Cover Contest winners: Robert Canali and Sarah Fuller
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Simmons & Burke are a California collaborative duo who work in a variety of media including digital and audio collage. We commissioned them to make a project for the BF2.0 website as well as for the print May 2010 issue. The audio files below are abbreviated compilations of various dramas including plays, musicals and operas. Working in audio and digital collage, the artists regularly connect sound and image in parallel and often complementary ways. The tracks included here are abstract compositions that reconceptualize the thematics of the dramas concerned into audio citations.
For more information on their work visit www.simmonsandburke.com.
Listen to the audio using the Quicktime media players below.
Krapp’s Last Tape, 02:21:
Equus, 00:18:
The Music Man, 05:23:
Exiles, 01:22:
L’Orfeo, 00:29:
The Crucible, 00:47:
Two artists on the 2.0 site recently engaged in a brief discussion about how work is described and it got us, here at BlackFlash, thinking. Specifically, I’m referring to Colin Carney’s entry in the artist pages and David Pollock’s reaction to it. The issue underlying their exchange, and perhaps the larger issue behind artist statements and art research in general, is the role of research in art. To what extent is a “social sciences” dialogue being used in art-speak nowadays?
Being through the art school system myself, I remember the days of my MFA when my colleagues and I would scramble to put together our SSHRC grant applications. In case you don’t know, SSHRC stands for Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Funny that it should be offering funding to fine arts student, no? Evidently not. SSHRC grants are given to fine arts students as researchers. The caveat is that the student must show what sort of new research he/she is engaging in and what methodology he/she is using. I was not the only one at the time to be struck by the foreignness of the demands. Indeed, funding bodies create demands and artists, who often need money to make ambitious projects, attempt to deliver.
While this is an academic context that I’m citing here–SSHRC grants are there to fund your graduate studies–the people who are being educated in these programs go on to shape the future art community. Are these changes good or bad? Are they largely propelled by the decisions of funding bodies and society’s desire for an instrumental function in art, or is it also a part of art’s natural evolution that stems from a history of political art and social engagement? How do we begin to qualify art that takes as its premise social engagement–by ethics or aesthetics?
We’re hoping the BlackFlash community can share their ideas about their own travails in being an artist, in looking about art and in reading about art. What do you think?
Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge is one of two artists commissioned by BlackFlash to produce a project for the 2.0 website. Her project is an interactive animation that playfully uses the idea of frames, specifically window and door frames, that draw attention between virtual and real parallels. Click here or on a still to see the work yourself.
Note: You will require the free Adobe Flash player to view Evelyne’s work. The file is 5MB in size, please be patient while page loads.
Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge, Guest Room from the series Frameworks
Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge, Bedroom from the series Frameworks
Image from AKA Gallery website.
On Saturday February 28th, AKA Gallery in Saskatoon held a panel as a follow up to it’s exhibition, The Bachelor (of Fine Arts) Party. The juried exhibition featured four students from the University of Regina (UofR) and four students from the University of Saskatchewan (UofS). The panel discussion was on the topic of BFA pedagogy in Saskatchewan and its place within fine arts education. The panel featured a representative from the UofR, Prof. David Garneau, a representative from the UofS, Bart Gazzola, two UofR students and one UofS student.
I have posted a transcript of the panel below. It is a shortened transcript that touches on the main points in the discussion. Prompted by Canadian Art’s “art schools” issue, my hope is to start a comparative examination of pedagogy across the country.
