Whatever! Criticism is not a democracy...

If you haven't worked it out already, I have a fairly sweaty intellectual crush on Guardian blogger Jonathan Jones. He managed to mirror so many things I feel in my voluminous gut - plenty of instinct there - and be so wonderfully succinct with it.

Once again he's done it with his spot-on post "Art criticism is not a democracy"

Jones writes :

"The reason so much average or absolutely awful art gets promoted is that no one seems to understand what criticism is; if nothing is properly criticised, mediocrity triumphs. A critic is basically an arrogant bastard who says "this is good, this is bad" without necessarily being able to explain why. At least, not instantly. The truth is, we feel this stuff in our bones. And we're innately convinced we're right."

POI: Moving, Mapping, Memory @ Cornerhouse

Yukari Yoshikawa

Despite the British summertime deciding to stab the nation collectively in the back with this shitty weather, and a yummy dose of anonymous bitchiness, my previous state of pessimism about art in Manchester has somewhat lifted.

I feel a little bad for writing rather brutally about the last few thing I've seen at the Cornerhouse. It is perhaps too easy to blame the institution for what it contains. However, art by it's very nature is always going to be hit or miss with individuals.

The first of a series of Editions, a new Cornerhouse scheme to introduce us to new and experimental art, POI: Moving, Mapping, Memory is a very mixed collection of work, all tracing path around ideas of how we map and remember time.

For a subject which could get really bloody stale rather quickly, POI for the most part nimbly avoids the worst pitfalls and in places introduces really innovative ideas.

Here I don't mean the same-old-same-old wearing a t-shirt with the word "INNOVATION" on it. No, actually innovation! and with out being depressingly clunky like a 90s era website.

Joel Porter's Ubiquitous Interactivity is a lovely introduction to the exhibition, although it unfortunately needs to be explained a little too much. Toying with the number of IDs we now have to carry which contain RFID chips, the work relies on participants to wave a card - either their own or provided by the artist - over a scanner, which then triggers changes on an opposite screen. These smashed together images are both attractive, eerie and playful.

Unfortunately the first gallery is dominated by a video projection which is accompanied by a soundscape which manages to be both obnoxious and generic. To be an artist, or indeed a curator, is famously about making choices. Why do, so often, people make the same bloody choices about what works of art sound like?

Fortunately, the use of sound is much more evocative and lovely in Gallery 2.

Yukari Yoshikawa's Colour and Colours has to be experienced, beautiful and hopeful, this work for me makes the exhibition. It draws you in with a flirtatious, powerful but not un-nerving, use of sound and colour. It intriguingly hints at narrative and an almost ephemeral, yet palpable, sense of something "more". Very simply, it is a visually and mentally delicious experience.

Instantanes ( Marseille ) by Eimer Birbeck is in principle very simple, but in reality rather an appealing and vivid auditory manifestation of the streets of Marseilles.

Upstairs, Andrea Zapp's Google Gaze, textile renderings of urban scenes, do not stand up well against the playful, and often beautiful, interactivity and dynamism of the other works in POI. Equally, An Exploration of Consciousness by Richard Charnock - e.g. that rabbit thing - seems a little overly complex and clunkily implemented when considering the actual result.

In an exhibition where some of the objects are, each in varying measures, joyfully playful, smoothly interactive and verging on beautiful, the low points are not spectacularly low. The lack of politics and aggressive intellectualisation - as seen in State Legacy - means this is a really assessable exhibition, and perhaps a good introduction to what can be done with digital methodologies in terms of art.

As for low points, the nasty soundscapes in the first gallery and the rather disparate and unconnected organisation of the top gallery spring to mind.

It would be easy to point out that I can be ruthlessly critical. However, in my defence, I refuse to be pointlessly celebratory. POI: Moving, Mapping, Memory is not perfect, but it's a happy step in the right direction.

( If that direction is keeping my fascist sensibilities happy.)

The Cutting Room Experiment - a final word on the matter ...

Encouraged by a rather creepy comment, I've decided to finish my commentary on The Cutting Room Experiment.

If you are interested the winning ideas can be viewed here.

