Episode VII: Cornelia Parker - Beauty is too easy. Often, I take beautiful objects and do extreme things to them...

00:00:04: Welcome to Art Unquoted, I'm Charlotte de Saga.

00:00:07: And i am Essenia Benen.

00:00:09: We're two billion based art professionals who think that in a world of noise revealing things can sometimes be found in few words.

00:00:19: In each episode we take single quote and see where it leads us.

00:00:23: This is Spark & Friction.

00:00:32: Someone Who prefers to remain unseen makes Art Unquote possible.

00:00:36: The generosity is the invisible foundation of everything you hear.

00:00:40: We dedicate this episode with deep gratitude.

00:00:47: Beauty is too easy, often I take beautiful objects and do extreme things to them so that they are overlaid.

00:00:54: something a bit more sinister and violent.

00:00:57: Cornelia Parker

00:01:00: Welcome back to Art Unquoted!

00:01:02: It's great to have you here again.

00:01:04: Today, we're focusing on an artist who knows perfectly well how to transform the ordinary into something spectacular.

00:01:12: We are talking about the British artist Cornelia Parker born in nineteen fifty six.

00:01:17: She takes everyday objects things were all familiar with and subjects them too extreme often violent processes.

00:01:25: The result quite breathtaking.

00:01:27: Yeah

00:01:28: definitely is spectacular and breathtaking but Parker herself warns us against the superficial temptation of pure aesthetics.

00:01:38: We choose a quote from her that perfectly captures this ambivalence, she says...

00:01:54: Outstanding truly!

00:01:56: This quote describes her practice very accurately.

00:02:00: and When I think of thirty pieces of silver, those thirty silver objects— plates, candlestick spoons which she had crushed by a steamroller —she literally flattened these valuable historical items.

00:02:14: And yet or perhaps because it suspended in mid-air they look so incredibly elegant and fragile!

00:02:20: They hang there like hovering silver lily pads... ...and when i stand infront that piece… That is the magnificent act of liberating the

00:02:29: object."

00:02:30: from their original function.

00:02:32: Yes, liberation!

00:02:35: But

00:02:36: at

00:02:36: what costs?

00:02:37: And that is the core of Parker's statement – The beauty you describe as a result of traumatic act.

00:02:43: A steamroller is pure relentless mechanical violence and Parker often speaks off cathartic tragic comic practice that is heavily influenced by her own fears.

00:02:56: And when she flattens thirty pieces of silver, she evokes the Biblical betrayal of Judas.

00:03:04: She gives these bourgeois status symbols a new violent history!

00:03:09: This is not just formal play – it's a performative archaeology of destruction…

00:03:14: But isn't exactly this distraction that creates space for associations?

00:03:20: in a way, I mean let's take what is probably her most recognized work called Dark Matter.

00:03:26: An exploded view!

00:03:28: She had the British army blow up an ordinary garden shed full of everyday objects and then she suspends to charred fragments exactly as if the explosion has been frozen in mid-air at this moment... And single light bulb cast dramatic shadows on walls around it.

00:03:47: It's like a three-dimensional still from an action movie.

00:03:51: She herself has said she loves this.

00:03:53: cartoon.

00:03:54: deaths, in Tom and Jerry where characters explode... ...and then reconstitute themselves running after each other chasing each other that have such incredible dynamic energy.

00:04:06: Yes it remains dynamic and dynamic absolutely but the shed is also retreating to personal safe space.

00:04:14: having it blown up by the military The ultimate authority of state violence is, above all a massive intrusion.

00:04:24: It's the visualization of the uncanny –the sinister as she calls it– and Parker is fascinated by Freud's psychoanalysis describing the uncanniness that has been alienated through repression.

00:04:39: By having this shed explode Parker forces us to acknowledge the latent violence simmering beneath the surface of our safe bourgeois everyday lives.

00:04:52: The shadows on the walls are not just dramatic, they're the ghosts.

00:05:04: Constantly emphasizes the freedom of the viewer.

00:05:07: She once even said, I think art is about freedom and hopefully my work will have a very different meaning to each person who sees it That she doesn't want that.

00:05:17: you have a fixed meaning.

00:05:19: So she loves ambiguity.

00:05:21: You don't...you don't exactly know which side your on Your rather confused feels like but in good way And you can feel this freedom In The Maybe too.

00:05:31: Do you remember Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass case surrounded by supposedly historical relics?

00:05:39: That's not just eerie, it is so fascinating.

00:05:42: It almost magical fairy tale-like!

00:05:45: Yeah her work The Maybe is an excellent example of this ambiguity.

00:05:50: Tilda swinton alive, sleeping vulnerable exhibited like a specimen in the museum Surrounded by relics that supposedly belong to famous historical figures.

00:06:02: and Parker virtually plays with our belief in the aura of objects here.

00:06:08: And there is a layer of violence, too – the voyeuristic gaze of the audience!

00:06:13: The sleeper is defenseless….

00:06:15: …the institution of the museum becomes place for surveillance.

00:06:18: Parker evades a fixed meaning yes but she forces us to critically question our own positioning... ...our own gaze.

00:06:26: We are accomplices in this act of exhibiting.

00:06:31: I have to admit, i think you're looking at it just strictly because for me Parker is an alchemist.

00:06:36: She takes the trivial, discarded and gives a completely new often much more poetic existence.

00:06:45: And by doing that through radical cut as you see in The Maybe which has title or suggests could be anything and evoke any type of feeling on maybe nothing at all.

00:07:00: Let's think about her pornographic drawings.

00:07:02: She takes confiscated pornographic videotapes, dissolves the ferric oxide of the tape and then turns it into ink for Rorschach tests.

00:07:12: that is such a brilliant almost humorous way of dealing with censorship on human abysses.

00:07:18: she transforms something socially taboo in to delicate abstract drawings.

00:07:23: Yeah It's an chemical process I agree with you but the origin off the material is crucial.

00:07:30: The Rocher Test, again a direct reference to psychoanalysis target the subconscious.

00:07:36: The fact that the ink consists of pornographic material is no coincidence and Parker called such things avoided objects – things whose meaning is denied or socially marginalized.

00:07:49: If we see sexual shapes in these abstract inkblots it's our own subconscious reacting.

00:07:57: beauty of the drawing is a trap that confronts us with our own repressions.

00:08:03: A trap, I gladly fall into because visual experience simply so strong.

00:08:10: her art may be deeply rooted conceptually but she never ever forgets to viewer in this space when you stand infront of cold dark matter or beneath the suspended instruments of breathless those flattened breath instrument.

00:08:24: it's primarily physical a rather overwhelming experience and you do feel the force that was applied, but you see the elegance of results.

00:08:34: The physical experience is undeniable!

00:08:37: But we must not stop at the elegances of this result.

00:08:41: Beauty is too easy... If we only admire the suspended instruments it's reference to music or the gleaming silver everyday objects.

00:08:50: We ignore the steamroller & explosive charge And Cornelia Parker forces us to accept destruction as an integral part of creation.

00:09:01: She shows that our everyday world and objects always carry the potential for violence within them, and true art emerges precisely at this point in

00:09:11: friction.".

00:09:12: And that exactly disfriction is what makes her work so unforgettable?

00:09:16: Yeah!

00:09:16: Exactly she destroys it in order re-create... ...and leaves us in awe.

00:09:25: That's all we have today.

00:09:28: And if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to Art Unquoted wherever you listen.

00:09:33: It helps other listeners find us

00:09:35: and we will be back soon with more ideas to unpack.

00:09:39: Thanks for listening!