23,199 research outputs found
The Institute of Beasts: strategies of doubt and refusal in a contemporary art practice
The collaborative work of Steve Dutton and Steve Swindells (Dutton and Swindells) can be seen in the context of post-conceptual artistic practices which play with and interrogate images, objects and texts through processes of collage, appropriation and multiple association. The aim of the collaboration is to foster complex interpretations, often from deceptively simple means; consciously working through varied rhetorical devices and tropes, modes of production and strategic interventions. We are tactical artists, preferring to focus on strategies, context and processes, frequently doubling, collaging, reversing, repeating and inverting images, objects and texts as a means of disruption. But a question remains at the heart of such contemporary art practices, namely, a disruption of what?
My paper for ATINER focused on strategies of refusal, waywardness, the production of ambiguity and new fictional taxonomies in a contemporary art practice and asked if the use of tactics of doubt in the work of art are useful tools for production of new knowledge. At the heart of these questions are issues around the relationship between art and research, the possibility or impossibility of art within the contexts of the contemporary art/educational institution and art school and the possibility of creating and sustaining an art practice which refuses to align itself to any one canon, manifesto, school, industry, form, institution or critical method.
The paper draws on the collaborative practice of Dutton and Swindells and also Michael Phillipsonâs 1992 essay âManaging âtraditionâ: the Plight of Aesthetic Practices in techno-scientific cultureâ as a means of illustrating the potential absorption of the specific into the general under the auspices neo-liberal institutional and commercial agendas
Towards an office of institutional aesthetics
By exploring the territory between being within the zone of art practice and the zone of art educational institutions along with their attendant bureaucratic structures, Dutton will engage with the possibility of applying different types of (poetic) sensibilities that emerge out of reflexive art practice onto and into the heart of the controlling rhetoric and processes that function as normative behaviour within many institutions of art education. Thinking of the Art School as a site of an improbable constellation of subjectivities and political and institutional imperatives, Dutton will outline a path through which art and institution might begin to conflate in a zone of possibilities.
Starting with a propositional âOffice of Institutional Aestheticsâ, which has its roots in real world scenarios, Dutton will characterise the tensions and strains of contemporary institutions of art education as âendâ obsessedâafter which he will explore forms of practice which concern âbecomingsâ rather than completions. Dutton concludes that those of us who straddle art and art-educational spheres might need to re-think our institutions as networks of behaviours and tactics in much the same way we might encounter and engage in the process of art over the fetish of the artefact
Clueless: contradictions, malapropisms and tensions within a contemporary art practice
At a recent gallery opening of the work of Terry Atkinson, I got talking to an artist friend, âMâ, and both of us were singing the praises of a certain mutual acquaintance, âDâ who happened to be âcropping upâ all over the place, in shows, in magazines, in his writings, even his teaching was being talked about. It was a genuine pleasure to see our friend doing so well but when my other friend âMâ made the point that âD âwas really focussed and knew what he was doingâ, and added wistfully, âI wish I did, I havenât a clue most of the timeâ, I felt an immediate sense of empathy and it seemed entirely appropriate that we would have this conversation within the context of work by Atkinson who has recently described the art world as a âswampâ. Like my friend âMâ, I too mostly seem to be little lost in my practice, but itâs a waywardness I seem compelled to cultivate in a far more profound manner than a simple inability to focus, yet something about this apparent lack of direction seems to indicate back to me an absence of something altogether more serious, of a sustainable intellectual argument perhaps, leading to the further academic threat of the loss of peer esteem or even more withering, the accusation of a shortfall of artistic ambition.
When asked to describe my work I often still stumble like a first year art student on his or her first viva. However I know its not that Iâm not articulate, itâs that Iâm not able to articulate a practice, which I have steered all over the place, precisely in order for it to be un-speakable.
David Bohm, in On Creativity suggests that we must âgive patient and sustained attention to the idea of confusionâ. My argument for my contribution to ATINER was be for a rethinking of practice, particularly within the contexts of research driven agendas of the Art and Design Institutions, in order to create conceptual space for this confusion and complexity to exist as aesthetic tensions, which are attempting to exist outside of the realm of the essentialising commodification of the art market whilst being implicitly sceptical of the progressive drive towards knowledge of the contemporary research culture.
In the words of Jacques Ranciere, âAesthetics is the ability to think contradictionâ. I proposed to explore an argument that refused to isolate waywardness as a lazy or uncritical approach, and indeed, to suggest that such an approach is deeply engaged, politicised and recognises contradiction as an aesthetic force. It may be possible to argue that this impossibility of classification, this refusal (or inability) to âfocusâ is in itself a highly charged and even ideologically informed approach, having its routes in libidinal forces, which, at their centre promote a deeply profound and necessary critical distance and attempt at detachment from what could be seen as the atomising effects of the confusion and manipulation of everyday media orientated life, presenting another model of confusion, in which tensions and stresses, contractions and disturbances have an aesthetic and dynamic dimensions which may experienced as a form of pleasure.
