It is a continuation of the week 2 lecture. This week we also had the pleasure of meeting new artists and being reminded of the ones we already knew. Here’s my response to this lecture’s art pieces:
From this week’s list of artists, I chose another 2 that seemed to be interesting to me and fitted the concept or the structure of my project in some way. I like to find similarities in my ideas and the ideas of others because it shows that we all as humans think in some kind similar way. We have similar thoughts, motives, and needs. We are just another kind of animal with their own unique instincts.
Martha Rosler – Semiotics of the Kitchen
This piece of Martha Rosler is a very much feminism-themed work produced in 1975. The artist shows her critique of the world’s expected role of women by using kitchen utensils shown in alphabetical order and accompanying gestures and actions of the woman to every tool. The video is 6 minutes long and is a picture of the anger and frustration at the patriarchal role of women. “Rosler relies on the philosophy of semiotics, which implies that words are simply indicators of social interactions that human beings use to describe their world.” (https://publicdelivery.org/martha-rosler-kitchen-semiotics/)
Her interactions with the objects are usually violent and unexpected, for example, she’s stabbing the air with a knife or fork. She’s demonstrating different objects as I mentioned before in alphabetical order, but for the letters, U, V, W, X, Y and Z the tools are replaced by Rosler’s body which becomes a signal system itself. “Martha Rosler clearly shows in her (staged) subjection to the insistence of the letter that she is not only subject to the position of her characters, an established social role that can and needs to be changed.”
“When the woman speaks, she names her own oppression.“
KARSTEN BOTT – Von Jedem Eins (One of Each)
The work of Karsten Bott is a collection of daily-use objects. The archive exists since 1988 and now the collection consisted of more than 500,000 objects. For these items hierarchy doesn’t exist – we can find there purchased products, found ones, the others were taken from the trash bins. There is everything that people used or had: toothbrushes, radios, glasses frames, toilet seats, cameras, newspapers, hats – everything. Bott puts in his collection mainly things that for many don’t have any value, but by using them in this work they gain meaning. Objects are sorted based on their purpose, the place that they’re used or the type of an item. The artist describes a collection as the “historical documents of mankind”, and the objects presented in the work are supposed to make people contemplate not about the owners of the items, but about our own lives. It goes very well with my own project, because my work also focuses on the objects and their role in our lives.
This week I almost finished all the details in my 3D project. I have to do the colouring and prepare some of the objects that I’m going to use. In the previous tutorial with Miranda, we started contemplating if the person who lives in my room should be me or for example some fictional character. We decided on the second option, because I put a barrier between me and the viewer. They will not know, that even if the room is mine, the person who spends there time is not me. I decided against showing the truth, maybe I’m just not ready yet, or maybe it’s just a way of playing with people’s minds. I’m creating a fake vision of myself. The first idea was to put my favourite book character into my private space, who is Anne of Green Gables, but after a conversation with my friend, he recommended me to base my character on the Crime and Punishment main character. That’s why I started reading this book. I’ve heard a lot of good reviews about this classic, even when I was in high school many people said that it was their favourite book for polish classes to read. I’ve just started but I’m a very fast reader so it won’t be a problem for me to finish it quickly! If I’ll like it I will base my character on the protagonist of Crime and Punishment.
Gosh Raskolnikov, what a fabulous idea! thank you to your friend, ahh I remember reading and loving Crime and Punishment, this will be a wonderful project. Did you look at Locked Room Scenario yet? it has a similarly sinister feeling perhaps, I think this is much more interesting that Anne of Greengables, much more depth and darkness perhaps? Ok so the room is ready…or almost..lets now see what happens next?