ART Habens Art Review // Special Edition by arthabens.artreview

ART

H A B E N S C o n t e m p o r a r y

A r t

R e v i e w

LISA BIRKE SPYROS KOUVARAS BETH KRENSKY AYELET COHEN MEHDI FARAJPOUR ILINCA BERNEA EDAN GORLICKI GOSIA MIELECH BBB JOHANNES DEIMLING , performance, 2016 a work by

, photo by

ART

H A B E N S C o n t e m p o r a r y

A r t

R e v i e w

Edan Gorlicki

Beth Krensky

Johannes Deimling

Ilinca Bernea

Aylet Cohen

Mehdi Farajpour

The Nederlands

USA

Denmark

United Kingdom

Israel

United Kingdom/Spain

The philosophy and beliefs surrounding Edan’s artistic approach are based on searching the self within its surroundings. Inspired yet confronted by the world around him, Edan finds artistic comfort within the search for belonging and connecting. What better way to explore life then through movement and researching the body within the space around it? Every work of Edan has been a personal and touching transparency of what we all as humans go through on a daily basis. Through his work he has dared to approach these difficult issues and expose them respectfully yet courageously to his audience.

Beth Krensky is an associate professor of art education and the Area Head of Art Teaching at the University of Utah. She is an artist, activist and educator. She received her formal art training from the Boston Museum School. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally. She is a founding member of the international artist collective, the Artnauts. Her work is intended to provoke reflection about what is happening in our world as well as to create a vision of what is possible. She is also a scholar in the area of youth-created art and social change. She received a master’s degree with a focus on critical pedagogy and art education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Colorado at Boulder. I feel that the result is much more honest and accessible compared to an arbitrary choice of music to accompany the dance from the sidelines.

In a way, the agri-food industry has become a new godfrom which citizens must proclaim their autonomy. Eating is thus a deliberate act. It is no longer a mere reflex linked to bodily survival, but an action prompted by more or less conscious emotional, economic and political choices. While tastes may not be open to discussion, they entail consumer decisions that have repercussions on our environment. The provenance of foodstuffs and their methods of production (intensive or organic) and management (exploitation or fair trade) are political and nutritional options by which people manifest their social commitment and express their individuality. On the art scene, food is a subject/object that has fascinated and “nourished” numerous performers. In many cases, their work goes far beyond the simple aesthetic event to address the eating behaviours of our society. Obviously, not all artists who use edibles as materialare political or environmental activists, but most have eating related experience or habits or attitudes that influence their every action. Food aversions, allergies, diets, special treats and childhood memories thus become food for thought in developing their art practices.

I conceive humor as being situated at the contact surface with the sublime. I practice all arts but music. I have released several performances in the last three years, created with students in choreography and philosophy.The two aesthetic coordinates of my creations are humor and melancholy. I put myself in the position of the Shakespearean jester, whose sense of humor is meant to dislocate an equal amount of sadness, bitterness and longing. I am addicted to cats and music. I am a big fan of the feline temperament, which has many contrasts, such as: the fast transition from a state of calm and quietness to the attack position or from a sleepy mood to extreme vigilance etc. I believe in beauty as necessity and as a spectacle of existence. I am an urban spirit. I am drawn into the blend between old and new, between chaos and order, between eccentricity and conformity, from big metropolises, which are quite eclectic, culturally speaking. The cross-features that are apparently not meant to be compatible are very appealing to me.

For several years now, I have been an independent choreographer, while I also serve as a dancer in some of my work. In 2012, I have founded MakesounD Music & Dance Projects, a troupe that focuses on connection between music and dance, turning them into one united language. I work in collaboration with composers, creating a combined form of art as dance and music merge into each other. We are conducting a collaborative process of defining and implementing the idea in two different fields and the final result presents a very unique and authentic artistic statement. The actual process of creation always starts with a specific idea or a particular topic I want to research. Collaboration with the composer is essential prior to implementing the physical elements in the studio. Knowing that I’m able to work with original compositions, which are created to help express my ideas.

In this issue

Ayelet Cohen

Beth Krensky BBB Johannes Deimling

Mehdi Farajpour Lise Birke

Edan Gorlicki Gosia Mielech

Lisa Birke

Spyros Kouvaras

Poland

Canada

Greece

I am a freelance artist based in Poland. I am a dancer, teacher, creator and a researcher involved with DanceLab. I was a soloist in the Polish Dance Theatre and had the pleasure to collaborate with many supreme choreographers and directors, what gave me a various amount of artistic tools and creative incentives. I was dancing in the whole repertoire of Polish Dance Theatre and working with many choreographers including in particular: Ohad Naharin, Yossi Berg, Jacek Przybyłowicz , Gunhild Bjoernsgaard, Susanne Jaresand, Ewa Wycichowska and many others. Now I am co-founder of DanceLab, an independent dance company and co?creator of choreography and other artistic projects for the group. The Premiere of “ Sababa” (chor. M. Mielech, Z. Jakubiec) and “ We bleed the same color” (chor. Shi Pratt) happened in June 2013 at the Polish Theatre in Poznań. I also co?created a multidimensional artistic project called DanceLabirynth as well as „Nilreb”? a piece to sum up DanceLab’s residency in Berlin. I have toured with performances from DanceLab’s repertory in (Berlin, Jena, Jerusalem, Wroclaw, Krakow, Poznan), taking artistic residencies (Berlin – Uferstudios) and developing my dance skills by participating in various dance projects, festivals and numerous dance workshops .

Lisa Birke is a Canadian artist who situates between the tradition of painting, digital video and performance art. She received an MFA with distinction from the University of Waterloo in 2013, where she held the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Master’s Scholarship and the University of Waterloo President’s Graduate Scholarship. Lisa Birke examines notions of ‘self’ through the lens of gender, bringing the cultural tropes of woman into focus and into question. Filmed unaccompanied in the Canadian landscape, absurd yet insightful performative acts become entangled in nuanced and complex narratives in single and multichannel video works that make reference to art history, mythology and popular culture. Revealing what lies beneath the surface of femininity, her work toys with a conclusion that is problematic, comi-tragic, and most essentially, human.

My name is Malgorzata Mielech. I am a freelance artist based in Poland. I am a dancer, teacher, creator and a researcher involved with DanceLab. I was a soloist in the Polish Dance Theatre and had the pleasure to collaborate with many supreme choreographers and directors, what gave me a various amount of artistic tools and creative incentives. I was dancing in the whole repertoire of Polish Dance Theatre and working with many choreographers including in particular: Ohad Naharin, Yossi Berg, Jacek Przybyłowicz , Gunhild Bjoernsgaard, Susanne Jaresand, Ewa Wycichowska and many others. Now I am co-founder of DanceLab, an independent dance company and co?creator of choreography and other artistic projects for the group. The Premiere of “ Sababa” (chor. M. Mielech, Z. Jakubiec) and “ We bleed the same color” (chor. Shi Pratt) happened in June 2013 at the Polish Theatre in Poznań. I also co?created a multidimensional artistic project called DanceLabirynth as well as „Nilreb”? a piece to sum up DanceLab’s residency in Berlin. I have toured with performances from DanceLab’s repertory in (Berlin, Jena, Jerusalem, Wroclaw, Krakow, Poznan), taking artistic residencies (Berlin – Uferstudios) and developing my dance skills by participating in various dance projects, festivals and numerous dance workshops .

Spyros Kouvaras Ilinca Bernea Gosia Mielech

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Special thanks to: Charlotte Seegers, Martin Gantman, Krzysztof Kaczmar, Tracey Snelling, Nicolas Vionnet, Genevieve Favre Petroff, Christopher Marsh, Adam Popli, Marilyn Wylder, Marya Vyrra, Gemma Pepper, Maria Osuna, Hannah Hiaseen and Scarlett Bowman, Yelena York Tonoyan, Edgar Askelovic, Kelsey Sheaffer and Robert Gschwantner.

Ayelet Cohen F

or several years now, I have been an independent choreographer, while I also serve as a dancer in some of my work. In 2012, I have founded MakesounD Music & Dance Projects, a troupe that focuses on connection between music and dance, turning them into one united language. I work in collaboration with composers, creating a combined form of art as dance and music merge into each other. We are conducting a collaborative process of defining and implementing the idea in two different fields and the final result presents a very unique and authentic artistic statement. The actual process of creation always starts with a specific idea or a particular topic I want to research. Collaboration with the composer is essential prior to implementing the physical elements in the studio. Knowing that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m able to work with original compositions, which are created to help express my ideas, I feel that the result is much more honest and accessible compared to an arbitrary choice of music to accompany the dance from the sidelines. Following the collaborative work process, I find myself approaching my creative work like it was a process of composing a musical piece. I enjoy creating based on the principle of creating a â&#x20AC;&#x153;pictureâ&#x20AC;?, which allows the viewer to observe from various perspectives and distances similar to various tools that create a harmony. Relations between the dancers are usually established based on their physical movement or their placement within the movement pattern, and not on a certain narrative. My observation of the creative process is very analytical, yet strives to be full of emotion.

Ayelet Cohen

The Map, 2016 Â© by Ayelet Cohen

An interview by and

, curator curator

Artist and choreographer Ayelet Cohen's work accomplishes an insightful exploration of the connection between music and dance, turning them into one united language, to walk the viewers through a multilayered experience, inducing them to elaborate personal associations and intepretations. Her style rejects any conventional classifications and is marked with freedom as well as coherence, while encapsulating a careful attention to composition and balance. One of the most impressive aspects of Cohen's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of transforming a reality into an alternate one: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Ayelet and welcome to ART Habens: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background? For several years now, you have been an independent choreographer, while you also serve as a dancer in some of your work. How do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello and thank you very much. I’m happy to be

Ayelet Cohen

here. I founded MakesounD – Music & Dance

d I understand the extent that it enables me to express myself and how important the “world of the stage” is to me. Suddenly, I discovered myself in a totally different light; it was then that I understood that this is my place.

Projects four years ago, after earning my Masters in Choreography. The major beginning of my journey was essentially my academic studies in the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. It was there that I was exposed to composition classes for the first time, and there that I had my first opportunity as a professional dancer to

Today, I teach ballet in addition to my creative work, and one of the amazing gifts that I am privileged to have now is the opportunity to incorporate dancers that I have personally trained in my ensembles. I believe that the fact

experience works by the country’s leading choreographers. The inclination to explore music is something that I developed at home. My mother is a music teacher and

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Ayelet Cohen

that I come from the world of education is very helpful to me when I work with dancers. Despite the fact that I am on stage with them, I am able to teach them my principles and the languages that I am attempting to create. The choice to also perform as a dancer in the pieces that I create stems from my desire to build maximum trust in the creative process and to be genuine in my movement language by bringing my true self into the entire process. I can feel, using my body, what is right for me, via all of the senses and not just visually. I enjoy experiencing the search for the language of movement myself, alongside the dancers, and I feel that the more I develop as a dancer, the more I advance as a choreographer, and vice versa. This is a principle that is important to me and which I utilize significantly. I am sure that my classical roots play a central role in the aesthetic considerations in my work. I believe in hard work and proper technique, and I encourage myself and my students to strive for these goals. There are those who define my style as conservative in terms of my perception of the body. Indeed, I try to present classical elements in my works, out of a desire to reconnect to those elements, to different figurations and ideas. I would like to believe that these same aesthetics can be used to serve the theme that each of my pieces explores. In Israel, I live a religious lifestyle, which means that there are subjects, for example sexuality, that do not correspond with my beliefs and that I will not broach. This would seem to pose

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Ayelet Cohen

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The Map, 2016 ÂŠ by Ayelet Cohen

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Ayelet Cohen

The Map, 2016 ÂŠ by Ayelet Cohen

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Ayelet Cohen

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limitations on my freedom of expression (as a result of my own choices), yet I feel that this is what pushes me to explore deeper and search for innovation and even rebellion from a simpler and more conventional place. The cultural conservatism that I grew up with has definitely shaped me into becoming who I am today as an artist, and I try to find my modernism within that conservatism, both ideologically and visually. Instead of running away from that conservatism and structure, I place it on a new background with a specific concept, so that the aesthetics and technique serve the idea that the piece seeks to explore. I find myself making analogies from many areas of my life in my choreography, especially musical analogies that lead me throughout this entire process. Your approach is very personal and your technique condenses a variety of viewpoints, that you combine together into a coherent balance. We would suggest to our readers to visit https://vimeo.com/user41825484 in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, we like the way it combines formal research with improvisation: how did you developed its main idea? And in particular, how would you define the roles of chance and improvisation in your approach?

To me, the beginning of building a creative piece is first of all choosing the subject matter and understanding what I want to say. Then I search to define a specific structure to serve as the basis, and only afterward, at essentially the last stage, I start to actively work in the studio on choosing the movement. In addition, the musical context for the works exists from the very start of the process. What is important to me in my creations is first of all the statement that is being made; only after I know what I want to say am I able to allow the body to go to work.

