One of the classes at ITP has a very interesting structure – every week there is a guest speaker, and presentations by students responding to the speaker from the previous week.
So far the speakers have been tremendously interesting: Vito Acconci and Vik Muniz. Both had a lot in common:
- Extremely engaging as speakers – lots of vitality and energy
- Very articulate description of their evolution as artists – how they got to where they are, what concerns motivated them, what problems they were trying to solve
- Focus on the medium – not just the message
- Emphasis on physicality – using the body, machines, very tangible materials
- Wore black
Two of those points were particularly interesting for me: the first, how they presented art as a process of problem-solving, of attempting to reach a goal; and second, their emphasis on the medium.
Vito Acconci described his artistic trajectory as a kind of reaching-out, starting from poetry on paper, to re-arranging typographic elements, getting into the world and following people, manipulating his body, interacting with people (in a variety of modes: hostile, voyeuristic…) and finally into shaping the environment. In a way, he portrays his artistic career as an attempt to reach out and engage.
He has codified his architectural work into a series of “operations” which he applies to objects and space, placing the emphasis on the process and the medium. Remarkably, he makes almost no use of “traditional” cultural references, preferring instead shapes and forms based on natural phenomena, and even those are not especially direct references. Rather than studying his works to see what they are “about”, you have to try to understand how they were made (the “operations”), and what they are used for (how to interact with them).
Vik Muniz also shows an interesting progression, though within a much more tightly-bounded universe than Acconci. His work consists mostly of rendering different images in unusual media, and then photographing the results. This overall framework has changed very little over time. However, within that, he has had to be very innovative in working with different media (wire, string, sugar, diamonds, caviar, chocolate, junk, dust) to produce extremely detailed renderings, of what are often banal or “trite” subjects.
As with Acconci, this places the emphasis very much on technique & process, versus the subject of the work. For example, he uses bulldozers and earthmovers to shape enormous earthworks into the shapes of scissors, rulers and other everyday objects. Chocolate syrup is used to render a faithful copy of “The Last Supper” or a portrait of Sigmund Freud. Junkyard trash is used to render copies of classical Greek works, or Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Sons”. Also as with Acconci, it is necessary to contemplate how the works were made, not just what they represent visually; for example, Muniz’s pictures of Haitian children made out of sugar, an industry which has oppressed the people of that country.
Much work at ITP seems to go in this direction, like Danny Rozin’s Wooden Mirror.
ITP Speakers – Exploring the Medium
One of the classes at ITP has a very interesting structure – every week there is a guest speaker, and presentations by students responding to the speaker from the previous week.
So far the speakers have been tremendously interesting: Vito Acconci and Vik Muniz. Both had a lot in common:
Two of those points were particularly interesting for me: the first, how they presented art as a process of problem-solving, of attempting to reach a goal; and second, their emphasis on the medium.
Vito Acconci described his artistic trajectory as a kind of reaching-out, starting from poetry on paper, to re-arranging typographic elements, getting into the world and following people, manipulating his body, interacting with people (in a variety of modes: hostile, voyeuristic…) and finally into shaping the environment. In a way, he portrays his artistic career as an attempt to reach out and engage.
He has codified his architectural work into a series of “operations” which he applies to objects and space, placing the emphasis on the process and the medium. Remarkably, he makes almost no use of “traditional” cultural references, preferring instead shapes and forms based on natural phenomena, and even those are not especially direct references. Rather than studying his works to see what they are “about”, you have to try to understand how they were made (the “operations”), and what they are used for (how to interact with them).
Vik Muniz also shows an interesting progression, though within a much more tightly-bounded universe than Acconci. His work consists mostly of rendering different images in unusual media, and then photographing the results. This overall framework has changed very little over time. However, within that, he has had to be very innovative in working with different media (wire, string, sugar, diamonds, caviar, chocolate, junk, dust) to produce extremely detailed renderings, of what are often banal or “trite” subjects.
As with Acconci, this places the emphasis very much on technique & process, versus the subject of the work. For example, he uses bulldozers and earthmovers to shape enormous earthworks into the shapes of scissors, rulers and other everyday objects. Chocolate syrup is used to render a faithful copy of “The Last Supper” or a portrait of Sigmund Freud. Junkyard trash is used to render copies of classical Greek works, or Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Sons”. Also as with Acconci, it is necessary to contemplate how the works were made, not just what they represent visually; for example, Muniz’s pictures of Haitian children made out of sugar, an industry which has oppressed the people of that country.
Much work at ITP seems to go in this direction, like Danny Rozin’s Wooden Mirror.