Window Serenade

 

This is an assignment we worked on with the amazing Rebekah Modrak!   She will join us on Wednesday to talk about this assignment and other project ideas from her book Reframing Photography.  Please share this assignment/project with colleagues in other disciplines with the hashtag #windowserenade – It could work equally well for drawing, painting, film/video etc…

Artists have often turned to the window: as a pictorial convention to articulate the illusory space of linear perspective; as a metaphor for photographic vision that contrasts with the introverted and reflective mirror; and as a theatrical curtain that divides public from private space. 

We are in a moment where the windows of our apartments and homes are our most consistent connections to “In Real Life” (IRL). Our friends, loved ones and neighbors are in their homes looking out. 

As artists shift from our studios and classrooms to our homes, we look to windows as frames, viewfinders, exhibition spaces, and stages and, most importantly, as sites of connection to share experiences in this time of self-isolation, quarantine, and seclusion. Beginning on April 6th, we join each other and our serenading neighbors in Naples and Tuscany with a visual chorus of serenades.” 

Please connect your windows to us by sharing photos of your window (from inside looking out, and from outside looking in) and tagging #WindowSerenade and @WindowSerenade on Instagram and Facebook. 

Artists

#WindowSerenade

Choose a public-facing window in your home and treat it in some way so that it serves as a missive to your neighbors and the world beyond. Submit video or one or two photographs of your window, showing its contents and the context of your home to your instructor and to @windowserenade on Instagram.

#windowserenade
#fotofikaserenade
#paintingserenade
#theaterserenade
#performanceserenade
#corvid_19
#coronavirus

Scroll to bottom for full assignment prompt

John Pfahl

“While making my “picture window” photographs, I came to think that every room was like a gigantic camera forever pointed at the same view. In the dictionary, of course, the word camera in Latin means chamber or room.

I searched the country for these cameras and their views: the more unusual or picturesque, the better. It was often hard to tell from the outside what could be seen from the inside, so I was usually surprised when I discovered a scene in its new context.” from HERE

Merry Alpern

In the winter of 1993-94, photographer Merry Alpern began taking photographs from a friend’s window off Wall Street in New York. Looking out, two windows opposite the apartment looked inside an after-hours sex club, “where stock-brokers and other well-todo businessmen handed over hundreds of dollars and drugs to women in G-strings and black lace.”

From Here

Shannon Lee Castleman

Shannon Lee Castleman introduced residents in opposing apartment buildings by inviting them to film one another. This movie shows tenants in the process of recording and being recorded, and in the process of acknowledging neighbors who had been strangers.

Shannon Lee Castleman
http://www.shannoncastleman.com

Romare Bearden

In 2011, in celebration of the centenary of Romare Bearden’s birth, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York featured one of the artist’s largest and most important work of art, the mural-size collage “The Block” from the museum’s collection.

Full Text

Shizuka Yokomizo

From ARTIC:

Shizuka Yokomizo has explored photography’s complicated relationship to voyeurism most innovatively in her series Dear Stranger (1998–2000).

Full Text Here

Rear Window Timelapse by Jeff Desom

Rear Window Timelapse

Winner: Ars Electronica – Golden Nica, Vimeo Award

Meticulously assembled using After Effects and Photoshop, Rear Window Loop is a large scale projection that shows Alfred Hitchock’s 1954 masterpiece as a never before seen panorama. With Jimmy Steward’s and Grace Kelly’s storylines removed from the picture, the iconic courtyard plays out otherwise banal observations from the film, letting viewers discover a world previously hidden under a dense thriller plot.

3 Channel Projection
Full Duration: 20 min
Full Resolution: 2400x600px
Projection Surface approx.: 10×2 meters

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Billboards

In celebration of its 15th anniversary in 2010, Artpace in San Antonio, Texas, mounted an ambitious state-wide exhibition of 336 seminal billboards created by Cuban-born artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996).

From Here

Shirin Neshat

Channel 4 News

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist and filmmaker. Although based in New York, most of her inspiration comes from her native home. .

From Here

Resources

Merry Alpern, Dirty Windows
https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/photography/merry-alpern-s-controversial-dirty-windows-series-nsfw/

Romare Bearden, The Block
https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/1-2012-34/romare-beardens-block-american-story

Shannon Lee Castleman
http://www.reframingphotography.com/artists/shannon-lee-castleman

Jan Dibbets
https://cristearoberts.com/artists/62-jan-dibbets/

Hitchcock, Rear Window
https://ksamaarchvis.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/the-importance-of-set-design-in-hitchcocks-rear-window/

Franz John, Military Eyes
http://www.f-john.de/index.php?id=37

Lee Miller, Portrait of Space
https://designobserver.com/feature/exposure-portrait-of-space-by-lee-miller/39101

Joseph Nicephore Niepce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826 first photograph, heliograph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_from_the_Window_at_Le_Gras

Anders Ostberg, Window Standpoint
http://lappareil.free.fr/window/

John Pfahl, Picture Windows
https://www.josephbellows.com/exhibitions/john-pfahl

Stephen Pippin, Laundromat Locomotion
https://www.amazon.com/Laundromat-Locomotion-Steven-Pippin/dp/9057050943

https://www.theguardian.com/turner1999/Story/0,,201737,00.html

Rebekah Modrak, “Linear Perspective and Sight” from Reframing Photography, pp 17-22

Essay that winds through pictorial conventions articulating space on illusory surfaces, from Renaissance systems of linear perspective and the “window” as a metaphor to establish perspectival space, to John Pfahl’s Picture Windows, John Baldessari’s assertion that television was the new Renaissance window, the window’s propensity to sever the body from space (resulting in emotional distancing and a supplanting of story-telling for technical virtuosity and voyeurism), Sontag’s theory of the camera/window as a way to deal with unfamiliar spaces, Shizuka Yokomizo’s Dear Stranger series, the Window Standpoint Series, Ernst Mach’s proposition of (and Tim Hawkinson’s work) visualizing depictions that don’t separate the “inner” and “outer.”

