Hello All,

 

Here is a record of our meeting on 23 May 08. Of course it's just what I noted which isn't the full picture. So please login here and add your own notes.

 

Aside from content, the structure of something also affects meaning and memory. So please also feel free to change the format of this record if you want, ie. rename or remove headings, or move paragraphs about. You can disagree with stuff and add your own comments, but please don't delete other people's words.

 

Dionea and Hitomi, it would be great if you could put a couple of pictures of the work that you showed here too if you can/want to liven up this page!

 

Jack

 

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Hosting a Micropolitics Drift

 

We started by looking at the email that Micropolitics sent us. We agreed to host one of their 'drifts' in the Red Room on 17 June 08 at 6pm. We were also interested in being involved in the 'critical arts eduation and activism' event they were doing at Camden Arts Centre on 25 June. We weren't sure what this was about, but would find out more on the 17th. We also agreed that it was ok for them to use part of the meeting to do their planning for next year. It would be good for u also to see how they worked and planned as a group.

 

RCA and Arts Education

 

As Micropolitics was a Goldsmiths group, we talked about the difference between Goldsmiths and the RCA. Here are some statements from the discussion:

 

Goldsmiths students seem a bit shocked when they come to the RCA. They are more used to a conceptual approach or environment.

 

Year on year, the RCA seems to produce good, high quality, excellent work. People like it, people buy it. That seems to be it. If our purpose in being here is to produce very good well-liked work, then it seems that we are supported and set up for that.

 

How do you create a radical school in this age? Nothing is shockable any more.

 

The RCA is so conservative. The main purpose is to get jobs.

 

In Communication Design, there is a very experimental approach and the focus isn't on getting jobs. The main purpose is to question where Technology sits in the world. But the development of technology is steered by funding, which in turn is steered by what consumers want to buy.

 

The RCA has a very good international reputation, but on arriving here, it seems that it is not cutting edge.

 

Perhaps you can't be cutting edge and have a good reputation. Because to be 'cutting edge' means that your work or practice is so new or different that people can't appreciate it or can't even recognise it. Whereas, to have a 'good reputation' it means that your work is already familiar, widely accepted, understood and appreciated.

 

Tutorials & Crits

 

Tutors tend to make critiques on the basis of what they are familiar with. If your work spans a number of disciplines, they ignore what they don't understand and concentrate on what they do.

 

It is important then to go elsewhere to have tutorials so we know how it is meant to be done in other disciplines.

 

But perhaps there is no reason to find out how other traditions make their work. A painter who makes video doesn't need to learn the whole of video and film-making tradition before being able to make videos. She can just make videos how she (a painter) makes videos .. not how the moving-image tradition or a fim-maker makes videos. [Would have been interesting to hear what Meital and Andrew would say about this!]

 

We looked at Hitomi's work.

        Material : Porcelain

 

If you are making something 'in between', e.g. something that is not fully traditional illustration or traditional ceramics, you must define the space and context for yourself. Try to do it like illustration and ceramics, not illustration or ceramics.

 

Actually it is political to maintain the separate disciplines and departments the way they are. People have jobs and allocated budgets. Students or creativity has to conform to these categories or people's jobs and budgets are at risk.

 

Arts Education and Class

 

Only rich people can come to this school.

 

Home students aren't necessarily rich.

 

But even home students have 'richness' in their support systems that enable them to come to the RCA. There might be talented people who can't do an arts MA because they have no money, have no family support, and who might have children and poorly-paid jobs.

 

International student have to be rich to come to the RCA because even with overseas scholarships, they cannot cover the cost of the fees here.

 

If we are only getting students who can afford to come here, then it isn't true to say that we are able to select from the best creative talent. We are only selecting from the best creative talent who can afford to come here.

 

 

Meaning and Context

 

We looked at Dionea's work.

Dionea put out her work (in-progress). We weren't sure what they were and had to ask what department she was from, which was Jewellery.

 

Dionea's work was jewellery as part of an installation. It is how she looks back at jewellery as a discipline. The work represents something she wants to say about Jewellery.

