LandEscape Art Review // Special Issue 2013

LandEscape Anniversary Edition

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Anniversary Edition

NICOLAS VIONNET NARA WALKER FREYA KAZEMI JASPER VAN LOON MARIA KOSTAREVA KITTY VON SOMETIMES MARIA KOSTAREVA SIMA YOUSEFNIA YE'ELA WOLSCHANSKI Endgame, 2016 six channel digital video installation at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery

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SUMMARY

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C o n t e m p o r a r y

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Freya Kazemi

Nicolas Vionnet

Kitty Von-Sometimes

Jasper van Loon

Nara Walker

Sima Yousefnia

Canada

Switzerland

United Kingdom

The Netherlands

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Freya Kazemi is an Iranian-Canadian abstract painter.

Ancient Persian art, Iranian elements and rare art miniatures, bold colors and Farsi poetry coming from her native roots contributed to her inspiration resulting in extraordinary paintings and art creations. Her work reflects her inner sole. Incredible artistic use of her creative hands allows her to transfer her flow of energy into her work. As a result, communicating her inner feelings and deepest emotions through her creations.

Copper and gold sheet collage paintings from her motherland have also inspired and influenced her greatly.

Vionnet’s preferred medium is acrylic on canvas. His chiefly large-scale works play with space and expanse.

Although almost always realistic, his paintings have more in common with abstract images than real landscapes. He paints disruptive grey strips across his clouds and allows coloured surfaces to drip down the canvas in accordance with the laws of gravity.

Vionnet is fascinated by such irritations: interventions that approach and create a non-hierarchical dialogue with the environment. This dialogue opens up a field of tension, which allows the viewer an intensi-ve glimpse of both these phenomena.

I take what is in my head and make it real. I am a child born of the emerging digital world and have a compulsive hunger to record what I do. My existence is but a drop in the ocean - all the documentation I have forms the ripples. My inspiration comes from childhood dreams, from synchronicity, from public participation, in freeing those from their own constraints and a personal obsession with spandex. I proactively involve those outside of art to become art, to live art, to feel art.

Those who are entangled in what I do, what I make, are often completely unknown to me before the pieces merge us together.

Undercurrents of female empowerment run deep, specifically with regard to the female form but come secondary to creating visual images.

My work often starts from memories, memories of certain places. A spot in the forest concealed by the leaves of a small overhanging branch from a large tree. Once the perfect hiding place. Only to discover that the overhanging branch is now long gone, the image from the memory altered into something different.

Maybe it's me who has changed, maybe it's the place itself. Or perhaps the memory was false to begin with and twisted itself into something I desired at the moment of recollection. In my work I ponder about these things and try to grasp the concept of place. What is a sense of place? Which audio-visual elements of the visited landscape are important?

I am interested in the viewers perspective as the voyeur thus uses the process of revealing and concealing to course tension. Through lust and fantasy my work aims to manipulate the viewer into the voyeurs position.

The body reacts to the touch of another, as does my work. Like a kiss to the back of the knee or a finger brushing up against the inside thigh.

Each mark I make influences another due to the sensual side of making that mark. The medium reacts to the surface, the surface to the medium, my hands and other appliances creating that tactile connection.

Each stroke, gesture or movement captured upon the surface representing the physicality and pleasure of creating for the voyeur to participate.

Most people think and dream in private and they do not want anyone to know about their thoughts or dreams or they are afraid to express them to others and society.

Silence is one of the most profound feelings that we, as humans, often can sense in our lives. But when it engulfs us, it turns all our thoughts and feelings into a mysterious serenity.

Silence eyes, silence lips, silence hands.

Some break it. Some never awaken its voiceless voice forever inside. Today, the modern human lives differently than his predecessors. He lives in large or mega cities.

His life is full of chaos and challenges.

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Nicolas Vionnet

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lives and works in Basel, Switzerland

Maria Kostareva

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lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Kitty Von Sometime

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lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Jasper van Loon

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lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands

Freya Kazemi

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lives and works in Toronto, Canada

Nara Walker Ye'ela Wilschanski

Maria Kostareva

Kosmas Giannoutakis

Israel

United Kingdom

Greece/United Kingdom

Using my body and voice to express myself, is what I have been doing since I was born. As an artist, my body and voice are the most readily available raw materials to create from and about. I started my way as an artist sewing clothes for my dolls. I needed to sketch my sewing designs, and those sketches progressed to paintings. Yearning for tools to paint, I went to art school. There, I was exposed to sculpture. I found that three dimensional is much more interesting than two. The more I learned sculpting techniques, the more I became interested in the movement my body makes when I engage with a material.

I use the simplest materials in my artwork.

These are usually paper and black ink. Such ascetic means remind me of the classic art of the East. The lines of landscape are transformed into signs, hieroglyphs that you need to read.

However, my pictures do not carry specific meaning of certain phrases, they are volatile and bent to deconstruction. Main means of composition that I use are line and blur.

The line reveals the outlines of the subject’s form, the spot fills its volume, allows it to appear on the white surface of the sheet.

Sometimes I work in color, but the basic principles of graphic image are retained even then, adding inward the relationships of colors. I am inspired by nature, but transform it into something new.

Game, as social extension of brain activity, and Play, as associated complex behavior, are concepts fundamentally related with every creative process.

Perception and creation of Art are creative complex processes with an intrinsic gaming nature, well hidden in the subconscious. The focus of my artistic research, is to raise the mind's gaming nature to the level of conscious awareness by creating artworks, which are performative art games.

Using sound as the main communicating medium, my engaged performers interact with dynamic audiovisual systems by developing listening virtuosity and acting adaptability.

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lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Kosmas Giannoutakis 88 lives and works in Athens, Greece

Sima Yousefnia

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lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Ye'ela Wilschanski

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lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel Special thanks to Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar, Joshua White, Nicolas Vionnet, Genevieve Favre Petroff, Sandra Hunter, MyLoan Dinh, John Moran, Marya Vyrra, Gemma Pepper, Michael Nelson, Hannah Hiaseen and Scarlett Bowman, Yelena York Tonoyan, Miya Ando, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar and Robyn Ellenbogen.

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Nicolas Vionnet Lives and works in Baselh, Switzerland

An artist's statement

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ionnet’s preferred medium is acrylic on canvas. His chiefly large-scale works play with space and expanse. Although almost always realistic, his paintings have more in common with abstract images than real landscapes. He paints disruptive grey strips across his clouds and allows coloured sur-faces to drip down the canvas in accordance with the laws of gravity.

Vionnet is fascinated by such irritations: interventions that approach and create a non-hierarchical dialogue with the environ-ment. This dialogue opens up a field of tension, which allows the viewer an intensi-ve glimpse of both these phenomena.

Vionnet uses the same approach and the same strategy for his installations. Irritation and integration. A fundamental confrontation with the history of a place leads to a subtler and more precise intervention of the object. Take for

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example his man-made grass island at the Weimarhallen Park (Weimar, GER), which ironically inten-sified the park’s own artificiality.

In ‘Close the Gap’ (Leipzig, GER) he bridged the space between an old-town row of houses with a printed canvas image of the now much frowned upon prefabricated buil-ding. A reference to changes in time and aesthetics.

Nicolas Vionnet lives and works in the Zuricharea. He graduated from the Hochschule fürGestaltung und Kunst Basel. He graduated in2009 from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimarwith a Master of Fine Arts degree after studyingon the university’s Public Art and New ArtisticStrategies programme.

Vionnet has partici-pated in various exhibitions at home and abroadsince 1999, including at the Kunsthalle Basel,the Neues Museum Weimar (Gallery marke.6)and the III Moscow International Biennale forYoung Art.

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LandEscape meets

Nicolas Vionnet An interview by Julian Thomas Ross, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator landescape@europe.com

Multidisciplinary artist Nicolas Vionnet's work explores the relationship between the Self and the collective consciousness, highlighting the unstable relation between these apparently opposite aspects. In his works that we'll be discussing in the following pages, he unveils the connections between our perceptual process and the elusive nature of our bodies' physicality yo accomplish the difficult task of drawing the viewers into a multilayered experience in which they are urged to rethink about the stages of the soul, spirit and body from before birth to afterlife. One of the most convincing aspect of Vionnet's approach is the way it condenses the permanent flow of associations in the realm of memory and experience: we are really pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production.

Hello Nicolas, and a warm welcome to LandEscape To start this interview would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any particular experiences that have impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks?

I grew up in the region of Basel, Switzerland, and have completed my education at the University of Art and Design Basel and at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. During the first few years I have

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been mainly dealing with painting. Decisive for my current artistic practice was my twoyear stay in Weimar, where I graduated from the Public Art and New Artistic Strategy master’s program.

During this time I was given the chance to realize my first major interventions in public space. It was an exciting and very intense time where I mainly learned to perceive my environment in a completely different way, to react and to undertake artistic interventions.

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 principal approach in nearly all projects is quite similar, but the final work can differ greatly. In the context of an exhibition I often get a proposed specific place or I have the freedom to choose from a range of different locations in public space.

My process usually begins with photo tours and walks where I am trying to become familiar with a place. Important questions for me are: how do the citizens use the place, what is its function and what role does it take in everyday life? Are there any

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special circumstances or other conspicuous issues? In the next stage I start an exhaustive research, go to the library or the city archive and try to clarify the historical background of the site. During this period I normally have the first clear ideas and I start to do visualizations with Photoshop. If an idea is strong enough and can survive for several days or weeks, I move to the final phase where I start to test and to work with the needed material to finally realize the work.

Now let's focus on your art production: we would start from A New Found Glory and Men after work, one of your earlier pieces that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to our readers to visit your website directly at http://www.nicolasvionnet.ch in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of these interesting projects?

What was your initial inspiration?

The first project you mentioned, A New Found Glory, was realized together with my friend Wouter Sibum from Rotterdam.

We both graduated from the Public Art and New Artistic Strategies program in Weimar and since then, often working together as a duo. For example we realized the work Colour me surprised as part of the III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art in 2012.

A New Found Glory was conceived one year later in a closed public toilet known as the M¸llloch (litter-hole) next to the Herdbr¸cke at the Donau in Ulm. For years, this non-place is closed off for the public. It gathers more and more garbage and is overgrown by weeds and wild flowers over the years. We were looking for a funny

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Nicolas Vionnet

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response to the still unresolved problem and decided to install a fountain in the middle of the forbidden zone. A fountain that was only just visible for the passersby, but once looked into the hole reveals to be filling the space completely. Thus, not only surprising the passersby - at the same time also a touch of festivity and glory returned to the old city wall in Ulm. The second work, Men after work, was a minimal intervention that I have realized in the project room of WIDMER + THEODORIDIS contemporary in Zurich. The room consisted of a long, dark passage, which finally ended in a courtyard in the heart of the old town of Zurich. On the one hand, I was referring on the exhibition title Men at work. On the other hand, the small but noticeable road construction warning light has flashed in unfamiliar red light through this dark alley and had a magnetic effect on passersby. I have to underline that we only know road construction warning lights with yellow appearance in Switzerland. Therefore the red light was irritating and many of the passers-by saw it more like an indication of a red light bar.

Furthermore I found the idea of a road construction warning light very charming and narrative: it is clocking-off time; the light is set to red. Come on in!

One of the features that has mostly impacted on me of Jacuzzi, is the way you are effectively capable of recontextualizing the idea of the environment we live in, which is far from being just the background of our existence: you Art in a certain sense forces the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive environment... so I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

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It is indeed the case that my work tries to sensitize the people for their immediate environment. My works are often restrained, unobtrusive and directly embedded in the landscape – my work would not be readable without a specific surrounding. So it is always about this dialogue, the positioning, interaction and what can come out of these situations. This forces the viewer to perceive the environment from a new perspective.

Unimportant and inconspicuous becomes suddenly important and intrusive.

Now to your question: Our experiences shape us throughout life. I see this like a simple classical conditioning. Our experiences are a key factor of how we perceive our world and how we behave in certain situations. You thus always have an impact, even if we are not always aware. In this sense, I don’t think that a creative process can be really disconnected from experience.

Multidisciplinary is a recurrent feature of your artistic production and I have appreciated the effective synergy that you create between different materials, as in the stimulating Extent of reflection: while crossing the borders of different techniques 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 must admit in all honesty: Yes, I actually work with synergies, but it was never intended to do so. I very often rely on my gut instinct and just try to bring the work to a coherent state.

One advantage of your mentioned interdisciplinary approach is that a work, through the interaction of different techniques, automatically focuses on several aspects and thus can be read on

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several levels. However, I am not consciously looking for these multiple layers.

In 2011, I have realized the installation Out of sight, out of mind in a former Stasi prison in Chemnitz, Germany. The work consisted of a huge mountain of shredded paper, with which I have filled a former interstitial space knee-high. As additional audio-element there were hectic noises of steps and shredding machines. The whole work addressed the last days of the Stasi shortly before the fall oft he wall in 1989.

The Stasi tried to destroy as many secret documents as possible. Even today, there are thousands of bags with shredded paper remnants that are now reassembled laboriously by hand. A hilarious story. In this sense you can see my work as a staging of the last hectic hours of the Stasi in 1989.

Another interesting work of yours that have particularly impressed me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Warum Denken traurig macht, and which is a clear example of what you have once defined as "nonhierarchical dialogue with the environment". By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, I can recognize such a socio political aim in your Art: a constant stimulation that we absolutely need to get a point of balance that might give us the chance of re-interpreting the world we live in... and our lives, indeed...

My work often focuses on the topics of integration and irritation. In other words, I'm trying to integrate something new into the existing environment and thus to irritate at the same time. However, the confusion should be subtle. The phrase "nonhierarchical dialogue with the environment" describes my conviction that the artwork itself may never be dominant.

Indeed, there should be no hierarchy.

Ideally, there is a balance between work and environment. This balance allows the

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viewer to perceive both components simultaneously.

The installation Warum Denken traurig macht in my view is an oddity among my works. This project was shown in the socalled art box, a typical white cube in the shape of a container that is shown in different locations in the city of Uster. Due to the physical presence oft the box, there was already an existing hierarchy, which I could not prevent. However, I wanted to follow a particular path. Many artists before me have used the box a simple white cube to showcase their existing works. In no case I wanted to do the same. I have decided to give the box a new residential function and to turn it into a retirement home. The whole room was papered, the walls were decorated with old family photos and at the door there was a cloak hanging. In between, the phone rang and you could hear the radio.

The people have actually thought that the box is inhabited.

By the way: the work's title referred to the same-named book from Georges Steiner, an American literary critic, essayist and philosopher During these years your works have been exhibited in several important occasions, both in Switzerland, where you are currently based, and abroad: and I think it's important to remark that you took part to the III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art... It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or just the expectation of positive feedback- could even influence the process of an artist...

By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

Absolutely. An artist needs an audience; I

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think that's probably one of the most important things. I want that my work can be seen! Art is destined to be shared! It is not that much important to me that I can sell my work, however, I am more interested to exhibit my work in a professional context and on a regular basis.

Sales may of course also have a negative influence on the artist's way of working.

Many artists argue that they are completely independent - I see that as utterly false.

Let's be honest: If you feel a large interest and for example you can sell a complete series of works at once, there is a high probability that you go back to your studio and start working on similar pieces again. I think this is quite normal.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Nicolas. 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?

I would like to thank you for your interest.

My work is currently shown at several locations. At the Kulturort Galerie Weiertal (Winterthur, ending on September 7,2014) I present two installation works in a magnificent park (one of the works is the above mentioned Jacuzzi). Furthermore I participate in a group show entitled Small Works at Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, New York, July 18 – August 22, 2014). There will be a group show entitled Trovato, non veduto at Ausstellungsraum Klingental (Basel, November 1 – 16, 2014). Moreover I am very excited to do another project together with Wouter Sibum (Rotterdam). We will present a major intervention in the sea as part oft he 4th Biennial Aarhus exhibit called Sculpture by the sea. This show will start in June 2016. You are cordially invited to visit my website www.nicolasvionnet.ch, where you can find more information and all exhibition dates.

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Maria Kostareva Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

An artist's statement

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use the simplest materials in my artwork.

These are usually paper and black ink. Such ascetic means remind me of the classic art of the East. The lines of landscape are transformed into signs, hieroglyphs that you need to read.

However, my pictures do not carry specific meaning of certain phrases, they are volatile and bent to deconstruction.

Main means of composition that I use are line and blur. The line reveals the outlines of the subject’s form, the spot fills its volume, allows it to appear on

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the white surface of the sheet.

Sometimes I work in color, but the basic principles of graphic image are retained even then, adding inward the relationships of colors.

I am inspired by nature, but transform it into something new.

It is important for me to convey not the formal similarity to the nature, but the spiritual substance, to create an image of a mountain that encloses the idea of all the mountains.

I do not depict a plot, I depict something that is near the plot.

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LandEscape meets

Maria Kostareva An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Maria Kostareva accomplishes the difficult task of a establishing an effective synergy between still image and movement, creating an area in which emotional dimension and perceptual reality coexist in a coherent unity. Throughout her multidisciplinary practice, she seeks to remove any contingent gaze to the reality she hints to: Kostareva's work reveals an incessant search of an organic dialogue between several viewpoints, that offers to the viewer a multilayered experience capable of establishing an area of deep interplay where we are invited to explore unexpected relationships with reality and the way we perceive it. I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating works.

Hello Maria and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, are there any experiences that have particularly influenced your evolution as an artists and that still impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

I cannot know what affects me at one time or another.

Sometimes it seems that something significant is happening, but in fact, one look, word or thought may be decisive. Perhaps my desire for expression and comprehension of nature in my works is related to childhood spent in a village, but maybe it isn’t. I do not think there was a single evolutionary element; I want to believe that I am constantly in progress.

Of course, careful study of art history reveals many new worlds to me, and it cannot pass without a trace.

I always have impressive examples that leave their subtle footprints in my work. I am very close to the Chinese traditional painting, primitive art of the first

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people, and the feeling of space in the works of Francis Bacon at the moment.

Your unique approach is marked out with a deep multidisciplinary feature and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between simple materials as paper and ink: while crossing the borders of Painting, Photography and Drawing and have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between such disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

The division into painting and drawing for me is rather arbitrary. In the Eastern tradition, for example, all that is created with a brush is considered painting, and graphic arts exist only in a printed form. I think ink is a very picturesque material, and on the contrary, I often use almost monochrome palette in an oil painting, which makes it graphical. I am really attracted to the simplest and almost ascetic materials, when the inner richness of the image depends entirely on how a dot of paint or a line is drawn. An important thought requires minimum of words.

Photography in my work occupies a special place. In fact, I rarely have considered it as a separate project.

For me it is rather a transitional stage between a look itself and its reflection on paper or canvas, similar to a draft. I see something magical, almost ritual in the art of photography. It is like kidnaping a part of the nature.

That is why I usually need additional means to comprehend an image captured in a photo. Thus, the "Lines of Etna" is a special project for me to some extent.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Lines of Etna that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to our readers to visit your website directly at http://www.m-kostareva.com in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production... In the meanwhile, would you like to tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

The main inspiration of the project was undoubtedly the place itself. When I was going from Catania to Etna, I thought it would be a spectacular experience, but did not plan any special project.

However, the force of creation inherent to this place became the source of my project. I wanted to consign the feeling of breath of this extraterrestrial place where

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stones are born. From soft, fluid, indefinite there appear solid, strong, clear. The aesthetics of the lines of nature itself is so concise and significant as if they were written in ink already; I just fixed it with camera. I think Etna may be considered the author of this project in a greater degree than I am. However, the main task of the artist is to see.

A relevant feature of Lines of Etna that has particularly impacted on me is the way you highlight the inner bond between Man and Nature: you invite the viewer to appreciate the intrinsic but sometimes disregarded beauty of geometrical patterns, bringing a new level of significance to the idea of landscape itself. In particular, remining me of the concept of non-lieu elaborated by the French anthropologist Marc AugĐš, this series raises a question on the role of the viewers' perception, forcing us to going beyond the common way we perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... I'm personally convinced that some information are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

I understand what you mean. Indeed, to see something with clear unclouded eyes you need to remove all the excessive. Moreover, for me this is the beauty. I do not think that by choosing the path of minimalism I abandon aesthetics. The interaction between man and nature is an important aspect of my work. Image of the Ocean in Tarkovsky's film "Solaris" seems very interesting to me. In this film the visualization of nature is made not only as a single living organism, but also as its ability to influence a person, to see his thoughts, generate visions. I tend to this understanding of nature as a reflection of a man. This does not mean that I diminish the importance of nature. Namely in its versatility, complexity and diversity one can find something important for the understanding of oneself.

Therefore, each landscape is in fact a portrait, an infinitely changeable one, because every viewer will see something of his or her own, private. On the other hand, a person is a whole world. Hence, the portrait becomes an image of the universe, i.e. landscape. It is actually a two-way communication.

