ARTDICK

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Video work by Wellington artist Claire Harris exploring the relationship between colonialisation and feminism. I operated the camera, Matt Whitwell did the sound recording, and Euan Robertson played the bagpipes. Originally screened as part of Typical Girls: Comedic Feminist Video from Wellington (curated by Bryce Galloway, Wellington Film Archive, 2011).

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Excerpts from volume 3 of the ongoing conceptual music project Britney Spears + Noise = HOT (mashing Britney Spears songs with experimental and avant-garde sound art) are finally up on Soundcloud (with cover art by Benedict Quilter, of Independent Woman Records). The completed 8 track album is also free to download here.

Previously volumes have included Britney paired with artists like The Dead C, Pierre Schaeffer, Arthur Doyle, Francis Dhomont and Yximalloo. This volume includes a number of more obscure New Zealand noise artists like Little Skull, Richard Neave, Jack Ellitt and The Human Instinct (as well as some other surprises). Check out Volume 1 and Volume 2 here.

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Concept album consisting of two minimalist compositions using a sample from Kanye West’s Runaway, inspired by Steve Reich’s experiments with ‘phasing’. In the technique of phasing a repetitive phrase (or loop) is played on two musical instruments in steady, but not identical tempo. At first the two layers appear to be in time with one another. However, because the two instruments differ ever so slightly in speed they gradually go out of “phase” with one another creating, at first, an echo effect and then a doubling of notes, before eventually phasing back in time with one another. Steve Reich explored this technique with the use of live instruments, but it can be effectively manipulated through sampling and remixing as well. Download the complete album for free here.

Track 1: Rruunnaawwaayy: Supercomposition for Two Pianos (36 minute phase exploration of a 38 second piano sample from the hip-hop song Runaway by Kanye West). Track 2: Rrruuunnnaaawwwaaayyy: Supercomposition for Three Pianos (a second 36 minute exploration of the same 38 second piano sample).

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In 2009 Tao Wells asked me to write a short piece of writing to accompany his exhibition “Space Jam 1996″ at Gambia Castle in Auckland, New Zealand. I happily agreed and after much back and forth with Tao this is what I came up with. Art critic John Hurrell later reviewed the show on Eye Contact, saying that “No meritable quality, in my view, is apparent from just looking at the exhibition.” For the record, I recommend thinking about it as well as looking, John.

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Three paragraphs for Tao Wells

Dick Whyte, November 2009

 

Tao Wells is a terrible artist. But he is a good person. It is ethics which concern me, rather than aesthetics (it is always so elegant to say what something is, followed by what it is not – it seems so final, or definitive). Morals involve any laws or codes which are imposed on you from without (religion, the legal system). Ethics are an internal model of behaviour: when morality no longer reflects our personal reality, ethics must intervene. Michel Foucault: “Ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.”

A second definition of ethics: we must become adept at talking with ourselves. We are always two, rather than one. “I am” is merely the light, beneath the shadowy “me” and “my” (particularly when used in statements like: “Oh me, oh my, I don’t know what I am going to do”). Not knowing what to do, we turn to ethics. Of course, the other response is simply to ignore whatever is troubling: to claim that it is “not art,” “not human” or simply “not to my taste.” If Immanuel Kant has taght us anything: art has nothing to do with taste (and everything to do with time).

Problem: I am interested in ethics, not aesthetics. Solution: I am interested in both ethics and aesthetics. Firstly: how can an aesthetic shock the audience into a moment of critical thought (how do formal aesthetics prompt emotional ethics). Secondly: what does it feel like when you experience representations of people making ethical choices (how do formal ethics prompt emotional aesthetics). Problem: Tao Wells is a terrible artist. Solution: Tao Wells is both a terrible artist and a terrific artist, and this is the hardest of all concepts to grasp.

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Top, left: Some of my early photocopy works fixed to a large board for inspection. Top, middle: A monochromatic painting, using photocopy ink (in the collection of Erica Lowe). Top, right: An assemblage, possibly made with Tim Wyborn.

Bottom, left: Painting by Mark Whyte (top) and a readymade using styrofoam packaging (bottom). Bottom, right: The remnants of a performance by then Wellington artist Collette [last name unknown].

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What if philosophers had the same kind of promotion attached to their brands and concepts as other commodities in our culture? Bourdieu on a billboard? Irigaray in an infomercial? Kant in the classifieds?

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Conceptual/sculptural piece exhibited in two parts: 1) the confiscation of a patch of land from Parliament grounds, and 2) this piece of land exhibited as part of The Briefcase Project (group show, curated by Richard Bartlett, Thistle Hall, 8-14 August). 19 artists were featured in the show, including Hannah Salmon, Ben Knight, Lance Ravenswood, Tui Harrington and Turrence Turner (among others).

“My favourite pieces are the visual discourse on the concept of “stolen land” and a beautiful piece of sound design, delivered on a very old school reel machine.” (Martyn Pepperell, Word on the Street)

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Late one afternoon in 1999 Tim Wyborn and I found an old photocopier toner in the library bin at Victoria University. Seeing the potential, but having no idea what to do, we grabbed it and headed back to my house. On the way Tim decided to smash the toner on my lawn and came up with the formula: SMASHING STUFF = ART. That sounded like fun, which produced a second formula: ART = FUN.

While Tim was smashing the toner, it started to rain and black ink ran all over my front yard (much to the annoyance of my flatmates). While he was doing this I got the idea to lay numerous pieces of paper on the ground around him to capture fragments of the event in plastic form. Never exhibited.

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Early painting of mine from 2000 made from pouring a bottle of black ink on an old piece of wood. Afterwards I varnished the wood to fix the ink in place. At the time I was drinking heavily and reading a lot of Charles Bukowski and always associated this painting with his book “Women” for some reason.

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