 

People seemed to be interested in the individual pieces in themselves, and asked questions about how they were made (lost wax) and what they were made of. There was some comments about organic growths and people liked the idea of 'unexpected volume'.

 

Dionea then put a picture on the table and placed one of the pieces with this picture. This recontextualised the work entirely. We were then drawn to the work in a different way. There was a different engagement where we tried to connect with the work by teasing out a meaning between the photo on the left, the pattern on the right, and the object below.

 

My response was a feeling of unease and mild disgust arising from images of internal organs, defacement, nostalgia, memory and veiled violence. - Jack

 

Dionea said that she didn't want to say too much. But she did say that the pattern was made out of pictures of wombs, and the girl in the photo was her mother.

 

It was hard to see how this work was jewellery in its traditional sense. If the work would have different meanings and readings if it was in different contexts: of a fine art gallery, a craft fair, a shop, or a postgraduate art discussion group!

 

Reading Heidegger and Hegel

 

"We inquire into the nature of art. Why do we inquire in this way? We inquire in this way in order to be able to ask more truly whether art is or is not an origin in our historical existence, whether and under what conditions it can and must be an origin" (Martin Heidegger  'The Origin of the Work of Art' (1936))

 

 

“Therefore the proper element of poetical representation is the poetical imagination and the illustration of spirit itself, and since this element is common to all and develops itself independently in each of them. Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself ad which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings. Yet, precisely, at this highest stage, art now transcends itself, in that it forsakes the element of a reconciled embodiment of the spirit in sensuous form and passed over from the poetry of the imagination to the prose of thought.” (G.W.F Hegel 'Aesthetics: lectures on fine art')

 

We read the pasages that Kirsty uploaded on the wiki (above). We discussed the following.

 

What does Heidegger mean when he says 'origin'?

 

Perhaps he means that art has to be new in a way that disrupts or changes the way society sees itself. He links the idea of origin to our "historical existence". This means that art as origin needs to have a connection or influence on our common recorded consciousness of ourselves and our activity.

 

If you had a roomful of objects, someone could go in and pull out things that are art and leave things that are not.

 

Art is something without function.

 

All things have function. A painting or sculpture can serve a contemplative or decorative function. It is just that Fine Art serves higher sensory functions: that of sight and sound. Other forms of creativity are really 'Art' because they serve lower sensory functions, such as taste, smell and touch. So according to the hierarchy of senses, cooking isn't art while painting is.

 

For Hegel the essence of art is a kind of poetry. Art is achieved in the artwork when this 'poetry' becomes independent from "external sensuous material". A balance or resolution is achived between the essence of the art being embodied in a thing as its vehicle.

 

But Hegel says that when this happens, the work then transcends itself from "the poetry of the imagination to the prose of thought". The closest I can think of how this can be understood in my experience is when I sit in front of say, a Rothko painting. The essence of the work is embodied in the paint and surface, and it is so perfectly crafted and composed so that both meaning and substance of the work hang in dynamic balance. But when this happens, it confounds any attempt I make at applying meaning onto it. The work has become bigger than anything I can imagine or impose on it. I simply have to slip into its 'consciousness' and engage with it in 'pure thought' rather than imagination. - Jack

 

This kind of engagement only happens in music. Music is the nearest to art. Maybe music is a higher form of art.

 

In the hierarchy of the senses, the visual is only priveleged because Aristotle said that 'to see is to know'. So the priority of visual over auditory is philosophical and not actual or subjectively true.

 

Perhaps we need to look at John Cage, Takemitsu and Philip Glass at a meeting in the future. We could find out if anyone at the Royal College of Music would host us.

 

Next Meetings / Things to do

 

Agreed to meet and do a walkabout of the degree show at 4pm on 6 June. We will meet at the main entrance (Albert Hall side). Jack will find out if Jonathan Miles can join us.  Everyone to look at the show before the meeting and each to choose a piece of work that we really love or really hate and we will go to these.

 

Hosting Micropolitics at 6 pm on 17 June in Red Room. Meital could you book this again for us?

 

25 June event at Camden Arts Centre.

 

Kirsty to upload various articles onto wiki.

 

Jack to find out about RCM and whether his partner can come chat with us about music.