"Flipping the Script", - Imogen O'Rorke

Imogen O'Rorke on Andrea Geyer's "9 Scripts from a Nation at War" on Mute Magazine Http://www.metamute.org/en/content/review_of_9_scripts_from_a_nation_at_war

Imogen O'Rorke is an artist, writer and new media consultant living in East London. Andrea Geyer is an artist, writer and researcher, working with narratives within staged social interactions and examplatory movement through (urban) spaces seen as sites of social, cultural and political productions.

The ‘9 script from a nation at war’ by Andrea Geyer explores psychology of nations in conflict. In the article she points out what the artists are trying to say about how the visual imageries need to approach to viewers and how the viewers should receive the image. “As viewers aka ‘citizens’, this is an upfront challenge to re-appraise our feelings about the conflicts and reactions to them”.1 Although the viewers could experience and understand the nations at the war but the ‘9 Scripts from a Nation at War’ doesn’t seem to give the viewers experience the event and the feelings effectively. “...in order to experience recent history, we need to experience it emotionally and unfiltered...”.2 I can understand that art work should be unfiltered and emotionally experienced – and especially in the context like Geyer’s artworks since the main point of the whole exhibition is to give viewers individual experience about what happened during the war and how the nation’s life has been affected by the war. David Campbell says, “Image alone might not be responsible for a narrative’s power, but narratives that are un-illustrated can struggle to convey the horror evident in many circumstances. Of course, there would be much to worry about of the media indulged in the simple proliferation of disturbing images.”3 By using the unfiltered images and sound in the art works could give better idea of the understanding or bigger impact to viewers, but from the media, games other things, a lot of the people these days are very much exposed to violence and disturbing images, which have leaded us to desensitisation of the images and emotion. I believe that sometimes it would be easier and more affective to viewers to show them ‘unfiltered’ images or sounds but by not giving the literal expressions and direct documentation, the work could become more powerful and still get emotional experience.





1. Imogen O'Rorke, “Flipping the Script” on Mute Magazine, http://www.metamute.org/en/content/review_of_9_scripts_from_a_nation_at_war, p3
2. Imogen O'Rorke, “Flipping the Script” on Mute Magazine, http://www.metamute.org/en/content/review_of_9_scripts_from_a_nation_at_war, p4
3. David Campbell, “Horrific Blindness”, Journal for Cultural Research, Volume 8, number 1,(2004)

“Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society” - Castells Manuel

Castells Manuel, “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), pp238-266.

Manuel Castells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communications research. John Conomos is a new media artist and critic who teach at Sydney Collage of the Arts, University of Sydney.

There are interesting ideas about globalization in relation to communication and media in the text by Manuel Castells. He talks about mass-communication and media politics and points out the issues and how media affects Politics and what mass-communication do in the society. John Conomos mentions in his writing ‘New Media, Culture, Identity’ that people and culture is drifting because of the idea of globalisation. “globalisation refers to our turbulent world of withering ‘nation-states’ and new ‘chaotic’ forms of movement of people, capital, culture, ideas, goods, symbols and global media networks set adrift.”1
From development of the mass self- communications like Facebook, youtube and twitter, the ‘many to many’2 communication is much easier and faster. By using these communication methods, public networking is growing- not only because of its quick easy structure but also because of its anonymity. Since anyone can write, comment and make statements anonymously, there are two sides of positive and negative values. The positive side is that the public can be more honest, active and people can make their voices heard without the help of media. On the other hand, there is possible danger of misleading the public or the losing control of the original information. “Yet any post in the internet, regardless of the intention of its author, becomes a bottle drifting in the ocean of global communication, a message susceptible of being received and reprocessed in unexpected ways.”3
The question about the ownership and the control of the information is something that interests me in relation to artists’ practices. I want to state that this issue especially in relation to the notion of ‘Contemporary’ arts which I believe the ‘idea’ becomes most crucial part of the art making and art works. Losing control of the ideas and ownership of any artist’s ideas would be like losing an actual art work.









1. John Conomos, Nikos Papasergiais, ed. ‘Complex Entanglements – Art, Globalisation and cultural Difference’, London: Rivers Oram Press, 2003, pp.127
2. ‘The communication system of the industrial society was centred around the mass media, characterised by the mass distribution of a one-way message from one to many. The communication foundation of the network society is the global web of horizontal communication networks that include the multimodal exchange of interactive messages from many to many both synchronous and asynchronous.’
- Castells Manuel, “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p246
3. Castells Manuel, “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p247

What does it mean to have a creative practice here in Aotearoa New Zealand

Catherine David and Irit Rogoff, “In Conversation”, in Claire Doherty ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, pp.82-89


Catherine David is artist, curator and Professor who has worked as a curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris during 1981-90 and since 2002 work as curator and director of the Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Irit Rogoff is a theorist and curator who is also a professor at Goldsmiths College, London University, in the department of Visual Cultures. Nikos Papastergiadis is Deputy Director of the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne.