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The Noise, Three canvases 80*90*3 / 110*90*3 / 80*90*3 cm. Canvases are arranged in a line, two side canvases are 15

Lines of Etna suggests a process of deconstruction and assemblage of memories that leads to a semantic restructuration of a view has reminded me of the ideas behind Thomas Demand's works, when he stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". While conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you

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explore. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

It’s an interesting question. I think both of these ideas are true to some extent. For example, "Lines of Etna" are images that exist on the edge of abstraction. However, there is also a psychological moment of remembrance in them. The pursuit of pure, abstract comprehension of the world is primary for me. I think we should try to go beyond

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cm lower than the central one.

our mental experience to get closer to understanding of the essence of things. On the other hand, I think that the component of personal experience will still find its manifestation, there is just no need to concentrate on it. It is a paradox that the process of overcoming the experience is a unique experience itself.

I definitively love the way you recontextualize the idea of the environment we live in: by the way, many contemporary landscape artists as the photographer Edward Burtynsky or Michael Light have some form of environmental or political message in their

photographs. Do you consider that your works are political in this way or do you seek to maintain a neutral approach?

I do not put political overtones in my works intentionally. I think politics is a phenomenon of a different order than an artistic image. On the other hand, if a person understands something about himself and his place in society, looking at my work, it is great.

Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled

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The Noise. I like the way you have created a lively synaesthesia, offering a concrete materialization of the abstract idea of noise: in particular, when I first happened to get to know with this work I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of a primary element as water to a single meaning.

I later realized I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

In "The Noise" I wanted to understand how such a specific means as oil painting can reproduce something indefinite, an abstract idea. A painting is both an object and space that contains a set of images formed in the mind of the viewer. It does not seek to put an image into a form, to endow it with ability to move.

When obstacles appear, a new abstraction is born, beautiful in its chaotic condition, and a system error (television interference) acquires canonical form.

Image of emptiness, like the image of chaos, is possible only in an abstract painting. Usual images and objects are filled with allegories and allusions fixed in age-old tradition. Giving them up grants infinite freedom of self-expression. Abstract images are clean and free, which brings them closer to something firstborn and sacred. Perhaps this is the way beyond experience, of which we spoke.

And I couldn't do without mentioning your interesting painting production: in particular, I would like to highlight your recent pieces entitled Reindeers and Rain, that have particularly impacted on me for the reminders to the concept of Heterotopia that you have effectively illustrated in your piece In a mirror, that I have to admit is one of mu favourite painting of yours. I like the way you take a story and re-contextualize it, bringing new messages and inviting the viewer to elaborate personal interpretations: at the same time, you do not reject a gaze on aesthetics, creating a lively combination between conceptual and beauty. How important is the aesthetic problem for you when you conceive a work?

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Maria Kostareva

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I do not always depict a story, but rather something near it. My pictures do not carry specific meaning of a certain phrase; they are changeable and inclined to deconstruction.

Sketchiness and incompleteness raised to a creative principle should activate the viewer's imagination, making it imagine the complementary part of the work and feel like a partner in the creative process. The lines are transformed into signs, hieroglyphs that you want to read.

Line reveals the outline form of the object, spot fills its volume and allows it to appear on the white surface of the sheet. It is interesting for me to see how the particular appears out of the general, how a landscape reveals architectural features and the streets and buildings show spontaneous aspect of a landscape. I'm inspired by nature, but transform it into something new.

Narrative of a picture appears in the minds of the audience; my works don’t have a clear line of the plot initially.

Aesthetics for me is very important, but in a distinctive way. I can not to concentrate on the beauty of a form, but it is important for me to reproduce the beauty of thought, of pure idea.

You've taken still life subjects and given it real emotional charge. What inspires this expressionist approach? By the way, any comments about your pallette? How did it evolve through the years?

At the beginning of the work I often see only a vague image of what I want to express. I may be inspired by music, poem, visual image, but the painting is formed in the process of work. This process itself is the real impulse. Sometimes, though, already working on a painting, I still do not know what I’ll end up with. I think that's fine.

This process is spontaneous. Dark and almost monochrome colors are close to me at the moment. It is chaos from which an image appears step by step. When working with ink I depart from the ideal whiteness of sheet on which a shadow appears. These are, in principle, similar processes.

Working directly with color is also interesting for me. I was fascinated by one particular shade of blue most recently, which manifested itself in several of my works. If we consider the development of the palette for several years, I can see that my works are in general

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characterized by cold dark colors. I like that all the energy in this case remains inside the picture, doesn’t splash out. It's a powerful dynamics closed in a still image.

But sometimes I feel that I need strong, contrasting color combinations, such as in my Spanish series.

Apparently, the place itself has an impact on the formation of such images.

During these years your works have been internationally exhibited including a recent participation at the Open Studio en Can Serrat, in Barcelona: so before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

Experience of participation in artistic residencies seems to me a very inspiring practice. This is an opportunity to see my work as if from the outside. It was important for me to get feedback not only from the audience, but also from the foreign artists.

However, I cannot say that the audience greatly affects the process of creating my works. I do not think that the viewer can influence me in the choice of the artistic language.

Nevertheless, the audience is necessary for my work. Only the viewer gives the completeness to my paintings, they live in a variety of interpretations of different people. It fills them with versatile meanings.

Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts, Maria.

Finally, I would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects.

Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

As I said, primitive art is one of the main sources of inspiration for me at the moment. I will go to Spain this year to study the Paleolithic cave paintings of Altamira.

I want to see the very source of graphic art, which appeared long before history, before the concept of "art" itself. I would like to make a series of paintings based on this journey.

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Reagan Lake

Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

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I

take what is in my head and make it real. I am a child born of the emerging digital world and have a compulsive hunger to record what I do. My existence is but a drop in the ocean - all the documentation I have forms the ripples. My inspiration comes from childhood dreams, from synchronicity, from public participation, in freeing those from their own constraints and a personal obsession with spandex.

I proactively involve those outside of art to become art, to live art, to feel art. Those who are entangled in what I do, what I make, are often completely unknown to me before the pieces merge us together.

Undercurrents of female empowerment run deep, specifically with regard to the female form but come secondary to creating visual images.

I envelop the viewer in a candyland, summoning them without them knowing why there is a sudden desire to come out to play. The series The Weird Girls Project is to date the majority of my total works. The women involved are unaware of everything involved in the performance until they arrive on set. Many do not know each other.

They free themselves of everything and I direct their involvement in a world I have created for them – a place both challenging and safe – and draw out parts of them they didn’t know existed. I love what I create.

The more I create the more I want to.

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LandEscape meets

Kitty Von-Sometime An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Hello Kitty and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview would you like to tell us something about your background?

Are there particular experiences that have impacted on the way you produce your artworks these days? By the way, as a self-taught artist, I would ask you what's your point about formal training... I often ask to myself if a certain kind of training could even stifle a young artist's creativity...

My background carries deep threads of creativity since childhood, but no education in art or film. All the work I have done comes from a love of the mediums and an exploration I have undertaken on my own. I would love to know more, and often crave a bigger background in my head, but sometimes I enjoy the utter naivety I have. Asking me how it would be comparatively if I had training is like asking an only child what it would be like to have a twin. They wouldn’t know. So neither to do I. My main concern with formal training versus

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non formal is that I believe an artist should be recognized by their work, and not necessarily a history of formal training. I comple- tely understand and respect education, but feel that not having it shouldn’t exclude you from opportunity or acceptance if you can show works of worth.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers some- thing 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 be- fore and during the process of creating a piece?

My productions are huge. For The Weird Girls Project I spend on average 3-4 months working on one piece.

Initially I develop the concept alone and then work with costume makers and film crew preparing the shoot day.

These days on set I have around 2030 women participating and a crew of between 30 and 50 people.

Technically, working with film requires a great deal of forethought. I also ned to build a solid relationship with the crew as it is not like working on a

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normal film set. The women are completely unaware of the entire day before they show up. They do not know where they will go, what they will do, what the concept is nor what the costumes are. So even with a shot list and a storyboard, a great deal comes down to me working with women on the day, encouraging and reacting to their personal limitations and boundaries and working them through it in the confines of my personal visual story.

By the way, do you visualize your works before creating? Do you know what it will look like before you begin?

Always. I often refer to myself as a concept artist as the concept is what begins, everything else is concerned with enabling me to share that concept with the outside world. My skills in installation and in filmmaking and direction are constantly self monitored.

I feel I have grown each time the end result gets closer and closer to being exactly what I birthed in my head.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would like to start with a very stimulating work entitled The Weird Girls Project whose stills have been admired in the starting pages of this article, and I would suggest our readers to visit http://www.theweirdgirlsproject.com/a bout.html in order to get a wider idea of this stimulating work: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this project? What was your initial inspiration?

The project started as a one off, not particularly meant for repeat nor to be a progressive work of art. I had many female friends who not only were lacking in something to do, but also were buried deep into self consciousness and body related issues.

Some of these were related to eating disorders, abuse, rape, bullying.

As you have remarked, the Project involves ordinary women rather than professional actresses or models... I personally find absolutely fashinating collaborations that artists can established together: especially because they reveals a symbiosis between apparently different approaches to art, especially as concern whom I would define "non professional artists" as "ordinary women"... and I can't help without mention Peter Tabor who 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?

My work is collaborative in nature but this project is very much under my direction. As someone who has not had any traditional training in art or film making, over the years I have collaborated with film makers, costume designers, choreographers and cinematographers through the life of the Project to enable my initial visual concept to come to life. In the early days I would very much need

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multiple colla- borators for this but these days as my experience has grown and my ability to understand how to get to the end visual goal is strong my collaboration has become less. These days I am opting to collaborate only with musicians and a cinematographer. The rest I am now in complete creative control over and have the skillset I need to get there.

This does not mean I am not open to working with others, I have just found that my pace of work is very fast and I run my work like a machine and other creatives can sometimes find that unenjoyable or hold my productions up. There are many people I would love to work with in the future however. With regards to using ‘ordinary women’ – this means I take women from all backgrounds who want to be part of a work of art but have possibly not been exposed to a way to do so.

A feature of your work that has particularly impacted on me is the skilful capability of communicating a wide variety of states of mind... have you ever happened to discover something that you didn't previously plan and that you didn't even think about before? I'm sort of convinced that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal hidden sides of life and nature... what's you point?

Every episode of The Project unfurls a new experience - both for myself and the women participating. It is something that comes with the format of the women reacting to a completely unknown day and for me, I have to

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interact with their responses and guide the visual concept into being.