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Ayelet Cohen

The involvement of music in the creative process begins when the piece is still just an idea. My dialogue with the composer begins there. We sit together to formulate a preliminary, external sketch of the piece; in other words, how many parts it will contain, what each part will reflect, which elements will be incorporated, what the duration of the piece will be, and more. During the practical stage in the studio, improvisation enters the scene. I use it to create central motifs that will be the basis for the entire movement scheme. From the moment that the concept for the piece has been born, and the importance of the structure upon which the piece is based is formulated, my thoughts revert to being more figurative and I set out to search for movement that will best serve the subject. Perhaps the best way to define the physical process is the development of subject and variation. As can be seen in the piece entitled â&#x20AC;&#x153;Windmill,â&#x20AC;? the idea is the body itself and its physical nature. The piece developed out of my desire to build music from air. Thus, the structure was very defined and clear from the start, and as a result, the preliminary improvisation in the studio was determined very quickly to express the language. Following this stage, which ends pretty quickly in the studio, there isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much more improvisation involved, except for perhaps in the content that

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Ayelet Cohen

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The Map, 2016 ÂŠ by Ayelet Cohen

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Ayelet Cohen

The Map, 2016 ÂŠ by Ayelet Cohen

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Ayelet Cohen

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each dancer adds, in terms of their character and the figuration of their body. The involvement of emotion in the works stems from the sincerity of all of the elements involved in the piece. I do not deal with a specific narrative or with dictating specific types of relationships for the dancers; rather, they emerge from the involvement with the movement alone, and from the inspiration of the music. It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the one that you have established over these years for the MakesounD Music & Dance Projects are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of several practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

I think that the power of creating together is stronger than ever before because from such multidisciplinary work comes innovation. Essentially, it takes an element from a very complete area and connects it to something else from a different area that is also complete in its own right. When the connection between them is productive, something new is created, that does not simply stand on one familiar base. Cooperation between arts is the most effective evolution and perhaps the most thought provoking in the art world.

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Ayelet Cohen

The cooperation between two areas allows each area to complement the other in the most effective way in order to express a certain idea. In addition, I think that the multidisciplinary integration in modern art blurs boundaries and involves more senses and more levels in the creative work, and consequentially, more types of audiences. I agree with Peter Tabor’s statements. The mutual productivity that takes place when working together creates a process that could not have ever been achieved through solo work. This is a process that demands thinking outside the box. As I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, my choice to connect to a composer stemmed from my desire to decipher the secret of the emotional accessibility in music, and the analogy that can be made regarding group dynamics between musical instruments and dancers. I learn a great deal from watching the stages of the work process of composition and recording. With Oded Zehavi, for example, this is my third year that we are working together, and I feel that he understands my way of thinking better than various dance professionals, precisely because both of us are connected to the same emotional elements that we aim for in our work. This way of thinking of “seeing the bigger picture” in composing music, as the “leader” responsible for several instruments, pushes me to take a step back all the time to see the overall image. It is clear that ultimately, this is a dance performance, at least according to the visual meaning of the field, but I have no doubt that what defines dance for

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Ayelet Cohen

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The Map, 2016 ÂŠ by Ayelet Cohen

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Ayelet Cohen

The Map, 2016 ÂŠ by Ayelet Cohen

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me is the music that accompanies the movement. Not necessarily the performance itself, but the genuine movement itself. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Ayelet. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

Oded and I are currently working on a new duet (a solo performance alongside a harpist). The premiere is scheduled for the end of February 2017 in Israel. Looking ahead, I see myself working on launching a full length show (until now, I have created performances that were approximately 20 minutes long). My aspirations are to continue to create in conjunction with first rate composers and to create a performance for a large number of dancers, in a way that will allow me to freely use spatial formation. I also dream of appearing on various stages around the world with my works. My biggest dream is to create a performance for a large ensemble accompanied by a live orchestra. In the meantime, I am deeply grateful for what I have achieved during these four years, and to everyone who I have had the privilege of meeting and involving in this process on the way. I anticipate the next four years and promise that I will work hard. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

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Lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Portable Sanctuary

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Beth Krensky

ART Habens

video, 2013

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An interview by Melissa C. Hilborn, curator and Josh Ryder, curator arthabens@mail.com Hello Beth and welcome to LandEscape: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training and after having degreed from the Boston Museum School, you nurtured your education with a master’s degree with a focus on critical pedagogy and art education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Colorado at Boulder: how do these experience influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making?

The social psychologist, Carol Gilligan, insists that we not only listen to what someone is saying, but understand who is speaking—in whose voice, in what body, from what time period and vantage point. With that in mind, I’ll share a little bit of information about me, because the circumstances of my life have shaped (and continue to shape) who I am. I was born in Greenwich Village in the mid1960s—a time of great tumult but also of great hope and possibility for the United States. Activism is part of me, and has been since I first absorbed the consciousness of my era. It has taken different forms—as a frontline activist, as a researcher tracking the far right, as an educator and as an artist.

Francine Gourguechon

that I make up my own rituals and do not in any way intend to represent a specific religious tradition.

My practice is wide-reaching and brings together a material studio practice rooted in research. This practice is informed by multiple traditions of faith—including my own Jewish culture—art theory and a belief in the role of art to transform individuals and communities. It is important to keep in mind

That said, my own cultural roots inform my practice, even if I have not always been conscious of this. A few years ago, the art critic Doris Bittar wrote about my work. She stated that: Beth Krensky metaphorically travels to

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Beth Krensky

[her] ancestral well and plucks out what is most relevant. What she finds varies, from stories and objects to images and personas. She reinvents her respective cultural and ethnic milieus. … Eventually the things or detritus she has collected conjure up parables/stories that become infused with icon-like gravitas. These icons in new contexts create a space for teaching and learning. Krensky’s pedagogic repertoire segues into formal strategies that create templates for survival, if and when the ground underneath shifts yet again (Bittar, 2007, p. 8) I find that being a member of a diaspora tribe has meant that the “templates for survival” Bittar wrote about are barely under the surface of my existence. You are a versatile artist and your approach reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.bethkrensky.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such crossdisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

Portable Sanctuary

used often in the book referring to women of color being the bridge that is thrown over a river or a tormented history for people to walk over. Twenty-one years later, in 2002, Anzaldua and Analouise Keating edited the anthology This Bridge We Call Home in which Anzaldua writes that

In 1981, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua edited a collection of writings by radical women of color entitled This Bridge Called My Back. The bridge metaphor is

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Beth Krensky

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worlds, spaces I call nepantla, A Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-intransition space lacking clear boundaries....[L]iving in this liminal zone means being in a constant state

"Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between

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Beth Krensky

Metaphysical Handcart

of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. (p. 1)"

transformation. I think that borders and boundaries are not static. We can realign these groupings if we choose. It is a powerful place from which to create work and to live. Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is an Israeli and one of the founders of the Parents Circleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Families Forum, a group consisting of

I have come to feel at home in this intermediary space. I try very hard to hold that space open for my students. I believe this is where true risk taking occurs and it is within this free space where envisioning can happen. Envisioning is the first step in

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Beth Krensky

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condolences, she left the room. In a 2001 speech to Women in Black, Dr. PeledElhanan explained why she would not sit with them. For me, the other side, the enemy, is not the Palestinian people. For me the struggle is not between Palestinians and Israelis, nor between Jews and Arabs. The fight is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. My people are those who seek peace. Peled-Elhanan’s words give me pause and cause me to ask who are my people, and beyond that, where are my people? This quote changed my life and made me realize that we get to create, and shift, classifications. I no longer accept predetermined borders between people, ideas and places. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected the Where Is the Road to the Road?, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your effective inquiry into the notion of futility in our unstable, everchanging contemporary age is the way you have provided your research with consistent and autonomous unity, accomplishing the difficult task of creating a concrete aesthetics from direct experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of Where Is the Road to the Road?, would you tell us something about your usual process and set up?

hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost a member of their immediate family in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She lost her 13 year-old daughter to a suicide bomber in 1997.

I am a gatherer of things—objects, words, spirit—and a connector of fragments, to make us whole.

When representatives from Netanyahu’s government came to offer their

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Beth Krensky

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really have a usual process; however, I do often base my work on something that has social or environmental significance, is authentic and is conceptually rooted in a socio-historical history of place. Sometimes I gather information for years before I start to create and sometimes I create without even knowing why. Where is the Road to the Road was created for an exhibition at the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah. The performance was inspired by a line in his poem, A Noun Sentence. I was especially drawn to the second half of the poem: â&#x20AC;ŚWishing for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me or ahead of me, barefoot. Where is my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where is futility? Where is the road to the road? And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present tense, where are we? Our talk a predicate and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam of speech the dots on the letters, wishing for the present tense a foothold on the pavement ... 93 These words cause me to ponder where we are headed during this time of futility, growing hatred and unrest. We seem to be wandering aimlessly looking for the road to the road that can lead us in a new direction. This piece is intended as a performative gesture for me to find my way as well as for others to engage in the metaphorical journey. In particular, I am referencing the contested land of Israel and Palestine. For me, it has become a metaphor for the multiple layers of shared existence over time and place and how we choose to interact with such a layered history. I think

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Skirt of Sorrow and Forgiveness

the time has come to forge a new road, one created by walking together. Where Is the Road to the Road? is draws its name from a Mahmoud Darwishâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poem: we have highly appreciated the way your approach goes beyond a merely interpretative aspect of the contexts you refer to. As the late Franz West did in his installations, the

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Beth Krensky

Where Is the Road to the Road? deconstructs perceptual imagery in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

ART Habens

both references something that has happened (often a difficult and uncomfortable event) as well as an opening for a possibility to occur. I try to create opportunities for the participants to engage with the work so that they can envision a possibility for themselves or beyond. My process is very ritualistic

My work is intended to have multiple entry points and layers of meaning. The work

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Beth Krensky

Skirt of Sorrow and Forgiveness

a contamination between the inner landscape and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

whereby I attempt to infuse the object with meaning, making it a literal metaphor. Where Is the Road to the Road?, also inquires into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such

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I use art as a tool for highlighting and creating human experiences that are both shared and unique. I am known for my

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Beth Krensky

ART Habens

when oppressive regimes come to power. The question is what do we, as artists, decide to do with our power? Do we work within the confines of the high art world? Do we take our work into the ever-expanding context of artmaking where every venue is open to interaction through art? What are the topics we address? What change do we strive to create through art? What type of bravery is needed for such acts? Elements from environment are particularly recurrent in your imagery and they never plays the role of a mere background. Do you see a definite relationship between the notion of land and your work?

Benjamin Coleman, the Associate Curator of American Art at the Detroit Institute of Art wrote about my work’s relationship to the land. He stated, “With open-ended guidelines and a light footprint, Krensky offers a model for artist-driven environmental activism in the realm of lived practice.” My work sanctifies the natural world and at times indicts those who have degraded it. I choose specific locations because of their history or significance. I perfomed Metaphysical Handcart on the Salt Flats—a wide expanse of whiteness and nothingness near the Great Salt Lake. As the cart makes its way through a landscape, everything it holds jiggles and moves. There are bronze and brass bells; a bowl (limned with a Hebrew blessing) filled with olive leaves; four dead birds cast in bronze. As they make their jingling and bumping sounds, I feel a sense of a narrow liminality, that the division between Heaven and Earth comes somehow aroused. I modeled this piece

writing and practice as a communitybased artist/educator, so it should not come as a surprise that I see the relationship between artists and the public sphere as inextricably linked. Artists wield tremendous power. It is no accident that artists are some of the first people to be detained, arrested, tortured and exiled

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Tashlich

Beth Krensky

ART Habens

as well as to honor the memories that are entombed there.

after the hand carts that Mormon pioneers used when they traveled across the country. For me, in our present day, it opens up a new frontier, albeit a metaphysical one: an Other space. The lived practice of the performance and the land are intended to connect with one another and engage in a dialogue of sorts.

We like the way you structured Skirt of Sorrow and Forgiveness: it leaves space for the spectators to replay the ideas you explore in their own intimate lives, letting them become emotionally involved in what you are attempting to communicate. As Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Do you think that the role of the artist has changed these days with the new global communications and the new sensibility created by new media?

Another interesting project that has particularly impressed us and on which we would like to discuss is entitled Tashlich, a word that means “casting off” in Hebrew. Your inquiry into the possibility of change and renewal accomplishes an effective investigation about the relationship between perception, memory and personal imagination, to challenge the viewers' parameters. What is the role of memory in your work? We are particularly interested in how you consider memory and its evokative role in showing an alternative way to escape and overcome the recurrent reality.

