Week ? questions
This week you are reading about Marco Maggi, Victoria Vesna, and Wenda Gu.
1. In a way, our work in studio does make me see a connection between our work and Marco Maggi’s as we both use commonly thought of and real items in our works. When we watched his work on the maccintosh apple, we sat for around 4 minutes staring at a movie of an apple that seemed, to all of us, not to change when it was slowly changing in size. No one noticed until we watched the movie fastforwarding through it. I do connect with the fact that Maggi chooses to use cheap and accessible substances that we can use up and throw away, such as computer paper and aluminium foil. In our studio class we’ve used posterboard, old boxes, found objects, insulation, and use-up and throw away items such as Q-tips, paper clips, paper towels. I find using these items to be more interesting than using items that are meant to be used for artwork, it opens up our work to endless possibilities.
2. Both Victoria vesna and Wenda Gu are interviewed in the book concerning their careers. How does choosing a mission connect to having a career? Describe their careers. Finally, do you feel a sense of mission as you work towards a degree and potential career? What is that mission if so?
Both of these artists create art because art chose them. Whether their missions chose them or they chose their mission, whatever their mission is it is what keeps them as an artist. It inspires them. it is what creates the ideas that formulate into their art which creates their careers. For most artists they have a mission and throughout their career they focus their work on this mission(s). Victoria Vesna focuses her work and career on creating time which was first realized in 1999. The book mentions different missions she has taken on, but her main mission is to try to create time or the equivalent to time. Her career started in the 1980s with Vesper’s Stampede to my Holy Mouth and Bhopal Christmas. Vesper is a cat and the video shows different contorted angles of the cat and a woman’s mouth. In Bhopal Christmas, another cat was used. In the 1990s, Vesna’s work changed and her career turned from videos of real people to unclude calculated computer images, shapes and forms. As the year 2000 came around, and technology evolved to allow her to explore different routes, such as NANO fashion. Throughout her career Vesna has used diffent means to try and create time, and her work has evolved as time progressed. Wenda Gu’s career progresses much in the same manner as Vesna’s, he focuses on his mission of celebrating human experiences, such as physical origins of life. He uses odd mediums. His resume is extensive and his career amazes me how many works he has created and what he has accomplished as he focuses on his mission.
My mission to graduate here at VCU is coming to a close, but my mission toward a potential career is still ongoing. Yes, I do see my quest for a job that will allow me to provide for myself as a mission. It is a stressful and complicated mission which entails me trying to figure out what type of job I want to do for the rest of my life that won’t make me want to commit suicide by age 40, but that I can achieve before turning 30. Is that even possible? Most people choose a job that will provide for them and are unhappy, but can support their families, am I doomed to follow in their footsteps? Or will I be able to find something that will fulfill my needs and make me happy as well?