It goes without saying that your artworks are strictly connected to the chance to create a deep interaction: so, how important is the role of your audience for your artworks? When you conceive a piece, do you happen to think to whom will enjoy it?

I start my work to be seen. I cannot even imagine leaving a piece

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somewhere in the dark without an audience. I am at heart an exhibitionist and feel like our lives are so very short, our work and actions are what stay here – not our physical being. I want my work to be accessible. I want people who think they don't know anything about art to enjoy it. People who say they aren’t interested in art to enjoy it. I feel many people are threatened by what they see as art, that art is only art if it

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is intellectually challenging, if it is in some way difficult. I am very preoccupied with enjoyment and my work is heavily focused on that.

If I have been asked to choose an adjective that could sum up in a single word your art, I would say that your it's "kaleidoscopic": 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?

In all honesty I do not think that deeply about it. I am aware of what my work is, what it has achieved and areas it has managed to succeed. I have an end visual I want to achieve and utilize whatever disciplines I need to get there. I think maybe this is where my lack of formal training is in some ways an advantage. I don't feel

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that areas outside of my ‘expertise’ are threatening. I managed film making without initially knowing what I was doing, began installation with no idea how to make it happen and so a new idea and a new discipline is completely accessible to me. Right now I am working on a public light instal- lation for Iceland and UK. I haven’t touched light nor programming before – yet I submitteda concept and won the commission – now I am in the process of searching out teachers to collaborate with to see if I can pull it off.

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Kitty. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

As I mentioned, I have a public light installation lightwork taking inspiration from the magic of biolumiescence. Above the public’s head, in an outside location a swarm of jellyfish will be hung. In addition I am always working on new deve- lopments for The Weird Girls Project and am awaiting some grant responses and also some proposals for festivals abroad who have asked for submission of The Project to be involved in their events – art and cultural festivals alike. I also hope to work with some age related charities to approach women’s consciousness in aging.

An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

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J asper van Loon Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

M

y work often starts from memories, memories of certain places. A spot in the forest concealed by the leaves of a small overhanging branch from a large tree. Once the perfect hiding place. Only to discover that the overhanging branch is now long gone, the image from the memory altered into something different.

Maybe it's me who has changed, maybe it's the place itself. Or perhaps the memory was false to begin with and twisted itself into something I desired at the moment of recollection.

In my work I ponder about these things and try to grasp the concept of place. What is a sense of place?

Which audio-visual elements of the visited landscape are important?

Which elements contribute to a sense of place? Questions I ask myself when I wander throughout the

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landscape with my camera and/or sound equipment. Questions which often take many repeated visits to a certain place before I can answer them by capturing sounds and images.

Wandering alone with my gear is something integral to my work since the slow movement of walking allows me to experience everything a certain place has to offer me. During everyday transportation we don't experience the places we visit, pass by, anymore.

Fast transportation and our eyes glued to the small screen of our smart phone destroy any experience of place. The films I make aim to bring this experience of place to the viewer.

To make them reflect on landscapes and note how details in sound and image influence the experience.

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LandEscape meets

Jasper van Loon An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Jasper van Loon explores the liminal area in which personal memory blends with collective imagery, evolving into a multilayered process of fulfillment: his investigation about the concept of space urges the viewers to go beyond a static idea of landscape, and invites to question the crossroad between contingency and immanence. In Langdorp that we'll be discussing in the following pages he accomplishes the difficult task of creating a refined interplay between perception and memory that removes any historic gaze and forces us to relate to the audio and visual features of the experience he offers us. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating production.

Hello Jasper and welcome to LandEscape: I would start this interview, posing you some questions about your background. In particular, you have a solid formal training and you hold a Master Audiovisual Arts, that you received from the Sint-Lukas Luca School of Arts: how has this experience influenced your evolution as an artist and how does it inform the way you currently conceive your works?

The Films I thought I'd be making before I started my education at Luca School of arts and the films I eventually ended up making could not be further apart in style, concept, genre, etc. You should note I was only 18

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years old when I initiated my first bachelor year. A young age at which I still was very much searching for my own identity, let alone the identity of my films. So my first two years were still a combination of me maturing and figuring out what I actually wanted to do artistically. It wasn't until the third year that I actually felt confident and knew exactly which direction I wanted to go with my work. During this year I became comfortable with the idea of making films by myself, alone. Something I hadn't really considered feasible before. I really wanted to wander with the film camera like a photographer can wander with his camera, without being restricted by a whole crew and set. My personal mentor at that time really supported me in this decision and helped me further develop this approach to filmmaking.

An approach which most likely came to be by discovering certain photographers, artists during lectures, which ended up influencing me. People I probably would not have discovered on my own or at least much later in life. These individual talks with an assigned mentor about your work were very important. They make you think crtically about the decisions you make and at the same time help you develop your personal signature as an artist.

The education helped me put my work in a wider framework of “experimental� filmmaking. Filmmakers that also work alone or where place plays an important part. It helped me understand where we meet and where we differ. The education basically forces you to think about every decision you make in your work which makes you very aware of the implications

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of these decision on the experience of the viewer. This awareness not only helps for future projects but also helps you understand what elements might have improved previous works.

Your artistic production is pervaded with a subtle but effective sense of narrative and although each of your project has an autonmous life, there's always seem to be such a channel of communication between your works, that springs from the way you juxtapose the ideas you explore: German artist Thomas Demand stated once that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

I think artists today cannot be ignorant towards the chosen medium's history and “rules”. Knowing this history and rules allow you to play with expectations, and shape your narrative by using or twisting these expectations. I don't think in narrative as in something with a beginning, middle and an end. I mostly think in concepts, ideas, which I try to translate into images. I would say I even try to avoid any clear narrative in my work. The initial voice-over for Langdorp was filled with emotional and personal details which gave it more of a clear meaning. “This is what the film is about and this is what you as viewer should get out of it.”. Eventually I stripped away these personal anecdotes because it felt like too much of a distraction. I wanted to make a film about places first and foremost, the initial voice-over was too dominant for that. Partly because the film was too short to space out the amount of voiceover I initially had but also because the emotional tone dictated a certain personal narrative upon the viewer. With the altered voice-over I feel there is much more room for the viewers to create their own narrative while I still very much control certain parts of that narrative.

I would suggest to our readers to visit http://jaspervanloon.com in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production that we are going to discuss in these pages: I would start from Langdorp, an interesting experimental video that takes its name from your hometown.

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When I first happened to get to know with this experimental vi I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of a primary environmental elements to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations...

Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

It's a combination of both. With Langdorp there is an interplay between being systematic but at the same time allowing intuitiveness. There is a very systematic approach to the way I film the places in Langdorp, which doesn't change throughout the film but plays a crucial part in the relation the viewer gets with the places.

Camera always at eye level and always the same lens, a 50mm on a full frame camera. I found that this combination creates the feeling of somebody who's looking at the place from a certain distance. A distance that balances between being captivated but at the same time showing a certain reluctance. But whereas I'm very strict in the systematic approach to filming, I'm more intuitive in what kind of places I actually film. I made a lot of test shots of places before the actual live shoot.

These test shots were mostly purely intuitive, based on places I read about in news reports about homicides or suicides, with not much foresight about how the relation between these shots would pan out. During the editing, which shapes the film, there is this certain systematic approach as well.

For instance, I imposed a minimum length on the shots. A length that I felt was necessary to experience the place that is shown and allow for the viewer to contemplate about that experience. But everything else is purely done on an intuitive manner, especially the sequence of the shots which plays a big part in how the viewer interacts with the whole film.

The same approach holds true for Ergens een Eiland as well. The same systematic use of the camera but more intuitiveness in the content of the shots. Even more so than in Langdorp since

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I didn't have this framework of historic events.

I like the way Langdorp creates an area of intense interplay with the viewers, that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience: in particular, your investigation about the intimate consequences of constructed realities: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Langdorp and Ergens een Eiland, are works that start from a very personal direct experience.

This experience shapes the creative process and in a sense is essential to those two films.

But when looking at Dreams of me escaping, a small experiment with North Korea as the backdrop, there is no such personal experience.

The lack of direct experience of this place never felt like a problem. It was all about creating an atmosphere about this place, an atmosphere influenced by images and text that's been spread about this country. But since it's just a short experiment I wonder if it would become a problem if I were to make a longer work out of it. I feel like it would. I can initiate my creative process without any direct experience but along the line I'd probably need to get this experience in order to elevate the work. In langdorp I create this view of a village, and I'm only able to create it because I have lived there my whole life. The personal history around the places, play a part in constructing the image. But on the other hand I guess it all depends on the type of work you're making. I can imagine that not every “narrative� needs personal experience, that in some cases it might be better that there is this disconnection.

The ambience you created in Ergens een

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Eiland has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by French social theorist Michel Foucault. The way your camera gazes upon places that don’t want to be seen, brings a new level of significance to the signs of absence, that invites us to a fullfilment process involving viewer's personal memories, that slowly blend with the details you provide with. This is a recurrent feature of your approach and you seem to deconstruct and assembly memories in order to suggest a process of investigation: maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

I think that in a sense art could always be considered as something that points out the unexpected. And unexpected sides of our inner nature is definitely something that art confronts us with, like so many other things. The places shown in Ergens een Eiland could be considered an expression of a certain inner desire. A desire that's personal but at the same time could be relevant to many people. So you could say that in Ergens een Eiland I not only attempt to reveal the hiding place but also reveal the desire to have such a place. Revealing something from our inner nature, at least the inner nature of some people.

Anoher interesting project of yours that has impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Dreams of me escaping and evokes the feeling of being trapped in North Korea. In particular, it has reminded me of Jean Rouch, the pioneer of cineanthropology and I like the way this piece explores the crossroad between video art and what I would define an emotional documentary: would you like to tell our readers the genesis of this project?

Dreams of me escaping should be seen as part of a workshop where we were to explore the cinematic possibilities of “low quality” cell phone images. To define the qualities of these images and use them as a strength rather than a weakness. The idea of North Korea came to mind

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because of its relation to modern technology. In our society internet and cell phones are an integral part of our lives, we cannot imagine being offline for more than a few days. I started wondering about how North Korea deals with technology that's designed to connect everyone with each other on a worldwide scale.

Since it's such an isolated place where everything is strictly regulated, that same design philosophy doesn't really hold true anymore. During this time I dreamt of how it would be if I were to be trapped in North Korea with only my cell phone but no access to the outside world. Hence the idea of making a short experiment in which I try to evoke the feeling of someone being trapped in North Korea. I was particularly interested in how I could combine abstract images with more figurative images to evoke some kind of dream-like state. Like being on the brink of sleeping, where dream and reality start to collide.