Yes, I do. I think global communications can connect us but can also desensitize us. This is why I gather stories and words from individuals. I try to make sense of larger issues by understanding specifics. I also am very involved with a group that uses global connection as a platform for change. In 1996 I was one of the founding members of the Artnauts. It is an artist collective that was founded by curator George Rivera and uses the visual arts as a tool for addressing global issues while connecting with artists from around the world. The name derives from combining the words “art” and “astronaut” as a way to describe the process of exploring uncharted territory in the world at large. The name also denotes the practice that is “not” art as usual, going beyond the confines of the traditional or conventional art world and blurring the boundaries between art, activism, and social practice. The Artnauts have worked at the intersection of critical consciousness and contemporary artistic

The arts offer the possibility of transformation on both an individual and societal level by opening up a free space where anything is possible. It is this free space or possible world that allows people to name themselves, envision a different reality, and engage in the re-making of their world. I think that memory and imagination are linked and inform each other. Memory and possibility are so intertwined in my work that it is often difficult to know which is which. I have my own memories, yet I also draw from ancestral memories as well as the memories that land and place hold. Many of my objects are intended to create new openings and trajectories for some of these memories to either be recalled or reimagined. I have made pilgrimages to massacre sites to pay homage

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ART Habens

Beth Krensky

practice to impact change for two decades with over 170 exhibitions on four continents. Besides producing your works, you hold the position of professor of art education: moreover, you are known largely for your scholarly works, writings, and also for your work in the field — specifically, going into diverse communities and working with children, making art, promoting dialogue and healing. How does this aspect of your work influence your practice? In particular, have you ever been inspired from your students' ideas?

I began teaching in the urban core of Boston, learning and working alongside young artists who taught me grace and hope in the face of extreme odds. They have remained my greatest teachers and still inspire me. Years later, I entered the academy to teach future community leaders and educators about equity and justice through the arts and education. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere wrote that, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” I strive for my work as an artist and educator to engage in the type of restless and hopeful inquiry that Freire believed had the power to reinvent—or perhaps repair—the world.

Where is the Road to the Road

responds to different contexts and ideas. Recent political changes in the United States have pushed me to respond. I am working on an installation of Courageous Acts of Kindness that highlights all of the brave acts people are engaging in to create and maintain spaces of tolerance, freedom, courage and kindness. I am also working on

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Beth. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

My artistic practice is a living practice — one that supports sustainability of individuals and the planet — and is a flexible entity that

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Beth Krensky

an interactive social practice piece, The Store of Wishes that references commerce in the art world as well as the idea of “store” as a repository. I am creating a store that sells and stores wishes—both the remembrance of and hope for these desires. In addition, I am editing a book on youth, art and social change because we desperately need these

ART Habens

examples to inspire us to act—to use our art as a tool for imagination and change. An interview by Melissa C. Hilborn, curator and Josh Ryder, curator arthabens@mail.com

Photos by Josh Blumental

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ART Habens

BBB Johannes Deimling

BBB Johannes Deimling Born 1969 in Andernach, Germany. Lives in Norway

â&#x20AC;&#x153;nourishedâ&#x20AC;? numerous performers. In many cases, their work goes far beyond the simple aesthetic event to address the eating behaviours of our society. Obviously, not all artists who use edibles as materialare political or environmental activists, but most have eating related experience or habits or attitudes that influence their every action.

ating is an act of self-affirmation. What better example than Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who in choosing to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, declared their independence of God? This mythical gesture, perhaps motivate simply by desire, hunger or gourmandise, stands as the symbol of a deliberate act, the act of choosing one's destiny andrejecting the ignorance imposed by a higher power. The creation myth no longer holds us in thrall, of course, but another form of authority has sprung up in the global garden and it dictates many of our behaviours.

Food aversions, allergies, diets, special treats and childhood memories thus become food for thought in developing their art practices. Often prompted by a desire to blur the line between art and life, their performances resemble routine daily activities, such as cooking, eating, handling or sharing food. Some reveal a wish to retake possession of a body too often abandoned to the dictates of fashion and aesthetics; others, a determination to point up and alter social behaviours acquired over decades of industrialization. Bread is one of the foods most widely used in performance art. A dietary staple in most cultures, a bodily symbol in Christianity, bread in performance inevitably leads toreflexion on the artist's corporeality.

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BBB Johannes Deimling

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BBB Johannes Deimling

ART Habens

ART Habens meets

Johannes Deimling An interview by and

, curator

high as possible. To begin the creative process I form single images. The so called ‘acted images’ (agierte Bilder) consist of reduced, simple actions often with only one object, one material or one gesture. A visual alphabet of acted images accrues, allowing me to literally and visually write my art that is performance. Using the technique of collage I combine several acted images that allows me to play in a cinematic way with all of the visual elements by deconstructing the course of actions and putting the parts anew together. During this process various intersections appear in which unpredictable new images emerge. The term for this working method would be: ‘performative collages’. The quality of this working method is that there is no end result, each performance is unique which cannot be repeated and creates new questions which opens a new research. An open and free field of choices, responsibilities and possibilities. The process itself becomes the technique..

, curator

My main medium since years is Performance Art and Action Art. Even though I also draw, write poems, make video works this art form is to me the most adequate form to articulate my visions and visual concepts as it per se a process oriented form of art. The process implies that there is no goal to reach, but more a way to go, so even there is a presentation of my performance the process is still going on, guiding my thoughts and decisions even within the performance itself. This is because in Performance Art the ‘production’ is trying to sculpt the unknown. I never rehearse my performances before the public presentation, so even I conceptualize and think a lot of how the work should look like I have no concrete knowledge about how it will actually be. The absence of rehearsal is a distinct separation to other performing arts (theatre, dance, music) and focusses on the uniqueness of the creative act with all risks of failure. This requires that I need to take the process always with me in order to keep my awareness within the public presentation as

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“It’s not the action that makes the performance” is the title of a recent published catalogue of my work (an online version is available here: http://j.mp/PPLxX9). The title of this publication is a statement which includes the thought that even the artist and his body is a main focus in performance art, it is not the only quality. The combination of the present body with various artistic components (size, shape, colour, light, space, sound, ...) - and very important - time creates this holistic universe of a performative art work which - if it comes altogether - creates this ‘magic’ moments in which art is in direct conversation with the present audience.

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, photo: Monika Sobczak

ART Habens

BBB Johannes Deimling

In all my works and as well in my philosophy I am looking for simplicity. “simplicity of complexity” is a term which describes my research on things, situations and moments. I am looking for an artistic language which can be understood by a lot people and not only by some. Looking on my work one can see that I use all day materials and objects. Transforming those simple elements in my performative works tries to shape an insight of complex subjects or feelings. The centre of my interest is the image as I see myself as a visual artist rather than a “performer” or “performance artist”. The visual image transports and transforms my artistic vision. It is a great pleasure for me to have Monika Sobczak (www.mmonikasobczak.com) as my personal photographer who is following me since more than 4 years. Performance Art and Photography are sharing an interesting intersection. Both art forms are interested in moments. In this collaboration the moment is one integral meeting point of both art forms and creates something that is pointing beyond the two forms. My working method creates a tension which is needed for the intensity of the presence and focuses on the artistic action. As I never rehearse my performances the failure is always present. For Monika Sobczak this is a challenge and set’s her profession in a similar state. While not knowing what will happen next she is in a similar attentive moment like I am and tries to catch the moment that I am creating. Monika Sobczak needs to read and follow the action and to capture the spatial composition, the relation with the audience and the artistic, aesthetic action and much more the atmosphere in one moment. This cooperation produces ‘after images’ which are more than only documentation of that what was happening. It is a dialogue between two persons and two art forms.

, photo: Monika Sobczak

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BBB Johannes Deimling

ART Habens

, Calgary, Canada, Photo by

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ART Habens

BBB Johannes Deimling

, Calgary, Canada, Photo by

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BBB Johannes Deimling

ART Habens

Since more than 20 years I am working with the concept of cycles or series in my performative art practise. ‘What’s in my head’, ‘Blanc’, ‘leaking memories’, ‘Around the World’ and ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’ are just a few titles of cycles in which I include several performative collages. The given titles are often metaphors for topics or themes which I cannot specify or extract in one art work. They are more like fields or landscapes on which I need to look from different perspectives in order to grasp their holistic meaning and potential. In several performances I try to shape this territory. This work is highly process based. Even though each piece of a cycle is standing for itself, each piece is transporting the experience of the performance before. “a rolling stone gathers no moss” is a new cycle of visual performances which I have started in 2013 and have presented over 11 performances since then. In this cycle of performances I focus metaphorically on motion and use very much the language of poetry to create these visual pieces. Following the fact that our whole life is based on motion as a consequence of a variety forms of repetition (e.g. breathing), I try to create performative statements talking about the coexistence of motion and its end. The English proverb “a rolling stone gathers no moss” can have both a positive or a negative acceptation, on one hand being in a constant state of movement means to keep on evolving, changing without letting time impose its traces, on the other to be a perpetual wanderer implies do not have the capacity to settle down some necessary roots. Simple wooden chairs, a metaphor for the English proverb, are appearing in all of the performances within the cycle in various forms (piled up on a heap, standing in line or circle, …) and formally creating a repetitive form through the whole cycle. Other elements and materials are changing according to the stage of the research and process of the cycle. There is a connection

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ART Habens

BBB Johannes Deimling

between the single performances which underlines the quality of a series. It is mainly done by used materials or symbols which will be reused in one of the next performances. For example the swing I used in #2 appeared again in #3, #5 and #8. The white dress I used in #8 appeared in a different context in #9 and the melody I used in #9 was sung by a choir in #10. Different to other cycles in ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’ I am challenging myself with different tasks which should bring me out of my comfort zone as a performer and condense the created atmosphere. In some of the performances I build in one element which is embarrassing for me and in some performances I take other people to perform with me. In the performance #8 - which I have presented at Savvy Contemporary in Berlin as part of the ‘Present Tense series’ curated by Chiara Cartuccia - I performed together with Lotte Kaiser, a 15 years old teenager. I know Lotte since a few years as she took part in a few workshops I gave for young people and knew that she was able to do the performance with me. Her appearance was very important for the concept of the performance as I was using a memory and a picture of my great grandmother as the source of this piece. Lotte at one point taking the position of the shown photograph of my great grandmother became a link between future and past. Or during the performance #10 – which I presented at the CREATurE festival in Kaunas, Lithuania – a choir with more than 20 young people appeared suddenly and were singing the anthem of Europe (Ode to joy). In all of my artistic works I try to talk about something which I cannot explain in words. If I could I would write or talk about it. I try to articulate through my visual language feelings, emotions, moments connected with my research on a broader topic and offer them in the shared moment of the public presentation to my audience. It is not important that the audience understands

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, Calgary, Canada, Photo by

what I am doing, as I am not producing a direct narrative, but more important is to me to offer a dialogue about the unknown and that what they see and how they respond to it.

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BBB Johannes Deimling

ART Habens

and when they are together they have an immense force. All started in 1996 when a friend of mine who worked as an art teacher in a high school asked me to give a workshop in Performance Art for her pupils as part of a project week at her school. Until this time my studies in pedagogy and communication were separated from my work as an independent artist which often caused quite a confusion inside of me. With this first teaching opportunity an incredible interesting process started which

Art and education are in my opinion twins

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ART Habens

BBB Johannes Deimling

completely changed my direction in so many different ways. Teaching and Performance Art practice have a lot in common. The situation a teacher – in any subject – creates is very much the same alike the situation an artist creates who is creating a performative piece of art. Both are trying to point on something which is unknown until the moment the actual teaching/learning or creative act happens. Both are sharing a space within a certain time frame with people. Both are trying to transfer an experience. Starting from these simple similarities I started to research within the intersections of art practice and education now since more than 17 years. Teaching Performance Art became more and more important as young generations of artists were interested in this art form, but didn’t had a direct access or connection to this art form. Still in Europe for example there are just a few academies offering a BA or MA in Performance Art, but the interest in this art form in the past years has increased enormously. Performance is for young artists therefore important as it has massively influenced the production of art and perception of art within the past 30 years. Even though Performance Art is experiencing a boom right now, but still it plays a marginal role in the market – which perhaps is not the worst thing to happen. The strategies and philosophies of performative art practice are useable for all kind of art practices. It can be seen as chameleon which has the potential to adjust in each artistic and as well non-artistic process. In 2008 I founded the independent, educational project PAS | Performance Art Studies of which since then I am the artistic director. The aim of this project is to provide interested people a comprehensive form of teaching on Performance Art, everywhere in the world and always in cooperation with Performance Art festivals, art academies, museums and galleries.

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BBB Johannes Deimling

ART Habens

, Calgary, Canada, Photo by

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ART Habens

BBB Johannes Deimling

I have to admit there is too little space for to say more about this project as it has grown enormously since its foundation. But the readers are invited to look at the website of PAS | Performance Art Studies ( ) and get in contact with PAS if they have any further questions or are interested in taking part in one of the studies.

