Performing for the Camera unravels the notions of using the camera to document performance. Our association with the camera often expects a document of the truth, a real image that exposes a small portion of our world caught in time. In most cases this is photography’s primary use, but since photograph’s invention, artists and creators have been using photography’s malleable qualities to distort and manipulate truth. These are actors and artists who are using the camera to document their performance. To perform requires an intention, there is something driving the participant’s will and their actions that has been somewhat thought out. This is incredibly different to straight photography that requires a ‘decisive moment’ in a world that is completely chaotic. Performing for the camera can take on many forms and the Tate’s exhibition addresses a large variety of work, yet the figure or the identity of the figure is present through out all the work.
Because of the large scaled nature of this exhibition I am just going to pick out a couple examples who have relevance to my own practice. I found it really intriguing how contemporary artists were dealing with performance and manipulation, especially with context to the internet. Thomas Mailaender's Gone Fishing series involves a great deal of appropriation and photo manipulation. Mailaender sources unsuspecting people’s holiday snapshots of them fishing or involved in other holiday activities from various online platforms.The artist then uses photoshop to turn the figure in the picture into himself. He carefully overlays his own face and makes these images belong to him. His identity inhabits a figure who is completely disassociated to the artist, yet Mailaender has this uncomfortable invasive access to their images.
The images tell a story of a young man’s adventure into parenthood. The work is accompanied by a series of letters written to the artists pregnant wife. The daunting prospect of the being a father is all to much for the artist and there fore he decided to ‘go fishing’. This false tale is portrayed as if it were truth, as an audience we become trapped between the narrative and the images. The longer you look at the images it becomes clearer and clearer that they are fabrication and the whole story beings to fall apart.
Personally I see this work as complex relationship between the Mailaender and his responsibilities of being an artist. He is evading traditions to work in the quasi-narrative manner. The work its self is displayed inside this huge tree trunk that has been carved from the centre, through a small head shaped hole we see this black space with a screen displaying the images. Speakers are playing a recording of the letters as the images move through a slideshow. The performance takes place in front of us in the gallery yet there is no actor present. We must engage with the tree and the space inside the tree to experience the work. I found that this darkened space within the tree was a fansitaic way to deal with a problem that I had been having with my own work. The images displayed on the device do not always fit to the edge of the screen, therefore by having theses images displayed in a black space where no light its able to expose the side of the screen all we see is the image. This also removes the black bars that would normally sit at either side of the image. All we see is the image the artist intends us to see. Creating a black darkened space is a perfectly possible solution for my own work when displaying my Google Image Still Life project.
Another artist, Amalia Ulman really showed how work that is so heavily involved with the internet can be repurposed for the gallery space. Her series takes form as an Instagram account, this series of constantly updating images documents her fictitious journey through a lavish lifestyle. This luxury was all fake, she spend months researching and planning the journey that this character of her self would take, there were three distinct stages of her character, she planned the changes to her hair and wardrobe all in an effort to gain notoriety on the Instagram platform. The Instagram account landed up getting over 90 thousand followers but Ulman’s ultimate goal was to expose “femininity is a construction, and not something biological or inherent to any woman”. Yet this had been realised through the fact “that photos of half-naked girls get a lot of likes”. Despite the narrative constructs it is clear that this series of work stems from a desirer for popularity. Reducing her own art to the standards that instagram accepts and adores. She is constructing a world that is inherently superficial, despite the fact that this act of sharing images becomes woven into personality and self identity.
What was fascinating to me was how the format of instagram was accepted into the formal gallery setting. My own series therothkoroom was formatted and created through the Instagram platform. But seeing the way the artist was able to present her work in the gallery really opened me up to the possibilities of displaying my own work. Printed on a large scale with the set square these images looked surprisingly well finished. Im not to sure if these images had been taken directly from the Instagram page after they had been uploaded or if they had in fact been taken by the iPhone with out being compressed in an upload. nether the less is shows that taking this work out of its online presences and into the physical world of print is completely possible and practical.