Renaissance system of seeing; the metaphoric window that establishes perspectival view of space
https://www.glass-bead.org/research-platform/the-perspectival-eye/?lang=enview

William Henry Fox Talbot – first photograph of window
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/282004

Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/virtual-window

James Elkins and Erna Fiorentini, Visual World: Looking, Images, Visual Disciplines
http://www.jameselkins.com/index.php/experimental-writing/257-our-visual-world

Shizuka Yokomizo, Stranger 2000
http://www.shizukayokomizo.com/6/4592958791

Andy Warhol

Public Forum for Conversation / Social Practice

Shimon Attie
http://shimonattie.net/

Candy Chang
http://candychang.com/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janeclairehervey/2018/01/30/this-artist-turns-anxiety-and-fear-into-public-art/#79f85c137625

Rafael Fernando Gutierrez Jr.
https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=Rafael+Fernando+Gutierrez+Jr

https://gramho.com/media/1985014195662684523

Harrell Fletcher
http://www.harrellfletcher.com/

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Billboards
https://davidzwirnerbooks.com/product/felix-gonzalez-torres-billboards

Núria Güell, Intervención #2
http://nuriaguell.net/projects/26.html

Jenny Holzer
https://massmoca.org/event/jenny-holzer/

Iocose, Instant Protest
http://exstrange.com/auctions/instant-protest/

Lev Manovich, Selfiecity
http://manovich.net/index.php/exhibitions/selfiecity

Asunción Molinos Gordo, El-Matam El-Mish-Masry (The Non-Egyptian Restaurant)
https://www.artforum.com/slant/kaelen-wilson-goldie-on-the-best-works-of-2012-38432

Mosireen
https://www.mosireen.com/?page_id=6

Public Delivery, Silence was Golden
https://vimeo.com/156928895

https://publicdelivery.org/silence-was-golden/

Public Murals
https://www.boredpanda.com/environmental-street-art-graffiti-climate-change/?utm_source=ecosia&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic

Art at Supermax Prison
https://www.chieftain.com/news/20190309/supermax-nations-most-secure-prison-gives-art-chance

Gillian Wearing, Signs that say what you want them to say
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/mar/04/gillian-wearing-signs-in-pictures

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Public Projections
https://www.krzysztofwodiczko.com/public-projections

 

Art Became the Oxygen: A Guide to Artistic Response
https://usdac.us/news-long/2017/8/9/art-became-the-oxygen-free-artistic-response-guide-available-now

Artists in Internment Camps, Minidoka: Artist as Witness
http://www.boiseartmuseum.org/exhibition/minidoka-artist-as-witness/

Liu Bolin
https://liubolinstudio.com/

John Heartfield
https://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art

Frida Kahlo
https://www.fridakahlo.org/

William Kentridge, Apartheid South Africa
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/10/out-of-south-africa-how-politics-animated-the-art-of-william-kentridge

Kathe Kollwitz, Two world wars
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/kathe_kollwitz/

Jesse Krimes, prison
https://www.jessekrimes.com/apokaluptein16389067

Mohau Modisakeng, South Africa
http://www.mohaumodisakengstudio.com/

Henry Moore, Underground Drawings
https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2013/december/11/henry-moores-spectral-images-from-the-underground/

Shirin Neshat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckfm1HruBh0

Blessing Ngobeni, South Africa
https://blessingngobeni.com/

Charlotte Salomon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGVtJydKHgo

Penny Siopis, South Africa
https://pennysiopis.com/

Paul Stopforth, South Africa
http://paulstopforth.com/

Ai Weiwei, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/11/ai-weiwei-launches-controversial-public-art-project-focused-on-immigration

David Wojnarowicz
https://visualaids.org/artists/david-wojnarowicz

 

 

 

 

Choose a public-facing window in your home and treat it in some way so that it serves as a missive to your neighbors and the world beyond. Submit video or one or two photographs of your window, showing its contents and the context of your home to your instructor and to @windowserenade on Instagram.

#windowserenade #fotofikaserenade #paintingserenade #theaterserenade #performanceserenade #corvid_19 #coronavirus

  • The window as a screen for projection and shadow-play
  • The window as a theater for performance
  • The window as a frame for messaging and design

Messages from within to neighbors and the world beyond about …

  • Life in self-isolation,
  • Politics and protest
  • Local to global
  • Hope and anxiety
  • Science-fiction
  • Real and online
  • Opportunity for escape

 

Weekly Assignment

 

Choose a public-facing window in your home and treat it in some way so that it serves as a missive to your neighbors and the world beyond. Submit video or one or two photographs of your window, showing its contents and the context of your home on Instagram @windowserenade  & Facebook @windowserenade

#windowserenade #fotofikaserenade #paintingserenade #theaterserenade #performanceserenade  #corvid_19 #coronavirus

  • The window as a screen for projection and shadow-play
  • The window as a theater for performance
  • The window as a frame for messaging and design

Messages from within to neighbors and the world beyond about …

  • Life in self-isolation
  • Politics and protest
  • Local to global
  • Hope and anxiety
  • Science-fiction
  • Real and online
  • Opportunity for escape
The Instagram hashtag for this assignment is #windowserenade

#windowserenade Photos