Artist Lecture: Shimon Attie

Today's lecture was Shimon Attie, an artist with an overwhelming amount of prestige for a fairly short artistic career. I only say this because I was impressed with how so soon after he graduated from art school he began his career as a paid, working artist. I found the lecture incredibly distracting and aggravating because of the equipment mishaps and the constant shuffle back and forth from digital projection to slides. Once we started moving primarily to digital and the flow of the lecture started to move, I was able to connect more to his work. The first piece he presented were his projections in East Berlin, which he attempted to show how life was "before." I enjoyed when he said "artists work in a realm of symbolic or imaginary" eluding to the fact, it does not always have to be concept, concept, concept! With the new direction my work is going, I enjoyed the word use "imaginary."

All of his work had been site specific, which is a direction I am also moving to. I appreciated his artful documentary approach to his imagery. His images were powerful and had meaning, but didn't need to be conceptual. My favorite piece of though, was "Between Dreams and History." I love when handwriting in incorporated in todays technological world. Its a soft approach that tells a lot about a person next to/or on a harsh medium. His work is also incredibly research based; researching first-then producing.

He spent a majority of the time speaking about his Aberfan project which was very moving and very surreal. It was emotional and interesting. I enjoyed what he said about "trauma freezing you," but you continue to function eventually but it never really leaves you. His subjects were emotionless faces which he said "erased sentiment [...] making them anonymous icons or icons that could be part of your village." I think it is fairly obvious that Attie was a trained photographer. His studio setup and lighting represented that well. The sound design however is very cinematic.