(Straight from the horse's mouth).
Day two.
January 22nd 2015.
Omer Fast ( Born in Jerusalem, lives and works in Berlin).
Omer is a political video artist interested in story telling and manipulation seems appose ( the danger of the single story), ref:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg This artist work focuses on trauma and the experience of traumas including his own and others.
Ragnar Kjartansson. ( Icelandic artist).
Ragnar is mostly a performative based artist. Ragnar started his presentation with a video, a bizarre interpretation of his own mothers daydream. This was a very amusing and evocative tale expressing Ragnar's sense of hilarity which is present throughout his work, ref:Jan Svankmajer. January 2nd 2015.
Sharon Lockhart (American artist from Massachusetts).
This presentation commenced with a video about Steve Paxton an experimental dancer and choreographer ref:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDBbyypWLJM whose ideas about experimental dance are fundamental to my subject matter. Sharon Lockhart is a film and photography based artist who is particularly interested in childhood and education. Her work displays an interest in the synchronisation of movement and interpretative dance.
Sanja Ivekovic (Croatian artist).
A feminist multi-medium artist whose subject matter is very political and the focus is in the main about societies control of the individual. Her talk commenced with a description of her first performative event which occurred the President Tito’s visit to the city, on a balcony, and at the time security police where on the top of the building. Sanja was on the balcony imitating an act of masturbating in the knowledge that the only person to view this was the security police, also Sanja being fully aware that they would communicate which each other. After a short period of time a knock at her door and a man simply said ' all persons and items should be removed from the balcony'. Sania work aims to explore gender political agendas and social dynamics.
Karen Mirza & Brad Butler ( British artists).
These are activists artists who are interested in 'who's holding the gun who is to blame'. One image of their work consisted of a found image of Meyrle Streep in her role as Margaret Thatcher, this image had been defaced with a biro scribble of what is commonly identified as Adolf Hitler's moustache and on one cheek is written 'I killed the British working class'. This displayed a paradoxical image which has layers of the pop culture, social controversy which surrounded Margaret Thatcher and connecting this to fascist dictatorships. The artist's talked about control and questioning what a terrorist act actually is and who in fact are the terrorists, this connects to their work 'the museum on non-participants'. The talk returned to their work with Artes Mundi which concerned what some people refer to as 'the ruling classes' 'the old school'.
Theaster Gates (Chicago-based Artist).
An multi-medium installation Artist, the winner of Artes Mundi Six, this artist presentation was a series of images in the form of process and he also sang loudly, which caused a shocked reaction in the member of the viewers around me. This in addition was very funny and invoked different levels of emotional reactions , it appeared to be almost a form of rebellion against the systems of artists competitions. Theaster Gates concluded by vowing to share his prize winnings with his fellow competitors. It was a 'happening' that I was happy to observe.