I am happy that my schedule is quite filled this year and that I have the chance to continue working on my cycle â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a rolling stone gathers no mossâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; which I will show in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia and Canada this year. I will continue working on this cycle until I decide to find an end, which I cannot foresee now. With PAS | Performance Art Studies we are going in October this year to Calgary, Canada as we are invited by the M:ST festival to realize a PASyouth studies with teenagers which will present their performances developed within the studies as part of the festival. This is a really rare opportunity made possible by the festival organizer Tomas Jonsson to let teenagers perform at the festival where established artists are presenting their works. This is for me not only a nice gesture, but more a statement to offer the audience an insight about the process of performative works which will be in the dialogue possible to witness. I am sure there will come some more projects up in this year, so the readers are welcome to visit my regular updated website in order to stay informed about my activities and hopefully I can welcome the one or the other to one of my performances or studies. Thank you very much for this interview.

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BBB Johannes Deimling

ART Habens

, Calgary, Canada, Photo by

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Mehdi Farajpour Lives and works in Paris, France Lives and works in Paris, France

YET UNTILTED It s an experimental & cutting

edge performance using body, video and some accessories to create a landscape by shadows on a white screen which is set up at background. The performance is easily adaptable to various locations such as Art galleries, museums, public spaces as well as any type of stage. More info: http://mehdifarajpour.com/yet-untitled/

Land

scape

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

Performers: ,

, ,

& .

An interview by and

, curator curator

Francine Gourguechon

Hello and thanks for your interest in my work. Actually, when I think about the beginning of my career an artist, I remember that I have been always fascinated by multifaceted artists in the history of Art. Antonin Artaud, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, … To me, discovering a theatre play written by a poets who has been also a drawer/painter was/is not only provoking my curiosity but was/is also a joy-able effort to understand and try to perceive a huge competence that one artist can develop during years by practicing different forms and disciplines. I love Coctau’s works not as a fan but because he was the one who thought me how not to be afraid of modern

classifications, labels, boxes and frames that others (art network) are imposing on an artist. It is hard to walk on borders. People (spatially program managers and curators) are not keen of multifaceted artists. They need to be able to categorise you and your work. During years of working as a non-categorazable artist, I heard very often from the program managers that they do not know how to present my works. They need to to put you in a box with a table such as dance artist, theatre maker, visual artist,… They even try to to create a new category nowadays labeled

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ART Habens

Mehdi Farajpour

Interdisciplinary artist that does not make any sense since it is still not precise. I studied drama (precisely to become an actor) but after few years of doing as an actor in the city theatre of Tehran, I gave up because I was not satisfied since I was not able to totally express myself in that discipline. So I switched my career to become a theatre director and then a choreographer. But besides all, originally, I consider myself as a poet. I have to admit that I started writing poems even before I decide to study theatre in the university. I was in high school by that time. When I entered into the university of fine arts (department of Drama), my vision on things has become wider. Theatre had offered me a new language (as a new tool) in which I could talk and act at the same time. Although, with the poetry, I did not have that Acting tool. I do not want to say that the poetry is a passive language compare to the theatre but I can carefully say that theatre is more comprehensive form of art and more open towards togetherness than the poetry. This is not a critic against the Poetry. It is only what I feel about it. The poetry is a personal cure to me. I can hide in my room and live with it although living with theatre needs going out of your room, meeting people,â&#x20AC;Ś During the years at Fine arts university, I spent a lot of time with the artists of other disciplines such as Cinema, Painting, Sculpture, Music,â&#x20AC;Ś. I should admit that I learnt more things by spending time in the courtyard of the university than sitting in the classrooms and listening to the professors. (I believe there is a profound problem with classical teaching methods). In the courtyard of my university, I noticed that each artistic disciplines is a language with its own capacities, competences and possibilities. Some ideas, concepts or emotions can be better expressed in one than the others. This is because of the particularity of that language (discipline). It is because that particular language is offering you a wider space or a certain possibility that is able to easily host your concept inside itself. But of course, to speak in

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2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelo

that particular language (or to expresse your concept in a that discipline), you need to know how basic rules (grammar) of that language works. This was the point when I did break up with those common classifications in the university and went

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Mehdi Farajpour

ART Habens

towards a more open area without even knowing that it is called interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary art. To me, creating comes from an inner need like the hunger. It s a wild feeling and it need to be responded immediately. One canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

learn how to become creative unless s/he feels that need. Then s/he will find his/her way to make it. No need to pass through Academic education although the professional network of art (nowadays) requires it. Recently I read a phrase from

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Mehdi Farajpour

2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

Oscar Wild that makes sense to me: ÂŤ Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time t time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught Âť.

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Mehdi Farajpour

ART Habens

Improvisation is the territory of Performers (actors, dancers, musicians) and it gives them a freedom to exist in a show (performance). It lets them to be part of the creation process not only a moving object on the stage for the sake of choreographer or director. I like to offer my performers (including myself) the freedom of living in the moment although I have to admit that I believe only in conditional improvisation not a wild improvisation. By saying « conditional improvisation » I mean a « structured sort of improvisation ». To work on this, when I work with a group of dancers, first of all I explain the situation (dramatic moment) to them, then I clarify the type of movement I would need to see. At the end, I explain to them « what I do not want to see ». This very last remark can take a lot of time because here is the moment when I start trimming my dancer’s movement. After these three steps, the conclusion (basically improvisation), does not look like an improvisation anymore and maybe only me (as the choreographer) and my dancer will know about it. The audience may think that it was not an improvisation. About Mistakes: I am a choreographer who is not afraid of mistakes. My dancers (performers) know it by heart since I continuously repeat during the rehearsals that: « I love mistakes ». When they hear this, their first reaction is to laugh although they know that I really mean it. Mistakes happen by chance and the only thing that you as an artist need to do is how to use them. Mistake is a miracle itself if perfectly done. The worse is a badly made mistake that means an unfinished or betrayed mistake. A mistake has to be developed perfectly not to be given up by the artist. I only do not like betrayed mistakes.

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ART Habens

Mehdi Farajpour

As I mentioned earlier, Persian poetry is my main source of inspiration in most of my creations including shows, performances, videos and visual art works. YET UNTITLED, is also both visually and conceptually inspired by Persian poetry in general and by several Persian poets in particular (Omar Khayyam, Molavi, Hafiz,â&#x20AC;Ś). I just tried to capture and mixe their views on the univers in a contemporary context. I also borrowed some of the major elements of their poems in YET UNTITLED. For example the music that is indeed a live sound captation of my own breathing rhythm while performing with a tiny microphone installed on my jacket. I transfer the sound of my breath to a computer and with the help of a software and sound mixing desk, I create a music in front of the audience (that is of course different each time that I perform). Or Clay is another word/element borrowed from Omar Khayyam who has very often used in is poems. For him, the clay is symbol of the earth as well as the human. About SHADOW - as the main element in YET UNTITLED - I have to add an explanation as follows. The Shadow has a powerful meaning in Persian poetry. It is the sign of existence because whatever exist has a shadow, otherwise it does not really exist (from materialistic point of view). At the same time, in Indian beliefs, shadow is considered as the illusion of reality. Our world is a Maya, meaning the shadow or the illusion of another world (which is the real world) and we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see it. This subject are all my inspiration sources to work with. At the end, I would like to use this opportunity and point out a cultural difference that I discovered while creating and performing YET UNTITLED. It is again about the shadow (as a

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Mehdi Farajpour

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Mehdi Farajpour

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Mehdi Farajpour

ART Habens

word and as an element) that as I mentioned before, has a symbolic meaning in Persian poetry which it is rather opposite to the western perception from the word. Shadow in majority of Persian poetry refers to the notion of Shelter although it does not refer to the same notion in western cultures. I assume it is because of the strength of sun in Iran that sometimes can be too sharp and even harsh, specially in the deserts. So, it is always considered as a resting point where one can relax and protect himself/herself from the burning sun. This notion does not make any sense in most of European countries where it does not happen to have a long period of sunny days in raw.

This is a very important question because one of my interests in performing artâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world is about VIEWING. How to watch a performance matters to me. From which angle or which corner my audience are going to watch me also matters. When I create a performance, first I imagine it in 3 dimensions. The floor has always an important role in my shows (performances) and it has to be seen. That is why I mostly prefer to set up my audience in a higher position (like in Greek theatres) where they can easily see the floor. For example in one of my recent shows called CORPS OUBLIĂ&#x2030;S (the rite of spring), the choreography was made for/with the video that was being projected on the floor. The venue was a huge abandoned shipyard with a clumsy ground. Or in another show called STOP SPOT, the whole stage including dancers were all covered with newspapers. Also in YET UNTITLED, the floor has got its own role. To me it represent a blank canvas on which I am painting with shadows.

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ART Habens

Mehdi Farajpour

Well, body and digital technology in my works are completing each. They are not jus put together side by side but they are put inside each other. I do not use technology to fascinate my audience with new sciences,…. I use it as a tool. For example in most of my performances I use video mapping but it always stays very basic. I use it as far as it supports my concept not more. It does not interest me to transform my show into a technological demonstration about a particular software or technology. For example in « ETC, ETC. » that - technologically - is the most sophisticated show I have ever done, I still stayed very simple and basic. There I used two video projectors and one camera that was filming on line. One of the projectors was projecting the online film and the other projector was projecting the one-line drawing that was happening right there. And dancers were being led by a drawing artist who was drawing in real time. The logic behind it was that ETC, ETC was about Antonin Artaud who was a drawer himself,… I never understood those artists (specially younger ones) who are scarifying their concept (intellectually) just because a certain technology has a technical capacity than what they actually need for their creation. In this case, what is happening is that the artist is adapting his/her concept to the the possibilities of a new technology instead of doing opposite. I mean at the end the show/performance is becoming a demonstration for a certain software (light, video or sound,…).

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I wanted to speak about food problems through an artistic medium. I am so sensible about this subject specially when I see the huge amount of food wastes in so-called developed countries although we all know that in some others countries (few kilometres away) people are dying of hunger. Anyway, I was sure that I am not going to make a performance around this concept because I have already seen a lot of performances with the same theme in which the artists themselves are wasting a lot of food, just to say this is happening in our world. To me this is a contradiction between what you say and what you do. Recently, I saw a theatre piece in Paris that was directed by a well-known director where the actors were wasting hundreds of litres of honey per day (per performance) just to criticise food consumption in our societies but actually they do the same. That honey could save the life of at least hundred children in Africa, India,â&#x20AC;Ś Anyway, I decided to work with another medium and to use a natural element as food that is not eatable: The stone.

I will continue with programming for PARIS SUMMER ACADEMY which has become a passion for me. It gives me an occasion to meet so many emerging artists as well as established ones and all in one place. Last year, I had the chance to invite JAN FABREâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s company to Paris to teach in frame of PSA 2016 and it was absolutely satisfying. For next year, I am still wondering which company/artist to bring in highlight.

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Lisa Birke

ART Habens

, 2014, performance

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“

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six channel digital video installation at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, video projections left to right: red stripe painting; walking the line; red carpet (left), Fragonard’s swing; Miss La La; hung out to dry (right), ), 2013 (image credit: Brian Limoyo)

An interview by and

, curator curator

Thank you so much for having me in Land scape, it is such a vibrant forum in which to express ideas and creative vision and I am so happy to participate. Yes, I came to my video art practise somewhat by accident. Before 2011, I was engaged in a twelve year painting, drawing and installation practise that was concerned with the overflux of information and the accumulation of material goods in our digital and commoditybased society. Alongside my more contemporary themes I also had one foot firmly planted within art history and was particularly enamoured with the narrative of the figure within the landscape. The winter before beginning my MFA, I spent

Lisa Birke

six weeks at the Ted Harrison Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Retreat Society (THARS) that runs a Residency Program at Crag Lake, an isolated community in the Yukon, in northern Canada. It was Januaryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and extremely coldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;yet also stunning and undeniably magical. On a whim, while taking a break from painting, I decided to take my tiny point-and-shoot camera and filmed a type of endurance performance

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ART Habens

Lisa Birke

outside in the nude, in the snow. I was inspired by the Arctic Games and was looking for an outlet for the current obsession with Yoga that was playing-out at the time in my home of Vancouver. I thought it would be both humourous and interesting to transplant the Yoga pose even further out of its original context into this unhospitable (and quite literally cold and white) environment. In order to introduce ourselves to the MFA program at the University of Waterloo, all incoming grads were asked to participate in an exhibition upon our arrival. As I could not afford to ship my large canvases, I decided to show the videos that I had made in the north. After this point, everyone thought that I was a video artist and my fate was somewhat sealed. This was terrifying as I considered myself a luddite and technophobe at the time. My extensive background in dance cushioned my transition and producing the videos has, surprisingly, felt quite intuitive and natural.

There are a number of lines of inquiry that I attempted to tackle in Pictures. Firstly, representation, and more specifically our expectations of the representation of the female form as embedded, performing, or perhaps even trapped with the natural landscape. There is a tradition of depicting the female as part of Nature: she is considered naturally part of or at home in the natural tableau in various levels of undress. These mythologized views are very interesting to me and I wanted to see what would happen when I physically played-out some of the historical

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, 2016, video performance

narratives. Of course, the result is anything from glamourous. It is muddy, there are bugs, and it is often really cold and prickly. Ergoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

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Lisa Birke

the female form is not naturally at home in nature. Following this, I was interested in unravelling some other myths.

