Pupil Magazine by Ana Clara Tito

DECEMBER 2016 THE UNEXPECTED

PUPIL

ISSUE 07

PUPIL MAGAZINE

editorial

ISSUE 7

PUPIL MAGAZINE

editorial

ISSUE 7

34 58

16 22

Contents New Gestures Fabricated to be Photographed Nico Krijno 34

Portfolios Benoit PaillĂŠ 28 Manon Wertenbroek 22 Juno Calypso 52 Yumna Al-Arashi 58

46 70

Articles Quirky Spaces: when the unexpected is found between four walls 46 Experimental Video Artists to Keep an Eye On in 2016 64 Interviews Olya Oleinic 16 Christto and Andrew 70

EDITORIAL

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Publisher Pupil Magazine, Editorial Offices Rio de Janeiro, Brazil T +55 (21)98109-3573 info@pupil-magazine.com www.pupil-magazine.com Pupil #7 Editor-in-chief Paula Gabriela

PUPIL Pupil Magazine is an online venue dedicated to fine art, contemporary photography and brings together diverse bodies of work by established and emerging artists from around the globe. Pupil is published on a semestral basis, and has shown portfolios from more than 300 photographers. The concept of Pupil was born in 2011 in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro. The first issue went live in May 2013, and featured four three new artists. With few advertising and just an announcement through social media, Pupil got thousands of hits. Within days, the issue was viewed by people in 11 countries. The second issue went live July 2013, and the audience and the traffic continued to grow. With that growth came a widening of the scope of the magazine to include artists from outside the region and then outside theBrazil. Pupil Magazine began as a way to showcase photography that deserved to be seen and perhaps was not getting exposure, and that impulse still guides the selection of every photographer featured. Pupil challenges viewers to look beyond the single image and explore each photographerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision and story by viewing full portfolios of photographs.

Managing Editor Ana Almeida Graphic design, Ana Bustamante Ana Clara Tito Victor Nogueira Translations Daniela Tinoco Social Media Editor Raff Marqz Contributors Alexander Strecker Benoit Palop Karol Kozlowski Nicole Rodriguez Priscilla Frank Rebecca Fuleeylove Sophie Wright

Copyright Pupil Magazine, 2016 The articles and images in the magazine do not belong to us. No copyright infringement intended.

the

unexpected what are the limits?

1. not expected; unforeseen; surprising; occurring without warning; unanticipated, chance, sudden, astonishing, startling, unpredictable, accidental, abrupt, out of the blue, unannounced, fortuitous, unheralded, unlooked-for

adjective

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INTERVIEW

OLYA OLEINIC: by Zippora Elders

Olya Oleinic (Moldova, 1991) researches the aesthetics of advertising as a tool for communication. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2014, she developed her sense for creative entrepreneurship by combining her autonomous practice with commercial work. The circulation of advertisements is a determinant aspect of our culture: Olya Oleinic investigates this phenomenon thoroughly, both in work and in life. Oleinicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is characterized by a great curiosity. Just like many other photographers, she is continuously captivated by the interplay between observation and reflection. But more so than others, her approach is characterized by wonder: the surprise of a traveller. At twenty-four years young, Olya tends not to settle in any one place. She is a global wanderer, blending effortlessly within diverse societies and surroundings, before moving on again. Olya incorporates the impressions of her daily life in her work. Proficient in both digital as well as analogue photography processing techniques, a work from Olya Oleinic can be characterized as constructed, staged and stylized.

olya oleinic

Zippora Elders: You graduated two years ago, and you were also a recipient of the Steenbergen Stipendium. What happened afterwards? Olya Oleinic: The moment I got the diploma in my hands I was so thankful that my life finally belonged fully to me. I was just happy to wake up every morning to a brand new independent life. So I haven’t experienced that scary black hole everyone’s usually talking about. I guess what happened to me over the last few years is a result of passionate work and a healthy dose of luck. It’s about meeting the right

people too. I see life as a maze and even its blind alleys sometimes have someone standing along the way, someone you were meant to meet and talk to. No matter how much comes from within, staying open to the outside seems crucial to me. No man is an island. ZE: You’re from Moldova. What’s Moldova like? OO: Trying to describe Moldova I always become very judgemental and sentimental. It’s a small land with a decaying identity, where time stands still, and there is very little justice to things. I’ve referred to you as a curious

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traveller, adjusting easily to different environments whilst simultaneously remaining an observant outsider. Do you think the root of this lies in your childhood? The abandoned houses were my playground and the uncut grass was full of treasures. For me, Moldova is a very special place and, even if I could, I’d never choose to be born elsewhere. Having spent my childhood there allows me to see the world and all of its differences and contrasts today. ZE: So how did you end up in the Netherlands? OO: When I was about 11, I noticed a 4-year old Dutch kid on the

