Field Trip: Transcending Occupation

Following our meeting at Gasworks with Mark Fisher, this exercise begins to explore the theory of Starbucks as a public space, meant to be occupied by consumers, revolutionaries and chess players contemporarily; the same way a public bench would have historically. What does it mean to be critical about capitalism within a hyper-capitalist space?

My locale, Starbucks Knightsbridge, works for it’s HD capitalism, and that same glory is mimicked in the architecture of the shop. The second level has a floor to ceiling window on Knightsbridge, with familiar tables and chairs pushed up against the glass – allowing a Starbucks customer to float above the street.

Following Huw Lemmey’s writing on Adi-Zones and Mark Fisher’s ‘Post-Capitalist Desire;’ we’ll use this space as a park to meet and hold a digital art critique. By performing this exercise in Starbucks Knightbridge, we put into practice some theories from Mark’s earlier session. Without simply sitting in Starbucks critiquing it, we will use the space to our benefit.

Exercise: DIGI CRIT

Following our session at Banner Repeater with Clunie Reid, this exercise makes the assumption that we are okay with viewing art online. We understand that the greatest dissemination of our work happens this way. How is it possible to represent our work online in a thoughtful way? Are some mediums impossible to represent? What are alternative approaches to disseminating work and does work need to be disseminated in order to reach it’s audience?

In Clunie Reid’s session we touched upon everything from Hito Steryl’s liberation through spam representation to Cady Noland’s monetary withdrawal from the art world. In a current online culture where production goes up as age goes down and where the word curate means ‘two tumblr posts that visually compliment’ how do artists document and display work?

How it works:

All participants are required to bring with them digital representation of a project they are currently working on. This can be a cell phone image of a sculpture or painting, a text (on cell, laptop, ipad) of writing, any version of the work (finished or not.) The only requirement is that you bring this work digitally represented – either how you hope it will be disseminated someday – on a website, or as an e-book, or you can digitally represent your project in process – i.e. in the studio, etc. The idea is for us to share what we are working on and perform an honest critique. Through representing it digitally, we may see something about either the work or it’s representation that will further clarify our inquiry into representation as a whole.

Leslie Kulesh Practice is engaged in critiquing up to date pop-cultural narratives through sculpture, achievement and video. Telling stories, addressing problems, and that specialize in specific minoritarian struggles, his work tackles intercultural points of convergence like those between feminism, environmental and technology. Finding at these crossroads area to hold out investigations, and interpreting them through these numerous mediums.