You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several viewpoint out of temporal synchronization: moreover, the reference to the universal imagery of childhood that recurs in your works seems to remove any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between sign and matter that marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any track of contingency...

Youth and childhood are both part of Langdorp and Ergens een Eiland, concepts which easily lead to a nostalgic feeling. To a certain extent I do have this nostalgic feeling and is thus part of both works. But I want to go beyond that history, those memories.

To, as you correctly noted, let the viewer perceive the place, the reality, in a more timeless manner. In langdorp, time and history play an even greater part. The image in Langdorp could be considered the reality today (but even that is not really true because of the nature of the medium, a recording is always something of the past). While the narrator is the

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one who reveals factual information about the past. The narrator imprints memories into the viewer about the place, it reshapes their already established idea of the place.

Because there are more places in the image than in the voice-over, there is this sense of the unkown.

Some images are left without any information and you can start to wonder what happened here? What is the significance of this place?

The active, engaged, viewer could start filling gaps themselves, create events that could have happened at the place they are seeing.

Especially when they see a name and year pop- up at the bottom of the image. A simple gesture that sets of a wide range of thoughts.

It's this juxtaposition between the image, sound, voice-over and text, that is integral to understanding Langdorp as a whole.

During these years your work have been screened in several occasions, including a recent participation to Filmideo 2015.

Before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, 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 for a particular context?

I believe everyone who exposes him or herself in an artistic way thinks about how the audience might respond, unless you don't (try to) show your art to the world. But I try not to let a possible audience's reaction to my work influence my creative process.

Which doesn't mean I don't pose critical questions about the decisions I make, you just need to know who's reaction is important to you. I know my films won't appeal to people who look for plot-driven narratives. They'd probably tell me my films are boring and that nothing happens for 26 minutes. If I'd watch my films from their standpoint I'd probably agree with them. But I don't watch my films like that and thus I don't really value their opinion as much as someone who watches my films and judges them by what they are and

not by what they want them to be.

But I'm still very much aware that long takes of landscapes are very intense and require a lot from viewers. I've seen an exhibition of James Benning's One Way Boogie Woogie 2012, where he had multiple screens cycling through different places. The viewer could have seen every place in about 15 minutes where as if they would watch the full length of every shot they'd have to watch for about 60 minutes. I sat there for about an hour while I saw people come and go. If I recall correctly he admitted that he used this approach because he was afraid that viewers might get bored if he'd make it another single screen work. It's an interesting compromise but at the same time compromises should not undermine the initial intention of the artist.

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

Thanks for having me. About future projects I can't say much because it's too early and I don't want to set expectations I might not fulfil. I can say however that there is this certain idea that keeps coming back to me.

It's again something based upon youth memories much like “Ergens een Eiland� was based on. But I'm still debating about how I could visualise this idea. Will it be a short film, a multi-screen work, a photographic work? How can I transform this idea into something tangible? Still a question that remains unanswered, for now.

As of now I've always used film as my medium of choice but I don't really see myself as a filmmaker, director, but more as an artist. So I definitely see myself branching out in different media if the project requires it. I'd love to work with something physical, to feel the medium in my hands, as opposed to working with digital files on a computer. Places, memories, will still be important in future work but I can't say if this will always be the case.

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Nara Walker Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

An artist's statement

C

urrently living in the London Nara Walker is an Australian born contemporary artist. She explores the physicality of creating within her work, presenting the viewer with paintings, performances, photographic work and at times mixing the mediums.

Nara is interested in the viewers perspective as the voyeur thus uses the process of revealing and concealing to course tension. Thus the viewer becomes more aware of their own thoughts and fantasy as to what they see. Her work is sensual and expressionist creating a line between beauty

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and grotesque through application.

"Through lust and fantasy my work aims to manipulate the viewer into the voyeurs position.

The body reacts to the touch of another, as does my work. Like a kiss to the back of the knee or a finger brushing up against the inside thigh. Each mark I make influences another due to the sensual side of making that mark.

The medium reacts to the surface, the surface to the medium, my hands and other appliances creating that tactile connection. Each stroke, gesture or movement captured upon the surface representing the physicality and pleasure of creating for the voyeur to participate."

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Flesh Tone, 2015 Oil paint, Perpex and Rope 22

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LandEscape meets

Nara Walker An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

A refined multidisciplinary approach allows Nara Walker to establish an organic symbiosys between several viewpoints, creating an area of deep interplay that allows us to enter an emotional realm, in which the subconscious dimension emerges into a tactile, physical way. If creativity has to do with improvisation, with what is happening around us, Walker's art provides us of an Ariadne's thread that allows us to accomplish a refined investigation about the liminal space in which physicality, imagination and eroticism find an unexpected point of convergence and coexist in a coherent unity. I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Nara, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after earning your Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours, that you recently received from the Griffith University, you moved to London where you undertook your first artist in residency at Juxtaposed Gallery. How have these experiences influenced your evolution as an artists and how do they impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Hello and thank you for having me!

My background has always been in the way of freedom of expression, as I was growing up my

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family encouraged me to express myself within the arts. Through the movement of dance, singing, performances and of course fine art. I believe this has allowed me to find my artist mark at an earlier stage than some. Through school I was pushed away from my abstract mind and towards a more realistic approach. However in my senior years from 16-17 I had a teacher who like my mother appreciated my artist mark and allowed me to create rather than copy. I then won the schools Acquisitive art prize which made me trust trust what my gut had told me to do, which was to be an 'artist'.

My Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours was an interesting time for me. As with any university degree there's more to it than the outcome, you find reason and theory behind process. The degree allowed me to focus on experimenting and my purpose to create with holding a stance for self expression. I'm a lover for travel and had previously been living in Oslo, Norway. Before this I had completed a Diploma of Fine Art at Tafe. The diploma was a good base after school to acknowledge my love for the tactile creation of fine art. The year away was a space to meditate on what I had learnt in the years previous and then the BFA allowed me to introduce a new period into my art. Once I moved to the UK I was accepted into an Artist in Residence and it was a great way to explore a new space. I believe the light is different all over the world so our subconscious choice of colours may change. The artist in residence was the start to many exciting projects in the UK and abroad.

I would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.naraisart.com in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production that we are going to discuss: let's begin from Flesh Tone, a recent work that our readers has already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. When I first happened to get to know with this piece I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the narrative that pervades your images, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to

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establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

I am very pleased to hear your visual reading on my work. To fit into the visual unity rather than one single meaning. The work should be engaged with, not just watched, it should be felt, however you can not be completely tactile with the work as a viewer, you should feel the urge to be. A relationship is met through direct relations to the physicality of the body. Aiming to enhance the viewer to a moment of feeling united with the work. As their imagination and senses become the final medium to the piece.

Flesh tone is a sculptural painting on Acrylic Perspex, painted with oil paint and suspended with rope. The work could be described as an abstract self portrait. This rope was one I have worn before, so each knot implies a specific point on my body. This creates connotations of the physical and absent body.

I may have an idea, however that all changes depending on my mood and or the medium.

There's a relationship between the artist and materials used; as mentioned before also between the viewer and the work. This relationship is between the point of my own imagination - my physical body and the audience. Capturing the dance between myself and the medium on a fluid level allows my artist mark to be revealed.

Back to Flesh tone, it was painted intuitively with my hands rubbing and pushing against the support. I believe it captures the sensual relationship between my subconscious with lush oil paint and the physical body. The rope was added at a later date.

I like the way Let Flight shows a symbiosys between the abstract ideas that evoke such an indefinite impalpability and the tactile feature suggested by tones that saturate the canvas: while referring to an easily "fruible" set of symbols as starting points, you seem to remove the historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more absolute form, in order to address us not only on a mere contingent view but especially to invites us to rethink about

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our future: this is a feature that I can recognize in other works from your recent production, as Fire Flies and Mindscape. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Process and experimentation is inspired by my personal experiences as they impact my creativity.

These moments I engage with create ridges which I believe push specific colours, forms and subjects into my subconscious.

Inspiration comes from the everyday and the process of creating is like unpacking or celebrating the emotions and thoughts into a visual language others can partake in.

Direct experience may be pulled away within some artists works, however I don't think I can. As we all hold our own specific symbols, connotations and experiences which ignite our creativity and ability to share moments. The moments may be shared through an array of mediums - on canvas, through performance and many other mediums.

The moment my direct experiences can't be expressed within my work the meaning of the work changes. The work for me has no longer been created, it's more like a product that has been produced for the masses.

I like the way your careful approach offers a rigorous but at the same time lively visual translation of immaterial and physical sights that pervade our reality: in this sense, your approach intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intense interplay with the viewers, that are invited to evolve from the condition of a passive audience. I would go as far as to state that in a certain sense you invite the viewers to challenge the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the reality we inhabit, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Codes and symbols create connotations and awaken

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senses within the audience. I am a strong believer that the artists role is to evoke and encourage the audience to question and feel.

Nature of the human is to create, we have always created. The creations have been for different reasons and or in different materials.

However we have the capability to create worlds within our own world. The artist should inspire and even if they are unaware of the codes they are creating, they should embrace the viewers within a visual language where our inner nature can connect with the outer.

Colour is of such importance, as is texture and gestures. Why do we feel a specific way when we are engaging with an art work? Why has the artist spread the colours and penetrated the texture as they have? People sometimes ask me how I know if a work is finished, I reply I just know. They may find that silly, however mathematically the equation of paint, movement and energy is complete for me. That's how I know the work is finished. It's a new world created within our own world. A space one can now become one with and feel encouraged by their own imagination inspired by the work.

I like the way you investigate about the psychological nature of the representational image, offering to the viewer such an Ariadne's thread that allows us to unveil unexpected but ubiquitous relations between eroticism and physicality. Philippe Dagen once established in his Le Silence des peintres, that the coming of a straight realism has caused a progressive retrenchment of painting from its primordial representetive role of reality.

With exception of Hyperrealism movement, Painting is nowadays more and more marked out with a symbolic feature. Do you think that the dichotomy between Representation and Painting is by now irremediable?

Painting and representation go in hand as it is ones representation of an image, feeling or moment in time captured. The problem I question as being prevalent today is if artists are creating for what they feel to create or for what they think they should create.

Many artists are technically amazing, however

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hold a feeling of deadness within their work.

A true representation is not only a hyperrealistic approach, it is a moment you engage with a work which represents what should be felt and engaged by the viewer.