I've decided to reappraise and reassert my expectations of the Arts & Crafts stream of The Cutting Room Experiment.

For the record, I had no problem with the Experiment it's self, rather how people's paltry, and frankly depressing , imagination manifested through it.

It would be easy to point to me and demand I do something about it. However, I didn't spend years of my life studying art and culture, pumping up my critical muscles at expense of everything else, to become a mere-participant. I am a historian, not a failed artist.

My own idea - submitted on a Bank Holiday afternoon after being plied with rose-aye wine - was whimsical and, yes, fuelled by a vague sense of competitiveness. Which I believe is exactly what the organisers hoped would happen.

The Experiment itself will almost certainly be considered by all involved a success, however for me its been a poignant demonstration of our apprehensions and stultifying precognitions about art.

It was a hot coal that I refused to pick up, but that doesn't mean I can't be dispirited by no one else rising to the challenge.

Image from flickr here, used under a creative commons licence.

EDIT:

I think I have the power to predict the future.

The Social Lives of Objects @ Castlefield Gallery

Summer is here, bringing with it a new lightness and fanciful feel to the Manchester art scene. 

Along with the upcoming POI at the Cornerhouse, the darkly frivolous The Social Lives of Objects at the Castlefield looks set to riff off ideas and concepts I'm an absolute sucker for. I'm susceptible to anything which manages to be really joyfully playful and still gracefully retain it's intellectual credentials while being friendlily intelligent. Barthes is my touch-stone when judging things on this aspect. 

We all know that excessive stuff is both the suffocating cancer of life in a post-modern age and the absolute bloody joy. My own irrational affection for old mugs and defunct gewgaws makes me a hellish person to live with. I'm constantly frustrated by my own avarice.

If you find any of the above reflected in yourself, you'll certainly find it mirrored in the complex but playful telling of the stories which surround our relationship with objects. This exhibition features a fresh and exciting collection of work by three artists based in Manchester and London, Hilary Jack, Lisa Penny and Dallas Seitz.

The Social Lives of Objects opened on Thursday 28th May and runs until the 19 July 2008. There will be a tour and discussion on the 18th June, 6 - 8pm. Contact the gallery to book. 

Opening Times: Wednesday to Sunday 1pm – 6 pm

Website : www.castlefield.co.uk 

Art at The Cutting Room Experiment OR Why I Am A Fascist

Having been successfully bribed with beer, I am writing a blog about the Cutting Room Experiment. 

The Cutting Room Experiment will - to quote their own word - use "the power of the web together we will produce the most groundbreaking event in Manchester. In 12 different themes 12 different flash mobs will be created involving genres such as art and design, dance, science to classical music."

It'll be interesting to see if any artists or curators take up the opportunity to do something with a bit of artistic substance, rather than producing smug and recycled concepts.

One of the major issues as I see it is that a lot of people have given up trying to have distinct opinions on what is art ( let alone what is good art ), in fear of being labelled some kind of fascist. I've been waiting for some tosser to roll out the twee attitude that flash mobs are "Art" in reference to this project, when clearly that is a deluded and undiscerning position to take.

So what is currently mooted to take place at Cutting Room Square in terms of art ( & it's estranged sister 'craft' ) on the 20th of June?

Looking at what is on there right now ( as of 12pm 24/05/09 ) the two most popular options are predictably ones which make me, at first glance, want to spit; 'knitters unite' and 'big hands.'

'knitters unite' is the most popular, and despite my prejudices, probably the least inappropriate one, since it is the "arts & craft" stream. I had thought the trend for hipster knitting had subsided, but apparently I was ( as usual ) wrong.

At Futuresonic the other week I found the way in which the building was dressed with little knitted bojangles rather sweet, so this could actually be the most visually engaging project mooted in the arts & craft stream.

'big hands' however... 

"Fitting with cutting rooms heritage as a space to cut large pieces of material, a finger painting on a piece of canvas of epic proportions. A team of a few hundred people could surely create something monstrously good. Messy, fun and with a lasting impression. The work could be donated to the Art gallery or some similar trust."

