Senalka at CCA

UPDATE

2013-12-12T10:34:00.001-08:00

I'm currently updating my website. It'll be back up soon! In the meanwhile, you can look at my daily musings and stuff I've been learning at California College of the Arts.

=)

1-25-2011

2011-01-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

And I've fallen in love. With the creativity of these artists, and their work.

First, Robert Pruitt:

The notion of black identity has been complicated and largely misunderstood. We control neither the construction, nor the distribution of our varied and multilayered stories of self. I am attempting to interrupt the existing narratives with my own. Some of this is done through sculptures, videos, photography and other media, but primarily through drawing.

These drawings are patchwork, counter images to the reductive examples of blackness that prevail in various forms of popular media and culture around the globe. The characters that makeup these drawings are drawn from my interest in science fiction, comic books, history, Hip Hop, and fresh fashion styles. They are portraits of friends and neighbors, and possess an unspoken description of resistance.

These works, out of necessity, speak from a dichotomy of both a western art language and a black popular expression, as this is the duality in which I operate. I work from and seek to reference forms that are relevant to both spaces.

Props

Silk & Soul

You Could Not Be Just Like Me if You Was My Twin

The Devil Planted Fear Inside the Black Babies

http://www.robert-pruitt.com/

Next, Tony Feher:

It Seemed a Beautiful Day 2002

Either/Or 1998

(Birth Stone) 2008

http://www.damelioterras.com or http://www.anthonymeierfinearts.com

1-23-2011

2011-01-23T18:45:00.000-08:00

Anita Sto

THUNDEROUS SILENCE

1 - channel video

Time: 1’ 22’’

2010

Music by Stars of the Lid,

Gravitational Pull Vs The Desire For An Aquatic Life

Thanks to Andre’ da Loba

TEXT:

THUNDEROUS SILENCE

“It is Horizontal Equilibrium, it is movement –– Life.

All life is composed of vibrating frequencies, each of them emits a sound.

All of life is emitting sound –– that is the effect of vibration.

“The organic matter that forms human beings generates a frequency that can be represented by sound at approximately 42 octaves above middle C.” [1]

It is a series of lines or lines in sequence.

Each line depicts an emotional strain, the sequence defines the rhythm.

A timeline, yes, but a lifeline too.

As cold is the lack of warm, dark is the lack of light then black is the lack of white and vice-versa.

Black and white are the same thing, identical but differing in gradation.

The two opposite color’s vibrations with the one of my body, render a kind of organic geometry to the motif of my oeuvre.

Those vibrations, combined together, create a wave.

Universe has a sound, this is its frequency.”

A succession of paintings and drawings which, in its own way, is beating time: each canvas or sheet is marked with the month and the year of its execution, together with a serial number, from 1 to n.

11-20-2011

2011-01-20T17:32:00.001-08:00

Inspiring.

1-18-2011 Potentials for a new project

2011-01-18T21:38:00.000-08:00

I'm not telling, pregnancy meeting - useful

1-16-11

2011-01-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

I watched a documentary about this documentary:

It was very interesting learning about the futures of the people involved in this documentary.
documentary:

http://www.followingsean.com/

New Year! 1/10/2011

2011-01-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

So I've been lazy when it comes to the blog, but I'm back. My sister told me to read this NY Times article about AndrewAndrew, a pair of DJ's. In reading it, I was excited by this statement:

AndrewAndrew are sometimes called performance artists, but they see themselves as mere catalysts, provoking onlookers to literally look twice. “Ultimately, it’s a nonperformance,” Andrew said, “because we’re not actually doing anything. We’re passive. The entire action takes place in someone else’s mind, in someone else’s perception.”

I'm very intrigued by the idea of someone's life being a performance, or "nonperformance". I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and what it could mean for me.
Check it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/fashion/06Andrew.html

Their site: http://www.andrewandrewdotcom.com/

Reading: NOTHING! I need something, and am on a search. Recommendations are welcome!

my name

2010-12-11T21:26:00.000-08:00

New discovery. Senaka is a word for 'back' in Japanese. Also:

According to Wikepedia, Senaka Bibile (13 February 1920 – 29 September 1977) was a Sri Lankan pharmacologist. He was the founder of Sri Lanka’s drug policy , which was used as a model for development of policies based on rational pharmaceutical use in other countries as well by theWHO, UNCTAD and the Non-Aligned Movement. Due to the far reaching effects of his proposals and policies, he has been called the 'greatest medical benefactor of humanity that Sri Lanka has hitherto produced'.

I've noticed many Sri Lankan and Japanese sites with this name listed. I guess that's where my name came from, and a Spanish flair was added to it by adding the 'l'. I guess I shouldn't feel so territorial about my name then : ) Also, can I just pretend I'm being sung to?

Weird.

12/11/2010

2010-12-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

Olivier de Sagazan, Return to Close, 2008

Looks like he was born in the Congo and studied biology.

Translation from De Sagazan’s site:

“I will address here the question of the artistic process and the genesis of a work of art. My approach works toward a personal application of painted sculpture and some skill as a biologist. This constitutes perhaps the driver and the limit of my interpretation.