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beach. He was so independent and free, so drastically different from the children I knew in Moldova. Years later, while googling ‘a list of best art schools in Europe’ my cursor stopped on the Netherlands, which I felt had been inspired by that encounter. I still sometimes think I owe that kid an ice-cream. ZE: Why art school? OO: As far back as I can remember I’ve been making things, and I couldn’t do without it. I also couldn’t imagine studying anything framed in a box of rules. The initial choice was between psychology and art, but I think by choosing the latter I sort of got a bit of both. ZE: And why photography? OO: Back in the day I used photography to capture things I’d made, to give my creations a longer life and ‘keep them’ for myself or for others. I would rarely take photographs of nature or of people as they are, but rather my photographs were playful takes on life. I think this still remains the essence of photography for me today. You can create a moment that only you know existed, sculpt your subject, move the light – and make a document of something that is your own constructed reality. ZE: How do your curiosity and sense of displacement affect your work? OO: I am always thirsty and that’s an ambivalent feeling. I think many people somehow get stuck in the way they live their lives,

INTERVIEW

considering it to be the only way. I never want that to happen to me. Staying open, curious, patient and loyal: these are almost meditative practices in my mind, not only in my art. ZE: How do you envision future? OO: Well, I often feel overwhelmed by everything I’m exposed to, and then feel like there is a need to make more meticulous choices, to work more in depth and choose a specific direction... I see the world as an organically evolving body – we all need to learn things about ourselves to create a positive future. ZE: At the same time, you make use of the advertising aesthetics used by big companies and brands that might not always be healthy for the world. How do you see this? OO: Aesthetics in general is arguably a significant aspect of contemporary art. The conceptual side is often considered more important, but if you have anything to say you need to say it right for anyone to hear you. Advertising is a trick, a language that people invented to steal your attention. Through its use, they are able to expose you to the maximum amount of information in the shortest amount of time. Through new technologies, advertising became a whole culture in and of itself: it grew into a visual language with its own history, movements and trends. I am fascinated by the idea of a message being sent efficiently, clearly and beautifully and at the

“I often feel overwhelmed by everything I’m exposed to, and then feel like there is a need to make more meticulous choices”

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INTERVIEW

same time it repulses me because it contaminates our lives. ZE: Soon, Foam will host your first ever solo exhibition at a museum. We’re currently in the planning phase, and it is a research trip to China. Why China? I went to China for the first time in April and it left me puzzled. A place that is so big — you can’t grasp it. It is full of things that turned my understandings of what’s ‘normal’ entirely upside down. It seems like such a structured, almost mechanical organisation of society, but it simultaneously somehow performs as a living organism. China is flooded with opportunities to buy and sell anything: possessions represent the identity of their owners and waste becomes a form of luxury

and status. Being in China, I felt exposed to an extreme amount of triggers and sales-oriented visual information, as well as simple cultural oddities that I couldn’t digest all at once. For the upcoming show I hope to recreate my experiences and transform my sentiments into imagery, thereby reflecting on the extreme consumerism and other characteristic queerness of China. ZE: Why art school? OO: As far back as I can remember I’ve been making things, and I couldn’t do without it. I also couldn’t imagine studying anything framed in a box of rules. The initial choice was between psychology and art, but I think by choosing the latter I sort of got a bit of both.

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ZE: And why photography? OO: Back in the day I used photography to capture things I’d made, to give my creations a longer life and ‘keep them’ for myself or for others. I would rarely take photographs of nature or of people as they are, but rather my photographs were playful takes on life. I think this still remains the essence of photography for me today. You can create a moment that only you know existed, sculpt your subject, move the light – and make a document of something that is your own constructed reality. ZE: How do your curiosity and sense of displacement affect your work? OO: I am always thirsty and that’s an ambivalent feeling. I think many people somehow get stuck in the way they live their lives, considering it to be the only way. I never want that to happen. to me. Staying open, curious, patient and loyal: these are almost meditative practices in my mind, not only in my art. ZE: How do you envision future? OO: Well, I often feel overwhelmed by everything I’m exposed to, and then feel like there is a need to make more meticulous choices, to work in depth.

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Manon

Wertenbroek by Alexander Strecker

Often, today, we think of photographs as disposable. A snapshot here, a social media post there— the medium’s increasing immateriality has taken away its feeling of permanence, of leaving behind a physical trace in our lives. Sculpture, meanwhile, has a distinct notion of being out in the world. Sculptures have weight and height and depth. They are unambiguously material artworks whose very existence presents itself in a intriguing physical form. Leave it, then, to Manon Wertenbroek, the Dutchborn, Swiss-raised photographer/sculptor to turn these notions on their head. “Flirting” (in her words), between image-making and form-making, Wertenbroek revels in the fragility of her sculptural creations while leaning heavily on photography’s power to pin down the ephemeral firmly into reality. To begin her series, “Tandem,” Wertenbroek chose to work closely with her brother, someone whom she had felt some distance from in recent years. Initial efforts at documentary and staged photography fell flat—Wertenbroek knew she had to return to the medium she felt the most affinity with. In returning to sculpture, while still utilizing her camera, and

