Art Journal

I have to admit that what intrigued me about this art journal at first was a link to a man who did a sort of study about shopping carts (http://www.strayshoppingcart.com/shopping_cart/1_introduction.htm). He took pictures of shopping carts in various ‘environments’ and had people send him pictures, he classified them into categories: what type of shopping cart they were (by where and how they were found, not by what they were made of or what store they were from), how they were used (one was used as a fence for a small front porch garden) and so on. And after looking more thoroughly through the journal, I realized that was one of the very few ‘quirky’ articles. Though I do not regret my choice of the journal based on that and just a couple other reviews, I feel this journal is too smart for me, or, more smarter. This seems to cover a lot of aspects from the art world, from digital personalities (that I will discuss shortly) to comparing dance with the theories of Nietzsche and Freud. Basically all the articles I read through had some sort of psychological spin on it, which I appreciated, and it made sense, but I did a lot of copying and pasting into Google search while reading those articles. The first article I wanted to discuss was Technics of the Subject: The Avatar-Drive by Emily Apter. I probably related to this article more which is why I chose it, because I am on the net all the time and use avatars without even realizing it. Avatars have become such a broad but also specific representation on the internet. The obvious, as she discusses in her article is that of the Sims and Second Life. Players can create their own representation of themselves, whether it is a character that looks exactly like them, or the total opposite. Someone who is socially inept or doesn’t like the way they look can live through these characters, having self confidence and so on via their avatar. But I think it goes beyond the obvious. I think of blogging websites when people have ‘profile pictures’ which essentially represent who they are to their readers. I frequent a livejournal community about celebrity gossip all the time and every now and a ‘member’ of that community will refer to another member by their user picture or if someone changes their user picture, it throws people off who have become accustomed to ‘seeing’ that member a certain way. There is also facebook and myspace where again, people can have profile pictures, so when you log in, that one picture will represent them. Some people put up pictures of themselves, while others will put up a painting, or celebrity figure. Do they then live vicariously through those pictures? Apter, like every other author in the journal, goes into a deeper translation of the avatar; she discusses the history of the actual word avatar, essentially meaning ‘down he goes,’ which of course is interesting because you always hear these crazy stories whether it be Law & Order or The Maury Povich Show where wives lose their husbands to online games and vice versa or kids who don’t like reality, basically, get lost in this fake world because they are loved there. But is that really us to judge? I say yes, because this is life, not that, but it can easily be argued. She then discusses Freud, though he died long before these modern day avatars, because of his studies of the id and ego and superego. She compares his studies to the avatar in the similar fashion of the ‘down he goes’ translation, people get lost in these avatars sometimes, developing ‘egoic defenses’ and the ‘inhibition of destructive.’
Then comes Stephanie Hart’s piece, Ways of See(th)ing: A Record of Visual Punk Practice where I think she feels she needs to put a psychological spin on the punk world. She reviews Panic Attack! Art in the Punk Years in a way that it incorporates a history of the dissection of punk, reading into the artists and the art work that came from them during the height of punk. I’ve never disliked Punk music, but I’ve never been a fan. I’ve been introduced to the basics like God Save the Queen and Sid and Nancy’s story courtesy of Gary Oldman, but I never delved into it and felt the angst of punk times. To be honest I’m not sure why I wanted to discuss this article, at least according to the guidelines of the paper, but I think I more wanted to review her review because in our class, we definitely analyze the films and read into it what we will, but as in my previous field report, I think we don’t really know what a piece of art really means unless the artist tells us. Turns out Killer of Sheep didn’t have a lot a inner meaning, people just read into what they would, and Stephanie Hart seems to take others’ thoughts and opinions to show her own when talking about why punk music was the way it was and why they were singing this or taking pictures of that, when maybe, they just really liked to dress that way or sing those words.