//following a recipe + kitchen semiotics [A1] 10%
digital studio spring 2018
professor margaretha haughwout
due monday feb 12
Consider the context in which you make art. What if it was in a kitchen or a laboratory instead of a studio? Consider the process of making art. What if the process itself was the art, and the end result merely a trace? This first assignment makes links to instructional based processes, avant garde practices, dynamic process, and multiples that emerge in the 20th-c, all of which challenge the boundary conditions between artist and art, and which reconsider the art object. These connections offer a fresh perspective on digital and code art practices of the 21st-c.
Shoot a video, make a performance, or make a photo essay of yourself cooking your favorite 'recipe', breaking down the process for your audience. What are your ingredients, what are the steps, how do you personalize the recipe with additions and subtractions? What are the emotions associated with your engagement with the kitchen? What gestures do you make while 'cooking' (think: Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen)? How might your performed engagements reveal complicated relationships with recipes, instructions, with the dynamics of the public and the private, gender, or the personal and the political? Where can you push the intructions/recipe into creative territory?
This assignment can be assembled using video or photographic montage, live performance or some combination of these.
1) The elements you are working with include a recipe/ instructional, a kitchen environment/ studio/ lab, and your documentation media. Choose each element carefully and consider how each element will inform the other. It is acceptable (encouraged even!) to stretch the definition of a 'recipe' or a 'kitchen' -- always consider your own subjectivity and the kinds of affect you will be conveying with the instructional (recipe) and the context (kitchen).
2) Bring the result of your recipe to class to serve while we look at or watch your piece. Even if your recipe is abstract, you should have something to distribute. The recipe result is part of the overall work. Consider having an activity or a set of questions for your audience as we eat and engage with the work.
3) One of the overarching questions of Digital Studio is how and where we encounter the artwork when considering instructional based art. Consider this question as you make your work, and see what other questions emerge.
4) Live performances and video works should be no longer than 6 minutes.
This recipe project involves performance (documented and/or live), a set of instructions in the form of a recipe, and the completed recipe (could be food, or possibly something else).
This assignment will be graded on 1) your ability to interpret the assignment (2.5pts), 2) independent thinking, creative approach and conceptual process (2.5pts), 3) sustained inquiry (most likely resulting in questions and conversation points) (2.5pts), 4) your ability to pioneer the craft of the work (develop techniques and processes that work for you and that effectively convey your inquiry) (2.5pts).
Submit some aspect of the project to Tumblr before the Feb 12 class -- it doesn't have to be the whole project, but do submit some stills, writing, or video. When submitting, choose the preset tags #A1, and #your name. On February 12, bring in digital copies of your work for viewing, transferrable to me via thumb drive or email. Label all files A1_Lastname_Firstname.filetype
Some artists engaged directly with food, recipes and kitchens to look at:
Martha Rosler
Suzanne Lacy
Bonnie Sherk
Alison Knowles
Linda Montano
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Gordon Matta-Clark
Allen Ruppersberg
Conflict Kitchen (Dawn Wileski and Jon Rubin)
Lindsay Kelley
Multispecies Salon
Elaine Gan
Catherine Grau
Some artists working more broadly with instructional processes and/or multiples:
Fluxus
FluxKits
Yoko Ono
John Cage
Sol LeWitt
Adrian Piper
Lee Walton
Miranda July
Some artists in labs:
Critical Art Ensemble (see Free Range Grain for Example)
Tissue Culture and Art Project (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr)
Phil Ross
Natalie Jeremijienko (see Amphibious Architecture for example)
Eduardo Kac
Beatriz da Costa
Adam Zaretsky
visit We Make Money Not Arts' AIL series