Exploring Life
Asynchronous Session
Art for Life and Living for Art: The Art and Artists of Mozambique’s Nucleo de Arte
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amy Schwartzott
This paper investigates an artists’ cooperative as the ‘nucleus of art’ it embodies. Originally founded in the early decades of the 20th century, which embodied the cultural sensibilities of its Portuguese founders, it now serves as a cultural and social center of Mozambican contemporary art. Central to this investigation is a desire to contextualize a broad view of this cultural space and its members. Artists such as Pekiwa and Makolwa carve, pound, weld and hammer. Artists Ana, Kass Kass and Falcao tear, twist, cut an paste. All of these artists, whether utilizing wood, metal or cloth - rely upon recycling as both technique and media in the creation of their art for varied aims and motivations.
A Study on Cultural Perception of Landscape Composition Based on Attention Mechanisms in Paintings: Between Shanshui and Impressionism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yaohui Su
This study compares Chinese landscape paintings and Western Impressionist landscape paintings using the attention mechanism method. Both types of paintings depict natural scenery and have unique artistic values in terms of composition, aesthetics, and cultural transmission. The attention mechanism, used for human visual research, has been applied to deep learning with great success. The researchers use this method for painting recognition and landscape design because of its simplicity, high speed, full automation, and accuracy. The results show that Eastern and Western paintings have distinct characteristics in composition, color, spatial hierarchy, and visual focus. A contemporary landscape composition model can be developed by integrating the advantages of both Eastern and Western artistic styles, revealing traditional aesthetic principles in modern design. This model provides diverse practical ideas for contemporary cultural landscape design, fulfilling modern human desires for a better living environment.
People, Place and Purpose: Place-based Approaches to Ecological Citizenship
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alec Shepley, Susan Liggett, Tracy Simpson, Daniel Knox
Humanity faces serious challenges in the coming decades: climate change, biodiversity loss, growing inequality, and more. We have a collection of rules and norms that reward some behaviours and punish others. In their current form, our systems seem to incentivise overconsumption, degrade communal bonds, and destroy natural wealth. The researchers in this project believe that place-based approaches and community engaged arts practices around the theme of sustainability, can enable a growing network of ecological citizens. In this paper we explore how through creative arts practices, sharing ideas, thoughts, and questions and learning from best practices at a local, national, and international level from a variety of partners can create sustenance for a community-based network. Ways of building a network of new and existing place-based arts research and knowledge exchange which has the potential to include children and young people in the decision-making process, is considered. We share how examples with embedded creative practice, such as community growers/larders/kitchens, forest schools etc., support partnership working within place-based projects. We will also discuss a people-centred approach to helping stakeholders, children, and young people, to make transitional choices, mitigate against negative consequences and empower local agency, in different localities. We show how diverse groups of people can begin to make impactful change through for example, community-focused approaches and community-led practices, activism and collective learning, advocacy, and design thinking in projects.
From One System into Another: Reading The Exploded View by Ivan Vladislavić as Conceptual Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Arundhati Singh
I explore the role of visual and conceptual art – and the business of the aesthetic – in Ivan Vladislavić’s 2004 book The Exploded View. Vladislavić, a South African writer, has long played with the boundary between language and art, especially South African contemporary art. Comprising four interlinked narratives, The Exploded View has generated extensive debate about whether it is a novel or a collection of short stories. I propose a different way of reading it entirely: as a work of conceptual art. The book, which originated as one part of a tripartite art exhibition – a ‘joint work’ by Vladislavić, artist Joachim Schönfeldt, and critic Andries Walter Oliphant – not only serves as a literary commentary on the process of making art and the consumerism of the ‘artworld’, but also embodies them. This is done particularly through the story Curiouser (a play on the words “curio” and “user”), about an artist who repurposes found objects into genocide-themed exhibitions. My paper is based on research into Vladislavić’s oeuvre and into (South African) art and literary theory, extensive material research, and dialogue with Joachim Schönfeldt (whose art prompted the writing of this book) and with the curators at Wits Art Museum (WAM) in Johannesburg. Based on this research and my own reading, I argue that The Exploded View functions as a work of conceptual art, interrogating the function of art – itself included – in a postcolonial, neoliberal society, and the appropriation of mass-produced objects and the exploitation of human labour.
