Laura Oldfield Ford

Another contemporary artist who combines the theoretical, the literary and the visual is Laura Oldfield Ford, whose work focuses on an exploration of the politics of development and the urban landscape, in the "psychoegeographic" tradition of the artists of the Situationist International.

Part of her practice has been the production of a zine (which ran from 2005-9) and then a blog, entitled Savage Messiah.

Here's her blog:
http://lauraoldfieldford.blogspot.co.uk/

A book version of Savage Messiah was published by Verso in 2011 - see Verso's website here:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1022-savage-messiah

From the New Statesman's review of this, by Sukhdev Sandhu:

“One of the most striking fanzines of recent years is Laura Oldfield Ford’s Savage Messiah, focussing on the politics, psychology and pop- cultural past of a different London postcode. Ford’s prose is scabrous and melancholic, incorporating theoretical shards from Guy Debord and Marc Augé, and mapping the transformations to the capital that the property boom and neoliberalist economics have wrought. Each zine is a drift, a wander through landscape that echoes certain strands of contemporary psychogeography. Ford—or a version of her, at least—is an occasional character, offering up narcotic memories of a forgotten metropolis. The images, hand-drawn, photographed and messily laid out, suggest both outtakes from a Sophie Calle project and the dust jacket of an early 1980s anarcho-punk compilation record: that is, both poetry and protest.”

Futurist Manifesto

We're discussing Marx and the Communist Manifesto in class this week. In what sense was the Communist Manifesto an artwork, a literary rather than simply political, theoretical or philosophical text? In what sense has it been an influence and a model for the explosion of artistic manifestos of the twentieth century?

The most famous, most seminal of the avant-garde art manifestos was the Futurists' Manifesto, published in the french newspaper Le Figaro, 5 Feb 1909.

Futurist Manifesto, marked in yellow, on the front page of Le Figaro, 5 Feb 1909.

The full text of the manifesto is here:
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

For more artists' Manifestos, see Alex Danchev's book 100 Artists' Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists (London: Penguin, 2011).

Mary Kelly, "Post Partum Document"

Mary Kelly's Post Partum Document (1973-9) is another classic conceptualist re-articulation of the relation between text and image / theory and art – though this time from a feminist persepctive.

The work traces the development of the mother-child relationship between her and her child, starting in 1973. It provoked tabloid outrage in its initial presentation at the ICA in 1976 because of its use of soiled nappies!

The work is interesting for weaving together a series of different kinds of text (the first words and graphic marks of the child, her own personal voice as a mother, psychoanalytical/feminist theory, and the more bureaucratic discourses of the medical, etc. professions which "write" ordinary people's experience.

More can be found about the work on Kelly's website:
http://www.marykellyartist.com/post_partum_document.html

Mary Kelly, Post Partum Document, detail. Perpsex units, white card, wool vests, pencil, ink
1 of 4 units, 20 x 25.5 cm each.

Another detail. Perpsex units, white card, diaper linings, plastic sheeting, paper,ink
31 units, 28 x 35.5 cm each

Anther detail. Perpsex unit, white card, wood, paper, ink, rubber. 1 of the 26 units, 20 x 25.5 cm. Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario