DCA and DOJ

On the 5th of December we as a college class went to see the Time Based Art exhibitions being held at the DCA and DOJ.

We started at the DCA spending an hour looking at the installation 'Play The Story' by Matthew Buckingham.

"One way to look at how we define the present is to consider how we edit or construct the relationship with the past - what's important enough to be included or excluded." - Matthew Buckingham 2007

The first room we entered The Spirit and the Letter was a large white room with one wall as a screen. In the middle of the room there was a large upside down chandelier, and on the opposite wall from the screen a upside down mirror. This was a hint to what was being projected on the screen. We saw a woman in 18th century clothing walking around a room talking about the oppression of women. Whilst she was talking however she was walking on the ceiling, I believe this was the artist way of showing her turning oppression on its head. The film was constructed from the published writings of Mary Wollstonecroft an 18th Century social reformer.

Carrying on into another room we sat down for False Futures. False Futures re-stages a film made by the pioneering cinematographer Louis Le Prince. This was a lot smaller than the first installation and used an old projector onto a small screen. The footage was of a street with pedestrians and traffic rushing by with a French man narrating and English subtitles. I found this installation very hard to follow, to me it felt like the wasn't enough to it. I couldn't follow what was being said and it felt like you would of had to been sitting there all day to understand what it was about.

The next part Everything I need is where Buckingham is imagining the thoughts of psychologist and radical feminist Charlotte Wolff on her return to Germany following her exile in the 1930s. For this one he had two screens the on on the left was showing images of the inside on an aeroplane and on the right the words in which he believes Charlotte is thinking. Through all of this we have the very loud rumbling of aeroplane noises. What I found effective about this installation was how as the plane was taking off the noise was so immense that it made the words on the screen so full of passion like you really felt it. The noises of this made you feel part of it but then like the last one there's only so long you can sit in a chair reading words on a screen.

There was two other installations in separate rooms which felt to me stuck onto the exhibition, it didn't seem like they had any part to do with Play The Story. The first one I went into was an old TV with some footage on the ground of a park. To me this one felt very lazy, there was nothing to involve you and it seemed beyond pretentious. Most people who entered this room wouldn't of noticed that sometimes you had Sparrows coming in and out of the shot. All you got from this was someone pointing a camera at the ground and I don't believe in this artistic snobbery that only pretentious art scholars should understand. The Brochure says -

"Interview with a cultural follower and public space inhabitant features the artist's attempt to interview sparrows"

Attempt to interview Sparrows? He's pointed a camera at the ground and called it art, by then I'd had enough and it was time to play with right angled view finders in the DCA shop.

After successfully loosing our classmates by playing with the view finders, Heather and I sprinted up to Duncan Of Jordanstone for the 2nd year Time Based Art exhibition. It was felt by many that after the more professional display at the DCA that the installations on show felt very ammature. Everything was just crammed into a poxy room with nothing properly explained or annotated. It just seemed like an excuse for students to do what they do best and get drunk, though I did enjoy the bubblewrap. Whatever it's purpose in some sort of conceptual sense it went pop when I stood on it.