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As the project builtâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and because of a certain reluctance in being able to let go of my comfort zone, the medium of paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I

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Lisa Birke

ART Habens

, 2016, video performance

decided to make an installation of six moving ‘paintings’, but all in the video medium. Each ‘tableau’ took its inspiration from an art

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historical or modernist painting that reveals the act of looking or challenges the materiality of the art form and thus challenging

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Caroline Monnet

ART Habens

pornography/sexuality, control, scopophilic viewing and the modern gaze, and entrapement. I wanted to viewer to be aware that they were looking at a constructed image, thus bringing awarneness to the “looking” and “interpreting” process—one that was both familiar and unnervingly uncertain here. I attempted to present stories, objects, and symbols that are already embedded into our cultural consciousness but worked to confuse the signification of these tropes and rendered their meaning uncertain. For example, in “red carpet” we are presented with the symbol of the movie industry: the red carpet. The symbol of fame, stardom and presentment, it is a powerful emblem that is usually only seen off screen and not in it—in “red carpet” is has been transplanted to the center of the frame. A woman walks the carpet, yet there are no media scrums and she is seemingly alone in her poised and stoic journey. She is not presenting herself ‘to’ the camera but rather walks endlessly away from it, forcing the viewer to follow behind her throughout the passage of the seasons. Thus, while it subverts cinematic space, it is also a tale about transcendence and literally walking the line, negotiating loneliness, and coming to terms with the human condition. It also reawakens a warning given in Agamemnon by Aeschylus, the first Greek play to use the symbolism of a mortal walking upon tapestries. It is a warning that has long since been silenced: beware all mortals who attempt to act as gods and walk upon such extravagences [artist’s paraphrase]. Out of interest sake, the paintings that inspired “red carpet” were Barnett Newman’s “The Wild” (1950) and “Achilles”(1952), two of Newman’s red “zip” paintings . The works in Pictures attempted to subvert the viewer’s expectations and also frustrate him/her in not providing a concrete resolution to the narratives—things are not always what they seem or are ‘seen’. Art, for me is an investigation into how we construct meaning for the world. Both power and danger lie therein: we often take what is presented to us

representation itself. The paintings were also selected to posit interesting themes that I could work with: spirituality/transcendence,

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ART Habens

Lisa Birke

as truth—especially when a certain image or narrative is repeated over and over again without questioning. The church understood the power of the image in the middle ages, yet we often don’t challenge tropes or mythologized representation in contemporary society. I should add that if there is further interest in some of the background information on the source paintings and the mythologies explored in Pictures my MFA thesis on this body of work can be found here: http://www.lisabirke.com/writings/pdfs/lisabirk e_thesissupportdocument_2013.pdf .

That is a great question. No, I feel that sometimes we artists like to feel that we can separate ourselves and/or our personal lives from the ‘greater concept’ we are working towards, but I feel that this is an impossibility. Of course, all our direct experiences cannot but wholly influence what we produce. Even when suppressed, the everyday, the mundane, our individual fears, joys, insanities and all of our processed experiences will filter out into the work in some way, if not directly than indirectly. In my own work, I have really had to contend with the fact that I am physically present in the work—even if only as a physical stand-in for an architype, or as an abstracted concept. Initially I used my own body because it was

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Lisa Birke

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ART Habens

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Lisa Birke

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Caroline Monnet

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cheap, it was willing to do questionable things for the sake of the art and it was always available to me. It has been a challenge to present the work publically because of that thing we all carry around, called shame and self-consciousness. I have learned to let this go, for the most part. I have become more interested instead in both the physical endurance and discomfort of making the work and in the awkward director/actor relationship that heightens the tension and questions the methodology of control in the image. I hope that because I am just a regular person (and not a trained stunt double) putting myself into these scenarios, that there is a certain degree of empathy that strengthens the issue of direct experience for the viewer.

I am always working with double meanings, puns and literal subversions in my work. I really like how language is contradictory: it is slippery and difficult to pin down yet weighs very heavily when imposed onto a subject or group of individuals with the intention of locking it/them down with a definitive definition. I think that people are generally more comfortable when things are categorized into neat boxes with tidy labels. When we are presented similar stories and representations over and over again, we are happy to accept

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Lisa Birke

ART Habens

, 2016, video performance

scenes and turn them into surreal tableaus through building on our lexicon of reference points and subtle meanings, manipulating these through our system of language and semiotics. In “House Bunny” and “Cougar” I am working with the ‘animalization’ of the female. In Canadian English, a male usually has other words that are associated with his © Davide Di Saro penis used against him if the intension is

these as truths because these categorizations make it easier to define our own selves in relation to them. We know where we stand and where we belong, so to speak. This is both a relief and comforting...until one realizes that one is being suppressed or controlled. In a number of the images from “House Broken” I take advertisement-style domestic

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Lisa Birke

ART Habens

subject has been surprised and rendered offbalance while washing the dishes by a giant kitsch ceramic bunny visible in the window—a literal House Bunny intruding on her space. We often don’t see these subtle power dynamics at play in our language systems— or maybe we don’t want to see them—like the big bunny in the window or the elephant in the room.

derrogatory (odd, considering these words are still symbols of power and thus not really degrading.) Women are much more readily associated with the animal kingdom—again that pesky Nature! So my intention was to reveal this language use in a purely visual form. In “House Bunny” it is not the female domestic that is the house bunny as we would expect from the title. Instead, our

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Special Issue

ART ARTHabens Habens

Caroline Monnet

work and don’t think about having to present the work to a live audience until much later in the process.

The “Cougar” in my image has been stuffed and put in the museum with the other curiosities. Again, it is through the overt humour and lightheartedness in the work that I hope these sytems of signification become apparant to the viewer. So yes, I think about both accessibility of the image to the viewer and using the tropes and stereotypes that are already familiar, while at the same time being very aware of the communicatory potential in saying something meaningful about our society and how the viewer might be able to “translate” and “read” these cues, jokes or subversions in the work.

Despite my irrational fear of audiences, I am not afraid of negative feedback. When it does come my way it really helps me figure out how the work is communicating or miscommunicating. All responses to the work are equally valid and helpful. Of course, positive feedback is very heartening and gives me the impetus to keep working. When even one other person ‘gets it’ and the work is able to impart just a bit of contemplation or emotion, it is very rewarding. And it feels just a little less lonely.

I have a number of projects on the go, some very long term that I will hopefully work on for decades and others much shorter in scope. Currently, I am interested in exploring simple video special effects (still involving the figure and landscape) and hopefully will have a new work finished by the end of the summer. I am also very excited that I received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to produce a collaborative video work with my Mom who is a textile designer and craftsperson extraordinaire. This will go into production in late summer/early fall. This should be another adventure with just a few of those continuing growing pains thrown in for good measure! So I hope that the work will evolve in scope and complexity. Maybe one day I will even start painting again. Thank you so much for having me and asking such engaging questions.

I am terrified of the audience yet art is made for an audience, so therein lies an inexplicable paradox for me. I have only attempted a few live performance projects and each time I nearly passed-out. This is why I hide behind the screen—the audience can see me, but I can’t see the audience—at least not when the work is being filmed. No, quite seriously (and there is a lot of truth to that first statement), I often have an unexplainable impulse and urge to do what I do (and I realize this is also cliché). I have attempted to stop producing work for short periods of time and witnessed my health and mental well-being deteriorate surprisingly quickly. The difficulty of making art is a lifelong challenge that I can’t seem to dissengage from. That being said, I also usually make the

Summer 2015 Special Issue

An interview by and

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, curator curator

“

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Edan Gorlicki

ART Habens

ART Habens meets

Edan Gorlicki An interview by and

, curator

in Israel. My teachers there were a great contribution to my development as a choreographer and I am very grateful for their mentorship. At school I was the only boy in the dance department. Of course this was difficult on many levels but it was also a great benefit as I was able to receive allot of attention from my teachers. They invested allot more energy in me then they did to the rest of my class. I am not sure that my school or my teachers have a direct influence on the way I conceive and produce my works today but I imagine that being an Israeli has something to do with that. I think we all are very influenced by our cultural upbringing. Especially growing up in such a complex survival driven country like Israel. I think that that survival instinct is imbedded in my attitude towards my work and lifestyle in general.

, curator

Well first of all I must point out that every creation process has a different identity, process and outcome. In most cases I have an indication of what the next work will be like but then discover as I go that actually the work is something else completely. I guess I could say that the creation process is for me more of a listening process and following where the work is taking me rather then directing the work. It is more of a relationship between my goals for the work and the work

Hi! Thank you for having me! Yes I started dancing at a very young age and have been fortunate to have studied at very good schools

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ART Habens

Edan Gorlicki

itself. The choreographer in me then becomes a mediator. I normally start with a clear direction that interests me, weather its a feeling, a visual image, a scenario or atmosphere, a personal experience or even just an interest to work with a certain dancer or collaborator. It is never the same. Inspiration comes from everywhere. In the freelance dance scene, unfortunately the development of a work mostly doesn’t start in the studio or experimenting with materials, those things come later. I never work alone. In dance we are always collaborating with many people. Because of this, the amount of organization, productional preparations and grant confirmations always needs to be done first. In the beginning I really had allot of problems with this because I was impatient and just wanted to get into the studio. Now I have more appreciation for this process because it shapes the way the work will be made and forces the first conceptual steps and ideas to form. I think I enjoy more the creations that are driven from a personal psychological place where the process for me might be more therapeutical. I think I just care more about those pieces. Funny enough though, with a critical eye, I think those pieces don’t end up my best work. Maybe they are too emotionally charged, Im not sure, but I can tell that those works are not the most communicative to the public in the end. Production:

During the creation process of another piece of mine ‘A little too close’ I developed together with my dancers an improvisational movement vocabulary that was quite unique to me. After we finished that creation process I became quite fascinated with the idea of diving deeper into this unique physicality to explore what exists further in this quality. I went into the studio with one of my dancers who deeply

‘Body Language’ is actually one of the works that grew more organically through time.

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Edan Gorlicki

inspires me: ’Mayke van Kruchten’. While watching her move this way it seemed to me as though her body was deciding for her what she was doing. This triggered an interest for us to see if it is possible to have our body choreograph what we do. We developed a step by step process that attempted to eliminate (as much as possible) mental creativity, judgment and decision making

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while improvising. This resulted in a fascinating journey where Mayke was discovering where her body is taking her, something that was equally exciting to watch. This is where the idea came to present this form of movement and live experimentation to the public as a performance installation rather then a theatrical work. I called it ‘Body Language’ and we started to perform it in

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Edan Gorlicki

Production:

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Edan Gorlicki

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diverse locations. During the performances we started to notice that Mayke’s body was behaving and producing interestingly different qualities and physicality’s based on the space and environment that she was in. Now for me ‘Body Language’ is an installation that exposes the authenticity of a certain environment created by the space, energy and people in it through the physicality of the dancers body.

Yes I think that is very interesting way of putting it and touches the essence of the identity of an artist as well. I do think that the role of the artist is to mirror society in some way and create a form that could offer the platform for discourse and interpretation, especially relating to our inner nature as people and our nature as a society. I think that I frame my work around exploring the self within its surroundings because it is a natural thing for me to do. I feel it is the basic need we have as social animals for belonging and connection, whether its to one another, one with nature, one with his/her beliefs and spirituality and so on…

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Edan Gorlicki

I don’t know much about this to state a clear hypothesis. The only think I can do is speak from my own personal experience. In that case for me many of the subjects in my works are driven from an emotional place of personal experience. However, it is my inspiration more then it is my practice. I don’t think its either this way or that way. I think its possible to create something that has no personal experiential influence and it can be great. I think that its possible to do both. In fact I would encourage to give that a try and explore the difference. I definitely think that personal experience is intrinsically implemented into what ever we do - its what we know. But shouldn’t a creation process be more about what we don’t know?

Like I said, every work is different and therefore needs diverse strategies and methods to be able to communicate what you

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Edan Gorlicki

ART Habens

Production:

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Production: Photographer:

Edan Gorlicki

want to say. Clarity is very important to me. It offers the viewer freedom to experience and feel more then to have to think, analyze or solve some sort of puzzle or mystery of ‘what is the artist trying to tell me’. In some cases the tool of narrativity can be very useful for clarity. I try my best to layer my works in a way that offers the viewer both the clarity of what this work is discussing but also the abstraction to interpret your own take on it. In my work ‘A little too close’ I consciously chose to work with a very well known pop-song. I am aware that this creates a very specific association to most of my audiences, immediately narrating a direct story. However, I then repeat this song in the piece using 7-8 different cover versions that then distorts this association, suggesting that there are many ways of seeing something that was a moment ago perfectly clear and simple. Simultaneously very aesthetically presenting abstract movement that offers plenty of room for interpretation.