embracing her brother into her own created worlds, Wertenbroek found a way to bring all the seeming oppositions into tandem to create imaginative, visually delightful works. To construct each image, Wertenbroek begins with sculpture. Utilizing organic materials—clay, paint, paper—she begins creating complex, almost impossible objects within bright, zany worlds. Calling upon her Dutch heritage, Wertenbroek allows herself to be as open-minded as possible, exploring the furthest boundaries that her materials will allow her. And unlike a “real” sculptor, Wertenbroek is freed from the obligation of making her works last. Many of the most striking are in fact built without backs and are collapsible to the lightest touch—yet perfectly crafted for the purposes of a single photograph, which effectively immortalize these fragile creations. Indeed, Wertenbroek feels the Swiss influence most when she goes about making the photographs themselves. In constructing her final shots, she is meticulous, detail-oriented and incredibly precise. With the photograph, as opposed to the sculpture, Wertenbroek has more control: the frame, the angle, the perspective, the color all become malleable.

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MANON WERTEMBROEK

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Benoit PaillÃ© by Nicole Rodriguez

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On the road living in his camper since 2013, Benoit Paille is an atypic artist, conscience agitator, creative genius, monstrously curious, absent and edgy. Soon in his life he became surrounded by secondhand smoke and nicoret patches, wich helped him to develop his artistic taste. Stoned on ritalin for most of his crucial years, he undertook a bio-medical career until he fell into the downfalll of photography. Self taught, he still became recognized rapidly in the field wich brought him to exhibit his work in galleries around the world : Russia, Ukraine, Spain, Amsterdam, France, United States and Quebec to name a few. On the conterpart, his many travels deprived him of any sustainable psychologial follow-up wich led him into regular crisis. With his growing number of likes in the digital world, we can really say he acquired the artist status, as long as his clic notoriety last. Far from looking for specific opportunities of creation, it’s in the primal impulse, the instantaneous situations that images are revealing themselves spontenaously. Using colorful flashs to outline surreal representations “ I often see myself like an hyper realist painter, my pictures documenting

an altered state of mind”. Cultivating a predilection for casual people and locations, kitsch landscapes, fences and strange parkinglots, he’s seeking the unexpected and the unseen. “Everybody can shoot a beautiful scenery or sunset, but I rather be a pataphysician, to apply myself to think about what others don’t ”. Always on the move, he realized a new record by braking more than 3 cameras a year in speed bumps and dirt roads. Even if he consider himself a produt of today’s hyper capitalism, he tries to oppose his resistance by acting out against selfies, trends, himself included, even if he think he’s the best photographer he knows. Of a disdainful nature, he yearns to be excluded from any renowned circle. Despite his international recognition, Benoit remains humble and open to others. He has the ability to intrude easily in the authentic life of people to wreck and corrupt their traditional habitat with technology. When children ask him what his THC vaporizer machine is, he lies and tells them it’s an asthma device. Wishing to step apart from institutionalized biographies, Benoit is making a lot of efforts to break through.

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BENOIT PAILLÃ&#x2030;

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NEW GESTURES. FABRICATED TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED

NICO KRIJNO

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New Gestures. Fabricated to be Photographed. Nico Krijno

by Sophie Wright

The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of ‘how to do.’ The salvation of photography comes from the experiment. 1947, László Moholy-Nagy South-African artist Nico Krijno’s works are a vibrating riot of colour, objects and patterns tearing through photography’s overpopulated landscape. With a unique and highly stylised vision that finds its form in prints, objects, books and other ephemera, Krijno is a trailblazer exploring the limits of photographic space. Though concerned with bringing the age-old tradition of the still life into an image-saturated culture, there is nothing still in his still lives. Like unwieldy sculptures built from the fragments left over from the digital explosion that has burst photography open at the seams, they are restless, humming with an impatient energy that suggests they will topple the second after the shutter has clicked. In true contemporary form, they refuse to be bound to any one dimension, any one reality. They are schizophrenic, existing in multiple identities, both online and in print; sometimes they leap out of the frame into sculptures and installations. And yet, we are hardly sure whether they even existed in the first place. And if they did, then why? How? They are unlikely amalgamations of the debris of the everyday, patterns, splatters of paint and at times con-

fused human bodies. They could hardly be further from the traditional still life, with its staid commitment to the real, its desire to last forever and its well-worn symbols. But what if reality has split into two, ‘forever’ no longer exists and there is a new language in town? Then, Krijno is a still life artist in the classical sense through and through. Brazenly reshaping the genre in a world that has migrated to a new digital reality, he is a staunch formalist that continues the tradition: registering the spirit of the time, interrogating composition and refining new techniques. Working against a South African backdrop, Krijno is part of a small international wave of artists concerned with developing a new photographic language. Combatting the pristine nature of the commercial still life – and its stable value system – so prevalent in our visual culture, his humourous approach to the genre embraces the myriad of transformations that the medium has endured in its recent history. Krijno is working within a chaotic artistic framework where the very identity of a photograph is in question, where the material quality of the photograph has mutated from film to digital data,

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NEW GESTURES. FABRICATED TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED

where the speed of production and distribution has increased a million-fold in the past decade, where the artist’s tools are for the most part intangible. In short, where photography as we once knew it has collapsed. But in its wake a space for experimentation has been born. And it is the experiment that is the ‘salvation’ of photography. It is within this borderless turmoil that Krijno is constructing his distinct photographic universe. In unstable times, the process and practice of the artist is reinvigorated. With a background in theatre and experimental video, the notion of performance is at the core of Krijno’s work. Logging his research and experiments online and in zines, photography becomes a play divided into acts. The photographic frame ceases to act as a transparent window on reality, instead becoming a means to rearrange it. More inventor than observer, he hunts through his surroundings, amassing rubbish and everyday objects to fabricate a private performance that will unfold in front of his lens. With the addition of paint and any textures he can get his hands on, Krijno ‘gets weird’, intuitively building up temporary sculptures and situations. Their transitory existence is then captured by the camera; magically odd and improbable encounters arrested in motion. Krijno’s performances juxtapose the natural and the manmade in colourfully awkward and abstract collisions. Influenced by the decontextualised way we have come to filter information, he zooms in on details of the everyday, shaking them loose of their former meaning cropping and remixing the familiar to new effect. Classical icons are smattered with plasticine, banal junk is doused in decoratively bright colours and bodies are rubbed in paint. With a cultivated disorder, the final images play with each other to create unexpected associations, challenging the way we perceive our surroundings and reflecting the fragmentation of the digital sphere. The journey to get to these end points is one of experimentation that continually reinvents the artistic process, particularly in the context of photography’s new technologies. As the nuances of the traditional photographic print are replaced.

NICO KRIJNO

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NEW GESTURES. FABRICATED TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED

NICO KRIJNO

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NEW GESTURES. FABRICATED TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED

NICO KRIJNO

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NEW GESTURES. FABRICATED TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED

NICO KRIJNO

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NEW GESTURES. FABRICATED TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED

NICO KRIJNO

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ARTICLE

Quirky spaces: When the unexpected is found between four walls. by Karol Kozlowski

The MeError project collects a series of short circuits, of visual errors. Apparently they are simple photos taken in front of a mirror: we should see ourselves reflected in it, but we don’t, as if we were invisible. In other words these pictures show us what mirrors reflect when we are not in front of them. Real images, that exist in the world, but that we can never witness, for we are their own interference. We should start by mentioning the writings of Jurgis Baltrušaitis on the matter of mirrors and mistakes. But it is the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that really comes at hand. The mere act of observing reality has already changed it, and that’s exactly what happens every time we step in front of a mirror: the image that was reflected a moment before is modified by our appearance. So,we will never be able to observe directly what a mirror shows when we are not in front of it. Only disappearing, we can observe reality without alterations. The error, the disappearing of the self, the acknowledgment of ourselves as disturbing elements, the denial of our own image – almost a self-imposed iconoclasm, are all deep rooted elements. In my photography there is always the urge of taking pictures unseen, almost vanishing. The sensation of unease that some people feels in front of a camera is equally relevant. A discomfort that probably comes when we look at our own image, in which not always we can fully recognize ourselves. Thus self-portrait and still life collide, creating images that are both the things and none at the same time. In fact, up to where is it legitimate to speak of portrait? Each one of these pictures premise it and the vertical format is clear about that. Yet is our very absence that triggers the mechanism of the image. Of course the theme of the mirror has encountered the interest of plenty of artists within the centuries. Suffice it to mention the most re-

Above: Untitled. Erbgericht series, Andrea GrĂźtzner. Above and on the left: Untitled. MeError series, Leonardo Magrelli. Left: Untitled (Vanity). Mirroring Energies series, Cynthia Talmadge and Matthew Leifheit

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ARTICLE

newed names. Trom Van Eyck to the disappeared Giorgione’s Saint George from Parmigianino to Titian. From Rembrandt to the beautiful interpretation given by Foucault on Vélazquez. Specifically though, La Reproduction interdite by Magritte and Absent Image by Sylvia Plimack Mangold are the real basis from which the MeError series grows. In both the paintings there is a plain, simple and almost academic aesthetics. That is in order to help the comprehension of the image and to make the visual short-circuit immediately clear and understandable – a more abstract approach would have compromised such clarity and would have thus required a slower and more deep and analytical reading of the painting. It is for all these reasons that the MeError photography series initially adopts a sharp, clear approach. An approach that allows the observer to immediately understand the mechanism of the pictures. Only then, we arrive to more unreal and metaphysical atmospheres. Finally it is important to discus the legitimacy of manipulating the images. Even if his words do not

