Arduous Journey

I feel great.  Really.  I just had a bunch of great ideas that tied a bunch of other great ideas together.  I don't want to brag or anything, but this feels really big.  

It seems to bring together some thoughts I've had about my recent work with work I plan on doing with my thesis idea of "playing in the face of Death, Devastation, Damage and Divorce" - the 4 D's.  

I wrote this status update on my facebook page:  Michael Conti is facing the book, and it's not that interesting of a quote so I'll spare you that. I find this list much more interesting: obstruction, resistance, absurdity, repetition, obsession, labor intensity, absolute, relative, structure, duration, endurance, meaning, existence, catharsis, correlation - and this question: What does one thing have to do with the other?  

Something about that list that I compiled from my notes from last Art Institute of Boston residency gets me going.  I think that if you put all those words in a circle with the word play at the center, that would be what my art is about.  

I have some ideas that involve hockey, playing in liquid water, underwater, on the other side of the ice, and on vertical ice.  I want to make a paddle board puck and hockey stick, and juggle hockey pucks and sawed off stick.  This is what fine art is all about.

Post Residency posting

Back from the June Residency at the Art Institute of Boston, my third.  One year down and one to go.  I feel some pressure to amp it up art wise this semester, then focus on writing the thesis in my final semester.  

I have some short movie ideas, but am just collecting my thoughts for now.  Now sure how or where to start filming.  It helps me to talk to people a little bit, see if the idea even makes sense when I try to articulate it.  

Also got to start taking more notes and story boarding.  That will help my process for sure.   Even a script might help.  

I'm going to leave you with a picture from my last trip to Boston.  I call it "Young Buddha in the Fountain". Hope to write more soon,

I Build a Qayaq

New Video at my youtube site here

or in my list of time based art on the right.

This video is a comment on the white euro-american adaption and subsequent eradication of the Native Alaskan way of life.  

The Yupik speaking narrators tell the stories of the importance of and building of a beautiful, one of a kind qayaq.  In the Yupik Eskimo culture of Western Alaska, this is the work of an artist/craftsman.  This qayaq is almost a sacred object as it is necessary for survival in the Bering Sea coast.  It is a mode of transportation, of food gathering and is symbolic of the Yupik culture.

This idea is contrasted with  the sportfisherman's "building" of the store bought, mass-produced inflatable kayak that was carried to a river to float and look for trout, which the fisherman will not even eat.   The anglo voice attempts to imitate the yupik words for beautiful qayaq, fish or food, great hunter and provider, thank you and goodbye, but his attempts are as elegant as his imitation kayak.  He goes to the wilderness to find experiences which he feels are real and genuine, to commune with nature and leave his city troubles behind, but he brings his city gear and city mindset with him.   

The fading of the kayak builder and the fisherman can be read as either a white man fading in his reality of the wilderness, or possible as helping along the fading of the indigenous subsistence based lifestyle.

This video attempts to contrast the similarities and differences of these two cultures in terms of language, attitude towards the land, subsistence lifestyle and recreational lifestyle.  It also pokes a little fun at catch and release trout fishing.

Thanks to the Anchorage Museum of History and Art for the exhibit Yuungnaqpiallerput (The Way We Genuinely Live): Masterworks of Yupik Science and Survival.  Also thanks to Frank Andrew and Neva Rivers, they were the male and female Yupik Speakers.   Also thanks to Dan Lung as the fisherman in red.

No News is NOT good news

Sorry no new pictures, no new videos, no new edits of old videos.  I got nothing.  But that doesn't stop me from posting to this blog.  

Here's what is going on:  I just finished my first paper of the semester, so I got that monkey off my back for a couple of weeks.  I have to do my taxes, which is a pain, but necessary if I want my stafford loan to come through.  Also, it's kind of the law, you know, to pay taxes.  

In terms of art, I have a lot of ideas, things I want to shoot, old stuff I want to edit differently, sounds I want to create, stories to tell.  Just need to narrow it down to what's important and do that first.  I was waiting till after I finished the paper to tackle this stuff, now I have no excuse.

Some character in Alice in Wonderland said this, "Begin at the beginning, continue on until you reach the end, then stop."

the Seven Labors

Re-edit of Ice Balls can be seen here

the shots have been shuffled around a bit, the premise is a little different, but still basically the same.  See if it reads better.  Leave a comment.

thanks,

Mike Out

Ice Balls

View my new piece here

this is an absurdist performance piece.  I feel like it needs a statement, if only for myself to see what the hell I think I'm doing.  So here goes.