I did this by drawing attention to my own practice within my collaborations of Dutton and Swindells and The Institute of Beasts, but I will also referred to the work Art and Language, Terry Atkinson, Fischli and Weiss, Arakawa and Gins, Liam Gillick as well as some emergent artists within the UK (Andy Spackman, Brigid Mcleer) and the thinking of David Bohm, Claire Bishop, Jaques Ranciere, Grant Kester and Elizabeth Grosz
How to protect estuaries in Durham, NH
Estuaries are some of the most diverse and fragile ecosystems on our planet. All over the nation, along the coastal states, half of the wetlands, about 55 million acres, have been destroyed (âHabitat Loss Nationwide,â n.d.). Most of these wetlands get Dutton 3 cleared and drained for development, agriculture, etc. In the estuaries located in the Gulf of Maine, development has doubled in the last forty years in the lower watershed (âHabitat Loss Nationwide,â n.d.). This has resulted in an increase in population and impervious surfaces, which correlates with the negative impacts to the watershed, such as runoff and sedimentation (National Research Council, 1987). Other factors have contributed to the degradation of the estuaries in the Piscataqua region such as sealevel rise and an increase in fertilizer use (citations). Some changes have been made to protect these estuaries, however, solving the cumulative impacts need to be included in the protection. Each individual activity is not independent of each other. Their activities work together to decrease the productivity and health of the estuaries. We have policies that have been created, and zoning that has been changed to improve estuaries, however, we need to take that next step forward to fill in the gaps. The goal of this paper is to analyze the current policies and programs, identify the gaps to improve and enhance the programs to be in line with the longstanding ideals of protection and conservation of Durhamâs estuaries
An Empirical Examination of the Associations Among Crystal Methamphetamine Use History, Posttraumatic Stress Symptom Severity, and Perceived Social Support
Social support functions as a protective factor against the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Crystal methamphetamine use, however, is associated with a decrease in Social functioning. This is noteworthy as people with PTSD endorse elevated rates of crystal methamphetamine use. The current study proposed to look at perceived Social support as it relates to crystal methamphetamine use among individuals endorsing a wide range of posttraumatic stress symptoms. Questionnaires measuring perceived Social support and posttraumatic stress symptom severity were administered to 98 traumatic event-exposed adults (Mage = 48.5, SD =7.74) recruited from the San Francisco bay area who were participating in a larger study focused on human immunodeficiency virus treatment adherence. Regression analyses were employed to test three interrelated hypotheses based on the general prediction that posttraumatic stress and crystal methamphetamine use will evidence unique and combined relations with perceived Social support. While posttraumatic stress symptom severity was negatively related to perceived Social support (B = -.145, β = -.322, sr 2 = .104, t(93) = -3.299, p = .001), neither the extent of previous crystal methamphetamine use, or the interaction between posttraumatic stress symptom severity and crystal methamphetamine use were associated with decreased levels of perceived Social support. Secondary analyses revealed a significant interaction between avoidance symptoms and crystal methamphetamine use, but upon further investigation, it appears that this relationship is only significant for those who deny previous crystal methamphetamine use. Similarly, an analysis of marital status indicated no significant relation between PTSD, crystal methamphetamine use, and marital status. Taken together, these results replicated research linking PTSD symptoms to Social support, but do not suggest that crystal methamphetamine use further impact Social support level
Evidence for a non-universal stellar initial mass function in low-redshift high-density early-type galaxies
We determine an absolute calibration of stellar mass-to-light ratios for the
densest \simeq 3% of early-type galaxies in the local universe (redshift
z\simeq 0.08) from SDSS DR7. This sample of \sim 4000 galaxies has, assuming a
Chabrier IMF, effective stellar surface densities, Sigma_e > 2500 M_sun/pc^2,
stellar population synthesis (SPS) stellar masses log_10(M_sps/M_sun)<10.8, and
aperture velocity dispersions of sigma_ap=168^{+37}_{-34} km/s (68% range). In
contrast to typical early-type galaxies, we show that these dense early-type
galaxies follow the virial fundamental plane, which suggests that
mass-follows-light. With the additional assumption that any dark matter does
not follow the light, the dynamical masses of dense galaxies provide a direct
measurement of stellar masses. Our dynamical masses (M_dyn), obtained from the
spherical Jeans equations, are only weakly sensitive to the choice of
anisotropy (\beta) due to the relatively large aperture of the SDSS fiber for
these galaxies: R_ap \simeq 1.5 R_e. Assuming isotropic orbits (\beta=0) we
find a median log_{10} (M_dyn/M_sps) = 0.233 \pm 0.003, consistent with a
Salpeter IMF, while more bottom heavy IMFs and standard Milky-Way IMFs are
strongly disfavored. Our results are consistent with, but do not require, a
dependence of the IMF on dynamical mass or velocity dispersion. We find
evidence for a color dependence to the IMF such that redder galaxies have
heavier IMFs with M_dyn/M_sps \propto (g-r)^{1.13\pm0.09}. This may reflect a
more fundamental dependence of the IMF on the age or metallicity of a stellar
population, or the density at which the stars formed.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, accepted to MNRAS Letters, minor changes to
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