Reading Assignment 4: Returning on Bikes Notes on Social Practice

Social practice has been introduced to the art world and become a method to be applied by Activism and Situationist. According to the author Maria Lind, the central value of social practice is all about participation. It promotes interaction between the audience and artwork.

Returnity was a social practice project created by Elin Wikstroms and one of the works was Cycle Club. It was about a large group of people riding bikes but cycling backward in a town in Germany in 1997. Cycle Club pushed the concept of social practice toward people and contemporary art. Although sometimes Returnity was still considered as a normal art project which was only about the connection with audience, it had shown in many cities around the world when social practice started to be recognized.

Many social practices reflect the issue at certain moments. During the post-WWII period, there were already several artists practiced with the weakening economy problem. Currently, the issues are related to working environment for artists. Many artists often suffer from ambiguous rights or working with low paid. Services, a project initiated in 1993, responded to this situation. Generally, it proceeded by cooperating with various artists in exhibitions. But Lind did not provide more details about this project in the article.

As our society is so globalized now, I think social practice can be more effective. We are facing the problem of over-relying on touch-screen devices. Because social practice strongly involves physical participation, it may be a helpful method to let more people to pay attention on this kind of problem.

Reading Assignment 3: In Defense of the Poor Image

It is not hard to find out we are more willing to see high quality pictures now by observing how the trend of cinemas and smart phones have modified every year. However, this situation does not eliminate the pictures with low defination. In Hito Steyerl's article In Defense of the Poor Image, she brought out the concept of "poor image" and explained how they are still able to present broadly in the modern world.

Steyerl believed the popularity of poor images is connected with the rapid growth of digital mediums such as computers and the Internet. The Internet is the most important medium today due to its convenience and speediness to collect information. Tons of low quality videos or pictures are floating on it. Even though high definition is the current trend in visual technology, people also preder to see images quickly. By using this advantage, poor image is able to maintain its value.

Steyerl had never given a clear definition of "poor image".  In my perspective, I define it as any image that produced in the past. The value of poor images is preserved by nostalgic feeling. I think a proper example is changing old films into the 3D version. Although these movies exist with poor visual quality, we still consider them as classics and watch them sometimes. And many film companies even improve the definition and bring them back to screen.

Regardless of how poor image is defined, we can be sure that poor image is irreplaceable. As the Internet goes faster or the time keeps passing, poor images will also become more accessible and more valuable.

Project 3: Curatorting

        My curatorial practice was about the contrast of nature and human technology. The color was chosen as brown because I thought it was the most abundant color (soil, woods, leaves, and hair/fur pigments) presenting in nature. The disc which built with wrong file was recycled to become the background of the patterns. The theme of one side was about plants. Because I wanted to be simple, I only made the composition with leaves and seeds. The other side was a deer with a pairs of giant antlers. The deer idea was inspired by the character, a deer-like god who protects nature from human beings, from a Ghibli movie named Princess Mononoke.

      We also were required to have a monochrome done by someone else. So here was my friend's sketch. I didn't have any special reason why I chose her to be my plus one. It was only because I went to the same high school with her and she has been really talented in drawing since then. 

      The show run well in my opinion. There were more people than I expected. Even though it was hold in the tiny gallery because we didn't collect many works, it turned out it was a successful show.

The pic of the curatorial show.

My work was the one shown at the right corner.