Reading Assignments & Artist Lectures

Scott Tsuchitani

As a multidisciplinary art interventionist and printmaker based in San Francisco, Scott Tsichitani proved to be quite the activist in his lecture, “Of Guerrilla Geisha and Samurai Subversion”. His socially engaged art underlies the theme of ‘undoing the other through anti-anti-Asian art’. Tsuchitani aimed his work to “reframe cultural discourse and subvert social norms and stereotypes” of the Asian lifestyle—which he had done quite successfully on a smaller scale. 

Tsuchitani’s main pieces revolved around the Asian Art Museum and its featured exhibits. The first exhibit was based on the geisha. Scott saw the museum had completely romanticized Japanese culture and decided to make a stand. He took the museum’s poster and replaced the woman’s face with his own, changed the title, and took it to the museum kiosk where people could take a pamphlet. This guerrilla art strategy worked surprisingly well. He received many emails concerning his work and had an anonymous article published in the newspaper. This brought him to his next project when the museum later featured the geisha’s male counterpart, the samurai. Tsuchitani created both a parody pamphlet and website parallel to the museum’s that criticized their mere glorification of war and violence, “masking the real history” and “selling militarism as beauty in a time of war,” which gained him further notoriety as an intellectual activist. 

When word spread through media about his work, Tsuchitani decided to display his success in a local gallery. However, just before the gallery opened, he was asked to take down the documentation of responses to his work. The faculty claimed it was not art and therefore should not be displayed. Despite this setback, Tsuchitani feels that though his impact was limited with this art, he was able to open people’s eyes to the over-glamorized portrayal of Asian culture through the museum.

Dada Exhibit

Dada was a major art movement that emerged in the early 20th century. The artists pushed the boundaries of what qualifies as ‘art’ and questioned the contemporary political and social conditions. The shocking, unconventional style of Dada gained much attention and later inspired avant-garde movements such as pop art and surrealism.

This exhibit in the Jot Travis was full of various Dada works done by both current and past artists, including a visual of Duchamp’s classic piece, Fountain. As one of the most well-known Dada works, Fountain is a great representation of what kind of art the Dadaists created. Duchamp’s work was simply a urinal placed on its side, begging the question what is art? Fountain was rejected in just about every gallery it was submitted to because it was such an unconventional piece just like the many paintings, sculptures, and multi-media works featured in the Dada exhibit.

The piece that stood out most in my eyes was the remake of “Moby Dick”. Each page of this book was scanned and displayed across a full wall. At first glance, the pages looked like regular text from a book. Looking at it closely, one could see that one letter, E, was used for the entire project. Looking even more closely, the letters were all handwritten in tiny print. What was most intriguing about the book was how the forms of the letters and paragraphs eventually dispersed into seemingly random, chaotic shapes and patterns. The last row of pages was absolutely abstract in form with the E’s looking as though they were swirling and exploding all over the pages, and by the end of it, there was nothing left but a few blank pages. This piece definitely captured the essence of Dada with its nonsensical form and play on words. Because it was placed so close to the entrance, it seemed to set the tone for the rest of the exhibit.

Maria Lind

Social practice is "simultaneously a medium, a method, and a genre" that seeks social and political change. Maria Lind stresses the importance of participation and collaboration in the use of social practice to "reformulate the relationship between the work and the viewer, between production and consumption, sender and receiver."

Elin Wikstrom's Returnity project with her cycle club, in which one were to pedal backwards on a bike in order to "unlearn the most commonplace skill probably learned as a child in order to see the world from an unusual perspective," was essentially the beginnings of what is now called social practice. The project was based entirely on voluntary participation as well as passerby and visitor contributors. This behavioral experiment was one in which the participants could "maneuver either individually or collectively, and raise consciousness." 

In my opinion, social practice is one of the most interesting genres of art. I am fascinated by the amount of thought and organization it takes to create a piece in this field. Teamwork, creativity, and underlying social, political, and/or artistic concerns are key to social practice. It is unique in that it doesn't necessarily require a single physical representation (image, sculpture, etc.) to understand the meaning, rather, the participation alone does the job of getting the message across. I believe this, in many ways, is more powerful than most genres of art. 

The Situationists

Guy-Ernest Debord's essay, Perspectives for Conscious Alterations in Everyday Life, focuses on the meaning of everyday life and the direction of Situationists. He criticizes sociologists and seems to suggest there has been a negative change in society since the development of industrialization and capitalism. With his vague descriptions of this issue, he appears to propose the solution lies in the hands of the situationists. 

To start, Debord convicts sociologists of having the "blindest faith" in that they recognize specialized activities everywhere and everyday life nowhere. With this, he proclaims everyday life is elsewhere, among others (not including the sociologists of course). Debord later admits though specialized activities exist, "everyday life is the measure of all things" yet "it is not everything." Most importantly, Deboard warns that "to fail to criticize everyday life today means accepting the prolongation of the present thoroughly rotten forms of culture and politics...especially in the most modern countries." And "on the other hand, a radical critique in acts of prevailing everyday life could lead to a suppression of culture and politics in the traditional sense." In other words, we are bound to society. 

After reading through his essay a few times, I was still unable to clearly understand what exactly the issue was as well as his idea for the solution. His writing is rather unclear and full of unnecessary rambling that never really gets to a solid idea. This made it difficult to interpret and rather painful, dare I say, to read. But from what I understood, Debord wanted to change the meaning of everyday life with a new type of revolutionary organization, also known as the Situationists.

Dada Readings

The Dada manifestos of Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara depicted the meanings of Dada through written example both figuratively and literally. Both manifestos deny the sensibility of logic and sense itself, claiming these conventional ideas were wrong—the cause of war and strife—and that the system was clearly not working. With the incorporation of humor and parody, these two manifestos make an interesting statement and bring to light an entirely new view of literature.

Hugo Ball’s manifesto begins with the standard definition, rather, translations of the word, Dada, in many languages. He seemingly pokes fun at the word itself, adding the Romanian translation, "Yes, indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right". Further into his short manifesto, Ball begins writing in random tangents, listing a series of various nonsense examples. This seems to throw off the reader in order to draw attention to the central idea of Dada; Dada is anything and everything. In other terms, Dada is whatever you want it to be.

Tristan Tzara completely counters Hugo Ball’s manifesto with the central notion that Dada means nothing. His manifesto also circulates around random and irrational ideas which also play into the meaning of Dada. Tzara’s manifesto, completely contradictory to itself, ends with the line, “Dada is life.” Going full circle from his initial claim that Dada means nothing, Tzara ingeniously designs his manifesto to be an example of Dada itself.