From the left to the right: Blue Room. Idle Quarters series, Sandy Mclea Untitled. Mirroring Energies series, Cynthia Talmadge and Matthew Leifheit Untitled. Studio series II, Jackson Hallberg Untitled. Studio series II, Jackson Hallberg Untitled. Erbgericht series, Andrea GrĂźtzner.

refer to digital photography, on the matter I like to quote Todd Hido: “I shoot sort of like a documentarian but I print like a painter. All my stuff is shot with natural light on a tripod. Untouched, and unstaged […] In the darkroom I’ll twist it all around in anyway I find that works that still feels real to me.” We should start by mentioning the writings of Jurgis Baltrušaitis on the matter of mirrors and mistakes. But it is the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that really comes at hand. The mere act of observing reality has already changed it, and that’s exactly what happens every time we step in front of a mirror: the image that was reflected a moment before is modified by our appearance. So,we will never be able to observe directly what a mirror shows when we are not in front of it. Only disappearing, we can observe reality without alterations. The error, the disappearing of the self, the acknowledgment of ourselves as disturbing elements, the denial of our own image – almost a self-imposed iconoclasm, are all deep rooted elements. In my photography there is always the urge of taking pictures unseen, almost vanishing. The sensation of unease that some people feels in front of a camera is equally relevant.

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Left: Untitled. Lay Out series, Teresa Giannico. Below: Untitled. Lay Out series, Teresa Giannico. Right: Untitled. MeError series, Leonardo Magrelli. Right and below: Lost Room. Idle Quarters series, Sandy Mclea

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J un o C alyps o

Joyce by Rebecca Fuleeylove

Twin Peaks, The Shining, Psycho: the pastel pink walls of out-of-town hotels often paper over a hotbed of sinister, sexualised weirdness. Which makes it no surprise that artist Juno Calypso is showing a brand new series of photographs made on her unlikely one-woman road trip to a honeymoon hotel. Calypso’s images come heavy with the scent of vanilla air fresheners and bacon pancakes. They swell with sexual frustration, and drive a sense of dread right into your stomach. “It was a pink 1960s gothic nightmare,” says Calypso, when we met for a drink to discuss her work. “I got dropped off at a diner in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania and had to tell a woman there that I was going to the love hotel. She looked me up and down and said, ‘Just you? Just one?’ Then I got picked up by The Love Machine, this flowery van full of ripped smelly seats that drives couples around the resort because they’re too lazy to walk.” Calypso, who often photographs herself in the guise of her alter-ego Joyce, had found a picture of the honeymoon hotel’s dusky pink bathrooms online. It was the perfect setting for the bored, frustrated, lonely housewife of her imagination – until she dis-

covered it was on the other side of the Atlantic. But the draw was insurmountable. “I was stuck,” says Calypso in her matter-of-fact north London voice. “It was very inconvenient, but I knew I needed to do something as crazy as the stuff I did as a student. So I saved up all this money and just went. On my own. To stay for a week.” The “crazy” stuff includes her standing in a carsized birthday cake in her mothers’ front room surrounded by rotting prawns and salami for Popcorn Venus; photographing herself wearing a remote-controlled 1970s anti-wrinkle mask reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter; and lying motionless, for hours, beside an open can of luncheon meat in Reconstituted Meat Slices. When she arrived, Calypso found that the resort – which is used both as a honeymoon retreat and a last-ditch, make-or-break destination for disillusioned couples – had barely changed in decades. “Thank God they hadn’t redecorated,” she says relieved. “My room had a heart-shaped hot tub and mirrors on the ceiling. I only left it for the all-youcan-eat breakfasts and dinner. The rest of the time I was just alone in my room taking pictures.”

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JUNO CALYPSO

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Yumna Al-Arashi

by Priscilla Frank

Photographer Yumna Al-Arashi was born and raised in Washington, D.C., yet Yemen still feels like home. After a recent trip there - on assignment as a photojournalist traveling through the country’s small towns and mountain roads - she became peeved by a question she was asked over and over again by outsiders: How are women treated in the Middle East? She felt as though the question framed the women she knew as strong leaders within their families and communities as victims who needed protecting.“There was a fight in me to defend them after being so drained of hearing the repeated question of my experiences as a woman in the Middle East,” she ex-

plained. For many on the outside looking in, the hijab, niqab, burqa and other types of coverings are symbols of maltreatment and oppression, of free will covered up, of all that many expected to find in AlArashi’s responses to their questions. And yet to the artist herself, they are something totally different. In her series “Northern Yemen,” Al-Arashi captures the majesty of the Yemeni landscape as well as the women who inhabit it. She hopes to illuminate the ways in which hijab and niqab are misunderstood in the West “Emancipation will come when we can fully respect a woman,” Al-Arashi concluded, “no matter how she looks or where she comes from.”.

