Ambiguous Gesture is Un-American: Lunch Hour Post

In Hamburg in 2004, Zoll-Douane art in public places exhibition asked 30 artists to create works about boundaries - mainly national ones after the unification of the European currencies. Artists Anja Steidinger and Raul Cordero projected the image of two people waving on the exterior wall at the entrance/exit of the exhibition. "Goodbye/Hello" presents the ambiguous gesture - waving - in which the meaning is established by the context. Waving goodbye, waving hello, waving for attention.

hellogoodbye_CustomsHamburg.jpg
Goodbye/Hello projection by Anja Steidinger and Raul Cordero

Years ago in an Agnieszka Holland film (I think), a series of faces were flashed on the screen and the imaginary audience selects if the face is happy or sad. All the faces were neutral like the ones below. The scientists were testing the audience, not the meaning of facial expressions.

Faces.jpg
Happy or Sad?

Ambiguity is loved by the fine arts and generally rejected by the public arts. We Americans are trained in the good, bad and purposeful. Ambiguity requires self-awareness by the viewers to explore their own reaction. Americans match their feelings to the feelings of the artwork, not explore. We judge the feeling. Ambiguity has no place.
.
.
.

Sign up for the Monthly email that lists the Aesthetic Grounds essays and links.





Subscribe to Aesthetic_Grounds list:




July 19, 2007 1:41 PM | | Comments (0)

Categories:

Leave a comment

Linkable

September 2008 

Conflux Festival in New York City, Sept 11-14

 La Machine in Liverpool, UK.

 Street Art Exhibition at Bronx Museum of the Arts

more picks

Blogroll

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Aesthetic Grounds published on July 19, 2007 1:41 PM.

Pink Squares: Lunch Time Post was the previous entry in this blog.

Richard Serra: The first artist made popular by Public Art is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads

Introducing
AJ Arts Blog Ads

Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

Advertise Here

[advertisement]

[advertisement]

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.