Week 3- Hussein Chalayan

Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996

                                                                 Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000

2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

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Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html 
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/

 

Week 5- Science and reason- Video art by Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist's video art- how can we link this to science and reason?

 

Still from 'Ever is Over All' (1997)

 

1. Define the 17th century 'Scientific Revolution', and say how it changed European thought and world view. 

2. Give examples of how we can we still see evidence of the 'Scientific Revolution' in the world today.

Research Pipilotti Rist's video installations to answer the following;

3. From your research, do you think that the contemporary art world values art work

that uses new media/technology over traditional media?

4. How has Pipilotti Rist used new media/technology to enhance the audience's experience of her work.

5. Comment on how the installation, sound and scale of 'Ever is Over All' (1997) could impact on the audience's experience of the work.

6. Comment on the notion of 'reason' within the content of the video. Is the woman's behaviour reasonable or unreasonable?

7. Comment on your 'reading' (understanding) of the work by discussion the aesthetic (look), experience and the ideologies (ideas, theories) of the work.