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article

Experimental Video Artists to Keep an Eye On in 2016 by Benoit Palop It isn’t risky to say that 2015 was heavy in terms of video production. Films and shorts, music videos, video installations, and even transmedia performances astonished us over the past 12 months, opening new perspectives to the ever-expanding medium. Thanks to strong narratives, conceptual storytellings and evolving devices and tools, forward-thinking creators explored a wide range of themes, using effective and creative ways to tackle topics, share

ideas, and fulfill their video art goals. Looking forward to seeing what new delights 2016 will treat us to, we asked a few of our favorite experimental video artists to tease us with their predictions and tell us what this year should look like for them—it should come as no surprise that VR’s big on everyone’s mind. Here’s what else Jeremy Bailey, Jillian Mayer + Lucas Leyva, Reed + Rader, Jon Rafman, and Jacolby Satterwhite came up with.

Experimental Video art

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Jeremy Bailey 62

Toronto-Based “famous new media artist” Jeremy Bailey had a busy 2015, launching The You Museum, showcasing new works and performances, giving courses at NYU, and generally enjoying his life. This year, Bailey will enhance his augmented reality explorations beginning with an upcoming show. “This exact moment I’m focused on work for a solo show opening this spring at Pari Nadimi in Toronto featuring new gestural software for making dripping wet feminist abstract expressionist video paintings,” he tells The Creators Project, adding that 2016 will also be the year during which his wife and him going to give birth to their first child in VR. “I’m hoping she lets me be pregnant,” he teases. Regarding 2016, Bailey predicts that “Authenticity is dead (again.) The medium is the body. What have you done with my hands?”

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Jillian Mayer & Lucas Leyva 2016 should look like “that” for the Miami-based duo consisting of artist Jillian Mayer and writer Lucas Leyva. The multitalented duo—whose works range from web projects, to music videos, experimental theater, film, and installation art—will unveil a whole bunch of kickass work, including a talk show for people and their pets, a Cuban kaiju feature film, an omniboat feature film, a Jar-Jar Binks VR experience, and a short sequel to Vanilla Ice’s classic Cool As Ice. Individually, Mayer has art shows in LA and Miami, while Leyva is writing a book. True visionaries, they tell us that “Buttholes and farts are very zeitgeisty and VR will allow us all to finally step inside mediocre N64 games.”

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Reed and Rader More cats, more basketball, and more gardening—these are the 2016 goals for the New Yorkbased duo consisting of Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader. They will also continue developing more works with Unreal Engine and virtual reality technology, and will unveil CAT SHOWDOWN, a VR video they’re currently working on. “It’s a surreal place filled with mice trying to escape the underbelly of a dark sinister world controlled by cats,” Reed + Rader explains. According to them, virtual reality will continue to increase in popularity. “Brands hip to new trends will take advantage of this, although the real obstacle is creating something immersive and VR tailored,” they explain. ”More artists will start using gaming engines,” they also suggest, insisting also that the lines between film and gaming will continue to blur. 67

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Jon Rafman Jon Rafman should be satisfied with 2015. The Montreal-based multimedia artist and jack-of-all-trades continued his examinations into the convergence of new technologies, contemporary life, and modern behaviors, but didn’t stop there. He showcased several exhibitions and new works, most notably The attraction of virtual communities, his first exhibition in a Canadian museum—this author considers it one of the most interesting shows ever at the MAC Montreal—and also Sticky Drama, a psychedelic video clip made in collaboration with Daniel Lopatin for Oneohtrix Point Never’s stellar Garden of Delete album. Rafman kicks this year off with a solo exhibition in Münster, Germany that started a few days ago. Upcoming projects should allow him to deepen his investigation into technology’s influences on the modern human condition. “I’m currently working on a new VR project, and several immersive video installations,” he tells us.

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Jacolby Satterwhite

Jon Rafman should be satisfied with 2015. The MontreSpending most of the last year designing, building, method acting, and researching, 2016 should be prolific for the Southern-born New Yorkbased multimedia artist Jacolby Satterwhite. “I am working on a feature length film CGI scored by a concept electronic album that outsources its vocals and lyrics from folk songs recorded on cassette tape in South Carolina between 1994 - 1998, ” Satterwhite tells us. “The film is called En Plein Air: Music of Objective Romance.” Satterwhite’s work constantly engages its public with identity & social issues and supports the queer community, and 2016 promises to bring consequential moves. “A positive trend this year seems to involve an expanding window and audience for experimental queer writers, electronic musicians, poets, fashion designers and misc. creatives,” he says. “I’m seeing a massively blurred gender binary reflect on the way music sounds, structures are broken, eccentricities and idiosyncrasies are pushing forward to the mainstream.”

