Creating Meaning-Making and Using Images

• no wastage of materials in the process of creating garments
• the discarded silver-plated brass musical instruments becomes artwork
• focus on the family and their facial expression, ignore the remaining food after the meal

• with the development of civilization, update speed of the product and food is unexpected
• ignore the discarded things after the producing, using and eating

• which have witnessed the passage of time
• Rethinking about these things is a kind of return, as well as an expectation of a nice time in the future
• and it is a necessary process of seeking the balance between consumption and environment

Words are Unreliable

Project:  Words are unreliable

“You make me feel so safe, Jessica.”

Date: 21-28 October 2011

Tutor: Silke Dettmers

The Death of Jessica

By Dongdong, 28 October 2011

Who is Jessica?  In my work, Jessica is changeable.  Different people may have different definition or feeling of safety in the different relationships.  For a mental patient, different kinds of medicine can make him feel safe.  Under this circumstance, Jessica is a kind of medicine… There are two pieces of passport in the second picture， although, the identifications in second picture looks like belong to two different individuals, actually, it is one person.   Because of the safety that the medicine brings, his personality was split to two parts, one is himself and another one is Jessica. Gradually, he fell in love with Jessica… The object in the third picture is an urn, which contains Jessica’s cremains.  In order to possess the kind of safety forever, he finally killed Jessica.  To love means to destroy, to destroy means to possess.  The death of Jessica makes him feel safe.  Actually, Jessica is himself, which means he killed himself.  The death of Jessica can make that kind of safety to be eternal.

Art Today

Thomas Hirschhorn said in Art Today, “Utopia does not interest me.  Utopia is only meaningful when I try and put it into practice and when I have the courage to surrender to potential failure and not run away when confronted with the fear of disaster.  I think Utopia has to be created in the here and now.  I have never been interested in the Utopia of the past.  And it must not become trendy either.  Utopia must never be left in the hands of politicians and sociologists.  As an artist I want to try and accept responsibility for this in and through my work… It is not a question of being responsible for a success or a failure, but of taking responsibility for the desire for Utopia.  If I am filled with this desire and acknowledge it then you cannot speak of failure, regardless of the result.  Failure in this case would be a lack of desire.” (2003:245)

So whether an artwork is successful, which depends on the artist’s extent of desire when he did it instead of final expression.  I will never and ever get the criticism from any viewers towards my finished work excluding something that appears to go against Utopia, cause I tried my best to finish every piece of my work with full of my desire.  If it happens, I will say you did not get the meaning of the work.  The suggestion or criticism only exists in the process of creating.

Study Proposal

My MA study proposal will use visual communication to advocate a more moderate consumption, exploring the possibilities of re-design and re-utilization, based on a design philosophy seeking the balance between consumption and environment.

All things created by predecessors that could be still used nowadays have a timeless quality of ‘eternal creation’. Yet old or abandoned things made by human beings have witnessed the passage of time. Giving these things a new life is a kind of return, as well as an expectation of a nice time in the future.

London boasts of its historic constructions and rich cultural background. The city has enjoyed a long period of advantages in economy, and is highly developed in term of contemporary arts, mainstream culture and counter-culture.

The development of London relates strongly to the brilliant combination of different cultures.  My aim is to find ways that this diversity could reflect a more moderate balance between people and environment in London.

We know this but we just don't know how to show it

We know this but we just don't know how to show it

By Ronin Cho

NEW SENSATIONS: SAATCHI GALLERY & CHANNEL 4'S PRIZE FOR 2011 UK GRADUATES

We know this but we just don’t know how to show it (2010) is a kinetic sculpture that mimics door knocking. It’s built with hand carved wooden hand, a door, a microprocessor and a distance sensor. As the audience comes close to the sculpture, the hand starts knocking the door multiple times.Please follow this link to view the video. 

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/ns/

http://vimeo.com/19106933

My interest lies in between two different spaces: the material/physical world and the immaterial/electrical world. The value of the immaterial is rapidly increasing as technology, Internet and small gadgets are popularised. Accordingly, the dependency on unseen systems and their influence is escalating followed by an alteration of people’s belief and behaviour, especially in communication.