I will rapidly give the elements of my theory of sculpture: materials and elements, to then get to the center of the subject: the transfer of ‘forms’ between the body of the artist and the work of art. At the start: an impression, a vague form, poorly seen, at best without a face, sensed again with the gut, something which one wants to draw closer.”

I'm not sure how I ultimately feel about this work. But it is riveting to watch.

12/7/2010

2010-12-08T00:16:00.000-08:00

AMAZING!
Just discovered this video tonight. It has inspired me immensely, as I'm beginning to do more video work.
Keren Cytter - Four Seasons, 2009
**Warning-Nudity**

As the film unravels, conflicting narratives are revealed, switching between the stories of Stella, a tragic tale of heart-break and domestic murder, echoing Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and Lucy. A voice-over describes the building using its architectural elements as metaphors for human behaviour. Climaxing with a series of spontaneously combusting objects – birthday cake, Christmas tree, record player – Four Seasons is a homage to all that is fake, showcasing visual clichés, lo-fi special effects and deadpan delivery. Yet, somehow, Cytter creates a sense of poignancy rather than of cynicism.

Cytter’s work emphasizes only multiple fragmented moments of feeling. As the man in Four Seasons explains to Stella, ‘I loved you then and I love you.’ Stella replies ‘… you pushed me. Head hit the floor so hard and my skull cracked wide open […] You broke my back. My knees. My heart.’ Clearly he wasn’t in love with Stella at that point. Cytter flouts her style clashes – home-movie Hitchcock, lo-fi Hollywood glamour, soap-opera Samuel Beckett, soft-core feminism – manipulating these cultural tools with results that range from the banal to the sublime, from the embarrassingly comic to the vulgarly surreal.
Kathy Noble

12/5/2010

2010-12-05T01:37:00.000-08:00

It's 1:32am. Just came home from a party, and while eating my SunChips (yes!) I remembered something exciting I was told. Sophie Calle is coming to give a talk next semester. Take a look:

Somedays I can't help but have this sitting on my shoulder...

2010-12-03T00:21:00.000-08:00

MICRO-OMISSIONS at MicroAgressions

Being written off as “the black girl,” “person of color,” or “woman” who’s just complaining or whining when I continuously bring issues of race, ethnicity, gender, or class into discussions.  Sometimes, I hear it in your responses, other times, I see it in your faces… most times, I read it through your silence.

http://microaggressions.tumblr.com/

Geisha

2010-12-03T00:12:00.000-08:00

Lots of posts tonight. I see this blog really as being able to remember artists and artistic information I've been given. I've never been good at that stuff. So a couple of years ago I saw Geisha, a dance performance by the dance company LeeSaar. Its the first time I'd seen any professional modern dance, and it was AMAZING. Meditative, ritualistic, beautiful. I would love to see them again. I've also been trying to look to more dance and performance work to think of ways that I can move my body.

http://www.leesaar.com/?page_id=34

WATCH IT!

Operation Puta

2010-12-02T23:58:00.000-08:00

I found a card today in the tradey area we have at school, for a performance piece called Operation Puta by Liz Cohen. It happened in 2001, and had an American and Panamanian flag on it, which was why I needed to have it. I'm not totally sure what the piece was about, but it looks like Cohen works with issues of sexism, objectification and feminist issues. Pic of the piece below.

http://www.laurentgodin.com/artists_detail.php?id_artiste=4

12/3/2010

2010-12-02T23:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm taking a break from textiles, and beginning some drawing/animation work. It feels good to work in a different media, and I'm excited about what the outcome will be. So today, I saw a video by Robert Breer titled Trial Balloons. He has had a 70 year career animating, among other things. The balloon sounds are perfect.

Reading: Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri

11/21/10

2010-11-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

I'll be making a video today. Or, multiple videos. I'm finding it harder and harder to wake up in the mornings; my brain and body are exhausted.

I need water
I need money
I need talk to you
I will trying to

I've had a pretty glorious weekend of relaxation, production, ingestion, and invention. Hopefully today ends successfully and beautifully as well.

David Hammons Bliz-aard Ball Sale 1983

performance piece

Reading: Ecrits by Jacque Lacan

11/15/2010

2010-11-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

Magdalena Abakanowicz is an artist I was inspired by a few weeks ago, then forgot her name. Luckily I found it again! She uses textiles in a sculptural way that I love. Her work is based on her Polish background, years spent in war and oppression.

“My work comes from the experience of crowds, injustice, and aggression… I feel an affinity for art when it was made a form of existence, like when shamans worked in the territory between men and unknown powers… I try to bewitch the crowd."

Reading: Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century - Richard J. Powell

11/14/2010

2010-11-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

Sheela Gowda

Gallant Hearts
Cowdung & Kumkum Threads
144" x 12" x 6"
1996

Sheela Gowda's work reminds me a lot of my own. Of course hers is much more conceptual, which is definitely something I'm striving for right now. The reds are very body like, sinewy, rich. She creates work and installations focusing on the ideas of female labor, handicrafts, rural life to express issues of historic and current violence in India.

