aestheticofaccumulation

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as flotsam and drift; as migration; as loss; as entrapment. Accumulation as process (casting salt into rope).

Karyn Olivier at the Whitney Biennial: How Many Ways Can You Disappear (2021), and Stop Gap (2020).

See also https://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/viewing-room/44-karyn-olivier-at-the-intersection-of-two-faults/

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as minimalism.

Mary Miss, Knots, 1969/2020. Pinakothek, Munich.

“These many knots suggest community. They revivify the potential of a cultural memorial. The traditional association of knots and memories suggested that this field was not a formal exercise in reduction but a trace of past events. Miss’s practice exemplified expansion, referring to the inclusion of new occurrences and practices as sculpture.” — Andrew Stooke, 2020

https://stookeandrew.medium.com/this-minimalism-which-is-not-one-patriarchy-in-an-expanded-field-99e34884a8d6

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as unintentional quotation; art history as a practice of accumulation for narrative invention and canon-building. Phyllida Barlow (at Hauser & Wirth Somerset) as Marie Watt as Mummers.

Photos by author at Hauser & Wirth except:

Marshfield Mummers about to perform, Nigel Goldsmith, 2015.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as cultural exploration, as technological symptom, as conservation challenge.

Nam June Paik – Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995, fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood; color, sound, approx. 15 x 40 x 4 ft., at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, photo: CC BY 2.0 by Cea.

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/nam-june-paik-smithsonian-59238/

https://americanart.si.edu/videos/nam-june-paiks-electronic-superhighway-american-art-moments-163756

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as erasure; monopoly as mass failure; empty frames as minimalist art. The great computer crash of July 2024 inadvertently mimics the conscious erasure of urban visual pollution in Brazil’s 2006 decision to ban outdoor advertising.

Photo credits: Getty, of Times Square (New York City); Tony de Marco’s São Paulo No Logo Flickr set (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508212/)

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as overflow, excess, obsolescence, decay, and the return of the repressed; as a stand-in for human masses and movement. Accumulation as a logistical challenge; as liquid.

Phyllida Barlow, untitled: stackedchairs, 2014. Hauser & Wirth, Somerset; installed 2024.

Doris Salcedo, 1550 Chairs Stacked Between Two City Buildings, 2003. Istanbul Biennial.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as inadvertent reinscription of the masculine as normative. Accumulation as echo of emblem books, Rembrandt etchings, eugenic photographs and visual documents of insanity by Charcot and others. Accumulation as negation of portraiture.

Sophy Cave, Expression, 2006. Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as activism, as theatre, as mourning, as protest. Accumulation as collaboration; as collective grief. Accumulation as the tension between overpopulation, the excesses of capitalism, and mass extinction.

Puppet Back Up At God’s House Tower, Southampton; Extinction Rebellion’s Funeral for Nature, Bath.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as digital occupation; as religious expression; as Muybridgean aesthetics (the conflation of the aesthetic and the technological); as somatic; as dance.

Lisa Jamhoury, L’entrée, 2024. Multimedia installation at Glow, Kings College London.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as public health action. Display of flags standing in for people with colorectal cancer, on the Mall, Washington, D.C.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as averted gaze, as memorial, as paradox of memory without experience. Anton Kusters at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/museum-exhibitions/blue-skies

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as resistance, recuperation, recovery, restoration. The Potlatch collection at the U’mista Cultural Centre, Alert Bay.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as collaboration, community-building, survivance, feminism, matrimony, softness, and monumentality.

Marie Watt, Blanket Stories: Three Sisters, Cousin Rose, Four Pelts and Sky Woman, 2005. 160×20×20 in. Folded and stacked wool blankets, salvaged cedar. Installation view, Hoffman Gallery, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as handwork, sustainability, and the passage of time. Elizabeth Day’s darned socks at Winchester School of Art Green Week.

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as collective action and collective optimism; accumulation as art-school education.

Peter Driver, March for Optimism, Winchester High Street, May 2014

[aestheticofaccumulation]

Accumulation as self-assessment and self-critique, but also self-celebration self-described as self-mockery.

Barbara Iweins, Katalog (delpire & co, 2022).

[aestheticofaccumulation]

24 hours in the life and a year in the making: accumulation as belated social media trending. (Hello, world.)