ART Habens Art Review // Special Issue

C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t R e v i e w

Creation of Man

a work by Stefan Nenov

Yajing Liu's photographic works mainly deal with issues of conditions of human, landscape and memory. Now she puts more attention to explore the boundaries of the medium in photography, such as multimedia and 3D imaging, and so on. Also, her involvement has been all-encompassing with a practice and a passion, from photojournalism to experiment film, to commercial photography and exhibition experience.

I think of my artworks as messages that have to contain a captiva-ting visual mate-rial, a strong concept and an open field for thoughts. I am trying to reflect the feelings and ideas that move our society and translate that to one deeper mean-ing. Internet and the new technologies are one my main source of ideas and provoc-ations. It is an interesting challenge to observe the way our society communicates

I always wanted to create tapestries, but not in the classical tapestry sense. I strive for innovation, pushing boundaries and breaking the rules of the traditional tapestry.

Where traditionalists weave only textile materials, I use the textile as my canvass. Burlap and recycled objects in my work act as elements, fusing the natural world and the industrial age.

My work is moving images, sound/music and objects. I utilize appropriation, technology and intuition. I am interested in time, language, scale and systems. This is a gross oversimplification. A tiny obfuscation. A maybe-not-necessary ridiculousness to preface the following simple statement: I want to make sense of what is happening. I mean that in the biggest and smallest ways imaginable.

As human beings, we have evolved to seek security and social hierarchy through living in groups. Babyhive, through substituting bees with babies, attempts to allude our primal desire to stay within close proximity of others, while simultaneously calling out the unease inflicted by the rapidly increasing population density”. Allison aims to maintain the characteristic of honesty and sincerity in her artwork while expressing her consistent fascination of nature.

Georgios GreeKalogerakis

Tatjana Blinja United Kingdom/Greece Croatia / Canada

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf USA

Allison Cheung USA / Hong Kong

Stefan Nenov United Kingdom

Yajing Liu Singapore

Bachelor in Audiovisual and New Media (2015), RC Campos looks for experimenting audiovisual with multi-screen installations and performance, creating stuff inspired by areas such as sensory and multispecies ethnography, cyber anthropology, embodiment and displacement affectivities

Our reality is of bad quality. It was Hito Steyerl who said, that the internet is the realm of the “poor image”.

Opposed to classical photography the poor image is of pixelated, shared, cropped and edited. Our reality mainly consists of those poor images and in a reverse development this poor images assure us that something really happened. Mobile phone shots became the new guarantor of authenticity.

The contrast between the experiential and reflexive aspects of my work serves to confront the viewer with the Dionysian nature of memory and the fact that we continue to outsource that memory to Apollonian, electronic spaces. It is through this divisive action that a brief moment of transcendence from the self is achieved. We are then able to look with a degree of acceptance to the past and to the future at the same time, to our personal histories and to our imminent destinies as cyborgs.

Lives and works in Atlanta, USA Video, Mixed media, Installation

Lives and works in Hong Kong Mixed media, Installation

Lives and works in London, UK Mixed media, Sculpture, Installation

Lives and works in London, UK Mixed Media, Sculpture

Lives and works in Singapore Fine Art Photography

Lives and works in Brazil VIdeo, Performance, installation

Lives and works in Toronto, Canada Sculpture, Mixed media

Lives and works in Graz, Austria Experimental Video, Installation

Lives and works in Bergen, USA Mixed Media, Video, Installation

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

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Gregor Schlatte Austria

RC Campos Brazil

Onirologia USA

Allison Cheung

Georgios GreeKalogerakis

Stefan Nenov

RC Campos

Yajing Liu

Onirologia

Gregor Schlatte

Tatjana Blinja

Nicol Eltzroth Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf Rosendorf

My work is moving images, sound/music and objects. I utilize appropriation, technology and intuition. I am interested in time, language, scale and systems.

Let us pretend that the following (possibly questionable) propositions make some small amount of big sense:

Proposition #1 - That the nervous systems, sensory apparatus and cognitive faculties of a selfregarding, self-reflexive, often self-immolating species of primate are capable of making sense, meaning and purpose out of the un-languageable and the Other.

Proposition #2 - Sense, meaning and purpose are partially if not wholly idiosyncratic.

Proposition #3 - That in spite of the idiosyncratic (ideo-syncretic?) nature of these observations (to belabor the non-metaphorical monkey talk,) some of these apes - on one opposably-thumbed hand, care about (and can be *pleased* by) the carefully presented and/or prettied observations of the ape on/of the Other. Ape B claims that he *has* to do these things - is compelled to - and would do them even if no one was watching, listening or noticing. But in actuality, Ape B wants little Ape A to pat him right on the pelt with his right hand. Perhaps pick a few (metaphorical or not) nits with the left. Look him square in his watery ape eye - and for just one moment feel a sense of connection to the other damned dirty apes. That in the horrific, joyous, terrifying and indescribably beautiful thrum of existence he is not alone in his particular apperception of the sublime.

Propositions #4, #5 & #6 - Apophenia is real. Nostalgia comforts. Wordplay can engender jouissense - particularly if it is so slippery that one has little hope of getting a whiff of the groan inducing joke, but does. Humor is paramount when a body is facing the Void - but alas, this is the Void.

