ARTBASE (1)
BIO
Michael Szpakowski is an artist, composer, writer and educator.
CV:
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/szpakowski_cv.pdf
Video work:
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/vlog/ScenesOfProvincialLife.cgi
Stills:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/szpako
12 Remixes:
http://www.michaelszpakowski.org/mickiewicz/
CV:
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/szpakowski_cv.pdf
Video work:
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/vlog/ScenesOfProvincialLife.cgi
Stills:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/szpako
12 Remixes:
http://www.michaelszpakowski.org/mickiewicz/
YES & NO
I like this a lot. It's very Naumanesque of course, a *good thing* in my book, & seems in keeping with one aspect of the MTAA mission which is a kind of "classicizing" impulse, the sometimes explicit, sometimes unspoken reworking of material & ideas from recent art history in a net context, which remaking inevitably comes with a slightly cheeky ( very Brit word -substitute an appropriate equivalent) warmth & and a feeling of a comfortable relaxation with the material; it's not the first time out for the *content* so no-one's too nervous about *that* and *playing* can happen.)
It is slightly giltchy, but I *like* the glitches -I like also the fact that you're not too controlling about the formal aspects of the piece ( more evidence of that relaxed classicism - early Nauman would have been much more obsessive/neurotic about shoehorning the content into the *form*) -there's some interesting stuff going on with contradictory speech/gesture (hmm, it'd go down well in Bulgaria where, confusingly, shaking the head means yes & vice versa) but there also seems to be a voice off? or is that a glitch ?- I see there are two separate Flash pieces abutted -they don't talk to each other do they? -I'm a Flash ignoramus. I assume each piece calls up fragments from a yes/no vid database -presumably sometimes it struggles a bit on the net which accounts for the occasional pops and grinding noises at the begining and end of fragments..
Don't fix it! I know ( and this also is evidence of your role as classicists) you have a lovely line in *finish* generally but the slight roughness of this is an attractive and fecund feature...
It is slightly giltchy, but I *like* the glitches -I like also the fact that you're not too controlling about the formal aspects of the piece ( more evidence of that relaxed classicism - early Nauman would have been much more obsessive/neurotic about shoehorning the content into the *form*) -there's some interesting stuff going on with contradictory speech/gesture (hmm, it'd go down well in Bulgaria where, confusingly, shaking the head means yes & vice versa) but there also seems to be a voice off? or is that a glitch ?- I see there are two separate Flash pieces abutted -they don't talk to each other do they? -I'm a Flash ignoramus. I assume each piece calls up fragments from a yes/no vid database -presumably sometimes it struggles a bit on the net which accounts for the occasional pops and grinding noises at the begining and end of fragments..
Don't fix it! I know ( and this also is evidence of your role as classicists) you have a lovely line in *finish* generally but the slight roughness of this is an attractive and fecund feature...
THIS is
Hi Nigel - living statues in Covent Garden, Barcelona, Paris whatever... just *so* dull..agreed.
There's no room, no resonance in that form which is exactly the same in every detail that matters whatever it *looks like* & wherever it is carried out.
(In a sense it's small scale "theme-parkism" and that analysis, I think, is borne out by the very immediate cash nexus involved in the living statue thing)
There's something very different about this - connected with it's one-offness, the fact it is a created/enacted by a collective & also that it's entirely free of the above mentioned monetary aspects , as well as the anti market sub text I maintain is present (whether put there consciously or not).
For me, it is typologically related to the student 'Anti-Normalizer' project Brett Stallbaum posted on here awhile back
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/26527/#49096
- we reposted the vid of that on dvblog
http://dvblog.org/?p=535
& thinking aloud then it struck me that there was something there very much in a line of descent from 68's ‘Sous les pavés, la plage!’ - it's no accident, as we old Trots love to say, that this kind of work, with its deeply utopian strain, is surfacing again now, in a time of increasing political and economic uncertainty...
There's no room, no resonance in that form which is exactly the same in every detail that matters whatever it *looks like* & wherever it is carried out.
(In a sense it's small scale "theme-parkism" and that analysis, I think, is borne out by the very immediate cash nexus involved in the living statue thing)
There's something very different about this - connected with it's one-offness, the fact it is a created/enacted by a collective & also that it's entirely free of the above mentioned monetary aspects , as well as the anti market sub text I maintain is present (whether put there consciously or not).
