Last Thursday saw the opening of Modified Practice, a show exploring the form and processes within contemporary graphic design. The show brought together two projects, Nomadic Museum by Kevin Boothe and No Masters. No Gods. by Tom Briggs. Below is the shows statement as well as some pictures of the install. A big thank you to all of you who managed to make it out of the course of the past week to view it in person.

Graphic design is a discipline that is best understood through its relations to others. As Stuart Bailey noted, “graphic design only exists when other subjects exist first. It is a not a priori discipline, but a ghost; both a grey area and a meeting point.” Modified Practice can be seen as a response to this constantly fluctuating position. The projects within this show do not deal with graphic design in the most traditional sense of the word, as there is no client, and no brief. Instead, Modified Practice hopes to re-frame viewers’ understandings of what graphic design can be through its explorations of the discipline’s relation to the museum and to film making. By using design as a point of reference, the individuals in Modified Practice seek ways in which new perspectives can be utilized in both of these forums.

If you are in the Toronto area this Thursday, April 21st, please join us in celebrating the opening of “Modified Practice,” a show exploring the forms and processes of contemporary design. The show will bring together two projects, Nomadic Museum by Kevin Boothe and No Masters. No Gods. by Tom Briggs. We will begin the evening with a screening of No Masters. No Gods. at 7:30 and the opening will run until 11 PM. Music will be provided by Trav. The shows statement can be read below.

Graphic design is a discipline that is best understood through its relations to others. As Stuart Bailey noted, “graphic design only exists when other subjects exist first. It is a not a priori discipline, but a ghost; both a grey area and a meeting point.” Modified Practice can be seen as a response to this constantly fluctuating position. The projects within this show do not deal with graphic design in the most traditional sense of the word, as there is no client, and no brief. Instead, Modified Practice hopes to re-frame viewers’ understandings of what graphic design can be through its explorations of the discipline’s relation to the museum and to film making. By using design as a point of reference, the individuals in Modified Practice seek ways in which new perspectives can be utilized in both of these forums.

With the past couple of weeks having had many of us in the more northern parts of the world dealing with particularly treacherous weather, here at Document, we decided it was time for a brief, albeit imaginary getaway. This week’s post features Seven Days worth of photographs from Susana Londono, taken in Cartagena, Colombia. We hope the photos get you excited for warmer days to come.

2011 has started off as a very busy but exciting year here at Document Magazine. We have a lot of interesting projects planned for the next twelve months that we looking forward to sharing with you. In the meantime, here are a few snapshots of some works that are currently in progress. Stay tuned for more!

We hope you had a great holiday, and look forward to resuming the Weeklies posting on a more regular basis within 2011. For this week’s installment of Weeklies, we continue our series of Seven Days, with this edition coming to us from Bangkok via Rob Boothe. We hope you enjoy.

The Last Newspaper, a show currently on view at New York’s New Museum traces the historical development of the newspaper as an artistic tool from the 1960’s to the present day. The show examines the rich history of the newspaper, embraced early on by the cubists and futurists as a way to further disseminate their artistic practice, as a source for “artist’s images and language” (newmuseum.org) as well as a tool to transmit both information and ideas.

The show, which is spread over three different floors of the New Museum, is ambitious both in size and subject matter. While the theme of the dramatic impact technology and global communication (i.e. the internet) on the way that the global community interacts with media and information may seem obvious, the true extent of these implications are sometimes hard to fathom.

The show’s top floor begins with a selection of newspaper based contemporary artist publications. Included in this group is a publication started by Jacob Fabricius entitled old news. old news is a non-profit publication that is comprised solely of re-cycled images and text culled from newspapers all over the world. Each issue (there are currently eight) features a mixture of artists and curators, whom each submit four different clippings. These clippings are then compiled and published in whatever original format they came to Fabricius in, and the project is distributed. By re-purposing this information and re-framing it in a new context, the participants and publishers question the modes and methods of the media, and the transmission and dissemination of information within contemporary society.

