Turner Prize 2012 winner: Elizabeth Price
"Elizabeth Price describes her films as moving 'from something that looks like a PowerPoint lecture, to something that looks like an infomercial to something that feels like a cinematic melodrama'. For the Turner Prize exhibition, Price is presenting her video installation THE WOOLWORTHS CHOIR OF 1979 2012. Comprising three parts, the video brings together distinct bodies of material into a dissonant assembly; photographs of church architecture, internet clips of pop performances and news footage of a notorious fire in a Woolworths furniture department in 1979. The film weaves together existing archives of text, image and sound to create video installations that drift between social history and fantasy."
(Tate, UK)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Open Space: non-profit artist-run centre in Victoria, British Columbia
"Founded in September 1972, Open Space is non-profit artist-run centre located in Victoria, British Columbia. For over thirty years, Open Space has supported professional artists who utilize hybrid and experimental approaches to media, art, music, and performance. As an exhibition and performance centre, Open Space reflects the wide diversity of contemporary art practices in Victoria, across Canada, and beyond. Our commitment to contemporary artists is an inclusive situation, embracing work by artists of different disciplines, media, generations, cultures, and communities.
Open Space supports experimental artistic practices in all contemporary arts disciplines, acting as a laboratory for engaging art, artists, and audiences."
(Open Space Arts Society Vision Statement, 2010)
Fig.1 "Video as a Cultural Metaphor" Artist: Chris Creighton-Kelly, Date: March 9 and 10, 1979.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Adam Yauch of The Beastie Boys Dies at 47
"It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam 'MCA' Yauch, founding member of Beastie Boys and also of the Milarepa Foundation that produced the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits, and film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer. He was 47 years old."
(Beastie Boys)
Fig.1 Music video by The Beastie Boys performing "Gratitude". (C) 2009 Capitol Records, LLC [recorded in 1992 in Rotorua, Aotearoa New Zealand].
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Dirkon: innovative paper cut-out camera
"During the 1970s, magazines published in Communist Czechoslovakia were controlled by the state, like the majority of other enterprises. Very few good magazines were available and were difficult to get hold of, so people would borrow and exchange them when given the opportunity. This also applied to magazines aimed at young people, which was probably one of the reasons why almost everyone from my generation, when we get on to the subject of pinhole cameras, has fond memories of the cut-out paper camera known as Dirkon*, published in 1979 in the magazine ABC mladých techniků a přírodovědců [An ABC of Young Technicians and Natural Scientists].
Its creators, Martin Pilný, Mirek Kolář and Richard Vyškovský, came up with a functional pinhole camera made of stiff paper, designed for 35 mm film, which resembles a real camera. It may not be the most practical of devices, but it works!
My first attempt at putting together a paper Dirkon a few years after it came out fell victim to a total lack of patience on my part. Today, twenty years later, I decided that I had to include this unusual pinhole camera in my collection. So I got hold of an old copy of ABC and set to work....
* The name Dirkon is a play on words based on the combination of the parts of two words: Dirk- is the beginning of the Czech word dírka – pinhole, and -kon is the end of the name of a well-known Japanese camera which needs no introduction.
A few notes about the original instructions
For the patient among you, here are the instructions for making the Dirkon camera which you can download in Adobe PDF format. But first a few notes which I've jotted down after my experience with making it, which you might find useful.
The camera must be cut out of stiffer paper than ordinary office paper (or thin card). If the paper isn't entirely opaque, you need to stick very thin black paper underneath the important sections so that no light gets into the camera. This is particularly important for sections 1, 2, 3, 10 and 23.
It is very important to print the cut-out to the correct size, i.e. 1 : 1. When you are printing from the Acrobat Reader, the option "Fit to page" MUST NOT be selected, otherwise the pages might come out smaller and the film won't fit into the Dirkon camera. I've added a ruler on each page so that you can check that the size is correct.
The instructions recommend using Foma 21° DIN film. This was film made back in former Czechoslovakia but it's similar, for example, to today's Ilford PAN 100. You can of course use any 35 mm film, even colour.
I discovered from the makers of Dirkon that, even when it was published, people often came up with improvements on their model. The design was significantly improved by sticking on a thin piece of metal with a hole, rather than making the hole in the paper, as described in the instructions. I didn't follow this suggestion, however, since I wanted to experience the real magic of Dirkon photography."
(David Balihar)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Knowledge is not something one accumulates but is instead something one uses to create new ideas
"inquiry informed by postmodern critique places emphasis on allowing intellect very broad prerogative to determine the directions that inquiry may go, rather than on maintaining a line of inquiry that is consistent with ends or objectives that are determined in advance of the activity. From the standpoint of the individual who seeks knowledge, the emphasis is on the idea that one is an inquirer before one is a knower. Knowledge is not something one accumulates but is instead something one uses to create new ideas. Lyotard's idea of knowledge as 'pragmatic,' diverse competencies also supports this idea of inquiry, since it emphasizes intellectual agility, or skill at adapting to new contexts. It also suggests that a good inquirer cultivates the ability to recognize when opportunities for new paths become possible and to alter the course of inquiry in ways that create such opportunities.
This kind of inquiry would be experimental rather than innovative; the latter is 'but a way of repeating, without great difference, something that already has been done and that has worked' (Lyotard, p.14, p.61) . For Lyotard, an experiment is an imaginative revision of received knowledge, a new move in a language game in which one is always an addressee before one is a sender. Further, the inquirer seeks to come 'to grips with the new effects produced by the new situation of a joint discussion' (Ibid., p.60, p.6). The inquirer participates in dialogue with the understand that the obligation to be a good listener precedes the freedom to experiment (Ibid., p.66.). Inquiry is, the, both an experimental and participatory act."
(Roger Philip Mourad, 1997, p.34)
Roger Philip Mourad (1997). 'Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education'. Westport, Bergin and Garvey.
Jean-François Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thébaud (1985). 'Just Gaming', University of Minnesota Press.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
