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The discussion about the identification of author, authorship, responder, artist, participant, viewer, and the destabilization among them is arouse in this week’s lecture. We watched short film such as Neil Goldberg’s My parents to see the role between the director and the performer, we listened a song originated from 70s rock band and re-performed by Langley school kids, and what I found the most compelling is the LearningToLoveYouMore project.

To use LTLYM as an example to reveal the issue of destabilization, the boundaries between artist and viewer is blur. the project directors Fletcher and July encourage everyone to practice art related to their daily simplicity and themselves. Yet this blurred line is not a leading to an vague attitude or an appreciation to anything. LTLYM is introduced as “an assignment art/project” and the word assignment carries a sense of responsibility, and this responsibility by completing the art with fidelity should be carried by both the project founders and the ones who take the tasks. Like what is concluded in Julia Bryan-Wilsons’s article, Fletcher and July encourage people to make specific objects, offering assignments with concrete parameters and rigorous guidelines. The instruction for every assignment is strictly exists.

For Fletcher and July, they are who offer the idea of the assignment, and offer the imaginary spaces for the participant to practice their ideas with their own imagination. By this process they are demonstrating the unique from everyone’s practice, which also means they are demonstrating that they are completely not the controller although they invents the instruction, since imagination is always out of control.

Comments

On this week's lecture we listened the speech given by a Canadian artist, and her works revealed a discussion of the boundaries between sincerity and humorous at the group discussion. It is indeed exist the risk that one's sincerity might be understand as a sense of naïve and thus humorous, and it is true that every viewers has its own perspective towards an artwork. Among all the films Thauberger showed at the lecture, I found the first one Not Afraid to Die is the most interesting one. It first depicts a girl alternatively waiting and the shot is static, then a slightly change is she begins to snack and drink water. Immediately following her movement the sound changes from birds to airplane. I found that the artist’s intention is showing the sound’s changing in terms of the static scene, and thus demonstrates that one figure’s look can be perceived different by the sound atmosphere. It is even tends to a trick film’s effect. Nevertheless, I found my viewpoint was not what the artist analyzes her work, which she is depicting some spiritual voice that the girl heard.

The last film Northern shown by the artist is about Canadian treeplanters. The film plot is inspired by the notable painting The Raft of the ‘Medusa’, also intends to present the environment damaged scene and related to human being. The artist mentions that the country is where Brokeback Mountatin is filmed, and it reminds me of the nature presented in that film: the director of BBM once talked about how the scene should be shot in low angle in order to involve air, and how air and trees can create the sound of the wind and melted into the characters’ motion. Since I was very impressed by his using of nature in BBM, I expected to perceive more interactions between the nature and the people in Thauberger’s Northern.

On the other end of calm

Emma W-W’s short video about Tate Modern: The performer has indeed a motion of exasperation, whereas there is a sense of balance in his annotation between calmness and anger that makes me moved as a viewer. He chooses to say with oral word, but not giving a direct vernacular speech. Why? Maybe it is because to annotate an issue about black and white via giving a vernacular speech: how similarly remind viewers of lyrics in 2pac’s songs or American History X? However, when viewers encounter those oral words appearing lines in line on the screen and along with a quite face, the emotion is thus magically presented, beyond that when we only see the words or the still face.

I think this can also exemplify the fascination of deadpan: to use a flat and expressionless face to serve a stereoscopic function, and to transmit a weighted message. And thus I think, EWW’s video illustrated that, deadpan is able to apply on various genre but not only comedy. A face of deadpan is not only applied the function of pleasure, it could also be anger. On the other end of flatness is extravaganza. However, it could probably be another end for it, which is exasperation.