Chapter 4

TATE
the potential for documentation to be a way of maintaing the memory of an experience. a way of accessing and collecting information. this is compelling. It speaks to something beyond fetishization and using the mass media and the nature of certain mediums toward wide dissemination. There are a lot of people saying hello to themselves. People using self-documentation as way to wax and wane, and further grind their axe. 

information. is something that is active. real-time. it involves people’s lives. it is something that requires response. it ceases to become information when it becomes abstract, which is inspiring at times and motivating but often useless. We maybe rely too much on.

Not totally submitting to the aesthetic of the visual.

social and political realities of regions.

verify realities through a variety of means of collecting information.

ecological. photographic, visual, physical. story telling.

the justification for aesthetic journalism, not that it needs one, is its capacity to move the imagination into realistic alternatives. the imagination is the necessary fantasy upon which reality is produced. without imagination we have very little. This is what is so deadening about main stream media. It offers unimaginative stories of the world. A world of problems. Dead images that when taken in also make us stagnant. anaesthetization.  one point,

when an image is over exposed it speaks to a loss of information and value. it holds a little metaphorical insight what happens to people as well when we are overexposed. it’s of little use.

we long to experience the information. to make sense of it with the capacity of our bodies. to discover, collect and understand information using different parts of ourselves. it cannot come only through eyes to be disassembled and reassembled in heads. I think this is what we miss when we over academicize/formalize information practices. It lessens the ability for information to move us and strike the imagination and there a new response. For the information we experience to belong to memory and shape us so. 

azoulay is a little more confusing for me. she speaks as an historian, and in that case photographs are very important and powerful tools. But i am not convinced the relevance and use of history.


MICHELLE
“The idea of confronting society with a veracious mirror coincided with the introduction of portable 35mm cameras. [Artists] took responsibility for divulging issues passed over by mainstream media, and representing them via a journalistic narrative, revealing meaning to an audience." This line was re-inspiring. With all of our discussions in class so far, I have been reminded of the question: What is the point of art? Concerning a place in journalism and activism, can art really move people to action? Well, there's a limit to the control we have as artists over our viewers, but that should not stop us from "confronting society" and bringing to light the issues that are sidelined by, over even hidden, by mainstream media. It is at once empowering and frustrating that we as artists have the freedom to bring anything to light and viewers have an equal amount of freedom in facing or rejecting artists' work. Perhaps that reality calls for artists to be relentless in claiming a place in journalism and activism, to unceasingly confront society over and over again. 



Hans Haacke's works make me wonder where the line is between art and journalism, or art and sociology. Besides the fact that Haacke had access to present in a museum space, what makes his MOMA-Poll (1970) piece art as opposed to any other, regular survey? The work can exists as a survey, if it weren't called art. So, why is it art? The same goes for his cancelled Guggenheim solo show work. The project consisted of photographs, marked maps, and charts. Those are materials that could be in a research or journal document, just as much as a museum space. So, why is it important for them to be in a museum? Because they are information collected by an artist? I think the projects are great, but when neither the aesthetic nor journalistic approach is primary, where should a project exist? 

Alex:

"Seeing so many documentaries of the world’s horrors ultimately has a diminished impact, like watching too much CNN."

Cramerotti quotes this statement, presenting art as the mode through which one can counter such a leveling of effectiveness. This leads me to consider, however, the effectiveness of art. I read, several years ago, somewhere in a text about the Louvre, that one can only truly appreciate three pieces of art a day. We go to galleries and museums and sculpture parks, etc, but how much of that do we truly see? How many will we really remember? These questions line up with the qualm of how many of those graphic images in journalism do we manage to process? These issues seem quite similar, causing me to have qualms with the division portrayed. Though he notes the ineffectiveness of art that resembles regular journalism too much, this huge faith in the power of art is just something I find strange and hard for me to personally reconcile with in the way it is put in the text.

Advait:

There are some lovely parallels between the week’s readings and the week’s in-class discussions. That which interests me most in the Azoulay reading is this notion of reconstructions, the rendering of alternatives, of the potential of art/journalism to present us with choices. Once again, a reiteration of the dangers of the single story, of the suppression of information.

The role of the archive seems to be crucial, in this respect. Preservation of these stories, of these voices, helps to prevent mis-representation. Remembering is important. Our class has discussed (at length!) the malleability of truth, and the construction of a singular history. This kind of construction seems especially dangerous, and was, for example, perpetrated to disastrous effect by the Belgian colonists in Rwanda.

We’ve talked about feeling as though there’s a deluge of information, too many stories. I suppose that something like Reddit is a problematic example, but: here is a community of people, sifting through large amounts of information, news, et cetera, and highlighting stories through consensus. Problems of course arrive when the collective exhibits a kind of hivemind, dissenting stories can be silenced, and discourse is limited to confirmation rather than provocation (I’ve not looked into the demographics of an online community like Reddit).

There is still a troubling lack of criticality to Cramerotti’s view of art; he seems to perceive it as a zone of respite, for pause, for contemplation. I recall having to read a book called Museum Legs before coming to RISD (it was assigned over the summer); it discussed a kind of exhaustion that occurs when one is walking through a museum, looking/seeing/observing. Art can just as easily acquire a homogeneity as reportage or pornography.

Hyo Jin

I agree with Advait's response. I haven't read Chapter 4 but read the others on the order of sent to us. The reading of documentary debate aesthetic for an-anesthetic made me think also aesthetic is a style. Style that reads meaning and by the style you show the image it show all different meanings. And it was quite interesting to think little by little on bigger things. First I thought if an image can be misread, is that responsibility on photographer? How far the maker has to be responsible. We mentions about where to present and how is very important but I don't really know. For me it is on what and how you want to present. My intention is to show my thinking to as many people as possible so what happens after presenting I'm happy with any result and ready to take charge for that. Who is responsible for mis reading by choosing certain style? and does it matter if it was intentional or not?