing water and sand which, when spun, erodes a beach-like ripple pattern into the sand surface" (wikipedia.org). He won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant fellowship in 2003 and the National Design Award for environmental design in 2005. Kahn currently lives and works in California. Kahn's work provides insight into contemporary society.

"On the one hand, he has a strong commitment to making projects that respond to their environment and to individual viewers. On the other hand, he seeks out natural complexity, and he knows intimately how natural turbulence can develop in technological systems" (http://www.nedkahn.com/biography.html).

Kahn is an artist I just happened to stumble upon in an artist's directory. His work is almost in the same vein as Andy Goldsworthy and also Chris Welsby. He uses nature to create these monumental sculptures. Nature works with his projects, much like Welsby's, where wind and other natural elements make the cameras move.

"In contrast to Turrell, Goldsworthy and Eliasson, however, Kahn harnesses kinetic, natural forces within formal, exhibition settings, and his works come to resemble interactive science experiments" (http://www.nedkahn.com/biography.html). In one of his projects, Slice of Wind, 10,000 metal discs move freely and reflect light as the wind passes through them. I enjoy the kinetic nature of Kahn's work. It's a lot like what I am doing now, where I just set my camera down and expose for long periods of time, letting nature do its thing. All I do is sit and capture it. I like the fact that all of his work is a scientific experiment. He makes these "experiments" yet they function as art so everyone can interact with them.

http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/interact/context/nedkahn.html

 www.newlangtonarts.org

http://www.nedkahn.com/

31st Annual Photography Contest

Magic

"Magic takes place in a curious world of paradox. When seeing a clever magical trick, the delight is in the fact that we don’t know how it is done, that we can permit ourselves the sneaking suspicion, if only for a moment, that perhaps, at last, here is some real magic, that there are no hidden wires, no rigged props, no stooges in the audience, but what we are witnessing is one hundred percent, real, authentic magic. The pleasure is in the ambivalence. And the idea of real magic hovers just out of reach, claims to its existence almost impossible to counter, because it occupies a twilight realm of anecdote, rumour and endless tales about what a friend of a friend saw" (thinkbuddha.org).

There is a certain aspect of magic related to my work. You can see it in my meditations and in the images themselves. Sometimes when I look at my work I wonder how the image came to be. "Modern Western magicians generally state magic's primary purpose to be personal spiritual growth,^[4] many seeing magic ritual purely in psychological terms as a powerful means of autosuggestion and of contacting the unconscious mind" (wikipedia.org). If magic is related to spiritual growth then an element of magic is definitely ingrained within my work. The act of meditating is a magical experience in an of itself. You get to be by yourself within your thoughts for an undisclosed period of time. The feeling is different for everyone but I know that every time I finish meditating I feel different and I see the world in a different light. I'm hoping that my images convey that sense of magic and mysticism.

Thorndike, Lynn (1923-1958) (8 volumes). A History of Magic and Experimental Science. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0231087942.

James Turell

Born to Quaker parents, Turell was born in 1943 in Pasadena, California. His work mainly focuses on light and space. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984. His work is represented by the Pace Gallery in New York. He received a B.A. degree in perceptual psychology from Pomona College and an M.A. degree in art from Claremont Graduate School, University of California. He is best known for his work in progress, Roden Crater. He is turning a natural cinder volcanic crater into a massive naked-eye observatory designed especially for viewing celestial phenomena. His other works "usually enclose the viewer in order to control their perception of light" (wikipedia.org).

"I feel my work is made for one being, one individual. You could say that's me, but that's not really true. It's for an idealized viewer. Sometimes I'm kind of cranky coming to see something. I saw the Mona Lisa when it was in L.A., saw it for 13 seconds and had to move on. But, you know, there's this slow-food movement right now. Maybe we could also have a slow-art movement, and take an hour" (wikipedia.org). While his work is mostly focused on light and space, it is still connected to nature. He's trying to get the viewers to connect to the space they are in and get in tune with that environment. Essentially that is what I'm doing, using photographs, sound, and film.

"Turrell's works defy the accelerated habits of people especially when looking at art. He feels that viewers spend so little time with the art that it makes it hard to appreciate" (wikipedia.org). I enjoy the fact that he is making art that forces the viewer to take time and actually pay attention and appreciate what they are looking at. We bypass so much beauty everyday because we are in such a hurry to live our daily lives.

http://thepacegallery.com/

http://conversations.org/story.php?sid=32

www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/

Meditation

Since I have started working on this series, meditation has become one of my top priorities. In the beginning, I never would have expected how much of an impact meditation would have on my life. It has become one of the main focuses in my body of work. A lot of the images depend on my meditating and connecting to the environments that I put myself in. Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, states that meditation is "the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well. Meditation is the road to enlightenment." Since starting this project, I fully believe in that statement. Putting myself out in nature, allowing myself quiet time to connect to the world around me has done me so much good. I think that's why I am able to capture the images I capture. I could just as easily employ the same methods of photography and capture images that look like crap without saying anything to the viewer when they look at them. I believe that letting myself go in the environment and learning how to appreciate my surroundings has made a big difference in the work I'm producing. Meditation "often involves invoking and cultivating a feeling or internal state" (wikipedia.org). When I am out photographing, I stop to meditate for awhile first. After a period of time I feel something within myself. Usually it's an overall calming feeling as well as a vast appreciation for everything around me. I see the world through new eyes and in a more positive light than ever before. It's this practice that is very beneficial to my work and to myself as a person in the long run.