PUPIL MAGAZINE

interview

Christto & Andrew by Nicole Rodriguez

“It’s really interesting for us as outsider artists to talk about Qatar because no one has really done it before.”

Sanz, from Puerto Rico, and Weir of South Africa, have made waves lately with their vibrant and somewhat in-your-face surreal photographs that weigh in on power structures of culture in locations like their current home Qatar. Their artwork is almost camp, employing unnatural counterintuitive pairings, artifice, exaggeration, and the stage in order to unpack or break down the private codes of the Middle East. Their work has received international praise and most re-

cently graced the cover of Pupil Magazine, a staple publication in contemporary photography. As artists who use the camera as just one of several tools and openly reject the title “photographers,” this has raised some eyebrows in the field. The rendezvous was one of those much-anticipated meetings that always feel a little overdue. As a fellow Puerto Rican expat also with some ties to the Arabian Peninsula, Sanz and I had been in on-and-off conversation

Christto and Andrew

since 2012. So when they were stopping in Berlin in between exhibitions, I jumped at the chance to chat about life as an insider/ outsider in the Middle East, the politics of palettes, the small controversy of their Pupil cover appearance, as well as their most recent series Liquid Portraits and what could follow. Christto Sanz: Once you leave it’s not the same to go back. Sometimes I catch myself thinking I would like to leave Qatar, but what would I do? Returning would be impossible. Nicole Rodriguez: Do they see you as outsiders? Andrew Jay Weir: Yes. NR: Does that fact really help you as artists? CS: Not really. There is a stark division between locals, Qataris, and expats. Therefore one will always be an expat. No matter how long you are there, you will never be from there. The Qataris have a lot more benefits than you and those limitations are always quite obvious. AW: It’s really interesting for us as outsider artists to talk about

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Qatar because no one has really done it before. And it still feels new and uncharted. CS: Our current project, Liquid Portraits, approaches Qatar by way of portraiture. We wanted to capture a contemporary local picture. The situation is that there is a vast amount of very traditional artwork, but there lacks a contemporary lens by which to view it all. The idea with these Portraits was to reinterpret these historic moments by constructing an image that would speak to a contemporary Qatar. Perhaps even one caught in the midst of some globalization or an approach to the idea of globalization. AW: It functions as a great bridge between these two cultures— West and East. CS: Also inevitably as a bridge straddling the perspectives of expat and local based on personal experience. AW: There are so many expats, that the question remains: who is the actual authority? Who is in change of the culture being generated? At the end of the day it’s the expats producing a bulk of

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interview

“For us, our practice, it’s a lot less critique than it is observation.”

the work, but they are marginalized and not fully integrated into the culture. This is a dilemma. Who is the cultural creator? CS: But you can’t exactly come out and say this. NR: Has your work been considered critique or reflection? CS: So when we were doing the interview with Pupil for the magazine text the writer explicitly situated our work as a critique. We kindly asked him to change this. The gallery where we are going to exhibit the series later this season belongs to a Shaek. NR: Are there other artists that have reaped some type of negative impact as a result of the embedded critique of their work? AW: One poet, Mohammed Rashid al-Ajami [a.k.a. Mohamed Ibn Al-Dheeb], comes to mind immediately. A few years go he was sentenced to life [later reduced to 15 years in 2013] for disseminating a poem considered to be critical of the ruling family.

NR: How does it feel to refer to a culture that is not native? AW: That’s the idea, isn’t it? There is nothing concrete. The title of the project itself alludes to this. Liquid Portraits—the melding of solids. There is not a very fixed perspective. CS: The project also inherently has that “outsider-looking-in” feeling. It’s an experience about an observation of another culture. NR: Considering you were exhibiting an “experience about an observation about another culture” outside its original context and presumably with no reference point, was there a guideline for selecting the pieces you would publish in Pupil? AW: Pupil chose a selection of pieces within the greater Liquid Portraits exhibition to include in the Talent issue. CS: We had already been working two years on this body of work before Pupil happened. We had an exhibition planned and

then the Pupil opportunity arose. NR: And is the project Liquid Portraits already finished? CS: We had already finished last December 2013. The exhibition space that had committed to present the work, Katara Art Center, began to face some issues and rumors of closing but in the end as the commitment to exhibit the series had been agreed upon, we are still exhibiting. However, the future for Katara is still uncertain. Unfortunately there is a great problem in finding spaces to exhibit locally. There are no experimental spaces. NR: What role does the color play in your work? AW: Color is really important. When I was 16 and I first moved to Qatar everything was gray. Color was an interruption. CS: Many of the artworks there, in Qatar, in the Middle East, are really black and white. There is a huge fear of using bold color. Coming from Puerto Rico and

Christto and Andrew

South Africa, color is intrinsically important to us. It’s the natural language. So we began working with the idea of exaggerating color and creating combinations that would heighten the sense of that exaggerated construction and together usually both of these views make the work stronger. NR: What about your models. How do you find them? AW: Anywhere. CS: This part is incredibly difficult because no one likes to get their pictures taken, especially the women. For example, in The Factory of Good Intention, we had in mind creating a series of different nannies of Qatar, but when we would approach the nannies about this they would be completely confused and weirded out, what I understand.

