Art Event Posts (because I cannot remember whether I posted or not...)

Reflection #1

Gabriela Bulisova, War Photographer and Social Advocate

Gabriela Bulisova is a war time photographer. She has photographed in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Her work strives to reveal the side of war often unseen. In a way the same concept lies behind her work as behind Horn’s work. She captures time and holds it still and in such a context that the reader is forced to consider the subject in a new and different light. To listen to her talk about her work was to hear a woman deeply impassioned about the wellbeing and rights of others. She strives and strove to show the world the reality of war. She put herself in harmful, dangerous scenarios and often asks her subjects to do the same.

She shows the parts of the war that we know exist but do not think about. The orphan children without parents, the parents who cannot afford to feed their children anymore. She shows the little boy with a scar stretching the length and width of his abdomen, wrapping his small body in signs of an embrace he will always have to remember. He was a victim of an explosion and suffered physical harm from the blast. As Gabriela travels, she interviews those in the area working for social justice. She sees those living in the shadow of war, in poverty and disease, in some of the worst conditions imaginable by humankind, and she responds in the only way possible: through photography.

Gabriela works for social justice but through the lens of this class, I wondered how her work would be accepted in other countries. Iraq and Iran, and the middle-east in general, are a sore topic for our country. Our population is sensitive to news of the people. We have heard about the war for so long, heard how many of our troops have died and how many of the insurgents we have killed that we forget. We often completely overlook the fact that the civilians living in the country are heavily impacted by the war we have brought to their country. Her photos bring us visual information about a concept that is universally known and understood. This is what makes my question relevant. If war is a common denominator, what meaning does her work bring to individual viewers? There are certain human emotions that are common and recognizable among all human faces. War is a common, understandable force and the basest of human emotions in response to such a force, are captured in an image. With so many elements connected to events and emotions easily recognized, what elements would make the work subjective?

I think that Gabriela’s work evokes emotion from all of us in some way because of the common elements it includes. The subjectivity of the work comes in when considering the exact emotional response which, of course, will vary from person to person. Perhaps someone will respond to her photo of the young boy because he is a boy, or because he is young or perhaps he is a child in war, or maybe because he has a massive scar on his belly. Each of these emotions could illicit responses of indignant anger (how could that happen to him?!), sympathy (poor child!), revulsion (oh my god!) or appreciate (for the composition). The subjectivity in the photo comes in each personal response to the actual subject and that response is impacted by the formal composition of the piece.

http://gabrielabulisova.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Iraqi-Refugees-Damascus-Syria/G0000jD.o.Xs92ho/I0000_RhtO80_grY

Reflection #2

Digital Studio,  Lights-in-the-Night Project

            I went to the Digital Studio class’ projection project. I was able to witness the members of the class projected the work they had recorded onto various surfaces of the school and campus. While I found it difficult to find some of the projections (some were projected in very odd places) the ones that I did find were spectacular. Two in particular struck me as powerful.

One projection was of a woman putting on makeup. It was on the campus center patio wall right before the outside set of stairs. It was probably a one to two minute clip. The woman leaned in to the mirror and applied bright red lipstick. She then leaned away and looked toward the camera. I liked this projection because of the dichotomy between the projection and the place on which it was projected. Here was a clip of a woman, dressed to the nines, applying makeup and wearing jewelry...projected on a dirty brick wall. The juxtaposition between the projection and the place on which it was projected made it more interesting then if it had just been the clip playing by itself. It gave it a sense of hardness and made it less fragile. The woman projected did not seem as feminine or gentle as she could have, had she been projected on a screen of some kind.

The other projection that struck me as interesting, simply because of its oddness, was a pair of eyes projected on the roof of the library facing the pond. The eyes would blink and shift back and forth at random intervals for about a two minute loop and then it would repeat. It was hilarious to see the reaction of the people that were not expecting to see something on the roof. It was even funnier to see the reactions of the people headed the other direction, looking at the reactions of the people headed toward the projection. They would look at the people and be confused, then turn and be completely shocked and/or startled by the huge pair of eyes on the roof. It brought to mind questions about sight and vision. How do we see things and from where?

This entire exhibit brought to mind questions concerning the importance of context and material. Obviously the material for this project was light and the surface projected on. I think that the context of the pieces were what made them art to me. Had they been projected in the classroom on a screen, I would not have considered them to be art and would have brushed them off as just recordings of life. Nothing about the taped segments was particularly artsy (at least not the ones I saw) and what made them artistic and interesting was the actual surface they were projected on to.

When looking at a project like this, it is interesting to consider how the meaning of the work would have changed if the context also changed. How would have the work been different if projected on a ceiling or printed and hung or mounted and displayed in a hallway? How different would it had been if it had been played and explained in the privacy of a class? How did the public-ness of the venue impact the meaning of the work and what new meaning did it bring? It is my belief that through the asking of these questions, one’s understanding of the piece deepens, especially as one gets a better feel for the impact of the context on the meaning of the work as in relation to the meaning it could have in other contexts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbIYtg8PK7A&feature=player_embedded