Rinpoche, Sogyai, Patrick Gaffney, and Andrew Harvey. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. [San Francisco, Calif.]: Harper San Francisco, 1992. Print.

Alexey Titarenko

Titarenko received his M.F.A. from the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad's Institute of Culture in 1983. Since his work had no connection to Soviet propaganda, he wasn't able to publicly declare himself an artist until 1989 with his exhibition "Nomenclature of Signs". He was also the creator of Ligovka 99, a photographer's exhibition space that was independent of the Communist ideology. His photographic series from the 1990s have won him worldwide recognition.

"By shooting slow shutter speeds and multiple exposures he essentially stops time and reveals a mysterious, ethereal world that resides between the shadows" (Burnstine, Susan; Black and White Photography; p 20). Titarenko's images of crowds of people initially drew me to the work. His images with slow shutter speeds are absolutely beautiful. The way the subjects leave trails as they move while having their hands remain in focus is just incredible. Recently I have been doing some experimentation with slow shutter speeds. I set up my camera and then just turn the shutter on and let nature do the rest.

"[I]n the purest tradition of documentary photography, Titarenko plucks fragments from daily life with no staging whatsoever. But the use of long exposures and the subtlety of his black-and-white cameos endow the reality he confronts with a metaphysical dimension, timeless and introspective" (Bouruet-Aubertot, Veronique; Beaux Arts Magazine). I'm also interested in the idea of not staging anything. I am coming into this project from a documentary perspective. I want to capture nature or urban environments in all their glory and show their beauty. I want to show the things that we often ignore when we are walking to work in the morning or going to school.

 http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/press/titarenko_shots.pdf

 http://www.philamuseum.org/

http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/index.html

Cary Street Gym!

VMFA Slide Slam Submission

Travel

"Travel and meditation lead to the same kind of experience by opposite means. When you travel you expose yourself to so much new and unexpected external information that you overwhelm the usual mechanisms of attentional selection and inhibition" (thinkbuddha.org).

Traveling was kind of the precursor to this whole project. The road trip I went on over the summer changed me in more ways than one. Being able to see so many different parts of the country and experience all new things was really life-changing. It changed my perspective and attitude towards life. A lot of the pictures I captured while traveling are things I look back on now and hope to reclaim with this new body of work. When I look back on old pictures I feel a sense of wonder. That's what I would like to capture with my work now. I think by traveling to new places I can capture that same feeling. I like the idea of being lost and not knowing where I am, in a strange place where everything is new to me and I don't know what to expect. Tomorrow I plan on getting lost. I'm going to hop in my car and just drive. Where I end up I don't know. Hopefully I will be able to capture the same feelings of wonder and excitement in the images I shoot.

"When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains" (Solnitt, p 13).

Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: a History of Walking. New York: Viking, 2000. Print.

Julika Rudelius Question/Response

1. How are you affected by feminist ideals? Do you even consider yourself a feminist? I would be interested to see feminist work from a male perspective.
2. What do you hope to gain with your work? Are you trying to effect social change or just make these issues be known?

I really enjoyed Rudelius's lecture today. Seeing her work was actually really beneficial for me because she works a lot in video as well as photography. Seeing how she displays her work with projections gave me some ideas about how I could display my work in the end. The main focus of Julika's work is the representation of truth. She enjoys manipulating the viewer and reality which in the end leaves you wondering what's real and what's not. Her video, The Highest Point, was one of my favorite pieces that she showed us. The original intent of the video was to interview women about their orgasms but from a straight, technical viewpoint. She was able to capture that but she also got much more. The interviewee started fidgeting a lot, rubbing her leg, and basically just posing sexually. It was really interesting to watch the interviewee doing all of these things while talking. She may have been uncomfortable with the subject matter or maybe it's just something she does while talking. It was really interesting social commentary, to see how females are socialized to do these things and appear attractive and appealing at all times. Her other project that I really liked was Forever Short, documenting the lives of rich women in the Hamptons. Hearing these women talk about happiness was an interesting way of looking at the differences between rich and poor and the things that they consider important. I almost felt like I was watching caricatures of these women. I felt like they were putting on a show, which they probably were with cameras rolling on them. Overall I really enjoyed the presentation of her work. A lot of the themes she discusses in her work are themes that I'm interested in as well. I think the way she carries out her projects using video is interesting and something that I would like to pursue in the future.