For me, it is typologically related to the student 'Anti-Normalizer' project Brett Stallbaum posted on here awhile back
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/26527/#49096
- we reposted the vid of that on dvblog
http://dvblog.org/?p=535
& thinking aloud then it struck me that there was something there very much in a line of descent from 68's ‘Sous les pavés, la plage!’ - it's no accident, as we old Trots love to say, that this kind of work, with its deeply utopian strain, is surfacing again now, in a time of increasing political and economic uncertainty...
THIS is
Hi Nigel - living statues in Covent Garden, Barcelona, Paris whatever... just *so* dull..agreed.
There's no room, no resonance in that form which is exactly the same in every detail that matters whatever it *looks like* & wherever it is carried out.
(In a sense it's small scale "theme-parkism" and that analysis, I think, is borne out by the very immediate cash nexus involved in the living statue thing)
There's something very different about this - connected with it's one-offness, the fact it is a created/enacted by a collective & also that it's entirely free of the above mentioned monetary aspects , as well as the anti market sub text I maintain is present (whether put there consciously or not).
For me, it is typologically related to the student 'Anti-Normalizer' project Brett Stallbaum posted on here awhile back
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/26527/#49096
- we reposted the vid of that on dvblog
http://dvblog.org/?p=535
& thinking aloud then it struck me that there was something there very much in a line of descent from 68's ‘Sous les pavés, la plage!’ - it's no accident, as we old Trots love to say, that this kind of work, with its deeply utopian strain, is surfacing again now, in a time of increasing political and economic uncertainty...
There's no room, no resonance in that form which is exactly the same in every detail that matters whatever it *looks like* & wherever it is carried out.
(In a sense it's small scale "theme-parkism" and that analysis, I think, is borne out by the very immediate cash nexus involved in the living statue thing)
There's something very different about this - connected with it's one-offness, the fact it is a created/enacted by a collective & also that it's entirely free of the above mentioned monetary aspects , as well as the anti market sub text I maintain is present (whether put there consciously or not).
For me, it is typologically related to the student 'Anti-Normalizer' project Brett Stallbaum posted on here awhile back
http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/26527/#49096
- we reposted the vid of that on dvblog
http://dvblog.org/?p=535
& thinking aloud then it struck me that there was something there very much in a line of descent from 68's ‘Sous les pavés, la plage!’ - it's no accident, as we old Trots love to say, that this kind of work, with its deeply utopian strain, is surfacing again now, in a time of increasing political and economic uncertainty...
Stuff on 'Scenes of Provincial Life' so far in 2008
I'm posting this in 'Discussion', pace Max, on the premise that I would be pleased if anyone discussed any of it.
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/vlog/ScenesOfProvincialLife.cgi/2008
(I'm trying to call your atttention to bigger chunks of the sequence rather less frequently.)
If anyone cares for a closer engagement there's now e mail subscription:
http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=237161&loc=en_US
cheers
michael
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/vlog/ScenesOfProvincialLife.cgi/2008
(I'm trying to call your atttention to bigger chunks of the sequence rather less frequently.)
If anyone cares for a closer engagement there's now e mail subscription:
http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=237161&loc=en_US
cheers
michael
THIS is
Yeah, I liked it too. A nicely executed bit of theatre. If anything the implicit politics strike me as *anti* market - In this busy space where people hurry to do business, get to work, we choose to do something utterly gratuitous. Not only that but the content of our nicely organised (& in that careful organising itself lies another layer of *our* time stolen from the man) acte gratuit itself involves - what? - well... *doing nothing*, *stopping*, manifestly neither *working* nor *doing business* nor *making war*. And there are whoops of genuine pleasure from onlookers at the end.
There is an encroaching element of theme-parkness in some large-scale art/performance that I find distressing, a blend of demagogy, marketing and the banal ( I'll name names if anyone cares) & I'd be the first to be critical of it; but this piece seems to me to be the antithesis of that phenomenon - smart, worked over, un-lazy, complex.
There is an encroaching element of theme-parkness in some large-scale art/performance that I find distressing, a blend of demagogy, marketing and the banal ( I'll name names if anyone cares) & I'd be the first to be critical of it; but this piece seems to me to be the antithesis of that phenomenon - smart, worked over, un-lazy, complex.