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addictive patterns and cycles. The triangular psychological relationship between the addict, co-addict and the addiction itself was at the heart of this work. This systematic cycle is very clear when you lay out the roles of each participant, however, the cycle itself becomes an entity of its own when you begin to look at the bigger picture and consider all three participants as one existing issue.

Quite allot. I make work for public of all kinds of people. Although (unfortunately) most of my audiences are cultural intellectual types of people and I very much care for their experiences while watching my works. I am still very interested in capturing the hearts of the (lets call them) un(dance)educated public who for whatever reason find themselves in the theater watching this. A little too close talks about such a simple subject that anyone can relate to which is the power of and in a relationship. It was important for me to make this work very easy to watch. That is actually another layer in the piece as well. Relationships are tricky yet from the outside they always seem simple. Other couples always look like they have it all figured out but do they really? The visual aesthetics in

I guess its a little bit of both. In general I am quite systematic in my head with what I want but the moment intuition comes to play I immediately let go of my systematic thinking and let the intuition take over. I appreciate what you say about HUNGER, I really wanted in this piece to show the complexities of the

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Edan Gorlicki

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Edan Gorlicki

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this work offer that kind of starting point. It seems so beautiful, until you get used to the attractive image and then you see whats really happening inside. Everybody understands this, and I love that.

Absolutely! I not only believe this is true, we even have the evidence to prove it. In 2007 I had the privilege to co-found Random Collision together with my friend Kirsten Krans. Random Collision is a company that develops work in a very unique way involving the general public in the creation process. Part of our programs were collaborations with other fields, especially scientific fields of research. Recently, Kirsten developed a trilogy titled Experiment A, B and B+. This project was a scientific experiment about group formations and was collaboratively developed by social psychologists and choreographers. These experiments manage to prove that the visual performance that the public is watching directly affects the behavior of the public after the performance and the way they interact with one another. This is a fascinating project and I recommend looking it up at www.randomcollision.net

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ART Habens

Edan Gorlicki

I might be making allot of my work for my own satisfaction but I first and foremost create things that I feel I want and need to share with others. Those others are my audiences. We need to be a bit more selective on what we present to the general public. If we (artists) want to make a difference on any level in whatever way, we have to think of who is watching what we are making first and then see what it is we can show them and think how can we surprise, touch, educate, transform, develop and create more thoughts, questions and discourse amongst the public. I personally do care about what they see and experience. Not necessarily what they think about it as in like or not like. But I try to remind myself that the reaction or reception I get from the public after a performance can be a great guide for me towards understanding more the way they see things. This can improve my next pieces. For me, the public reception is my critic.

Well, as a freelance choreographer I am forced to exist in my past, present and future simultaneously. I am still reflecting my last project, am working on several current projects and busy with organizing and developing future projects as well. I am currently working on a new full evening production called ‘The Players’. This piece is the final part of my three-year study on power and control. Inspired by the theme of Psychopathy, The Players raises questions about social status, manipulation, peoples’ intentions, what is reality, hierarchy, deceit, and how far are we willing to go to get what we want? In addition I am preparing a new work for the Ludwik Solski State Drama School in Krakow set to premiere in December 2016. Thank you for having me! :-)

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Edan Gorlicki

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Production: Photographer:

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ynthesis 748 Company was established in May 2008 in Paris (FR), by the choreographer and performer Spyros Kouvaras. Powered by the National Dance Center of France and the French Ministry of Culture, the company has an international course over the years. Spyros Kouvaras’ works have been exhibited and performed in theaters, galleries, museums and festivals in various countries including France, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Argentina and Colombia. The Company has received warm reviews and has been referenced in international contemporary art publications. Since 2015, Synthesis 748 is also based in Athens (GR). « My choreographic research consists on a mechanistic approach of movement using at the same time the body as a canvas, as an abstract surface, so that the movement can be in the image and the movement can vibrates the image. I practice a research that focuses on the relation between body, sound and image and I am interesting on the sculpture tangibility of the bodies, the prolonged duration of the movement and the aesthetic precision. It is about a study of abstraction where its strength consists on the intensity between human subject and visual object, between time and space, movement and sound. An important area of creation is the approach of art and philosophy as well as art and science. The kinetic vocabulary of the company focuses on the development of a personal choreographic language which deviates from the recognizable forms of contemporary dance and usually takes a hybrid form. My performances do not tell a story. The scenic installations that always make up the starting point of the global composition are characterized by the creation of timeless spaces, by the creation of situations and fields which are interpreted more by the unconscious and less by the logic. The company’s works, often like choreographic installations in movement, approaches the scenic space like an exhibition room, the performance itself like an exhibited object and propose to the audience the role of the visitor ».

Spyros Kouvaras

An interview by and

, curator curator

Choreographer and performer Spyros Kouvaras' focuses his research on the sculpture tangibility of the bodies, the prolonged duration of the movement and the aesthetic precision to consider the vital relationship between direct experience and visual interpretation. In his OPUS I # temporality that we'll be discussing in the following pages he trigger the viewers' perceptual parameters to draw them through a multilayered, unconventional experience. One of the most impressive aspects of Kouvaras' work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating timeless spaces, by the creation of situations and fields which are interpreted more by the unconscious and less by the logic: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Spyros and welcome to LandEscape: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You studied Graphic Arts in Athens, contemporary dance and choreography-performance in France and you also graduated from European Academy of Physical Theatre in Paris: how did these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum due to the relationship between your Greek roots and your current life in France inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem in general?

Yael Omer

now that I have moved to Athens. I mean that living and working in Paris for a long period as an artist is something which marks you forever. My Greek roots also exist in my works but more in a subconscious way. I used to look always forward in my life but of course memory and past are welcomed and necessary elements for the artistic creation.

When I started to study Graphic Design, I soon realized that it interested me more as an artistic background and less as a professional practice. At the same time I was always interested in movement, so I turned my orientation to contemporary dance because I found in it a huge horizon of an artistic freedom. My studies and personal research in Graphic Design, Fine Arts and History of Art, were for me a very important knowledge which I used and I am still using in my choreographic work. I believe that my 10 years of living, searching and creating in Paris will always characterize my artistic work in the future, even

You are a versatile artist and the results of you choreographic research conveys together a coherent sense of unity that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your

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Land

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

Ehud Schori

Land

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

ART Habens

Spyros Kouvaras

production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://vimeo.com/synthesis748 in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

I think yes. Personally, I couldn't exist just as a choreographer and performer. I first feel like an artist in a holistic way and secondarily like a choreographer and dancer. In my choreographic research I focus on the relationship between human subject and visual object, between body and image using at the same time the music as a link point between them. I am also interested in the connection between art, science and philosophy, so all these influences lead me to create hybrid dance performances. When I teach or give a workshop, I ask my students: Are you a dancer? Ok, you have to visit contemporary art exhibitions. Are you a visual artist? Ok, then you have to see contemporary dance performances. And of course, you must listen to music and study History of Art and philosophy in a personal way. I mean, becoming an artist is a component of many things and influences. The «richer» your background is, the «richer» is your work. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected OPUS I # temporality, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your effective inquiry into the notion of physicality is the way you have been capable of creating a concrete aesthetics from direct experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of OPUS I # temporality would you tell us something about your usual process and set up?

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Spyros Kouvaras

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When I was in Athens in October 2014, I visited the third part of the visual project «MetroLogos» at Owl Art Space Gallery. The project examined the relationship between art and science and I was impressed of the art works of the exhibition and the artists who participated. So, I started to talk with Alexandra Nasioula, visual artist and curator of the project, about my participation in the project. Our common desire to explore the idea of a choreographic exhibition led me to work on «OPUS I # temporality» and I started to work on a solo «in partnering» with the 15 visual works which were exhibited in the gallery. I also asked the composer Giorgos Kouvaras to compose a live musical environment for my performance, so thus to create a sound vibration to the whole project. OPUS I # temporality is centered on the idea of time as movement with the sense of change and being: we have highly appreciated the way your approach goes beyond a merely interpretative aspect of the contexts you refer to. As Janet Cardiff and Olafur Eliasson do in their works, «OPUS I # temporality» shows unconventional aesthetics in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of selfreflection. Would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

What I do mostly is choreographic installations, « performances which dance » than dance performances. I use to approach the body as an exhibited object and the object as a choreographed subject. I think there is a clear metaphor on this process, in a way that I like to change the stereotypes, the roles of the things, to give them an allegorical dimension. When I perform in a theatrical context, I want the viewer to have a sense of being a visitor in an exhibition room and when

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Spyros Kouvaras

I perform in a gallery or in a museum, I want the visitor to have a sense of a theatrical viewer. 3 mountains not to climb inquiries into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a contamination the inner and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

«3 Mountains not to Climb», is a performance which examines the inner and the outside, the presence and the absence and is asking us to see what exists behind the phenomenon. Producing an art work in public space, already changes the way that we see this space and urges us to have a different, shared, cultural experience. But it is not that simple; Personally, I don't believe in art as a «happening». The thing is not just to get out and perform; the thing is to focus on the emotional response and perception of particular socio-spatial context in which an art work in public could be placed. And also, I believe that public art projects will be most effective when they will be part of a larger, holistic, multidisciplinary approach to enlivening a city or neighborhood. Only in this way, public art can contribute both to community life and to the service and vitality of public spaces. As you have remarked once, your approach consists on a mechanistic approach of movement using at the same time the body as a canvas, as an abstract surface, so that the movement can be in the image and the movement can vibrates the image: how would you define the notion of body in your practice? In particular, do you think that personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process? Could a creative process be disconnected from direct experience?

I believe that there are autobiographical elements in most of my works even if sometimes that happens subconsciously. They

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which are interpreted more by the unconscious and less by the logic. I am more interested in searching an organic point of meeting between the performers-dancers and the audience. For example, in my work, «OPUS I # temporality», the choreography with its slowness and its gradual development, suggests to the viewers a situation of «waiting», where the form is captured easily. As the images change, the relation between space, duration and movement grow strongly and the viewers are able to get to it in their own way. As Olafur Eliasson said, we have to trust the abstraction…

are just elements, we are our experiences of course, but that doesn't mean that a personal experience makes you create a work. When a creative process starts, it is already an experience of the present. When I work on a project, my mental connection with the materials that I use (bodies, sound, objects) already creates a new experience condition. I never start to create with an idea with a specific experience, I prefer to start pure, just using my main material which is the body, or the bodies of the dancers and the scenic space and its installation. In my collaboration with art@CMS - program of the CMS Experiment at CERN - when I created «10^ -22 sec», there was not a direct experience during the creation process at all. I mean what experiences could we have on Higgs boson? When I created «L’Isolement dans un Space Infini», the experience was more direct than in my other works, it could happen, but even in this performance, the personal experience wasn't the starting point of the creation, it came after the pure experimentation of the form between body, movement and the costume material that I used.

Your performances have on the surface, a seductive beauty: at the same time, playing with the dichotomy between logic and emotion, they challenge the viewers' perceptual parametersestablishing a channel of communication between the conscious level and the subconscious sphere: artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this? In particular, do you think that your works could induce a process of self-reflection in the viewers?

You have remarked the importance of abstraction where its strength consists on the intensity between human subject and visual object: while exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your process seems to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to invite the viewer to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your pieces. How do representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?

Synthesis is the most important element in my work: composition, structure, rhythm, and atmosphere. It is a co-existence in space and time through movement, image, sound and energy. Assuming that the energy of the visual work comes from the inner entity and diffuses outward, while we focus at the same time our attention on the moving bodies which are also pushed by an inner vibration outwards, we realize that these two energy lines pulsate. This fusion is realized in the «empty space» which is created between them and I think this «empty space» induces a process of selfreflection to each viewer…

My performances do not tell a story, I defined realism in art many years ago. The scenic installations that always make up the starting point of the global composition are characterized by the creation of timeless spaces, by the creation of situations and fields

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explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

I truly believe in artistic synergies but in quite closed circles. It sounds paradox, but what I mean is that I seek to work and collaborate with people with whom I share common, human and artistic visions and aesthetics. There are not too many, you know. The composer Giorgos Kouvaras and the performer Korina Kotsiri work with my company since 2010. Their artistic contribution in many of my works has been vital and fundamental for the realization of these projects. There are also other artists who have collaborated with the Synthesis 748 Company depending on the project each time. What I like in collaborations is the possibility to work with someone in more than one project, to evolve our practices together. This is really interesting because I see how easily the quality of each artist is adapted each time in my concepts.

