Coming up...
October 2014
AKA Collective
Nicol Sanders-O'Shea Artist & Tutor Bachelor Creative Industries Bay of Plenty Polytechnic
AKA Collective is founded by a group of teaching staff from the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic in Bachelor of Creative Industries programme. They have collaborated to present and discuss creative research in photography, printmaking, painting, assemblage and fashion design for a local exhibition at Gallerie.
eScape
The escape plan is an intentional and elaborate plan to get away from our daily experience/existence. Creative research is a form of escape, so too is our continued acceptance and reliance on everything electronic. 'Realism lost' is one of the central themes of postmodernism discussed by Frederick Jameson. He defines it as the disappearance of history, where the memory of tradition has gone and what we are left with is a self absorbed culture only interested in the present.
'If there is any realism left here, it is 'realism' that is meant to derive from the shock of grasping that confinement and of slowly becoming aware of a new and original historical situation in wihch we are condemned to seek History by way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history, which itself remains forever out of reach (Jameson, 2004). The Internet is probably the most significant post-modern phenomenon, in it's collective creation and authorship of information. Information bites have changed the way we read information, our unconsious application of the 3 second rule for surfing the net is an irreversible lack of comprehension of knowledge of disengaged fragments of often useless information. Other significant changes in how we understand human behavior is played out on TV in various forms of dramatisations and reality TV, has transformed the provate domain of private life into a space of public intrigue. Information and online reality, broadcasts from both inside the home and from public spaces questions our desire for truth and normalises dysfunctional relationships, behaviour and attitudes.
How we learn life skills has changed too, from the historical trajectory of parent to child, grandparent to parent, parent to parent, teahcer to student, to the more common place contemporary system of learning of visually illustrated self-help guides and now wanted on youtube.
This awareness in fragmentation of knowledge is still reflected in art practice today as wholeness in human experience become increasingly more fragmented on a daily basis with every new personalized gadget consumed and adored to add to our list of distractions to disengage with our daily existence.
Creative escape is where discovery and play occur. Creativity can be finding alternatives and possibilities to existing problems, questions and solutions. Banksy describes creativity as not necessarily about something new, instead it is about understanding what others have done; being aware of what is happening in our world and making work that references these ideas. A reinterpretation of these ideas and notions about our world and observing the unnoticed (Banksy, 2006). Creativity can be unexpected, exciting and radically different. The AKA Collective interdisciplinary practice involves aspects of creative and divergent thinking to question structures, rules and boundaries; cultural and sustainable contexts' media, technology and discipline limitations. The challenge for creative pedagogy is the continued social, political and technological changes that impact on the globalised flow of information, people and financial captial. Arts are a form of cultural production and consumption, the teaching of Bachelor of Creative Industries degree intends to give students the skills to adapt creatively in this global marketplace and keep teachers current to assist in their own creative endeavours. 'Today's practitioner know thier history. Indeed, some have argued that artists have become too educated, relying on graduate degrees and the voracious consumption of theory to position their work. But, in fact, it is this level of engagement - 'a deep understanding of their medium. In a world fundamentally characterized by its physical nature, the materiality, tactility and spatiality, provides a direct line into our desire to examine and better unserstand our surroundings.' (Ellegood, 2009)