The fifth floor also features a separate, but complimentary side project, entitled Museum as Hub. Museum as Hub is a series of projects initiated through a partnership of five different international arts organizations. It’s aim is to explore “new model[s] for curatorial practice and institutional collaboration” that look to “enhance our understanding of contemporary art.” (newmuseum.org) The project exists through these series of partnerships, as well as within the physical space on the fifth floor of the New Museum. It’s current offering, a reading room organized by Bidoun Magazine, focuses on five decades of printed material from the Middle East. The curated selection of publications is eclectic, spanning a wide variety of topics from the across the previous fifty years. The publications are divided into subgroups and the reading room/educational resource center set-up encourages further personal exploration

Set up as part exhibition, part participatory lab, the third floor encourages viewers to become active participants through a series of partnerships and projects that explore the idea of “citizen journalism.” The Barcelona based group Latitudes is on site, publishing a weekly newspaper in which participants can submit letters to the editor from a type writer located within the exhibition space.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy and StoryCorps both have spaces set up exploring the shifting site of the city and the economics of gentrification. Their contribution can be viewed as an investigation into the ways that news and media shape the discourse surrounding issues that affect individual’s daily lives.

The Last Newspaper is a show that feels, for lack of a better term, very of the moment. This is neither a comment on the show’s staying power, or a criticism of playing to current trends, but instead an observation that the show deals with issues that are central to contemporary life, but that have been mostly ignored by the majority of large scale art institutions. The production, structure, and dissemination of information have been favorite topics within the art world for a long time, but only recently have we begun to recognize the fundamental, paradigm shifting impact of contemporary technology. The combination of physical pieces and participatory projects showcased in the exhibit accomplish two important tasks: first, they investigate the methods and modes in which information is produced, structured and circulated in society; second, the exhibition challenges the audience to become more critical participants as they interact with the wealth of information they are exposed to on a daily basis.

“The Last Newspaper” is currently on view at New York’s New Museum and runs until January 9, 2011. For more information please visit www.newmuseum.org

Yesterday I had the opportunity to tour the Lowe-Martin Group Printing facilities here in Toronto. Founded in 1908, The Lowe-Martin group has been recognized as the most environmentally responsible printers in Canada 3 of the past five years that the award has been presented. I was lucky enough to visit on a day that they were printing (among other things) the Porter airline inflight magazine, a favorite here at Document. Below are a few low quality cellphone snaps of their operation.

The power and impact of visual images on humans has long been recognized and respected. From the pre-historic images of the caves at Lascaux to hieroglyphs and illuminated manuscripts, to the hyper saturated 24/7 mediascape of contemporary society, the image has been the method in which human beings have communicated, created, and negotiated their experiences of reality.

Especially over the past century, the rate at which Western society produces, circulates, and re-appropriates images has reached an unprecedented scale. The ease and speed by which modern technology facilitates these processes has turned the image into a global currency, exchanged and traded the world over in a matter of seconds. Images are continually re-purposed, rearranged and re-contextualized. Images are reaching the point of becoming media agnostic, transferring from billboards and walls, to magazines and newspapers, to TVs, computer screens and cell phones with minimal effort. So persistent is the place of image within society, that we no longer think to question the notions of the image and all that they encompasses.

In his 2003 work The Future of the Image, Jacque Ranciere asserts that the image is “never a simple reality” (Ranciere 6). Instead, images are a culmination of content and container, sender and receiver, image and word, context and framework. Ranciere refers to images as ‘operations’ and claims they can be interpreted at their most basic level in two different stages: “the image as raw, material presence and the image as discourse encoding a history” (Ranciere 11). Following this, images can be further understood by placing them into three categories, ‘the image, resemblance and hyper-resemblance’ (Ranciere, 8). Images fall into the category of raw material, and are appreciated as such. Resemblance, can be best explained through the example of hyperrealist painting. While the painting separates its operations from its techniques, it acts as little more then a mirror with none of the depicted objects “provenance and destination,” being shown. Finally, the third classification, hyper-resemblance does not “provide a replica of a reality but attests directly to the elsewhere whence it derives” (Ranciere 8). By understanding this multiplicity of planes in which the image operates, we begin to develop a notion of the complex and often convoluted functions of the image within contemporary culture.