Lil' somthin new I'm workin on

2010-11-10T21:42:00.001-08:00

11/10/10

2010-11-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

Soooooooooooooo sleepy today. Late night working. But I got some great photos, which I'll hopefully be putting up soon. Today, Ana Mendieta. Beautiful and amazing Cuban-American performance artist, an inspiration to many.

Much of Mendieta's work may be considered strongly feminist by some; it is in essence autobiographical. One theme in her early performance art was violence against the female body. Later Mendieta focused on a spiritual and physical connection with the land, most particularly in her Silueta pieces, which typically involved carving her imprint into sand or mud, making body prints or painting her outline or silhouette onto a wall.

Reading - Black Boy

11/6/2010

2010-11-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

Sue Williams. It's Saturday, so no school, though I did get a lot of work done at home. Very busy day tomorrow! But today, I looked at the work of Sue Williams, who is AMAZING. I like her charcoal drawings, but can't find any to link. So I'll put up this image:

On her site:
Sue Williams work has been driven by the desire to understand and interpret the psychological world of the human condition and the ever-increasing pressures that drive us to behave in certain ways. The inspiration has been founded on the notion of the ‘….tit bits…’ a play with reality and fantasy from a feminine perspective, often subverting the truth through image and text, in both a serious and playful manner. The main thrust in the work is drawing - drawing been used as an urgent and immediate tool for visualising my responses, thus ‘……… dirty linen on line…..!’ This constantly growing installation of drawing is addictive, involving both memory and fantasy and at the same time conveying a meaning at both the political and the private levels. The analytical has been a constant throughout my work, using the visual image as a recording of the unconscious - the conscious, the safe – the unsafe, the real – the unreal. It is through this particular visual dialogue that a number of certain issues are highlighted and become part of a much larger picture.

Reading: Black Boy

11/03/2010

2010-11-03T21:42:00.002-07:00

Went to work today, then worked in my studio for a while, continuing on two projects. One involves knitting, the other gauze. I'm trying to stay with them; sometimes I lose confidence.

Anyway, I found this book in the library called Sexual Artifice: Persons, Images, Politics, and it just so happens to have an article in it called Something's Missing: Male Hysteria and the U.S. Invasion of Panama by Cynthia Weber. I'm reading it tonight after writing a paper. I also looked at some more artwork today, and came across an artist I'd looked at many years ago, then forgot her name. It's Mickalene Thomas.

The best strategy for challenging the phallic authority of the penis is laughter.

--Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction

Everybody's got a little rent a cop.....

2010-11-02T19:48:00.004-07:00

Dodge and Kahn employ video as a tool to dramatize the longing that underpins interpersonal expression ( both functional and dysfunctional), the desire for contact and some sense of personal agency. What at first might seem like random decisions in the works— unorthodox choices for location, wardrobe, and editing— are carefully poised to produce scenarios that flirt with slapstick without diluting their characters’ basic humanity. This balancing act is particularly vivid in the pair’s Can’t Swallow It, Can’t Spit It Out (2006), which charts the relationship that develops between that logorrheic Valkyrie and her voyeur-cum-documentarian as the two move from confrontation to empathy during the course of an off-kilter dérive through Los Angeles. Wandering a largely depopulated city, the woman regales her newfound companion with tales that run from personal reminiscences to insane ramblings (more than a few begin “When I was in hell . . . ”), occasionally pausing in their fruitless search for “action” to lament, “You should have been there for that!” By the end, both the cameraperson and the viewer know they have. JEFFREY KASTNER

Can't Swallow it, Can't Spit it Out (2006)
Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn

11/2/2010

2010-11-02T17:40:00.001-07:00

Day 2! Busy and inspiring day! I went on a field trip with my Fearless Speech class to the Rosie the Riveter memorial in Richmond, CA, and had the honor to meet Betty Soskin, the 89 year old park ranger who gave us the history of the area and the memorial. Through her oral history, she was able to contextualize the later growth of the Black Panthers, who began in Oakland, CA. I met one of the founders, David Hilliard, last week at a talk he gave to one of my classes. Basically, after the dust bowl many african-americans moved to California to work at shipyards all over the bay area, building ships for the war, and living difficult lives faced with racism, sexism, low wages, and poor housing. The difficulties of the time, plus the end of war causing loss of jobs and nothing for soldiers to come home to eventually led to the boiling point civil rights fights. It's fascinating to know how one thing led to another, and how they affect the community, and the entire United States, now.

After that, I checked out a million books from the library, and am currently looking at the work of William Pope.L

Currently reading: Black Boy by Richard Wright

11/01/2010

2010-11-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

I decided to start a blog. I've noticed other students doing it as well, and I thought it would be a good way to log what I've learned while in school, so it can float around the intranets forever more.
Today, I went to work - Career Services Center! - then checked out some books at the library. I'll be exploring the work of Kori Newkirk.
This is what the the Whitney says: Kori Newkirk makes multimedia paintings, sculptural installations, and photographs that explore the formal properties of materials, the politics of identity, and the artist’s personal history. Although cultural references emerge in his recurring use of pomade and plastic pony beads, both used to style black hair, as well as the color white, with its connotations of race and pristine environments, the symbolic possibilities of these elements are always matched by their formal elegance.

LOVE!