Making the Invisible Known: Images of a City

Barney Kulok's In Visisble Cities act as story telling and a map making device of sorts which bridge time between the past and present. How New York City's past is always so close to its present remained a constant theme throughout the readings made available in class. The past of New York City remains a reminder to all things before it, both tangible and not. Although New York City's urban milieu is constantly being recontextualized through literal demolitions and reconstructions, the oral history and memory of a place shifts too. How one's personal experience shapes a place and event, another's can be vastly different. This notion of how memory of time is made in a moment in history, like September 11th, is especially of note because arguably the event was felt so collectively, but each individual identification with the event is a little different. How an artist like Barney Kulok reshapes and makes new maps of seemingly familiar locales uses modern technology of mapping available WiFi networks he sees on his cellphone while walking familiar paths from known location to location, past to present, within New York CIty.

The process is as follows, in Kulok's own words:

In Visible Cities consists of three monochromatic panels and one photograph. To make each panel I began by choosing two points in Manhattan which would act as the frame. The titles of the pieces were chosen for places that once existed at these coordinates, but no longer exists today. I then walked between these sites and, using my phone, collected the names of all the WiFi networks that appeared on my screen along the route. I arranged the found text from each walk into grids and produced large stencils. On four-by-eight-foot aluminum panels I used acrylic paint and sprayed the ground black. Using the same pigment I then sprayed through the stencils, creating a field of names rising in low relief above the monochromatic surface. The resulting works are cameraless landscapes, invisible snapshots; representations of both the paths depicted and the moment of their recording, connecting the passage of time in the history of the city to the specific date the network names were recorded. This makes the project peculiarly photographic; the recording device has simply transformed from a camera into a phone.

Kulok's description of cameraless landscapes and the idea that even though his project is without an actual photograph, the process itself in inherently photographic because of the use of a recording device and the pinpointing of a specific place and the moment in which it is recorded. As New York City is a constantly changing place, Kulok's work is a connector for its locations' past lives as well as what those places operate as today. The way that Kulok's works operate within this project go a step further to demonstrate Michel de Certeau's statement that "what can be seen designates what is no longer there", in that the WiFi networks are there but invisible, they represent the inhabitants of places and spaces that have changed over the years. Kulok's In Visible Cities project serves to examine the changing surfaces of the street, public and private spaces. Kulok's works appear to be a way to blend the city, art and space. Even though the pieces are presented singularly within a group, the imagery examines the city as a series of the new and now, how situations are viewed in pieces, but act as a whole creating a background of their/our collective visual and verbal memory which is brought together to form a vision of composites.

Week 12: Archiving and Saving

[Zoe Leonard]

Johanna Burton begins her essay, New York, Beside Itself, with recounting another author's memory of walking through the streets post September 11th and still expecting to see the Twin Towers. The author, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, recounts that she would feel compelled to look South, even if not heading in that direction on Fifth Avenue to still see if they were there, or, redirect her mind that of course they would come back, they wouldn't leave forever. How we identify landmarks, whatever their beauty or purpose aids in our orientation within the city [ala people like Haussmann and Kevin Lynch]. Burton begins to equate the urban landscape with a face, not the same, but in some ways in terms that for quite some time, the city has been considered by many to be a living entity, encompassing the organic, responsive and transitional. We could look for the same cues of familiarity that we associate so much with human expression, it's readability, to explore and connect further to the city.




In Burton's opening with reflections upon Sedgwick, she explores too how some contemporary artists working with and within New York City after 9/11 didn't necessarily make work that directly commented on the impact of the event. This statement makes me think to our Monday meeting in the Museum of Contemporary Photography in which we conversed with Natasha Egan about Chinese artists working in urban China. One of the questions raised was, in China after the Cultural Revolution, are any artists free from having their work associated implicitly with being political? What are our preconceived notions or methods for putting a piece in context for our understanding, which may be so far removed from the actual content or conception of a piece?

A specific section within Burton's essay is one of note when it looks to how artists archive. It explores how artists compellingly use, abuse, digest, retool, re-regard or even disregard histories. As Burton looks to contemporary artists who she argues have a ravenousness, an uncouthness, an unruly drive to seek and reframe history. Indeed she states that it is precisely an infidelity to history, which is not the same as a lack of respect. Or, there is a faithlessness [is this better?] "to the presumption of history as singular, solid, sealed or fully relegated to the past that makes these artists' practices something other than mournful or nostalgic. That New York can be seen as so many iterations of itself, only highlights its potential to function as a site both actually and perceptually pictured." This is a strong point in that it asks us how does one wholly and completely archive? History is so contextual, bathed in our assignments of meanings to things which since we may not know about something, especially if we were not there, we conjure definition. Even so much like making a photograph, you edit from step one. Burton further enforces this point by framing it within the described map making process of Jonathon Flatley, in that a subject can never truly consider themselves independent or to have full autonomy, because everything shifts and becomes entangled with so many others [and maps].