Everyone's thoughtless scrawl is worthy of being called art now? It brings to mind that ouroboros of modern art: modern art looks like a child could have painted it = if it looks like a child painted it = modern art.  

Oh! that lucky art gallery! Even the misplaced capital A suggests a slightly shaky grasp on what art is.

A recent blog by Johnathan Jones ( who else? ) states that the public cannot be trusted to commission art. Equally, as I fear the Arts & Craft stream of the Cutting Room Experiment will prove, they can be trusted even less to take a multi-authorial hand in it.

Why do I have a problem with this? Cause right now it seems that Manchester is incapable of plotting a course between uber-brow and sickeningly twee-tastic; both of which often are insufferably self assured and self reverential.

With a wider view, it often seems that a lot of public art at the moment sometimes doubt that the public can think about art abstractly and intelligently, apart from only in the most hackneyed and rudimentary manner.

 
If this has pissed people off, then prove me wrong. The deadline for idea submissions is 29 May 2009. I'd like to see something which was intelligent, and not so patronising in it's inclusiveness and intellectual crudeness. This could be an opportunity to do something wonderful, a clarion call, a chance to prove all the curatorial elite wrong. 

But will it be?


http://www.cuttingroomexperiment.com/

POI: MOVING, MAPPING, MEMORY

Just recieved a really sweet "save the date" email from the Cornerhouse about POI : Moving, Mapping, Memory, their next exhibition which runs 5 to 28 June 2009.

"POI explores the exchanging of points in time, or places in space, giving us the chance to review the world around us through innovative media art works. The installations investigate our shifting existences, both physical and digital, and the ways we perceive, shape and interweave the environments we inhabit. The narratives created ultimately comment on our surroundings, from a social, historical and technological perspective."

Sounds pretty interesting, but a tad uber-brow, which is what exhibitions at the Cornerhouse seem to be tending towards at the moment. Anyway, with my current immersion in the digital perhaps I'll be able to get a better handle on this one, as opposed to the slightly overwhelming politicised/intellectual efforts involved in State Legacy. 

Futuresonic Art v1

One and a half days into Futuresonic, and before heading off to the second day of the Social Tech Summit at Contact, I thought I would write something quickly about some of the art I've seen.

The main arts hub is the The Environment 2.0 Art Exhibition at Cube Gallery on Portland Street. Although there is a basket load of interactive musical fun nonsense on the lower floor, the stuff that caught my attention and provoked my latent childlike fascination were in the top gallery.

Firstly, it is impossible to ignore Scenocosme's Akousmaflore. Located just inside the gallery, these musical plants are almost additive. Wiggle you hand next to them, or gently tug on the hanging strands, and the plants emitted electronic jangles and twitters in the most charming way. It is like being in some magical garden.

However, I did find them ever so slightly menacing. Has anyone red Day Of The Triffids recently? Didn't the Triffid's emit some seductive hoots and whistles to tempt humans into reach of their stingers?

Recently I've fallen back in love with Joseph Beuys, perhaps thanks to Cat and Girl. Also, I quite like trees. I mean, saplings. They are so cute. Like baby tress. Am I getting broody over flora?

It is for these reasons that I really liked Ackroyd and Harvey's Beuys' Acorns installation. Yes, I know it's just 300 saplings grown from acorns from trees planted by Beuys, but there is something beautiful and intriguing to see this number of plants in a gallery space. The miss-matched pots give it a lovely sense of careful/carelessness. 

When I picked up my delegate pack on Wednesday I cycled home, and sat in my kitchen with my housemate's going through my freebees. I've not been to many of these junkets, so I find these kind of packs pretty interesting. In the bag was a plain matchbox, and upon sliding it open I almost threw it across the room. For a split second I thought it contain a dead bug, or worse, a live on.

However, it was really a dinky little paper cockroach made out of old Futuresonic programmes. In the Cube there are thousands of them, swarming along a ledge on the staircase. Oddly, I can't find any info on who did this glorious buggy installation. 

The photographs are by my good friend @samscam, who has some great photographs of Futuresonic over on his Flickr account.

I better be off, throw myself at the Social Tech Summit. Blogging is my new excuse for staying in bed.