This piece references several artists/works indirectly.  I can cite Mathew Barney's Drawing Restraint videos, Andy Goldsworthy's landscape/performance art, Bruce Nauman's self referential piece "Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the perimeter of a square", some of Vito Acconci's early video work, and Muybridge and Etienne's photo studies of human movement and animal locomotion.  Oh, especially Duane Michal's Still photo sequence "I Build a Pyramid" where he photographs himself building a small pyramid of stones in front of the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.  There is probably more, but that's all I can think of right now.  

In the video, I see myself as "the artist alone in his studio" where my studio is outdoors.  I find the scenery especially scenic, if not remote.  It's shot near downtown Anchorage, and if I let the direct sounds in, you would hear trains, humming industry, cars and planes flying overhead.  I opted to make it sound remote by dubbing the arctic wind.  

In the action itself, I wanted to create a dichotomy of scene and action.  I find the act of playing baseball, football or soccer in a such a desolate landscape extremely funny.  I added an element of slapstick to the mix.  The physical comedy of the movements exaggerates the incongruity of context.  The use of different sized pieces of ice as the objects of sport pushes the piece further into the absurd.

While reviewing the footage after the shoot, I came to see the marks being made in the clean white snow as drawing.  I, dressed in black, became like a charcoal stick that made lines and shapes with my footprints.  This is where I really felt I was close to what Goldsworthy is doing with his use of sticks, leaves, rocks and ice to make natural drawings and sculptures.   This piece also draws from Hamish Fulton whose artwork begins with a walk from one place to another.  Incidentally, both Goldsworthy and Fulton have done work in Alaska in the last 10 years.

In this work I see myself as moving through space, moving through landscape, moving through environment.  I see myself struggling against myself and the environment.  The idea was born with the weigh lifting scene, the first shot in the video.  this one for me is representational of struggle, first to get the ice ball free of the ground, then to lift and carry it off camera.  The other parts continue with throwing an ice ball away, sliding into a 2nd base iceball, then stealing third, an iceball onside kick turned into a touchdown, and dribbling an ice soccerball.  In the last two pieces I reference running, swimming, gymnastics, swimming, boxing, bowling and the shot put.  I have since shot something with hockey and breakdancing.  I'm not sure where this will eventually lead me, but I plan to follow this train of thought throughout the course of this winter.

Spill Piece

Prince William Sound, Northern Knight Island, Death Marsh, 2002

This piece is a montage of images that I made while photographing a scientific expedition to Knight Island.  The purpose of the trip was to gather foraging data on sea otters that had been living in a heavily oiled area of Prince William Sound, 13 years after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.  The images were made in Bay of Isles.   That is my own footprint in the intertidal muck of Death Marsh, a small cove at the end of the bay where oil can still be seen.  The landscape image was made in the November morning light from an unnamed island near the mouth of the bay looking northeast towards Valdez Arm and Bligh Reef, where the tanker ship ran aground.  The chemical symbols represent several aromatic hydrocarbons indicative of crude oil that remains scattered in the intertidal sediments of areas impacted by the Spill.

This piece and accompanying statement were made for a gallery show and catalogue that are to travel the state of Alaska to mark the 20th Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

Mentality of Spring

Yes, it is the spring semester.  It's still the dead of winter here, but every day we get another couple minutes of daylight.  

I'm excited to be back to work after my second residency at the Art Institute of Boston.  Each time I go there I get a little more impressed by the program and the professors there.  I'm glad to be working with some top notch people.   I was just explaining to someone the other day how glad I am to be going to an East Coast Grad School, rather than West coast or worse yet, University of Alaska Fairbanks.  Nothing against the west coast or UAF, but it seems to me that if I am going to spend the time, effort and money to get my MFA, I want to get a taste of the East coast art scene.  and to go to Fairbanks, well, I guess I just know Alaska too well.  We are a small community of fine artists, and we love to pat each other on the back all the time for how "Alaskan" we all are.  It's an geographically isolated, closed community.  I will make art in Alaska for a long time to come, and will love it, but I just wanted to be exposed to another world.

More later, maybe some pictures even,

Mike out

Nuclear Winter

This is what a sunset looks like at 15 below zero.  

Like distant artillery.

or the River Styx.

Omnipotent Narrator