[-empyre-] Starting the First Week / Valente and Ziyalan

Sat Nov 5 02:35:04 AEDT 2016

It appears to me that underlying the heated arguments of the last few days
is the question of power.. Who has control on another through a medium of
technology, this time the camera. The posession of power is assigned
implicitly to the user of the camera. I would like to shift the focus a
little to the camera-- the camera's power, in other words, its efficiency
in enabling the photographer to control the final image. Is that power of
the machine a positive for the arts, does it not even have a moral
dimension?

About two months ago I wrote a catalogue essay for the exhibition of the
Russian photographer and conceptual artist Olga Chernisheva's black and
white drawings "Vague Accent"  at The Drawing Center in Manhattan that is
open until December 18 (http://www.drawingcenter.org/en/drawingcenter/5/
exhibitions/6/current/ ). Here is a passage from the essay "A Dialogue with
Olga:

            Olga's Weak Art

iPhone6 destroyed photography, giving the photographer absolute power over
its subject. At the click of a finger, every milli-inch of one's
solipsistic reality is mastered, replicating or giving it an intensity of
codified, algorithmic hue—of a violet panoptical twilight zone. The weak
power of black and white images— rebelling.

Before hearing any argument about me calling a woman's art weak, I would
like to say Olga Chernisheva went out her way to say that this passage
represented the intention behind her drawings perfectly.

What this passage suggests is that "weakness" is an essential part of any
significant art in our our time --a vibrant weapon undercutting often from
within the all engrossing reality that the computer creates for us-- in
essence, a negative force.

One may argue about the content of Valente's photos; but there is no
question that in the processes involving the making of his films (as
described in his introductory statement) and his photographs he is trying
to create conditions of weakness where the controlling power of the framer
of the image is diminished. That is what William Bain's post is implying
when he says that the faults he saw in Valente's photos were due to a
glitch in the computer or intentional. Nevertheless, he found the blurry
intrusions or double-exposures emotionally enhancing.

That is also why I asked both Valente and Ziyalan to describe in detail in
their introductory statements the handling of their cameras creating their
images, how, for instance, Ziyalan dealt with photoshop or what kind of
cameras Valente used.

