Working with video and youth, you get to see a lot of good stuff. But there are very few videos that would beat Francis Luke Wasser from Dublin and his video 24/7. Have a look. This makes me think of a basic premise of the Demos research we have commissioned around StrangerFestival: these are not expressions of who they are but these cultural expressions are tools for becoming who they will be.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
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Hey tommi thanks for the compliment, sorry for not staying in contact more often. I have alot of time for the work you are doing and I appreciate all the oppertunities that have arisen from taking part in the work shop in 2006 in dublin. Currently I am studing at HKU in Utrecht untill the end of June, Ive been here for the last two months. Came across this blog whilst working on a digital ready made. I have been keeping a close eye on the various events circling around 24/7. It is important to understand that I made this video after only one year of my fine art degree and now 2 years later I am currently preparing for my 4th and final year. The institution ( Contemporary Fine Art) I am being educated in and around does not exactly promote making radical statements untill a certain amount of research has been put into the artwork at hand, thus I have not yet used the internet as a major element in my creative process but plan to do so within the next month. In fact apart from a few bluff artist profiles i created on saatchi online I have yet to exploit this meduim for creative expression. I have been researching manicily on the use of video within contemporary art and more signifficantly the advent of you tube and perhaps its effect not only on youth but society in general. I really found some of the articles on the stranger blog very interesting and important especially the horrifying stories of youth misusing you tube. I recall a conversation we had in Ghent about a disaster that had happened in finland around the same time where a youth had generated videos of him practising with guns only later to use them against his friends. One can never draw any conclusions from these acts. I do feel however as part of the generation that simply without question embraced the internet as a new form of self-representation that these things are often swept under the carpet. That the internet is not educated to youth and as i understand it we are all children in this realm in so far that it is all so new to us. Often this bombardment of imagery, opinons and essentialily digital capitalism leaves no room for real observations. Anyway I am ranting now, the point Iam getting to is that I feel despite how small my contribution may be for the one minute beijing exhibition it may be worth taking the time to ask whether or not I and others agree with the one minutes being exhibited in china, particularily because of its ties with the olympic games which seem to be hightlighted as the exhibitions main selling point. Honestly, I have no opinon here at this present moment on where I stand in relation to art and politics mainly because of some of the points I mentioned above and a lack of information and I am sure I am not the only one in this boat. It is worth noticing that there is no real difference between relating art with sport as one would relate politics with sport, the question centres around culture. It is my understanding that there are to say the least some major differences between the culture of free expression in europe and china, we can not turn a blind eye now considering the very nature of what is core to the one minutes. For this reason I see the greatness in such an exhibition being held in Beijing as an inspiration for change however clarity is needed to really ask why and what will come from this? Your blogs seem to be very open minded and in many ways inspiring and I notice how you state that your opinons here do not reflect that of your employers so a response to this situation would be very much valued. You have to understand that I think it is important to really ask these questions and to express the problems into answers or more questions, for me that is part of what the one minutes stand for and indeed it was a similar catalyst for 24/7. I hope you are well.
Kind Regards
Francis John Luke Wasser
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