Nathaniel’s Blog

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Reading about the many forms of artistic context is fascinating to me, adding a new dimension to not only thoughtful critique, but influencing countless choices made by the artist themselves. The chapter points out that recognizing the cultural or physical implications of a work can make it’s message more powerful, like the example of the flag being shown in a window as opposed to the floor of the gallery space. Not to speak of the stark contrast of viewing a subject in a gallery as opposed to that same subject in a trash can. Criticism should address a work on this basis to be fully comprehensive, but weighing these factors exclusively is as reductive as it is unhelpful.

There are many other issues brought to light by the reading as well, like the often forgotten bias and influence of curators in exhibitions and museums, choosing the sequence in which art is presented. These small but important changes effect the viewing context, and most damning of all twists the artist’s intended viewing experience, acting as a creative bureaucrat in an industry where one bad showing can make or break your career. I firmly stand with the artists that choose to criticize this practice, harm to career be damned.

What seems so topical to culture today is the Historical and Social context in the era of re-litigation and posthumous indignation, neglected is the time and place an artist worked in, and the broader ripples in the greater artistic world they made. The gap between the greater audience and art should ideally be made as small as possible if we want to create a system where an artist’s work can reach the mass audience receptive to it, and in turn we as honest appreciators owe it to everyone to stop paying attention to the one guy at the party who never misses an opportunity to tell you how John Lennon beat his wife.

I was inspired by Christine Sun Kim and the way she was able to display sound as visual force so I wanted to set up a shot where the plastic bag looked sort of like a topographical map with the water acting as lakes. I thought of the effect we have on the environment as being as being a one-sided conversation and imagined the earth could respond through sound waves. Sound mixing was a challenge in this project because to get the water to respond, I had to play extremely loudly, so I hope it’s played at a semi-appropriate volume.

After watching Todd Selby’s video on Christine Sun Kim and her artwork I feel I have a new appreciation for sound and these abstract concepts that I just take for granted in my experience. During the beginning of the video Christine starts signing to us and explains that she had grown up internalizing the idea that sound never belonged to her as a deaf person, that she had to be respectful of other people’s possession. She experienced one of the basic human senses through the lens of what others told her she could not do and have, and because of that her curiosity and creativity in her sound art is all the more poignant.

By expressing sounds and relating them through movement, Christine is not only reclaiming and making hers what was always denied her which adds an emotional context to view the work, but she’s also expanding the way that we non-deaf people can experience and think about something we’ve had access to our whole lives. Kim’s work is transformative in a way, taking a unique medium and moving it into the world of movement and displacement, spreading paint onto a canvas via vibrations.

I think her work also speaks about broader issues of communication. She signs to us in the video, telling us she didn’t have access to language as a kid, her parents struggling to use English and Sign Language equally. There’s this element of repression and ideas fighting to come out but without the traditional tools available for her to do so. Through art she is freed in a way to express herself and in my eyes be recognized in her own way for the vividly creative and thoughtful art that so obviously bursts forth from her unique perspective.