Ciao,

Murat

On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Oh my, what a difference 8 hours make! Multiple questions to my mind.
> First, to Renate's question. Why are there not more responses from women?
> Except for Renate, up to now all the discussions pro and con have been
> among men. Tim's connection to Trump for example would have been more
> convincing if it had come from a woman. I don't want this discussion to be,
> as it has been historically, among men deciding "what women want" or what
> is fair or unfair to them.
>
> It seems to me it is very relevant in Peter's photos whether the women let
> their photos be taken willingly or unwillingly. (As I said in my
> introductory remarks, what is revolutionary about the camera is that who or
> what (plants, stone, a piece of wood, the water stain on a wall, etc. have
> an independence beyond the photographer (his or her "gaze").
>
> The second issue is that I understand some of the images in these
> photographs were harvested from the internet. Here I think the problem is
> completely different and has to do with the relationship with the computer.
> I have always found the "mining" of the computer for "images" or "bits of
> language" fraught with problems. Very often the images or language are
> deracinated, uprooted from its relation to its specific place--in other
> words, the independence of what is on the other side of the screen or the
> camera (isn't the computer window actually a virtual, moving photograph?)
> has been exploited. Here I think we can talk about a male or female gaze.
>
> Ciao
>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 10:10 AM, Peter Valente <p.valente.film at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Hi Timothy,
>>
>> Did you see the photos under discussion here? Did you watch the
>> youtube video I sent?
>>
>> I have trouble seeing your claim that my photos relate to Donald
>> Trump's misogyny in any way.
>>
>> But look at the photos and tell me what you think of them.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
>> wrote:
>> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> > Thank you, Renate.  Yes, isn't the US being threatened as we speak with
>> a
>> > potential President who assumes that all women make themselves sexually
>> > available to him?  Don't images, especially sexual ones, have complex
>> > discursive structures that we must continually grapple with? Speaking of
>> > Mapplethorpe, didn't we learn from the many Mapplethorpe controversies
>> > that images read differently to different publics?  Remember the
>> > objections of Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer that Mapplethorpe's "Black
>> > Book" failed to account for the potential fetishization of the male
>> black
>> > body?  We must not take these issues lightly or merely smooth out
>> > resistance to particular sets of imagery as representing conservative
>> > prudishness in the face of some kind of unfiltered utopian desire.  As
>> > Renate points out, we have spent years on -empyre- and elsewhere
>> > reflecting on sexualities in much more complicated ways than this, and,
>> I
>> > might add for all of my male interlocutors on -empyre-, that we
>> shouldn't
>> > always need to rely on our female colleagues to point this out.
>> >
>> > I recognize that Peter is trying to find a space outside politics and
>> > where sexual pleasure is not "reduced" to fit some contemporary theory.
>> > But isn't this precisely Donald Trump's response to his misogyny?
>> >
>> > Looking forward to a more political layering of this conversation, even
>> > when I recognize that this might run against the grain of a desire for
>> > some kinds of utopian thought.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > Tim
>> >
>> >
>> > Timothy Murray
>> > Professor of Comparative Literature and English
>> > Taylor Family Director, Society for the Humanities
>> > http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
>> > Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
>> > http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
>> > A D White House
>> > Cornell University,
>> > Ithaca, New York 14853
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 11/2/16 9:12 AM, "Renate Terese Ferro" <rferro at cornell.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> >>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >>As an artist and a feminist I am puzzled by the lack of acknowledgment
>> >>here that there has been years of historical discussion and theorizing
>> >>about the male gaze, scopophilia, and the whole canon of gender,
>> >>sexuality and visual theory that has put characterizations such as this
>> >>to rest I thought.
>> >>
>> >> R
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>On 11/2/16, 7:11 AM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
>> >>behalf of Peter Valente" <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
>> >>behalf of p.valente.film at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >>>Murat, I was just trying to designate a space outside politics where
>> >>>sexual pleasure is not codified or politicized or reduced to fit some
>> >>>contemporary theory. Perhaps this remains an ideal, especially in
>> >>>anglophone countries. In the case of photographers like Gatewood or
>> >>>Mapplethorpe, whose work can be extreme i.e. potentially obscene to
>> >>>certain groups, it seems like political factions struggle to confine
>> >>>it, find a language for it, and failing that, instead reject it
>> >>>completely. That was the case with Mapplethorpe. I think, with regard
>> >>>to my own photos, the image of a woman who makes herself sexually
>> >>>available, i.e. a woman comfortable with her sexuality, is still a
>> >>>very provocative image in the U.S.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 2:03 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>
>> >>>wrote:
>> >>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >>>> Alan, are you not assuming the photos are all of women though many
>> >>>>are? There is at least one among these where the figure is a man.
>> Also,
>> >>>>I understand these are pictures from a much longer series. The photos
>> >>>>reminded me of selfies also, I think because they are not voyeuristic.
>> >>>>They are intimate. The photographer seems somehow to be in front of
>> the
>> >>>>lens also sharing the experience.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Peter, could you elaborate more why in an extreme world pleasure
>> needs
>> >>>>no defence?
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Ciao,
>> >>>> Murat
>> >>>>
>> >>>> On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 8:20 PM, Peter Valente
>> >>>><p.valente.film at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >>>>> Hi Alan,
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> I have no problem with 'selfies.' Of course, my own photos are not
>> >>>>> 'selfties' since no one in the photos took pictures of themselves. I
>> >>>>> photographed all of them. But I can imagine ways in which 'selfies'
>> >>>>> can be used to make interesting images. And I can't remember his
>> name,
>> >>>>> but a filmmaker shot an entire film on a smartphone and it won some
>> >>>>> award in Berlin. I shot an entire film with the camera focused on
>> >>>>> myself.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> I don't think my images are 'pornographic.' And there's an
>> interesting
>> >>>>> writer I'm translating, Guillaume Dustan, whose extreme depictions
>> of
>> >>>>> sex acts and drug use are without explanation, or defense, or
>> >>>>> rationalization. Edmund White's blurb on one of Dustan's books:
>> >>>>> "...the book features a narrator whose wants are to fuck, listen to
>> >>>>> house music and visit London. 'Let the Good Times Roll' is the motto
>> >>>>> of this ecstatic celebration of a way of life unaffected by the
>> >>>>> demands of safe sex and queer politics."
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Why only women? I found the images interesting. The nudes happen to
>> be
>> >>>>> of women. But admittedly my photos exist in a kind of extreme world,
>> >>>>> you might even call it an ideal space, where pleasure is never
>> >>>>> political and needs no defense.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Thanks for the questions, Alan.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Peter
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 6:11 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
>> >>>>>wrote:
>> >>>>> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> > Hi Peter, I have a couple of questions. What do you 'think about'
>> >>>>>selfies?
>> >>>>> > And do you see the pornographic images as a doubling in a sense,
>> >>>>>and why
>> >>>>> > women only? This isn't a critical query; I'm really curious.
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> > Thanks for the description and images, Alan
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> > On Tue, 1 Nov 2016, Peter Valente wrote:
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> > ==
>> >>>>> > email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>> >>>>> > web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
>> >>>>> > music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
>> >>>>> > current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt
>> >>>>> > ==
>> >>>>> >
>> >>>>> > _______________________________________________
>> >>>>> > empyre forum
>> >>>>> > empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> >>>>> > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>> >>>>> _______________________________________________
>> >>>>> empyre forum
>> >>>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> >>>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> _______________________________________________
>> >>>> empyre forum
>> >>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> >>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>> >>>_______________________________________________
>> >>>empyre forum
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>> >>>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>> >>_______________________________________________
>> >>empyre forum
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>> >>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>> _______________________________________________
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