Images are further complicated by the notion of substitution versus description. While images (particularly photographs) are immediately understood to be depictions of something, they also function as separate entities unto themselves, detached from the original and offering their own mediated form of experience. Although this distinction may seem obvious the importance of this concept warrants constant reevaluation when considering images and objects within the museum/gallery context. A classic example of this is the Mona Lisa. While the majority of the western world has seen a photograph or reproduction of this painting at some point or another, a much smaller percentage has seen the painting itself. It is important to question how these experiences and our perception of an image is different from our perception of the physical object itself.

Ranciere classifies the type of images that are found within galleries and museums into three major categories: the naked image, the ostensive image and the metamorphic image (Ranciere 22). The naked image refers to ‘the image that does not constitute art, because it what it shows us excludes the prestige of dissemblance and the rhetoric of exegeses’ (Ranciere 22). An example of a naked image is a photograph of a historical event. These images are usually found within the museum not based on their artistic merit, but their ability to serve as historical record of a particular time, place and happening. These are most often found in science, technological, or natural history museums as opposed to art museums and galleries. A variation of the naked image, the ostensive image “asserts its power as that of sheer presence, without signification. But it claims it in the name of art”(Ranciere 23). Ostensive images are “isolated in their sheer haecceity” or their own unique attributes (Ranciere 23). Their material presence can often be seen as their defining attribute. This category is largely comprised by individual ‘works of art.’ Obvious examples from recent history include abstract expressionist work by the likes of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. The third major category, the metamorphic image can be best summarized as the exact opposite of the ostensive image (Ranciere 24). These are images whose ‘artistic operations’ are impossible to differentiate from social and commercial imagery (Ranciere 24). Their artistic factor is defined by their ability to play upon the ‘ambiguity of resemblances’ and questioning of the “forms and products of imagery, rather than carry out their demystification” (Ranciere 25).
According to these classifications, design objects, images and exhibitions fall under the third category, the metamorphic image. Because the majority of design images having operated as commercial imagery at one point or another, according to Ranciere’s definition, their artistic operations are reliant on an individual (usually a curator) the object/images and placing them within the museum context. This raises important questions upon the nature of the images themselves. Were they art when serving their original commercial function in the ‘exterior world’ or did they simply become ‘art’ when re contextualized within a gallery context? Fine art went through a similar struggle starting with Duchamp’s ready-mades and culminating in the pop art’s questioning of traditional notions of ‘high culture vs low culture.’ While the art community seems to have been able to put the debate to rest, design is still struggling with these distinctions and trying to find how to best function within the museum context.

An important aspect of imageness; or all those complicated qualities that an image is comprised of, is the complex relation between the image and the word. Because graphic design has traditionally been concerned with the combination of word and image, this is a relationship that warrants further investigation. As Ranciere points out, “Words describe what the eye might see or express what it will never see; they deliberately clarify or obscure an idea” (Ranciere 7). Words and images are always inextricably linked, tied up in ways that make them impossible to disentangle. Descriptions, be it visual, or verbal never tell the full story when on their own. As Ranciere explains, ‘the description is a substitution. It replaces one scene of speech by another” (Ranciere 85). As visual communicators, designers are charged with the task to find ways that these two tools can be used in the most effective manner to convey ideas. In order to accomplish this objective, it is critical for designers to be aware of the myriad of ways in which an image can be interpreted and experienced.

A final aspect of imageness that is important for designers to consider is what Ranciere calls “The Surface of Design” (Ranciere 91). Much of modernity can be attributed to design. From the industrial revolution and the modern methods of production, to the way information is collected, displayed and disseminated, all of these ‘design decisions’ that started as ways of “distributing surfaces” have ended up shaping the political, economic and social landscape of contemporary Western civilization. If we treat the museum as a microcosm of this larger system, we begin to realize that every single decision made with the museum also starts with the distribution of surfaces, and ends up shaping our entire experience of the museum. Content, container and form are inextricably linked and this forms our perception of the images and objects displayed as well as the larger ‘image’ of the overall museum.