[Tom Burr]

[Richard Serra]

Burton writes about reinterpretations of known works, she points to the artist Tom Burr. Burton claims works with the "particularities" of "occupation and use", to explore the possibility of spaces having more than one single, private dimension are exemplified in a work such as Burr's Deep Purple, which becomes a rendition of Richard Serra's Tilted Arc and further comments on an on-going belief that Serra's bulky public works act in a way to shield illicit activities. To continue this examination, she features the artist John Miller who photographed various locales in New York City where sex clubs once operated. The images that seem fairly straightforward in approach go further than looking at the commonalities and regularities of these spaces, even the prominence of them and what was, but focuses more on as Burton states what lies beneath. As Burton continues to look at artists who work from history or make attempts to redefine time spheres from it, she examines Zoe Leonard whose pictures reframe things and places in already set borders, Burton argues she achieves this aesthetically and culturally. How Zoe Leonard exactly reframes actions, could be looking or exposing the private within the public. Her photographs look at the ways her subjects represent themselves and therefore present a way to become understood by others, even when said subject is absent. The photographs acts to gather the sum of what is left, to see the history, whatever is made available. As Burton looks to frame Zoe Leonard's work under Rosalyn Deutsche's terms, Leonard's photographs pass from being simply pictures, but act to prompt. How the work prompts I believe is inescapable from a personal reframing that what the viewer brings to the work, in that how does the viewer frame spaces by assigning them meaning? Are the assignments conjured by preconceived notions or memory? If the latter, what shapes the memory, what senses are used?


[Zoe Leonard]

Works from artists like Leonard, or even Moyra Davey [whose photographs of New York City newsstands 17 years ago become an important part of the history making within that city as these objects are becoming more rare on the streets], act as placeholders within a history. These works operate within a city that is constantly reimagined and transformed within its borders. Its future partially dictated from its past, in constant tug-of-war with its limitations and possibilities.

[Moyra Davey]

Week 11: Urban China, A Global Megalopolis

[Wang Qingsong]

After reading through Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Cultural, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, the catalog from the exhibit Made in China at the MCA in Chicago, as well as viewing multiple video clips from the Tiananmen Square Protests, it is staggering the review these collective pieces and reflect upon how much China has changed just in my lifetime.

The format of the catalog to the Made in China exhibit mimics the wallpaper layout of the show. It functions as a type of time-line, exploring China from its agriculturally rich history throughout its political and governmental transformations to the overwhelming urbanization efforts it has and continues to undertake. The time-line operates in such a way that sections in different ink colors, break up titling to separate red ink for representing "formal, ordered or planned governmental decisions, while blue ink covers the informal, organic or ad-hoc responses and reactions to the enforced policies or events. Tricia Van Eck, states within the catalog that the wallpaper setup encourages the viewer to further interact with other visitors of the show and to answer a set of questions Jiang Jun poses. As the Editor in Chief to Urban China, the only Chinese magazine which researches urbanism in China, Jiang Jun asks the viewer a series of questions focusing on seeing China in many different forms. Some of the more fascinating questions center around looking to "active" public spaces in China and what differentiates them from those in the United States?

In the excerpts from the Tiananmen Square Mini Documentary, the narration begins to explain that Tiananmen Square is the largest public space in the world, intentionally built on an inhuman scale which in part means to reduce humans to the importance of the state. Stated by Michel de Certeau that some specific sites are nearly impossible to separate from specific words, Tiananmen Square rises to the top of that list. The space is seeped in a history of political events, including the protests of 1989 in which hundreds of protesters were killed, possibly many more. A site like Tiananmen Square is so specific and yet evokes such incredibly varied responses, based on emotion, interaction and the preconceived notions which seem eternally linked with the public.



Jiang Jun also asks us how an active "public" can be generated in China? Even though China is a country full of cities that are at the forefront of reigning powers in the global economy, I would argue that an uncensored internet could create a more active public. Even though in many developed countries, millions do not have access to the internet for multiple reasons, in most areas of China even those that do have access are limited due to the State. What does it say about a society that keep its people "in"? One of the confusing aspects of this is that the country plays on the international stage of trade and economic powers, especially due to its population who creates the goods, but prohibits them from total information.

[Tian Taiquan]

Throughout the Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents article excerpts, artists such as Huang Yan, Zhan Wang and Chen Shaoxiong examine the changing urbanism within cities that looks to infrastructure and cultural shifts. Between making rubbings of buildings before, during and after demolition, creating mirrored surfaced "artificial rockery" and attempting to photograph every aspect of an urban landscape, these artists attempt to understand their very temporal and transitional spaces. Chen Shaoxiong's attempts at focusing on every object, including all seemingly insignificant, in an effort to examine and memorialize his rapidly changing Guangzhou is reminiscent of artists like Christopher Wool, Moyra Davey and Roy Colmer working in New York City.

[Zhan Wang]

[Chen Shaoxiong]

In addition to these works, an Australian Dateline feature named China's Ghost Cities and Malls investigates the booming large-scale infrastructure projects in China. Millions of apartments and commercial spaces have sat vacant for years and per current predictions will continue to remain unoccupied. The unbelievable costs of home ownership and the strict conditions in which that dream could be possible seem so unattainable even to very high earners. Facts stated that some projects require a 50% down-payment on property followed by the requirement of the balance to be payed off in 3 years. The destruction of historic neighborhoods followed by the replacement of huge redevelopment projects is so focused on setting the GDP high, that everything else suffers. State-assisted housing doesn't appear as an option even in a state controlled housing market. Several artists are following these occurrences photographically, including Edward Burtynsky, Zhang Xiao and Sze Tsung Leong.

[Edward Burtynsky]




[3 images: Zhang Xiao]

Although a little generalized, the following video explores "public spaces" within and around private developments in a few areas of urban China.



While exploring Chinese artists in the contemporary sphere, I ran across this great site, Conscientious, which leads to many images and personal artist sites. Many of the works by the Chinese photographers featured explore the multiple layers and intertwining cultural histories of China both before and after the Cultural Revolution. It is straightforward enough to point out multiple problems that China dwells within, not limited to: [gross negligence of human rights, Tibet, censorship, overpowering State control and massive urban renewal projects], but not as clear as how to shift them towards repair. Much of the Made in China show explores how to expand the dialogue surrounding these issues and how individuals, including artists, can tangibly and visually create changes for the reimagination of China.

[O Zhang]