Presentation - Barbara Bloom

For my presentation I had the pleasure of learning about conceptual artist Barbara Bloom. Bloom is a free-lancing artist who likes chasing different opportunities and creating work that is multidimensional. Reading about her creative process led me to some differences she has with Simulations' author Baudrillard. My thesis is as follows:

Barbara Bloom certainly understands Baudrillard’s theory on the effect of ethnology and the loss of pure value in an object when it is simulated. However, Bloom’s rhetoric suggests simulation is a process that brings her pleasure while Baudrillard’s prose suggests it is a sinful task.

Ranging from the recreation of Japanese culture, to celebrating history, to partaking in the creation of a Braille copy of Playboy, whatever medium and topic Bloom sets her sights on she attacks it in a way Baudrillard would say is damaging. However Bloom's innocence is in her awareness. She acknowledges the wholesale changes she is making to these items and accepts them as her own work. 

She would have to be considered the ravaging ethnographer in the eyes of Baudrillard. However, that doesn't mean that she is wrong to do so, in fact her widespread use of many different topics has served as inspiration to me to return to simulation as a broad theme for my final project, with each varying image having very little to do with the preceding one.

Find Barbara Bloom's available works on ArtStor: Here