I am a model of a person who has such a dependency on unseen system. However, since I found myself struggling finding where the sincerity is, I despise this unseen system for its illusion and side effects such as its speed of change, which disrupts digestion of thoughts. Then I started to crave certainty in the material/physical world as well as balance between two worlds in this inseparable disparity.

The fantasy of pressing a button is already realised and part of our life; we don’t need to understand how the system works. However, lack of awareness in the behaviour leaves unwanted or unintended marks. And because of the behaviour alteration, the level of consciousness reaches near to the ground. From these changes, I explore the origins of this phenomenon by finding unnoticed parts of everyday electronic appliances.

If I were selected, I would like to continue to make the work; transforming the various characters of those objects and their non-physical status into something sturdy, physical and tangible. By elevating their physical presence to a sense-sharpening tool, I try to provoke a question to the audience: where is our belief in this hurried shifting time?

Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo

Postmodernist: Ai Weiwei (b.1957)

Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo 1994

The postmodern preoccupation with branding is put to shocking effect in this early work by Ai Weiwei. Painting a 2000-year-old urn with the Coca-Cola logo (a western brand with a huge presence in China), he suggests the uncomfortable collision of ancient culture with global capital. Ironically, through already a precious artefact, the object became more valuable once he defaced it and turned it into contemporary art.

The Art of the Factory

Untitled (High Heels), Qing Li, Lina International Shoes Ltd, Huizhou, China

For his new project, Err, artist Jeremy Hutchison contacted various factories around the world, and asked if one of their workers would produce an 'incorrect' version of the product they make every day: in doing so, the functional objects became artworks.

"I asked them to make me one of their products, but to make it with an error," Hutchison explains. "I specified that this error should render the object dysfunctional. And rather than my choosing the error, I wanted the factory worker who made it to choose what error to make. Whatever this worker chose to do, I would accept and pay for."

Untitled (Chair), Lee Ming, ShowOwn Ltd, Hangzhou, China

Untitled (Shovel), Henryk Wegner, Romanik Tools S.A., Gdansk, Poland

"[Err is] about creating deliberate miscommunication," continues Hutchison, "forging a moment of poetry within a hyper-efficient system of digital exchange. It's about an invisible global workforce, and their connection to the relentless regurgitation of stuff. It's about Duchamp and the readymade, but updated to exist within the context of today's globalised economy. It's about the rub between art and design, the mass-produced and unique, the functional and the dysfunctional."

Untitled (Comb), Mr Kartick, Mr Ram, Mr Vikash, Star Creations Ltd, Kolkata, India

Untitled (Sunglasses), Mr King, Wenzhou Yidao Optical Co, Ltd, Wenzhou, China

The resulting new products Hutchison received vary enormously. Some are simply objects that have been destroyed, such as the chair, from a factory in China. Others are more playful: a shovel with its handle inverted, a pipe with no space to stuff tobacco.

Untitled (Pipe), Soner Demirel, Pipsan Pipes, Istanbul, Turkey

Untitled (Trumpet), Lie Liu, Tianjin Jessy Musical Instrument Co, Ltd, Tianjin, China

Hutchison has kept all of the correspondence with the factories as part of the project. As might be imagined, many of the initial emails express confusion. Shown below are two of the emails he received, including one with the apt enquiry, "are you joking, sir?"

Even more intriguing is some of Hutchison's later correspondence regarding how the individual workers felt about the project. Lee Ming, the Chinese worker who destroyed the chair, is said to have initially tried to "destroy it with a big stone", before using a cutting machine. The person writing to Hutchison on behalf of Lee Ming then reports that "the feeling is great he said after he cut the chair piece to piece".

Untitled (Ladder), Jack Lee, Shijiazhuang Dadaoyuan Trading Co, Ltd, Shijiazhuang, China

Untitled (Walking Stick), Carlos Barrachina, FCA Segorbina de Bastones, SL, Segorbe, Spain

The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture at SAATCHI GALLERY