As Ranciere asserted, the image truly is never a simple reality. Images are created, disseminated and negotiated by individuals. This makes both their creation and interpretation inherently personal. Instead of treating images as factual, historical and ultimately “true,” it is more important to remember that all images are subjective, and only offer us one interpretation of a narrative that what usually has multiple realities.

In Michel Foucault’s 1969 essay, What is an Author, the French post structuralist thinker expands on the idea of authorship and discourse while challenging his readers to re consider many basic assumptions regarding our contemporary perception of the author. This essay, while concerned primarily with the author in the traditional sense (as one who produces a written body of work) raises many questions that could be similarly applied to ‘producers’ across a variety of creative fields including design.

Early in the work, Foucault reminds his reader that the idea of authorship itself, while often viewed as something that is ‘solid and fundamental,’ is something that only evolved after an extended period of time. This raises very interesting questions when applied to the field of design, as the majority of design we interact with on a day to day basis is created by teams of individuals who are anonymous to the end user. Society as a whole is less interested in these individuals who are responsible for creating the entities that we are engage with, then with how well these entities perform the task they were designed for. Removing these entities from there so called ‘functional’ settings, and placing them within a museum context not only changes the way we interact with the entities, but also the importance and role placed upon their ‘author.’

Following his brief introduction of authorship, Foucault begins to focus on ‘The Name’ of the author, and its use as both a classifying device, and to continue to perpetuate the ‘myth of creative genius.’ By focusing on the hero qualities readers often attach to authors, Foucault begins to unpack an issue that has been facing the art world for centuries, the so called ‘myth of creative genius.’ First emerging in the renaissance, and largely attributed to early biographers (like Vasari and his seminal work The Lives of the Artists) authors of written art criticism have largely been responsible for continuing perpetuate the wide variety of myths surrounding most famous artists (Kliemann, Julian and Antonio Manno). While design has fewer myths than the art world (due in part to the short period of time in which design has its own established criticism) it is also guilty of formulating and at times even encouraging myths concerning some of its more recognizable practitioners. In graphic design, names like Stefan Sagmeister, Massimo Vignelli, and David Carson all evoke particular and often highly sensationalized stories, turning these individuals into what is commonly referred to as design-stars. In industrial design, this issue is taken even further, with individuals like Karim Rashid, and Phillipe Starck being known as much for their public persona as the products they design.

This myth of creative genius, and the focus on these individuals’ personas as oppose to the work they produce is what prompted Barthes to call for ‘the death of the author’ in 1968. Barthes ideas becomes even more complicated when applied to the display of individual’s work within the museum context. Although it is obviously impossible to isolate individuals’ personas from the work they produce, these types of considerations raise many important questions for curators and exhibition designers alike. How much information about the individuals’ persona/past experiences is needed to really appreciate the work? How do we begin to go about analyzing the structure, architecture, intrinsic form and the ‘play of the internal relationships’ of the work itself (Foucault)? After we are done analyzing these factors within the work itself, we must begin to also question the relationship between these various factors within the exhibition itself, the larger museum and finally, greater society as a whole.

The notions of individual authorship of anything whether it be a text, an image, a poem, or even a multimedia piece raises a multitude of questions that must be carefully considered. When “design objects’ are isolated, and placed within a museum context it is supposed to let us engage with them in a more distilled context then their original ‘functional’ setting. However, placing these entities within a museum context amplifies some of the many issues concerning authorship, the personal personas attached to them, questions of authority and the role of narratives within exhibitions. While I can by no means offer any conclusive solution to this myriad of issues, I believe that the first step lies in an awareness of the complexity of these issues at hand. Only through this deeper understanding combined with an increased dialogue concerning the many issues surrounding authorship within exhibition of design can we begin to move forward.

Foucault, Michel. What is An Author? 1969.
Kliemann, Julian and Antonio Manno. “Vasari.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online.