Wednesday 30 March 2011

Remix: The Dialectic of Altered Books.


Brian Dettmar's intricate and skillful sculptures explore the meaning of knowledge and our relationship with it.  He insists on the obligation to challenge orthodoxy, and the right of the individual to do so.  This makes me very happy.


Dettmer:  Perpetuity to Rymer



Dettmer's work is completely different to that of German sculptor Johannes Pfeiffer, which I wrote about recently (Weighing Words: Sculpture With Books).  Pfeiffer also articulates books as repositories of knowledge, and in his case the purpose is to critique censorship and rigidities of thinking. 

I liked the small exhibition that I saw in Turin. It conveyed, in a horribly static way, the deadness of thought control.  There is something deeply creepy about books entombed in concrete.



The Bible by Johannes Pfeiffer

Dettmer, by contrast, focuses on the other side of the intellectual coin: the dynamic potential of ideas; the opening up of thought; the importance of re-interpretation and re-integration; the development of knowledge through interaction with the material world; the evolution of meaning.

Take a look at this famous, lovely, brain-like creature:  or is it a magical helmet of knowledge? or a nifty mohican of dreams?  Anyway, it is made of a full set of encyclopedias (encycoplediae?).


















The New World of Books
 All downloaded from Brian Dettmer's photostream on Flikr, under creative commons licence


How incredible is that?  Entrancing even?

Dettmer works by sealing the book or books with some kind of resin, and carefully cutting away one layer at a time, revealing images and text that are already there, putting them in new relationship to each other.  He never inserts, or moves the book's contents. What emerges is a new, or alternative, set of meanings, of knowledge.

Here is his Flickr slideshow, which is just astonishing.

And below is a video of Brian himself, setting out his ideas, and how he sees his work in relation to modern media.  He seems quite young to have achieved so much - each of his dozens (scores? hundreds?) of works must take ages to complete.

Perhaps he now has a studio of assistants, like the Dutch and Florentine humanists.

But he is a modern-day humanist.  As he says himself, his work is remix.






I will deffo be going to his New York exhibition 19 May-11 June 2011 at Kinz and Tillou, 525 W. 26th St.  It's in my calendar.  When will he next exhibit in London, I wonder?


Sunday 27 March 2011

Wedding Flowers

There was a wedding at St. Andrew's, Farnham on Saturday, and these were left behind, for the rest of us to enjoy.










You might also like A Churchyard in Surrey.

Friday 25 March 2011

Weighing Words: sculpture with books


Spotted on the tables and windows of Unicredit's Leadership Learning Centre in Turin this week, some interesting work by German sculpture Johannes Pfeiffer.

Not sure I really understand, but interesting nevertheless; I liked it.

Most of the books seemed to be about philosophy, the arts and religion, so perhaps that is where the meaning lies.......









































These works were recently shown at Pfeiffer's exhibition "Pesare les Parole", at the Turin City Multimedia Library (Biblioteca Archimede Settimo Torinese).

Sunday 20 March 2011

Bruce Springteen - No Surrender

Never beaten.  Still relevant.





We busted out of class had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound
I can feel my heart begin to pound
You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down

We made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat no surrender
Like soldiers in the winter's night with a vow to defend
No retreat no surrender

Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold
We swore blood brothers against the wind
I'm ready to grow young again
And hear your sister's voice calling us home across the open yards
Well maybe we could cut someplace of our own
With these drums and these guitars

Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend
No retreat no surrender

Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
There's a war outside still raging
you say it ain't ours anymore to win
I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bed
with a wide open country in my eyes
and these romantic dreams in my head





With thanks to John J. Kelly of This Hard Land 2010 for reminding me.