OxStu’s Ruskin profiles are patronising and dull

Fine Artist, Lu Williams, reacts to OxStu’s cack-handed approach to art in an interview of her own.

Why did you take against OxStu Ruskin profiles?

I was thinking that the regulation of artistic expression on platforms such as OxStu are kind of funny, and wanted to subvert that. You can’t use certain words and you must stick to certain limits and have your photograph taken in a certain pre-set way. It’s a filtered platform, presenting a version of yourself that you don’t entirely agree with. The problem is that they are doing you a favour by giving you a platform in the first place and you have to ‘give in’ to this control in order to get yourself heard. So I decided to just copy and paste other people’s words as answers to the questions they set.

OxStu interview excerpt

I’m an art student and I know there are certain restrictions to printing – but I’ve managed to print htmls and smiley faces no problem. I feel like its more of an imposition of power over writers. Take Buzzfeed for example, people criticise it because it can be considered ‘trashy’. But this prejudice is really damaging. That style of writing and displaying of information is seen as un-academic and therefore less credible than, say, the Telegraph. Yet Buzzfeed in my opinion is way more democratic than the telegraph, there’s less politicisation among other things.

I wanted to turn these prejudices on their heads- provide something very intellectually based from writers and artists talking about appropriation in their work and re-contextualising what they were saying, into the format provided by OxStu; in order to explain my own practice. It slipped under the radar because people see anything written in an academic style as legitimate.

Do you think the media regulates art excessively?

Definitely, for example it’s been known for a while that Duchamp practically stole the urinal from Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, but the art industry relies on the value of art so much, especially with a piece like that, that they simply refuse to acknowledge this new information. Appropriation is seen as devaluing. Am I less of a valued artist because I spoke about my own interests and work using somebody else’s words?

Even then, our culture is being re-hashed and celebrated as just that, take stock photos for example. I felt the inclusion of an artist talking about stock photos during the ox stu interview as a piece of appropriation itself was pretty cyclical. The information is relevant and agreeable – its now just displayed in an un-credible context.

Stock photography

But as an artist should you always be completely honest?

No. I think that the interview medium is constructed, and what constitutes ‘honesty’ within it is constructed as well. I’m letting you edit this conversation and if you wanted it’d probably be very easy for you to misrepresent what I’m saying.

In that sense I suppose being dishonest in the sense that you were can be a commentary upon the medium of the interview, or of the media in general.

I am aware that being dishonest only reflects back at the way the interview questions were structured and given, and the media in general, so yeah, I thought it was subtle. The interview questions were kinda like stock writing. A surface level of vague interest.

Artistic autonomy is vital though. Although you’re curating culture as an artist, and appropriation may be a method of subverting the media, it is important that it is expressed in the way you intended.

I agree with your interpretation – you’ve worded it better than me.

But I’ve worded this better than you though…

That’s hard to argue with. But some would see the interview as insulting. Do you think that it’s useful for the OxStu readers? Do you think it’s interesting or helpful for them to interact with discussions in contemporary art in this form?

I think it’s interesting for them to not have it easy. When making a piece of work sometimes you want your viewer to work too, to give them something to think about instead of satisfying them aesthetically, immediately. I think art is more rewarding if you work at it and get something out of it – being handed information easily stifles your own creativity. It’s good to question the authenticity of the author but also of your role as reader.

Do you believe my answers to these questions are earnest?

Yes. Should I?

 I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade.

-Marilyn Monroe, 2003

‘Loft Space’ – Lu Williams