Through the text, I found term ‘un-belonging’ very interesting. Irit Rogoff mentions the idea of un-belonging. “How can we make un-belonging a kind of active realm by which to somehow relate to place and not through the identifications demanded by the nation state? … constantly trying to think of positionality-one’s constantly contingent, constantly shifting positionality towards place.”1
I see a connection between the idea of ‘un-belonging’ and the idea of the local- cultural artwork, which one could read differently when the artwork is placed in another country. I think this applies not only to site-specific artworks but to all cultural artworks. From my point of view the artworks which include culture, history and the story don’t necessarily have to be shown in the country of creation since the world is becoming more and more globalized. International artists and the way viewers interpret artworks are different from past.
Although their culture and the background could affect or change their ways of understanding, people around the world who live in countries which have a multi-cultural society understand artworks as individualistic. For example New Zealand is also a multi-cultural nation which already has 2 cultures forming one country and added to the bi-cultural background there are many people from another countries which makes New Zealand a multi-cultural country. I think the question what does it mean to have a creative practice in Aotearoa New Zealand is answered to a large extent by this idea- and offers an insight into how we should look at artworks in New Zealand and from New Zealand. Nikos Papasergiais says that “...the artist must develop ‘tricky’ strategies for engaging the attention of the viewer away from the spectacle into a new experiential filed where symbolic and material meaning take new twists.”2 However, I believe that even though art works are shown in the country of creation, not necessarily everyone would be from that country and although the work might be more successful, the understanding will still be differ to individual audiences.






1. Catherine David and Irit Rogoff. "In conversation", in Claire Doherty ed., From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004, pp.84

2. Nikos Papasergiais, ed. ‘Complex Entanglements – Art, Globalisation and cultural Difference’, London: Rivers Oram Press, 2003, pp.6

“Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses.” - Cuauhtémoc Medina. & “Under the sign of Labor” - Sabeth Buchmann.

Medina, Cuauhtémoc. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses.” E-flux journal: issue #12 (January 2010).


Cuauhtémoc Medina is an art critic, curator and art historian from Mexico. He also was the first Associate Curator of Latin American Art Collections at Tate Modern in London.
Sabeth Buchmann is an art critic and historian who is Professor of Post-modern art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

In this article, Medina suggests eleven theories in relation to ‘contemporary’ art. At the beginning of the article, he states that “contemporary is the term that stands to mark the death of ‘modern’.”1 From my understanding of Medina, contemporary art not only comes after the modern art chronologically but also giving end to the modern era and replacing it by – presenting ‘the contemporary’ – disagreeing the ideas of Modernism. In the article by Sabeth Buchmann, she points out the ‘blind spot’ of the modern. “...revisions of conceptual notions of work that intended to historically illuminate the blind spots of modernist art discourse...”2 and believes the conceptual notions overlaps to modernist phenomena. This is interesting to see the similarities between the two authors’ ideas which are that the contemporary revise the notions and improved the blind spots of modernism. Buchmann says that “…Conceptual art was successful I establishing the idea that instead of being measurable only in terms of the fact of material production, the form of art’s symbolic value should be equally open to calibration using scales of social productivity…”3 Which is in other words saying the idea of conceptual art is being open, symbolic but art as form of communication making the works more public and socialised. This beginning notion of the Conceptual art has made the artists and viewers to value the ‘idea’ and the ‘process’ more as well as the actual finished ‘artwork’. This kind of Conceptual art has allowed artists to use theories or philosophies as a material and also changed the way we communicate with artworks.

1. Medina, Cuauhtemoc. "Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses". E-flux journal #12, 01/2010. http://e-flux.com/journal/view/103, p1.

2. Buchmann, Sabeth, 'Under the sign of Labor', Art after conceptualism, Cambridge, Mass & London: MIT Press, p182

3. Buchmann, Sabeth, 'Under the sign of Labor', Art after conceptualism, Cambridge, Mass & London: MIT Press, p179

“Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery.” - Craig Garrett

Garrett, Craig. “Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery.” Flash Art 238 (October 2004): 90-93.

Garrett Craig is an art critic and the managing editor of the Flash Art magazine. In this article he wrote in October 2004, thorough interview with Thomas Hirshhorn, the artist who works in the field of Philosophy.

In the article, Thomas Hirshhorn talks about his artworks employing philosophy just as any other material for his artworks.
"... So in my last two works, Unfinished Walls and Stand in, I tried to work with this material by cutting, enlarging, reducing, and extracting from it.”1

This is an interesting point about precisely what and how Hirshhorn uses philosophy in his artworks. He talks about how he employed philosophy and added it into his work. This made me question about physically implying philosophy into the meanings of the artwork and putting philosophical meanings on to the actual artwork itself. From my point of view, photo copies and cut outs of enlarged, reduced texts from print out texts about philosophy could be using philosophy as a material but the action and the process- the method itself- more importantly gives the artwork philosophical meanings.
This has helped me to think that sometimes artists tends to limit themselves to strictly to the rules to themselves or thinking of that for example, philosophy has to be under-laid and be dissolved into the meanings of the artworks. But by using the words on to the actual objects, Hirshhorn is showing the viewers what philosophical materials he is presenting to be part of his sculptures and at the same time, by doing this the under-laid meaning is formed in viewers’ minds. . This point relates to my interest towards the relations between what is on the surface of the artwork and the under laying meanings.

1.Garrett, Craig. “Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery.” Flash Art 238 (October 2004), p 92.