What is more important to me is the orchestration of the space, the venue, where the choreography and the performance will be presented. This is important and affects the establishment of the project. It is quite different to work on a project for an exhibition room than for a theatrical context, although there is a clear line in my work no matter what the presentation framework is (theater, public space, museum or gallery). There are always common elements, for example, most of my works tend to be relatively «quiet», the sculpture naturalness of the body is always present, as well as the immobility that we acquire as performers-dancers, and the paradox of this choreographic immobility. What changes each time is the approach to the viewer, the duration of the project and the general idea if there is a clear start and end of the performance.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Spyros. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

Right now, I work on the development of my workshop «Choreographic Installations», which is addressed to professional dancers, performers and visual artists and I also spend time with the Company to promote my last creation, «3 Mountains not to Climb». In my new performance for 2017 which is still in research and progress, I would like to work the choreography and the whole installation with at least six bodies-dancers and just one objectmaterial in a large volume. Usually, until now, I preferred to work with many objects and no more than three bodies and I think it is time to change this «protocol». Actually, it is always a question of changing things…

It's no doubt that collaborations as the one that you have established over these years for the Synthesis 748 Company, established in May 2008 in Paris, are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of several practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you

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Ilinca Bernea I

An interview by and

, curator curator

Ilinca Bernea

a way of resizing and reconfiguring it. Literature sets in motion our hidden potential and I am talking from both perspectives: the one of the writer and of the reader. During the years of accumulations and experiences with my writing, I had some moments of blockage and then, because I kept feeling the need to express myself in a creative way, I started taking photos and painting. Recently, I've started reciting my own lyrics on music and I've made some dance experiments guided by my childhood friend, Mihaela Zamfirescu, (we grew up on the same street) and who became,

I started wishing to become a writer when I was about 12. Until then, I had wanted to become a space explorer and cosmonaut, like almost all children. When I discovered the power of narratives over the soul, it was clear enough for me that this was what I wanted to do. It was obvious to me that the act of writing was a way to materialize and to objectify fictions in order to covey them into a parallel realityâ&#x20AC;Ś Literature comes to fill up the emptiness of quotidian life with whatever our inner lives push us to live. It's

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

Ilinca Bernea

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I think we need the experience of beauty more than any other type of inner experience, in order to feel that we are living, plenary and deeply. It is a source of pleasure and even ecstasy in some cases. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve reflected a lot on these things. When your body misses a vital substance, you feel sick. The same thing happens with your mentalbody: if it decodes the present wherein you're moving as being "ugly", you feel an emotional sickness. In my view, the worst thing happening nowadays is the crisis of beauty resources. We are assaulted with toxic suggestions and with sensorial and mental information that keeps us away from our deeper self. The contemporary life-style is very dynamic on an exterior level and quite inertial on an inner level. We are pushed, through all means, out of our inner worlds, like through an emergency door, into a mutual world that belongs to nobody, really, we are chased out of ourselves with bulldozers. And, then, we wonder how come we've got this epidemic of depressions and neuroses and dogmatism and fanaticism? The penury of imagination uglifies individuals and reduces them, keeps them too close to the ground and makes them prone to sick criticism.

meanwhile, a great choreographer and ballet teacher. In philosophical terms, I am the adept of Croce and Collingwood's views. But to me, personally, art is a practice that helps me out in refining my way of living. I will never put art beyond existence, the art of living is the most important art. You are a versatile artist and your approach reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://ilinkars.wordpress.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have ever happened to realize that such multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

It is not mainly an I idea that I am aiming at, but the beauty of existence's spectacle. Ever since I can remember, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tried to find the secret of beauty, like that obsessive character of Suskind's novel, The Perfume, who wanted the elixir of eternal youth. I am talking about all kinds of beauty: the one of natural shapes and manifestations, the one of a mathematical demonstration, of a certain expression, or gesture, or of a body posture, because beauty is what gives identity to each shape, it converts the neutrality of perception. Beauty is what gives meaning to particularity and particularity to meanings. Everything that breaks through the anonymity of common places, everything surprising, everything strident, that could shake the senses and perceptions, bears the fingerprints of beauty.

There are many possibilities to measure and prove your intelligence. In certain cases, you can discover you're smarter or stupider that you expected, but you need nobody to confirm it, intelligence is an individual and instrumental good. By the contrary, beauty is a relational value. On a deserted island, if you are alone, intelligence is a golden mine, but there is nothing you can do with your beauty. It exists only if it is acknowledged by another. It makes no sense to be beautiful if there is no one to realize it and to enjoy it, it is a contemplative good, an inter-human value, it is instinct as well as cultural fiction, avatar of desire and stimuli of fantasy, it is the perfect antidote against angst.

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For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected Reeducation / The Intruder, a couple of extremely interesting videos (poems) that reflect the multifaceted nature of our relationship to nature and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: when walking our readers through the genesis of the Reeducation / The Intruder would you tell us something about your usual process and set up?

These two poems were conceived as a script for a contemporary theatre-dance performance exploring the confrontation of someone, caught in his middle age crisis, with the failure of his expectations and life plans. It is a metaphorspectacle about the way in which pieces settle inside of us at different ages, about the awareness of losing and being lost, about the dramatic encounter of the adult with the youngster and with the child that he used to be, about the chimaeras, the strong and weak points of different life phases, about the acceptance and the refusal of reality, about the search of the perfect love. I always try to find the most adequate expression for the ideas and the emotional material I intend to transmit. The language takes the shape of the body of a certain narrative universe. The only two constant parameters of my style, which are true for everything I create, are humour and dramatic ambiance, this paradoxical blend is what defines me as an artist, I think. The way you combine words with images allows you to accomplish the difficult task to balance rhyhtm and visual evokative reminders: this aspect of your practice seems to reflect your fascination for continuous transformation processes and draws the readers into a multilayered experience. Do you think that the harmonic fusion between different media could be the poet's goal? Or is the goal to make people look at the sphere of

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experience in a different way? Is it to touch their soul? Is it for them to feel delight?

It's hard to say. There are some already classicized arts, like cinematography, that make recourse to the image-text fusion. The traditional performing arts operate with imagetext-movement melds, as well. Although there are, technically speaking, new media appearing all the time, this syncretism has been practiced, in various shapes, throughout the whole modern era. Sometimes I feel that my texts would better captivate the audience if I associated them with a visual counterpoint, but there are situations wherein I am convinced that the image would diminish or restrain the horizon of the text... Why do books have such seductive powers? How come it is more difficult for us to forget a good book than a good movie? This happens because literature actively involves the reader into an imaginative process. He (she) is supposed to create in his mind the film of the whole narrative, to visually and sonically configure the story. The temptation of an art that could cover, though its representation means, the areal of all senses, always existed. The question is: when the creator guides you through a so well-defined sonic/figurative universe, are you able to transpose yourself in his fiction with same intensity as if it were yours? The ambiguity of the literary universe absorbs the reader's projections. You complete, as a reader, with your own fiction, the dotted lines, the shady zones of the script, and you are the one who chooses the exact image of every single thing evoked, you have the freedom to sketch all the portraits, to decide the casting of all protagonists. When I choose to associate a poem with images, to turn it into a video or into a theatre performance, I am aware that I resize and reshape it, that I am adding a new lecture-key to its original meaning. Meanwhile, my main

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concern is to keep the horizon of the text wide open. Therefore my choice is for semifigurative artistic expressions: they have a higher degree of ambiguity, they are more mysterious, therefore more appealing. We have particularly appreciated the way your love for lyricism of the metamorphosis leades you to combine symbolic elements with a figurative approach, to create an effective channel of communication between the conscious sphere and the subconscious level. This creates a compelling non linear narrative that, playing with the evocative power of reminders to universal imagery, establishes direct relations with the viewers. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

What I am trying to do is capture the infrareality, whatever is hidden under the curtain of cultural constructs and interpretations. I would avoid any term from those shaped and employed by psychoanalysts, although I am definitely the adept of C.G. Jung and G. Bachelard. I prefer not to do it because the "unconscious" became the hobbyhorse of the actual academism and of doubtful theoretical speculations. What I can say is that one cannot make art inspired by theory, on the contrary, in order to make art one has to get rid of any theoretical influence from his (her) own feeling and understanding. If there was ever a time when I wrote and painted really badly, it was when I fattened up on studies. I needed 10 years of rehab. You turn into an artist only from the moment when you get undressed of any cultural vesture that blurs or distorts your

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natural voice. I want to believe that I have come to the point when my creations have nothing demonstrative anymore, when I really found my "inborn" style, a way of speaking in my own particular language. You cannot get here if you don't know yourself...You need to destroy your supra-ego to be a true artist and a true human being as well, that's for sure. For each one of us, the most difficult thing is to cross the border set between a fake self image that has been culturally and socially shaped and the lands of our inner truth. My alchemical black-gold is the instinct. It's so hard to get in touch with it, to accede it, to let it guide you, to silence the voice of reasoning that is prone to contest any form of spontaneous knowledge! Reasoning is skeptical, by excellence. Spontaneous knowledge is, in fact, the result of thousands of years of ancestral experiences, it functions as a deep intuition that tells you who and what you're dealing with. I'll try to say it as simply as possible: we know what to eat instinctively, because our senses find some aliments repulsive and others irresistibly tasteful. Pleasure and disgust are sensors that warn us about what could be good for us and what cannot...What we perceive as having bad taste, could also be dangerous for our health. The same thing is true on an inter-human level. The attraction that we feel towards someone is a sample of instinctive â&#x20AC;&#x153;knowledgeâ&#x20AC;? that tells us, clearly, that we are dealing with someone that we are in harmony with. I think that pleasure is the media through which we are taught everything we need to know about ourselves in a primordial sense. Our thoughts, feelings, experiences, acts are not pointing out who we are as clearly as our desires. The aesthetic resonance between the art-consumer and the art-maker happens in the same way and has the same properties. This resonance has mirroring properties. There are art shapes capable of reflecting our own image like

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meditations on situations of social crisis or of tensions between values within a community, but I never intended them to have an ideological stake. I try to avoid the militant attitudes and the enrolment on the side of a doctrine by all means. I am very reluctant towards those pieces of so called engaged art, which are but ideological products and propaganda. I acquired this aversion when I was a child. I grew up in a country from the communist Eastern Bloc, I think it's understandable.

mirrors or to acquaint us with a face that we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know we had. Instinct is the compass of the primitive brain, also called reptilian in biology. If this archaic brain, that tells us who we are and what we need and have to know about life through senses and desires and not through words and judgements, would be completely subordinated by the other (the recent and rational one) the whole beauty and poetry of existence would collapse, the whole art would vanish, because art is born from the tension existing between the new brain that operates with logic formulas and abstract ideas and the old brain, that acts through instincts and feelings.

Your imagery shows a connection to urban fictions: however, we daresay that your approach goes beyond a merely interpretative aspect of the contexts you refer to. As the late Franz West did in his installations, your works show unconventional aesthetics in the way they deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of selfreflection. Would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you conceive humor as being situated at the contact surface with the sublime: while artists from the contemporary scene, as Ai WeiWei or more recently Jennifer Linton, use to express open sociopolitical criticism in their works, you seem more interested to hint the direction, inviting the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead to subvert a variety of cultural categories. In particular, you once remarked that art's role is to put ourselves in contact with our deeper self and senses. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in a certain sense or did you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

My attitude towards metaphor evolved in time. It could be the scaffolding of a whole novel or performance or painting. I will give you an example. One of my most recent poems that employs metaphors on one side, but is very straight and realistic on the other side. The mixture between a fantastic succession of images, with oneiric accents, and a raw, even aggressive disclosure of a tough reality, is something typical for my lyricism.

In a certain sense, yes, every art work has political echoes and implications, we are social-political beings, we live in a network, in a context. Surely, my creations are no exception, they have been conceived as

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Gosia Mielech Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland

My name is Malgorzata Mielech. I am a freelance artist based in Poland. I am a dancer, teacher, creator and a researcher involved with DanceLab. Coming from a Ballet background, I graduated from Olga Slawska-Lipczynska Ballet School (2007). In the years 2007?2012 I was a soloist in the Polish Dance Theatre and had the pleasure to collaborate with many supreme choreographers and directors, what gave me a various amount of artistic tools and creative incentives. I was dancing in the whole repertoire of Polish Dance Theatre and working with many choreographers including in particular: Ohad Naharin, Yossi Berg, Jacek Przybyłowicz , Gunhild Bjoernsgaard, Susanne Jaresand, Ewa Wycichowska and many others. Now I am co?founder of DanceLab, an independent dance company and co?creator of choreography and other artistic projects for the group. The Premiere of “ Sababa” (chor. M. Mielech, Z. Jakubiec) and “ We bleed the same color” (chor. Shi Pratt) happened in June 2013 at the Polish Theatre in Poznań. I also co?created a multidimensional artistic project called DanceLabirynth as well as „Nilreb”? a piece to sum up DanceLab’s residency in Berlin. I have toured with performances from DanceLab’s repertory in (Berlin, Jena, Jerusalem, Wroclaw, Krakow, Poznan), taking artistic residencies (Berlin – Uferstudios) and developing my dance skills by participating in various dance projects, festivals and numerous dance workshops . While being a freelance choreographer and dancer I created and performed a solo piece “Sacre”, directed by Krzysztof Raczkowski, on the 10th Poznań Ballet Spring in the Grand Theatre in Poznan. My latest solo piece called Anonymous had a premier in Poznan, Poland in June 2014. It’s a performance that connects dance, street art, original electronic live music and mapping.