I think due to the public at times believing a work should represent the image as a photograph many works have been created in angst. We still hold onto the ideals of a pure representation of the subject matter which I see as a moment head over heart comes into play – or thought instead of emotion. A realistic painting is fine, however it should hold something more than just a copy of what is presented in front. It should hold an emotion within the movement, the colours and thus become alive again.

Art can be created to make a statement, or evoke a feeling. It can also be created because we are told what will and will not be hung in a gallery space. The latter makes me sad as this is again a product and we artist are the machines.

I have highly appreciated the way you combine a careful sensibility with a marked instinctive approach, that reveals an investigation about a subconscious dimension: in particular,you seem to take advantage of Collective unconscious in order to disclose the unrevealed narrative behind the ephemeral moments you capture.

Accordingly, I daresay that imagination acts as cornerstones for the fullfilment process of the viewers that has reminded me Thomas Demand, when he stated that "nowadays Art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead": what's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

The ephemeral moments hold the narrative of my work. What is persistent is the subject of myself, expression of those moments and stories shared. I create through exploring my own subconscious. For me it's like a meditation within the process of creating.

You described my work to take advantage of

the collective unconscious in order to disclose the unrevealed narrative. This is tue and the viewer rather than being asked and having to verbalise an emotion can partake and reveal their own subconcious through imagination and fantasy.

Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your current practice: besides your stimulating paintings you also express your Art through suggestive performances as the recent Energy String - Mapping relationships through memory and energy. while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Working within different disciplines allows me to fully voice what I want to express.

For an example, as a native English speaker during times of travel I pick up new words and in turn ways to express an emotion, a need or an object. Once learnt sometimes these words stick with me as they express what I feel in a more suitable way than the English language.

As an artist I have expressed myself in many other mediums and find that the symbiosis between the different disciplines explain my work better at times.

Today we have so much more to create with it would be like wearing the same colour every day. In turn not being able to express myself fully. Each work encourages me to learn more about my practice and feeds into the process of the others.

You had your first solo Suggestive Gestures about a year ago, at the Woolloongabba Art Gallery in Brisbane: the vivid patterns that pervades the canvas from this series had on me the same impact that I happened to experience on the first time I had the chance to view Jenny Saville's early works.

Conveying physicality and dynamism, your paintings are often marked out with a center that conveys the idea of a subtle geometric precision: yet the shapes you paint tend to have soft edges, that suggest a sense of freedom, freedom from an authoritative

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order. This is something that seems to have held back a lot of the more formal abstract painters of our time. Does some of the human feeling that pervade your works stem from the basic tenet that, despite being considered abstract, they contain universally recognizable forms? By the way, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

I can see the similarity within the mark making of Saville's and my work, we both represent human form pushed through an abstract mark.

I think all painting is abstract as it is a representation created from ones own point of view from a moment in time. Time is abstract and as is the mind. Capturing this within a painting is holding onto an abstract thought and emotion.

The work is felt and moved across with gestures,within these gestures spaces arise as reconizable forms. I then push and pull these to conceal and reveal what feels like it should be shared. Combining two visual languages in one work inspires imagination and interaction amongst the viewer and the work. I want my work to cross the line between what some see as pure abstraction and recognisable symbols – such as the figure. The feeling which is felt whilt viewing a work which is not one nor the other leaves some feeling angst or other emotions, interrupting their ideals of what an image should represent. Viewers sometimes feel as you described earlier the feeling to fit into the visual unity – This is a feeling I want my work to portray, as the work should emmurse the viewer.

Over these years you have participated to many group exhibitions and you are going to take a resindence at the Pantocrátor Gallery in Shanghai. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, 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 for a particular context?

I would say the audience is of importance, it's

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not so much the process that I would take into account. More so the location as to where I would show specific works. Capturing the process of creating is what makes my work free, if I were to adjust it for the audience it would lose a part of it's energy. So I create and find the space the work would most best suit, rather than creating for a space.

If asked to create for a buyer or a specific show/subject - I keep as free as possible and instead of creating for the audience/buyer I am inspired by the audience and or buyer.

Pantocrátor Gallery is a project I have been looking forward to. The proposed work will be large and very expressive. Inspired by Shanghai and my body being amongst a new environment, the colours and gestures will be transformed from the experience of place and space. I aim to explore with new media and techniques along with paintings...

Unfortunately I have had to put the trip off for now as I do not have the funds needed.

Pantocrátor Gallery will allow me to join at a later stage which is great.

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

I see my work evolving with the choice of materials and experimentation with installation.

I would like to experiment within performance and the idea of bringing painting to a live audience. In August I will be performing in Venice and exploring this further.

My other future projects include an exhibition in Portugal called Visual Poetry at Gallery of City Museum of Aveiro and Gallery of Capitania Building. I've also just been told I have been selected as one of the finalist for the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait award which will be held between July-October in London. Other future projects may be found on my page www.naraisart.com Thank you for your time and for expressing my work within your own perspective. It was a pleasure.

Kosmas Giannoutakis Game, as social extension of brain activity, and Play, as associated complex behavior, are concepts fundamentally related with every creative process.

Perception and creation of Art are creative complex processes with an intrinsic gaming nature, well hidden in the subconscious. The focus of my artistic research, is to raise the mind's gaming nature to the level of conscious awareness by creating artworks, which are performative art games. Using sound as the main communicating medium, my engaged performers interact with dynamic audiovisual systems by developing listening virtuosity and acting adaptability.

My perceivers experience the direct artistic result and at the same time a subliminal, recursive, self-similar effect, which links the gaming structure of the artwork with the gaming structure of their perception. The Art making paradigm I propose, is an inevitable consequence of our interdisciplinary cybernetic era, which is opening our concepts and preparing the ground for more transcending steps.

Kosmas Giannoutakis Kosmas Giannoutakis

Breathe Forrest, Breathe!

Installation(4mx4mx4m), 2013

Snapshot of a performance of the game piece "Zeitleben/Timelife"with four "shadows" in action.

021 4 Double bass performance by Juan Pablo Trad Hasbun, photograph by Nick Acorne.

Summer 2015

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LandEscape meets

An interview with

Kosmas Giannoutakis Kosmas Giannoutakis accomplishes the difficult task of providing an Ariadne's Thread that unveils the connection between the subliminal dimension that drives the creative process and the conscious level, at

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which the viewers relate themselves with the outside world. The nature of his approach urges us to investigate the relationship between reality and the way we perceive it: one of the most convincing as-

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tell us something about your background?

You have a solid formal training and after having earned your Bachelor of Music from the University of Macedonia, you moved to Germany where you eventually degreed with a Master of Music from the University of Music, Freiburg. Moreover, you are currently studying Computer Music at the Institute for Electronic Music und Acustics.

How have these experiences influenced your evolution as an artist? and in particular, do you think that being exposed to a wide, international scene may have informed the way you conceive and produce your works today?

Thank you very much ART Habens for the invitation to share my thoughts with you and your readers. I had indeed a formal training in different disciplines of the conventional music making (composition, theory, piano, percussion), which began from my childhood. In the last years, I have moved towards more experimental and radical approaches of music making (algorithmic composition, mechanical instruments, dynamic systems, games), which I am currently studying at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz Austria. The institutional training was very important for my development, because I learned in depth historical practices of music making. I would claim nevertheless, that I am more a selftaught artist, since my actual artistic language was developed through my personal interests and investigations. Being exposed to a wide, international scene allowed me to know and develop a critical stance to the parallel artistic approaches of my colleagues and raise my work standards. pects of Giannoutakis's practice is the way he establishes an area of intellectual interplay between memory and perception, condensing the permanent flow of the perception of the reality we inhabit in. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his refined artistic production.

Hello Kosmas and welcome to LandEscape.

To start this interview, would you like to

Your approach is marked out with a deep symbiosis between several practices, that are combined to provide your works of a dynamic and autonomous life. I would suggest our readers to visit http://www.kosmasgiannoutakis.eu/ in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. While superimposing concepts and images, crossing the borders

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of different artistic fields, have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different viewpoints is the only way to achieve some results, to express specific concepts?

I like to drew my inspiration from philosophical questions and paradoxes, that challenge the human mind. Starting with very abstract ideas (time, space, change), I am conceptualizing my works by combining mentally different artistic fields which could possibly create interesting dynamic situations. Experimenting and improvising with concrete materials allows me to decide which combinations should I keep and develop. If I find unintended potential in a specific media combination, I don't hesitate to change completely the initial concept. Sound, Game and Performance have always central role in my concepts.

I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from Zeitleben/Timelife, an interesting project featured in the introductory pages of this article. What most impressed me in this project is the way you have create a point of convergence between a functional analysis of the context you examine and autonomous aesthetics. Do you conceive this in an instinctive way or do you rather structure your process in order to reach the right balance?

The processes I conceptualize, are highly structured, because I am focusing on complex systems which exhibit indeterministic behavior. In Zeitleben/Timelife, I explored for the first time the notion of continuity, which had aesthetic and technical consequences. Changes were not discrete and there were infinite states of the system. It was really a challenge to compose the music, which had to aesthetically work for every possible state. In the technical level, I had to use delay lines instead of static buffers.

Dividing the process in five distinct rounds, made the implementation possible and the perception more transparent. I suppose my intuition have developed more sensitivity concerning live processes, during the last years I have been working with dynamic systems.

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A possible performance state of the piano in the game piece "unlock the piano" Photograph by Kosmas Giannoutakis.

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Piano preparation with all keys detached in the beginning of the game piece "unlock the piano"

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Rationality and instinct are harmonically tuned by working intimately together for the same cause.

In particular, I like the way your performative approach conveys both an aseptic point of view on formalism and a suggestive gaze on today's reality. This combination reminds me of the idea behind Thomas Demand's works, when he states that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". While the conception of Art could be considered an abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a sense of permanence, going beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of those concepts you explore. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion, personal experience is absolutely indispensable as part of the creative process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Symbolic strategies can be very efficient, but they have to be really strong. In Zeitleben/Timelife the simple functional game of moving images resembles metaphorically how the mnemonic experience works. But this comes in a secondary conceptual level, the resonance of the medium is of primarily importance. It is really beautiful when an artwork invites for interpretation in different levels. The sense of permanence can be associated with these factors, namely the depth of interpretation levels and the intensity of mind resonance for each level. Creative processes are gaming acts, associated with past personal experiences and absolutely connected with direct experience.

Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface and one of the aim of your practice is to bring to a conscious level the variety of sources that are subliminally driven: your approach unveils a subtle but ubiquitous narrative providing us of an Ariadne's Thread that invites us to the discover the connection between these apparently separate dimensions, and that's incredibly

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beautiful. Stimulating the viewer’s psyche, you approach works on both a conscious level and a subconscious one: 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?

My position is that the Nature of every creative process is fundamentally related to the notions of Game and Play. When we perceive art, we experience a kind of inner-subjective game where our past experiences come into interplay by defining patterns of appreciation and understanding. When we create art, a more complicated process, we try things, experiment, improvise. We create temporary rules, play under them, come up with a result, perceive the result, decide if our mind resonated well enough and repeat the process, by keeping the same rules and trying to play better or change the rules.

A fixed artwork, for example a sculpture, functions as a stimulant for such a perceptive game to occur. A dynamic artwork, for example a performance, follows inevitably the gaming pattern. It is not a coincidence that in most languages we use the word “play” when we are referring to music or theater activities. Art is the resonant game of the mind. Holding this position, I create artworks which consciously reflect their gaming nature. My game pieces and installations involve the perceivers in self-similar recursive processes, because of the similar structure between the artwork and perceptive process. Revealing our inner Nature, I invite us for a deeper exploration of ourselves.

I have enjoyed the way you probe the evocative potential of the medium, involving a crucial role of modern technologies to provide the viewer of an extension of usual perceptual parameters that allows you to go beyond any dichotomy between Tradition and Contemporariness, as in the interesting Inextricable, establishing a stimulating osmosis between materials and techniques from a contingent era and an absolute approach to Art: do you recognize

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Portrait still of the artist's tools. Photograph by Panagiotis B

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The artist sound-directing a rehearsal of the game piece "Zeitleben/Timelife". Photograph by Nick Acorne.

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any contrast between Tradition and Contemporariness?

Contemporariness arises from Tradition.

Tradition have to be studied in depth, in order someone to be able to attempt successful steps in unexplored areas. The prerequisite for an artistic movement to be Tradition, is to be first Contemporariness. The value of Tradition lies in the provision of solid ground, where new art can be build. As Heidegger points out, the art that have lost contact with the world it was conceived and made, is nothing more than a relic. This is an enormous problem in music, where we arbitrary modify old musical artworks in order to assign to them unintended modern functionality. We use modern media to massively communicate them (for example recordings and amplification) but we don't realize how much we distort their originality and how much we cloy our modern world with mutated “masterpieces�, which take over the vital space of new creation. The cybernetic era we have entered, provide us with new media, which extend our brain functions. These meta-tools and universal machines should not be treated as limb-extended instruments but as brainextended organisms, which mirror our cognitive abilities. I think this is a fundamental difference between the old and new media, and it will take decades of digestion, until Art will completely adapt to the new world.

What is the role of computer-based techniques in your composition process? Do you still use an acoustic approach and then manage the evolution of the ideas you develop through high end technology or does your approach blends these apparently different approaches?

The complex systems I create have two components, a dynamic system, which is realized with digital technology, and the human agency (performers). The dynamic system receive input information (sound, image) from the performers and results to very complex, indeterministic and chaotic behavior. The performers have to react on the variable output of the dynamic

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system according to a set of rules of possible actions I provide (instructions, score). The resulting complex system (dynamic system ↔ human agency) is a coupled feedback system, with both components feeding with information each other.

I describe these situations as “games” and the resulting artworks as “game pieces”. My approach has a hybrid form for now, since there are lots of fixed events involved. My future goal is to make both components of the complex system 100% dynamic. Real-time digital signal processing algorithms, acoustic properties of the set up and human agency, with it's acoustic instrumental extensions, are all conceived together in initial phase.

Over your career you have exhibited internationally, showcasing your work in several occasions.

So before leaving this conversation I 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?

An utopian vision I have, is the creation of artworks, which will know where and when they should take place in order to maximize their communicating effectiveness. This should require embedded complex cognitive functions which should collect and process in real time enormous amounts of environmental and human data. When this will be achieved, we will experience a transcending step in Arts, namely the conscious artwork which adapts successfully in multiple real life environments and situations. For now, I am working on adaptive systems, which enable my dynamic systems to adapt into the specific acoustical characteristics of the rooms they are taking place. Also, I try to design my interactive environments in a specific way, which enables their presentation as installation for open public participation and as performance for specialist performers. I believe that good artistic ideas have the potential to be presented and communicated in multiple forms, languages and media, and adapt successfully in multiple contexts. One of my future distant goals, is to create such meta-artworks, which will exhibit intelligent adaptability.

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

It was a pleasure, thank you for your challenging questions! In August, my piece Zeitleben/Timelife will be performed in the Soundislands Festival - 2nd International Symposium on Sound and Interactivity in Singapore, where it received the “Si15 best student submission award”. In September, I will be in the Netherlands, where I will present a concert version of my interactive puzzle game installation “Ascending and Descending”, which I developed during my composer-in-resident program by conlon foundation in the Muzieckhuis in Utrecht.

I have recently performed myself my new game piece “Contraction point” for piano, performer and feedback system, in CUBE-IEM, in Graz and in Kubus-ZKM in Karlsruhe. These performances were totally improvisational and now I am working on making a score by fixing the events, which have to be fixed, and developing more sophisticated tracking algorithms, which will enable the feedback system to function completely autonomous, without the intervention of an extra operator. For my future game pieces, I want to explore complex systems which involve more than one performer.

I want also to enhance the physical flexibility of my dynamic systems, by enabling the dynamic change of the positional and perspective characteristics of the input/output instruments (microphones, loudspeakers, cameras, projectors) into the game rule set. So, I have the tendency to seek for more variability and complexity which requires deeper understanding of mathematics, acoustics, computer science, media theory and philosophy.

I am really privileged that my institutional environment, the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics, can provide me the space and materials for these interdisciplinary art experiments.

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S ima Yousefnia Lives and works in Teheran, Iran

An artist's statement

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ost people think and dream in private and they do not want anyone to know about their thoughts or dreams or they are afraid to express them to others and society.

Silence is one of the most profound feelings that we, as humans, often can sense in our lives. But when it engulfs us, it turns all our thoughts and feelings into a mysterious serenity.

Silence eyes, silence lips, silence hands. Some break it. Some never awaken its voiceless voice forever inside.

Today, the modern human lives differently than his predecessors.

He lives in large or mega cities. His life is full of chaos and challenges.

Life presents many opportunities, from what he eats, drives, and

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wears to his hobbies and recreations. He travels and visits many places. One can conclude that he also thinks and deeply examines his feelings. He only goes in nature in order to understand himself and discover the wonders of the natural world, while his predecessors lived in nature, in harmony with it.

He is destroying the natural world and builds with a greater intensity and velocity. Everything happening around him emanates utter chaos and commotion. A chaos that is no longer within his control!

I am in search of modern human’s inner feelings and I am wondering what is happening inside?

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LandEscape meets

Sima Yousefnia An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Sima Yousefnia's work snatches the essential spirit of an image: rather than lingering on decorative aspects to seduce the viewers, her insightful approach draws concepts from Reality to convey experience and memories in a lively and coherent unity, providing the viewers of an extension of the ordinary human perception, and inviting them to snatch the spirit of ubiquitous meanings behind the world we perceive. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production.

Hello Sima, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a multidiscipinary training and after earning your Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Shomal University, you take several class in Fine Art Photography. How did these experiences influence your evolution as an artists and how do they impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Well, at first I would like to thank the LandEscape magazine and I must say I am proud that my work was selected for the magazine and I'm happy about it. In the case of my educational background, I have

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to say that half of my family members have been enrolled in technical fields. But on the other hand, my mother is interested in art, nature and craft and she used to paint seriously for a while. In addition the way that I grew up in the family produced a tendency through art in me. However when I wanted to go to the university I chose to continue in computer field. But after entering the university I realized that it is completely unfamiliar with my personality and interests.

As a result I started photography with compact cameras, although my photography at that time was quite primitive and aimless, but seeing the work of other photographers, I realized that photography has an enormous size and I am interested in it. After graduation I registered in an institute for a complete 9 months course in photography and bought a DSLR camera.

After completing the course I became a member of a photography club in the institute and we had a group exhibition.

Then I participated in specialized courses in photography and my work was selected for the group exhibition in the Photography Museum of Tehran. I can't say if educating in computer has any impact on my artwork or not but since my university was in the North of Iran and I went almost every week from Tehran to North and seeing different landscapes and different people along the way it can’t be affectless. At the beginning my photography started with landscapes

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that I saw on the road. Slowly, and with further study I realized that what I am interested in is the fascinating world of photography and art in general.

Dealing with your process and with your technical equipment, how do you adapt your setup to the work you are working to? In particular, how have digital techniques impacted on your approach?

I also like the other photographers have experiences with analog and Pin Hole cameras and I think if we want to enjoy photography itself, working with old cameras and experiencing different techniques is very interesting and enjoyable and has interesting results. But I don't need working with old cameras and techniques for my projects, digital cameras are easier and suitable for me. They provide more facilities during and after photography that I don't have with analog cameras.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Sound of Silence, and interesting series that our readers had already had the chance to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: would you like to tell us something about the genesis of this project? What was your initial inspiration?

The basic idea of the sound of silence, as I mentioned in my statement is modern human concerns and knowing what is happening inside? What impact does modern life, surroundings and all the problems that people face them today have on them? In my opinion you can see these impacts on people when they are thinking in their privacy. People who have been photographed in this series are all from my family and friends. I can say that I had seen my family in these situations before taking these pictures and my pictures are pretty much close to reality. During photography I used the decoration of the place and in open

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environments I didn't change anything.

While photographing the subjects I didn't ask them to do anything or to show any feelings I just ask them to be relax and try to think, usually after some shots I could reach what I wanted.

I like the way Sound of Silence shows a symbiosys between the abstract idea of night that evokes such an indefinite impalpability of the idea of Silence: while referring to an easily "fruible" set of symbols as starting points, you seem to remove the historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more absolute form, in order to address us not only on a mere contingent view but especially to invites us to rethink about our future. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I think creativity of the artist in any field has a direct or indirect connection with his life. It means that our childhood memories, people who have been in contact with us, things we have seen and events that have happened to us, all have their effects on the artist and the works he/she creates.

Apart from memories and what we have in mind from the past, which is stored in our conscious or subconscious, there are some issues which are connected to our daily life.

Our observations from childhood to the present that we walk in the street, things we see or in general what is happening around us or in the whole world, all has a direct or indirect impact on what an artist creates and is not separate from it.