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AW: The families they worked for would be present in these encounters and it would further alienate the idea for them. CS: They don’t understand. Many don’t speak English either and this is an added barrier. But for this particular project we secured three workers that allowed us to take photos. The Pupil cover image, Mimetic Gestures I, for example, speaks a little to the contemporary Indian worker of today in comparison to the historic worker of yesteryear, “the pearl diver.” It is a history that repeats itself in a different version of the same story and the slavery continues, unfortunelly. AW: But ideas of slavery in the Islamic world, from what I have understood in my own experiences, are quite different from the West.

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They are almost like family. There is an expectation that they are treated with a type of respect. NR: So how did the models react to the finished product, their portraits, but also the magazine, the cover? This cover was so prevalent everywhere. CS: In the end you try to explain what you are doing to the models. They see the final product, in this most recent case the Pupil Magazine cover and they seem pleased but they really don’t understand the context. When they model for us we are also paying them more than their own salaries, which lends this all another interesting dynamic where you are putting someone in the context of art, removing them from their normal context and paying them well for it. NR: How does the medium itself come into play? You have a habit of striking tension between extreme ends of a spectrum: tra-

interview

ditional and modern, East and West, local and expat, cultural observation and broader philosophy, How do you see yourself embedded in the culture of photography? Do you feel displaced there as well? CS: We don’t consider ourselves photographers because we aren’t so interested in technique or light or any of the traditional photographic concerns. We only use the camera as a tool to create the image but that technical preoccupation does not exist for us. Not like some of the other artists involved in this edition of Pupil. NR: How was that received, given this is a photography magazine, and a photography exhibition? AW: I can say some might have been bothered by this, especially given that our work was on the cover of that number. CS: Their perspective is more technique. The gallery we exhibit with in Dubai, East Wing, is also

completely focused on photography, which is not our total focus. I don’t want the medium to limit us. Too often the word photographer itself has a very negative and intense connotation. NR: Your work is at surface so Qatari-centric and in this conversation we have touched a little on a nostalgia and desire to maybe return to the West. How would your work change if you did that and left? AW: We’re exploring precisely that in our next project and I think with the traveling Pupil exhibition we began to see this at work. CS: We don’t want to be artists that only speak to or about one region. Because ultimately it’s not who we are, it’s what we are currently living in the moment. We have other worries. AW: Even though the immediate content points directly at Qatar, there is a lot of general philosophy imbued there.

Christto and Andrew

ISSUE 7

PUPIL MAGAZINE

titles

all photo titles 1

Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

19 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

2 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

20 Nude Girl. Alternative Landscapes Series. Benoit Paillé

3 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

21 Clearcutting. Alternatives Landscapes Series. Benoit Paillé

4 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

22 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé

5 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

23 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé

6 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

24 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé

7 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

25 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé

8 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

26 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé.

9 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

27 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé.

10 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

28 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé.

11 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

29 Untitled. The kitsch destruction of our world Series. Benoit Paillé.

12 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

30 L’amphithéâtre. Alternative Landscapes Series. Benoit Paillé

13 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

31 Untitled. Alternative Landscapes Series. Benoit Paillé

14 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

32 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

15 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

33 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

16 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

34 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

17 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

35 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

18 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

36 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

titles

37 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

58 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

38 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

59 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

39 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

60 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

40 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

61 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

41 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

62 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

42 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

63 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

43 Eternal Beauty II (Film Still). Eternal Beauty Series. Juno Calypso

64 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

44 Seaweed Wrap. The Honeymoon Series. Juno Calypso

65 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

45 A Dream In Green. The Honeymoon Series. Juno Calypso

66 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

46 12 Reasons Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Tired All The Time. Joyce II Series. Juno Calypso

67 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

47 Massage Mask. The Honeymoon Series. Juno Calypso

68 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

48 Chicken Dogs. Joyce II Series. Juno Calypso

69 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

49 Untitled. The Honeymoon Series. Juno Calypso

70 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

50 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

71 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

51 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

72 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

52 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

73 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

53 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

74 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

54 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

75 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

55 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

76 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

56 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

77 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

57 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

78 Untitled. Northern Yemen Series Yumna Al-Arashi

ISSUE 7

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