Gosia Mielech

ART Habens

Gosia Mielech

ART Habens meets

Gosia Mielech An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Jurgen Stern, curator landescape@europe.com

Hello Gosia, and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual introductory question: what does in your opinion define a work of Art? By the way, what could be in your opinion the features that mark an artworks as a piece of Contemporary Art? Do you think that there's a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness?

In contemporary art there are no rules, no boundaries, no taboo subjects, no limit's and no tool more powerful than imagination. The key is to learn how to really listen to yourself, then observe, to be bothered about questions which may appear and let them begin an inner discourse. For me personally any creation ought to have a meaning, a micro or a mini mission to fulfil, in order to be called an art piece. Contemporary Art surrounds us from all around, it invigorates our senses, broadens our horizons and creates, for us, a perception of reality. It is a challenging responsibility to carry, for any Artist to satisfy the viewer’s deep hunger. For me personally a work of art needs to have an individual impact on a viewer, it has to DO something. It is not about seeking dramatic solutions or finding simple answers. It’s about being honest, searching and available. I wouldn’t say that there’s a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness, I am more inclined to say that they interpenetrate. By acknowledging the past with all its burdens, superstitions and an overwhelming tradition, Artist's can only gain creative incentives. Tradition is immortal, stable

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and entwined with dailiness. It would be a shame to deny the tradition, an immensity of inspirations that Artist's can confront their ultra contemporary approach with. Would you like to tell us something about your background? You have formal training and in 2007 you graduated from Olga SlawskaLipczynska Ballet School: moreover, I think it's important to remark that this wasn't your first experience with dance and that before graduating you already started a career in Ballet... How have these different experiences impacted on your development as an artist and on the way you currently create your dance?

Obviously, ballet technique has strongly influenced the beginning of my professional career. Simultaneously I was training in contemporary dance, as well as other dance techniques, that from the earliest years gave me a wide spectrum of dance education. The fascination and dedication to ballet turned out to leave strong technical fundamentals in the body and habits that I was able to confront in the later years, by focusing on improvisation and seeking for different values and qualities of movement in dance. Improvisation opened up a totally new chapter in my life. Dance wasn’t about perfect figures, symmetrical excellence and partly numb body anymore. I started focusing on imagination and more importantly, I started to really listen to my body instead of telling it what to do. From that moment on, I was more careful and conscious about the reality that surrounds me. During my years of dancing in the Polish Dance Theatre, I was able to turn theory into practice by combining my movement research and collaborating with many sublime choreographers. Another milestone on my dance self-education route was discovering GaGa language. After several visits to Israel, where GaGa originates from, I became entirely inspired by this movement philosophy, which is created by Ohad Naharin. “There are many things in it: the importance of yielding and the collapse of delicacy, connecting effort to pleasure, working without mirrors, being aware of our explosive power and sometimes using it. Being calm and alert at once.” – Ohad Naharin.

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Discovering GaGa triggered me to look for more joy, freedom, courage, self- acceptance and to focus on my personal body language. Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

The process of creating a new piece starts long before I enter a dance studio. The beginnings are very blurry, I usually have some scattered images in my head and a general idea of the piece. Then I start my research, I look for inspiration's, mostly focusing on various visual stimulus, which has the strongest impact on me. I see an image, a piece of street art hidden inside a scruffy gate in the middle of a busy, soulless, hectic street and I get absolutely captivated. Even when I come to a rehearsal with a fixed plan, I never know what will come out of it, because I deal with a very sensitive matter, which is my mind. I often connect to my feelings and memories and I am mixing it with my abstractive fantasy world. After a few weeks of more theoretical research I am able to lock myself in the studio. Creating choreographic material is based on different improvisation tasks, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an ongoing experiment. It is a unique, beautiful and very challenging time. In a way I am starting a new chapter of my life. I am also facing my demons â&#x20AC;&#x201C;I get frustrated, insecure, I fight not to be too judgmental or overly ambitious. It may easily destroy spontaneity, joy and roughness that I appreciate so much. Music is equivalent to dance in my opinion, so I spend a lot of time either discussing thoughts with djâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, producers and musicians or completing a soundtrack myself. The entire process of creating a dance piece; mastering the technical aspects of it and working on both the dramaturgic and energetic cohesion of the piece as well as bringing together all the other artistic elements (costumes, scenography, lighting) takes few months.

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Now let's focus on your art production: I would start from your extremely interesting work entitled We Bleed The Same Color that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: I would suggest our readers to visit your website directly at http://www.dancelab.eu in order to get a wider idea of it as well as of your current artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this piece? What was your initial inspiration?

Shi Pratt’s (choreographer of the piece) initial inspiration was a social interaction, closeness and intimacy between individuals. The creative process was truly interesting. We were given very detailed, surprising tasks, that we individually or jointly were dealing with. For instance, Shi gave us a map of a sewage system in New York – we were supposed to choose one of the routes for ourselves and then transform these paths into movements, making a duet with another dancer who picked a different route. So we were faced with a goal; we had to find a connection between a very real thing: a New York’s sewage system map and our interpretation of it in conjunction with a partner. Shi was watching us for hours in total silence, she saw us struggling, being stuck in one spot, failing but all the time progressing and learning about one another. An other example in the performance: there is a scene called ‘hunt’. It is a very intimate and yet quite strong in meaning, part of the piece. It is about changing stories and shifting between extreme emotions. One time you’re yielding, then you’re attacking. It's a sweet and bitter game. Basically Shi was leading us through movement and a mental rollercoaster and pushing us to experiment with our limitations. We Bleed The Same Color creates a hermetic, isolated reality in which we play different parts; we hunt, seduce, protect, dominate and dream. In the piece we play with arousing, disrupting connection and intimacy to highlight the ways in which we form social connections. As you have remarked, We Bleed The Same Color explores the differences and similarities of how we understand and experience situations in relation to each other and what has mostly impacted on me of this wonderful piece if the

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perfect symbiosis that you have been capable of establishing between the harmony of the movement and a skillful usage of light, which creates such a parallel dimension to our perception process... This has reminded me the well known Picasso's quote "Everything you can imagine is real" I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience from real world is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I would rather say that personal experience from the real world is an inescapable and natural part of a creative process. Experiences are shaping our personality and understanding of the world. I think that the creative process could be disconnected from a direct experience, however Artist needs to have something to relate to, not necessarily something tangible. It can be an abstract image, story or adventure, but substantial enough to visualize. As long as we can imagine something. Then it exists in our mind. We are able to connect to it, reflect on it and make it real for ourselves. The power of imagination is crucial in every creative process. So the more connected, to the fantasy elements within us, we are, the more creative we become. Every experience enriches us as a human being. We learn and mature through discovering life. Multidisciplinarity and experimentation are a recurrent and very important features of your dance practice: for example, Anonymous which recently had a premier in Poznan it's a stimulating performance that connects dance, street art, original electronic live music and mapping... while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I would be more inclined to say, that synergy definitely helps to achieve some results, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the only way to do so. By integrating different fields of art, we can enlarge the impact on the viewer and deliver a fuller picture. It is also a chance to present the spectator with a form of art that was unfamiliar to him until now.

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It gives us unlimited potential and thanks to this, we can create a multilayered piece of art, that has no artistic, nor cultural boundaries. However, it is possible to make an evenly powerful statement by using less elements. There is a very strong message in simplicity and monism. Sometimes the piece is mainly focused on physicality, roughness, naturalistic dance, which cannot be distracted by fancy lighting, costume or even sound. Everything depends on what the artist is trying to say, how he can express that and keep the cohesion within the performance. A feature of the stimulating Sababa that I have highly appreciated is the way you force the viewers to a deep intellectual interaction and involvement, communicating a wide variety of states of mind: forcing the viewer to explorate and in a certain sense to challenge the usual way we perceive the space... I would go as far as to state that this work, rather than simply describing something, pose us questions: and in a certain sense forces us to meditate to the way we perceive not only the outside world, but our inner one...

We live in a society that cultivates speed, greed, a culture of material achievement, power and superficiality. There is seldom a place left in life for deeper contemplation, pursuit of peace and balance. It is a pure luxury being able to appreciate the reality and listen intently to yourself. Sababa is all about sharing and rediscovering inner perception. Sababa is a dance piece, that illustrates Zofia and my (co- creator of the piece) overwhelming fascination with dance, freedom and commendation of Israeli culture. It presents a sine wave of peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emotions. The viewer can either relate to it, or just observe. As you correctly noticed we are not trying to describe anything, or ask questions. We simply reveal a piece of our inner, abstract world. We are inviting the audience to enter a non verbal dialogue, from which the spectator takes whatever he or she wishes and builds a fantasy story. The piece does evoke emotions, usually brings positive thoughts and leaves the audience uplifted. People often compare Sababa to their favourite video clip or a mood busting, refreshing song that they can listen

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ART Habens

Gosia Mielech

to over and over again. Every time we perform that piece I leave the stage feeling overwhelmed by the enthusiastic feedback and honest satisfaction. There is nothing more awarding than touching other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emotions by taking them on a journey. I think it's important to mention that you are the co-founder of co-founder of DanceLab, an independent dance company and co-creator of choreography and other artistic projects for the group: dance is intrinsically a collaborative practice and I do believe that interdisciplinary collaboration today is an ever growing force in Art and that that most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about these effective synergies? By the way, the artist Peter Tabor once said that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

As long as you keep your integrity and you are open to other influences you can only benefit from any creative collaboration. I take great inspiration from that. Sometimes, leaving your comfort zone, your studio, where without any distractions you can develop your project in an intimate atmosphere, can be very beneficial. I discovered that, while working on the Anonymous performance, I was switching rehearsal spaces. The creative process was literally happening all the time, in various venues. One of them was an art gallery, which exhibits beautiful photographs by a renowned polish photographer, Szymon Brodziak, who specializes in black and white pictures, capturing womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beauty. The gallery looks like a fish tank, it is a rectangular, mostly glazed space, which is situated on a busy street in Poznan. The main inspiration for Anonymous is street art. It was a perfect opportunity to create, despite the fact that I was surrounded by people and street life, but most of all being constantly exposed to everyone. It was a unique experience. Usually beginning a creative process is a very personal

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Gosia Mielech

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ART Habens

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ART Habens

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Gosia Mielech

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Gosia Mielech

ART Habens

time. In dance it is never overly interesting for an accidental viewer, it is all about endless repetitions, brain work, not much about dancing. It was extremely challenging to stick to my slow, careful research instead of letting my ambition win and dance my heart out while people were stopping to stare at me. In this case, it wasn't about any direct collaboration with an other artist, it was a more blanket experience. So far your works have been exhibited in several important occasions and it goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

When I was wondering if there is a possibility of a genuine relation between art and business, my first answer was: no, there isn't. But then I thought, often, when art and business meet, great things can happen. It usually introduces art to a wider range of people and allows artists to create without a constant financial struggle. It also brings colour to business. I guess, if you’re creating a piece for a special request, then you are obliged to deliver ‘the product’ and agree on some compromises along the way. Does it mean that this artistic creation can’t be perceived as a piece of art anymore? The answer is: of course it can. It is still art. The unquestionable fact is that the Artist, in order to be able to exist and to produce new creative material, has to have a financial input. That’s where business comes in. Art and business don’t have to exclude each other as long as artists keep creative freedom and the Artist doesn't end up being forced to sign a contract with the devil, whereby they become limited and censored. To answer your first question: I

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Gosia Mielech

respect my audience a lot, so when I build a performance I think about how certain aspects of it will influence them, but I don’t wonder whether they will like it or not. It’s not about mutual sympathy, I want to take them on a journey and evoke reflections. It doesn’t matter if they are an educated contemporary dance enthusiasts or just a random person. The spectator is my companion, someone I care about. I take him on a journey, talk to him, share feelings, build trust, however I’m always going to be a separate individual, no matter how much we’ve been through together. Art for me is about sharing the magic, creating a “parallel universe” in which the viewer can dream and live the experience. Its roots were still firmly set in the root of the social world. Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Małgorzata. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Thank you for asking me all these intriguing questions. They were quite personal and challenging – I enjoyed this interview a lot. I have a very exciting time ahead of me. I will be involved in a variety of interesting collaborations and performing my own dance pieces nationally and internationally. I will be creating a couple of projects in Poznań, Cultural Center Zamek (an interdisciplinary institution presenting the most interesting phenomena of contemporary culture, such areas as visual arts, theatre, film, music and literature). I will be involved in Arbor Cosmica; Andrzej Panufnik's jubilee and ‘My Music’ project. I will also participate in a research project with Isabelle Schad (Berlin based choreographer) in Old Brewery, New Dance. I will be performing ‘Anonymous’ project in London (The Place) from 4th until 8thof November. I would love to invite all our readers to join me there.

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