About the Sound of Silence I prefer that others tell me what they see. But certainly

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in this project my life, my memories and the environment have their effect.

A relevant feature of Sound of Silence that has particularly impacted on me is the way this series raises a question on the role of the viewers' perception, forcing us to going beyond the common way we perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... I'm personally convinced that some information are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

I think this is absolutely true, the world that we are living in now, about the last hundred years, is much more complex than before and we are unaware of most of the things that happening around us. Although we live in an era that there is access to information more than ever, but it seems that there are lots of things that we are not aware or we can’t be aware of and it’s all because the pace of life.

Another dimension of this issue is the modern human’s inside, I think his mentality his concerns and his lifestyle has changed and is more complex. In that condition one can call himself/herself a true artist that can slows time to observe life in fine detail without ignoring even insignificant events.

Most of the times the artist creates a new world and teaches us to see differently. Which is creating new insights that is necessary to analyze and understand the contemporary society. In fact, we won’t have a dynamic society if artists do not create artworks, and undoubtedly they have their impact on the entire world.

Your work seems to be pervaded with an inner narrative, but you reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to the viewer an Ariadne's Thread that allows to find personal interpretations

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to the subject you question. How much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

As you mentioned there is no explicit narrative for The Sound of Silence, and I prefer that anyone has its own perceptions and interpretations. In reality I like one examine his/her inner self through my perspective without limiting his or her vision. In my opinion there are narrations for this project in the number of people who see it.

I have highly appreciated the way you explore the blurry boundaries between Imagination and Experience: in particular you seem recontexualize the idea of Silence in order to disclose the unrevealed narrative behind the instant you capture. Accordingly, I daresay that imagination acts as cornerstones for the fullfilment process of the viewers that has reminded me again Thomas Demand, when he stated that "nowadays photography can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead": what's your point about this?

I believe that photography has passed many tests and errors and we are not in an era that needs exciting experiences such as still life photography, nude photography or playing with light and form. This type of photography is still attractive today, but it's not in the genre of Fine Art. The thing which is important in this genre is the idea behind pictures and the photographer encoded world that makes it unique; it’s a world that we’ve never experienced.

During this years you have exhibited your works in many occasions, including a recent show at the Photography Museum of Tehran and I think it's important to mention that you have been

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shortlisted for the incoming Two Land Art Festival, at Hormoz Island and Khorram Abad. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

Usually artists are active through different majors in art, such as sculpture, painting, land art and…. The whole idea is the same but the artist uses different mediums to express it. I don’t think about my viewers when I want to choose a medium to show what I have in mind, its mediums potentials that make me choose. Photography has its own potentials it can enter into philosophy and you can also find many layers in a picture, but environmental art is connected with environment and natural materials and what produced in each medium is different.

Thanks a lot for this interesting conversation, Sima. Finally, I would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects. Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Thanks for the interview; I’m working on a new project which is different with the Sound of Silence, because Sound of Silence was kind of stage photography. But my new project is in wide landscapes and everything is natural. I’ve just started this project and it doesn’t have solidarity to share with the readers. In the field of land art readers can see my works through this link: https://sites.google.com/site/siyouart/ .

And here is my email address: simisi.y@gmail.com I am looking forward to receive emails from the readers and I would like them to share their opinions with me.

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Ye'ela Wilschanski Lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel

An artist's statement

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sing my body and voice to express myself, is what I have been doing since I was born. As an artist, my body and voice are the most readily available raw materials to create from and about.

I started my way as an artist sewing clothes for my dolls. I needed to sketch my sewing designs, and those sketches progressed to paintings. Yearning for tools to paint, I went to art school. There, I was exposed to sculpture. I found that three dimensional is much more interesting than two.

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The more I learned sculpting techniques, the more I became interested in the movement my body makes when I engage with a material. The process of creating an art work excited me, but once there was a final product, I lost interest in it. I felt that my body- the tool that creates my imprint on all those materials- is not given the respect and presence it's worthy of.

That is what led me to performance art. Documenting my performances introduced me to the

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LandEscape meets

Ye'ela Wilschanski An interview by Julian Thomas Ross, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator landescape@europe.com

What immediately impresses of Ye'ela Wilschanski's work is the way her multidisciplinary and performative approach is capable of taking advantage from different techniques, as Sculpture, Video and Drawing to create a consistent, coherent unity that challenges the viewers' perception, accomplishing the difficult task of leading us to rethink about way we relate ourselves to modern society. Through an incessant process of recontextualization, Wilschanski goes beyond mere subjectivity and individual perception, breaking down the Four Wall and allowing the viewers to evolve from a passive audience to conscious participant of the creative process. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Ye'ela, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bezalel School of art and design that you have received from the prestigious Bezalel School of art and design: how has this experience influenced you as an artist and impacted on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Providing a helpful environment to produce art work is more complex than what a school curriculum can offer.

For my needs, going through therapy gave me the strength and tools to be an artist. Travelling the world gave me sensitivity and awareness to materials, in comparison to my familiar surroundings.

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Ye'ela Wilschanski (photo by Colette Aliman)

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Ye'ela Wilschanski

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Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Body Land, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://www.yeelawilschanski.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

The inspiration for "Body Land" was refamiliarising my body in relation to the four angles of my bed, following a breakup of a relationship. For a month I stayed in bed until I had the strength to get out. A year later, I wanted to confront the feelings I had experienced, and visually recreate what I had been through, in order to recover.

What I do in the performance is to take a pile of dry soil and draw the outline shapes around my moving body, then I gather back the soil and form a square around me, moving in relation to the square. The final stage is drawing a frame referring to the shape of the room and audience within it. This stage is different at each performance, depending on the space.

I definetely love the way Body Land takes such an intense participatory line on the conception of art. In particular, your investigation about the intimate aspect of constructed realities has reminded me of Thomas Demand's works: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

A creative process can be disconnected, but it is much more interesting both for me and for the audience to witness my going through an one-off experience .

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My choice to be inside my works is because I feel that when I am making an object, I'm totally into it and want to continue being playful forever. When I need to let go, the object becomes a foreign body that I don't want to feel any responsibility for.

"Body Land" is an example of that. The process leading up to the point of this performance began with ceramics pottery works which led on to my studying mud building. The performance absorbs all that knowledge. What I chose to share with the audience isthe relationship between body and vessel\shelter. There is no final product in the performance because the soil is dry therefore I do not form a object Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Sculpture as well as of Drawing: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I don't consciously choose the multi-disciplinary approach to my work. In the past ten years, each time I wanted to focus on one particular art medium, it opened a desire to study another field . This is an ongoing process that I hope will never end. As a result, I have slowly built up a variety of tools. When I start a new project, I analyze it through the lens of different disciplines until I feel that I have found the right medium.

I get inspiration from my dreams. I wake up with a notebook next to me, and write down what I remember. I respect and listen to my dreams, because in them, a kaleidoscope of people and objects in bizarre situations make sense within one frame. That notebook is my laboratory of fascinating "raw footage" that I work with. I also make decisions concerning day-to-day life, when I am still half-awake because then I'm naturally

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(photo by Yonathan Shehoah)

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free from my brain’s limitations.

I come from a multicultural bilingual family.

Not having a one solid base to start from, influences my identity. Going away from my comfort zone and re-adjusting is my default.

This may explain why as an artist I work with multiple disciplines.

In the APPROACHING you drew outlines of the passengers silhouettes on the glass of a train station: I can recognize in this interesting project a subtle but effective

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investigation about the emerging of language due to a process of self-reflection, and what has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to signs, and in a wide sense to re-contextualize the concept of a track of our existence. This is a recurrent feature of your approach that invite the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas

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are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

In the crazy city of Jerusalem, the Light Rail route reflects a political statement on the part of the Authorities. My inspiration for this project came from the text on the station screen:

‫ תברקתמ‬APPROACHING ‫ عودة‬Appearing in Arabic, Hebrew and English a minute before the train's arrival. To me, the word approaching express warm communication .

People all over the city, hope to see the word "Approaching", followed by a language used by the other side of the city they would never approach. On the same screen, is a request: "‫‫‬A ‫ ‬‫‬ttention please! Before entering the train, please make sure you have not left anything at the station”. This is a forceful reminder that, at any given time, this place can become violent and even deathly and passengers

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should be aware of suspicious people and objects.

Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled No and it is based on a performance at the entrance to Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. I have found really stimulating the way you have extracted from the apparently simple act of shaking one's head no a distinctive feature from each of the involved people: as you have remarked once, we use your body as a tool to express

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yourselves from the moment you are born : and I have appreciated the way your approach forces us to evolve from being a passive spectator to more conscious participants to the act you perform... By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naĂŻf, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical issues: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's

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behaviour... what's your point about this?

Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

"NO "is a piece about my feelings as a woman, using my own hair to communicate my research . For two and a half weeks, I had a trading stand in the market designated to woman.

My own braided hair advertised the hair-do I was offering to do. In exchange, I asked for posing to the camera time.

One hundred and thirteen women chose to participate. With each woman, as I braided

her hair, we discussed her feelings about being a woman in the market, and how she feels about the way the society makes her feel about her body.

When I finished doing the braids, I stood behind the camera. My instructions then to the woman was to nod her head, as if saying "No", simultaneously showing off the different angles of her braid.

Then they left, adorned with the same hairdo as mine. Over a year has passed since, and I still meet random woman who tell me how the

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braids changed their day, and how beautiful they felt. I know, that I had taken there unbound hair and closed it firmly to form that.

You have talked about projects you did in the street, communicating with random people, In "My happiness is your grief", you deal with your closer surrounding.

Specifically with your close family. What is the background of this video?

The video is about my relationship with my mother and my relationship to the model of a mother I was expected to become and rejected. I based the videos sequence on childhood memories from religious rituals at family meals. On Friday night dinner, it is a tradition that the father followed by the mother place there hands on the children's head and recite a blessing that god will bless and take care of them.

There is a different blessing for girls and boys and it's given in order from oldest to youngest sibling. Looking back I thought of the choreography and body gestures that made that ritual what it is. In the video, I am different generations and times in my body. I thought of the gestures I would have used, expanding on the formal ones to give expression to the complexity of the family situation.

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

Thanks for the interview!

In the next couple of months I will be performing in a movement improvisation series at Barbur Gallery, for further information: http://impromovement.wix.com/2015 The project I'm working on now is a video and a performance that deal with the image of a memorial wreath .

In the future, I hope to be attentive to the materials in my body and in my surrounding, and to be precise with myself.

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