From: Art GALLERY <Art.GALLERY@msvu.ca>
Date: March 20, 2009 8:56:26 AM PDT (CA)
To: jasonwff@shaw.ca
Subject: Notes on B + B, Encore
Hi Jason,
After being pre-empted by the snowstorm, our panel (minus the Religious Studies specialist) convened and held a 90-minute palaver concerning your work.
Staffer Katie Belcher and I took notes. Attached and pasted below are the transcripts of both sets of notes.
After about 2 weeks I should be in a position to start work on the catalogue.
Everyone in the discussion was fascinated and challenged by your work. Thank you for an unforgettable exhibition.
Ingrid
Informal Panel Discussion of Bite and Burn, Encore
10 March 2009, MSVU Art Gallery
With Wallace Brannen, Peter Dykhuis, Craig Leonard, Jayne Wark, Katie Belcher, Ingrid Jenkner
Brannen
In 1970 local tattoo artist, Bob MacLean, made a print in the NSCAD Litho Workshop based on one of his original tattoo designs, Whore’s Doom. Iconographically it is entirely unexceptional! Brannen is preparing an article on NYC artists of the 70s who used tattoos as a printmaking image source. While in Halifax, Vito Acconci considered acquiring a tattoo of line demarcating his entire body front from the back—but demurred. At that point Jerry Ferguson, who accompanied him to the tattoo parlour, had Acconci bite him on the leg. The tattooist then inked the bitemarks in a tattoo.
Jenkner
Similarly to a printed impression, the activity on the platform left a permanent compression of one corner. A performance trace left in the material. The indexicality of the blood trace (evidentiary) and the “footprint” of the performance. How does this link to the authenticity valued in Death Metal, the search for self via a witnessed ordeal? (Evidence of event left in the gallery space post- performance; this really happened.)
Leonard
Reduction (non-representational, non-melodic, etc.) a trope of musical and artistic minimalism.
Amped sound of tattoo gun: Loudness is often characteristic of Noise, as is the use of a tool in place of a musical instrument. Noise (music) represents a disruptive form of resistance; sound of gun reflects the parallel disruption of traditional tattoo norms in the tattoo designed by Jason.
Lou Reed’s proto-Industrial Music album of 1975, Metal Machine (feedback) is reminiscent of the effect of the 3 Bite and Burn videos playing simultaneously, with the sound clashing and blending. Also comparable to Brian Eno’s No Wave Noise composed of feedback, guitar, vocal and arrhythmic drumming.
In that it is noisy, non-narrative, and aurally irritating, Death Metal is comparable to early Noise and Industrial Music.
Wark et al. on tropes of masculinity
Compare Throbbing Gristle and the Viennese Aktionists. Blood sacrifice and mortification of the flesh. Jason’s performance not comparable to Robert Morris’s machismo style of presenting himself, but rather a non-armoured search for self, authentic experience.
Beuys’ social sculpture and art events grounded in a response to the Holocaust and trauma. Is Jason also engaged in a ritual of healing post trauma through voluntary experience of pain?
Judith Butler’s concept that we perform ourselves to others as though looking into the mirror for re-assurance that we are who we think we are.
The witnessing role of the performance audience: shock arises from the violation of boundary between private and public space.
Dykhuis
The anti-tattoo: Bite and Burn tattoos resemble the blackout rectangle normally associated with covering up a disliked tattoo. Emphatically contra orthodox tattoo culture. The spinal tattoo closely resembles an earlier black wall-floor sculpture illustrated on the artist’s website.
Gang of One: one foot in artworld the other in a subculture. Working class aesthetics and task-oriented constructions comparable to those of Kelly Mark.
Encore functions as the summation and counterpoint to the previous Bite and Burn “tour.”
Encore: T-shirts, Open Platform, Live Band, frontal tattoo
VS
B & B: record Albums, Enclosed Cubicle, Recorded Music, spinal tattoo
Katie’s Notes
BITE AND BURN ENCORE, GENDER AND THE DISTRESSED BODY NOTES
Rites of Passage
Mood aspiring to manhood
Painful ritual of healing and purification
Opened to self-investigation
Not armoured, not self-sufficient and self-contained
Creating rituals of authenticity in an attempt to gain it.
Minimalism
Connections to the nuances in music and visual art
Limited “minimal” design of the tattoo
References to minimalist sculpture in the platform
Sound
Loudness as a characteristic of noise
Amplified tattoo gun as an instrument
i. Industrial music
ii. Use of unorthodox instrumentation to create noise
References: Douglas Kahn, History of Noise, Jacques Attali, Noise
i. noise as resistance to dominant system (power).
ii. The line and its presence in noise music
iii. Lou Reed: 16 minutes of feedback. Just as he was becoming accepted more into popular mainstream, he challenged musical convention (to break a contract?)
iv. Brian Eno’s “Now Wave”: feedback, guitar, voice, arrhythmic drumming
Esoteric and quasi-intellectual music whereas Jason listened more to juvenile metal.
i. Metal was for him about authenticity. Metal vs. Rock (glitz/glamour/celebrity)
ii. Gendered form of music, idea of authenticity yet he is not presenting himself as a macho, both vulnerable and stoic.
The Tattoo
Decision of the linear shaped tattoo
(Noise and the) (M)(m)inimalist line
i. Straight
ii. Minimal gesture
iii. More like a stencil
iv. Lack of representation
v. Simplification/purification
vi. Act of noise because of its resistance to a dominant system
“Gang of One” Disregarding tattoo history; intervening/disrupting the common form of tattoo. He remains outside of tattoo culture
Negating a bad tattoo, blocking out the image
Mondrian patterning on his body
Process based work
Faux construction jobs: building of the platform
Kelly Mark as working class hero: class/work analogy
Is he anti-intellectual?
Not resistant, not controlling of his work
Open to interpretation
Wants to situate himself within the art history
Is this the appeal of Beuys? An artist outside of traditional materials to look up to?
Religion
Symbolic elements:
i. Under the light
ii. Across the chest, openness
iii. Mortification of the flesh
iv. Martyrdom
v. Proclamation as a prophet
vi. Passivity/punishment
Spectacle of pain and the ritual of ordeal
Joseph Beuys
i. Acted like the messiah fro German people said all art is political (art materials not from an art store)
ii. holocaust, mass trauma vs personal trauma, solipsistic
iii. Problematic to call up references without taking responsibility
Close to the Viennese Aktionists.
Printmaking
Platform absorbing an imprint, compression; never leveling off after the performance.
Editioning as a practice of printmaking, but keeping them together and showing them as one piece is not.
What was the possible effect on the crowd?
forcing as witness as opposed to the barrier at Struts.
During the performance, there remained an aura around him, everyone was giving him space: no contact, therefore it is not social sculpture
Focus/skill of the collaborating artists was on display (trust)
Etymology
Origin of the word Tattoo: The origin of the word tattoo is from the Samoan word tatau, meaning “open wound.” Could there also be a relation to the repetitive drumming of a military Tattoo?
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This communication, including any attached documentation, is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain confidential, personal, and/or privileged information. Any unauthorized disclosure, copying, or taking action on the contents is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact us immediately so we may correct our records.
Please then delete or destroy the original transmission and any subsequent reply.
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