Proposition #7 -Sense, meaning and purpose is serious fucking business.

This is a gross oversimplification. A tiny obfuscation. A circular hyperbolic recursive absurdity. A confla(gra)tion of art and philosophy. A maybe-not-necessary ridiculousness to preface the following simple statement:

I want to make sense of what is happening. I mean that in the biggest and smallest ways imaginable.

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Nicol Eltzrot Eltzroth Rosendorf h Rosendorf

A personal interview A personal interview A interview A interview

Through a refined cross-disciplinary approach, Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf accomplishes the difficult task of creating an area of intellectual interplay between physical perception and immateriality: his insightful manipulation of abstract images invites the viewers us to explore the crossroad between form and significance, and offers an effective Ariadne's thread capable of walking us into a liminal area in which experience and oniric dimension find a point of convergence. What mostly impresses of Rosendorf 's work is the way his analytical gaze on contemporary age unveils a variety of messages that are hidden in the reality we perceive, discovering unsuspected but ubiquitous connections. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating production.

Hello Nicol, and a warm welcome to ART Habens: I would start this interview posing you a couple of questions about your rich and interesting background. As an artist your are largely autodidact, but it's important to remark that you made a made a long and fruitful career in communications and advertising, and over twenty years you had the chance to work for for the world’s biggest brands: how does this extraordinary experience inform the way you nowadays relate yourself to art making? Moreover, since you have lectured at the Atlanta College of Art and the Art Institute of Atlanta, I would like to ask your point about the impact of formal training on young creative people... do you think that your

approach would be different if you have attended an art school, rather than jumping directly into concrete practice as you did?

As far as my commercial work informing my art making, my initial impulse is to speak to the banal alchemy of advertisinghow it turns figurative shit into literal gold. As true as that may be I find that line of thought tiresome…although I am always

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

(photo by Paul D. McPherson, Jr.)

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

happy to deploy a good turn of fecal phrase. In actuality, my experience in commercial production has given me a technical fluency–at least in the moving image aspect of my work–that allows me to keep the conceptual aspect of my practice foremost in my thinking. The craft I deploy in commercial work is no different from that which I deploy in art making: work is work, even if the end goals are radically different.

With regard to formal training, I have a perpetual outsider’s perspective. As a young adult, the majority of my social circle was comprised of art students. Prior to this point my academic experience had been problematic to say the least. I was a model student until my adolescence, when punk rock, sex and the perturbation of my consciousness became much more important to me than rote memorization at the consumption training academy in which I was enrolled. Seeing my art school friends actively engaged and *thinking* in the art/academic context was exciting to me and I wanted in. Just as I was about to go to art school, I had the opportunity to take a job at a certain, famous Atlanta based soft drink marketer and manufacturer. It was a simple economic decision to forego school and take the money.

Fast forward a decade to the early/mid 2000s. I was then the owner of a production company that was employing recent art school graduates as designers and animators. Keep in mind that for the most part, these were not fine arts majorsthey were technicians and designers trained in what amounts to visual widget manufacture. I think that creative young people can certainly be edified by formal training, but it is up to the individual in

every conceivable way to *do* something with it. As someone who has taken it upon himself to half-assedly self-educate in art history, critical theory and philosophy, I can now certainly see the value of structured instruction. This could have countered my

ART Habens Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Lemniscate - Desire Urges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me

unfortunate and seemingly incurable inclination to cherry pick what interests me and flit hummingbird-like from one exciting thing to the next. Would formal training have made a difference to my approach? Absolutely. My life would be utterly

different. If I had gone to school, I would have been saddled with crippling debt and therefore my relationship to the very idea of risk would certainly have been much different. Conversely, with training, my drawing skills would be much more

ART Habens

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

developed, and my understanding of art history would be broader and deeper had I been forced to study and contextualize art which did not appeal to me.

What has at once caught my attention of

your approach is the incessant search of a balance between the extraction of unexpected semantic relations and the creation of an autonomous aesthetics. To pursue such equilibrium you adopt a multidisciplinary strategy and I would

Lemniscate - Desire Urges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me HD Video // Sound // 5 min 23 sec-∞ // 2013

suggest our readers to visit http:// nicoleltzrothrosendorf.com in order to get a general idea of the variety of your projects. While superimposing concepts from Maths and techniques from various fields, have you ever happened to realize

that a symbiosis between different viewpoints and disciplines is the only way to express concepts you explore?

I wouldn’t say such an approach is the *only* way at all, but it certainly aids me in the conceptual layering in the work. My thematic concerns are basic yet complicated–time, scale, language, perception–and a multivalent approach is the only sort that makes any sense to me. Your use of the words balance and equilibrium are important here. I often feel like I am building a house of cards. I prefer a reductive and austere visual aesthetic, but I load so much contradictory and idiosyncratic material into the work that it always seems to be on the verge of discohesion. That equilibrial teetering is where I find that the work functions best.

Now let's focus on your production: I would start from Lemniscate: "Desire Urges Me On, While Fear Bridles Me", an interesting work that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: When I first happened to admire it I tried to relate all the visual information and its geometrical symbolism to a single meaning, filling the gaps and searching for an Ariadne's thread that could unveil an order in the intrinsic regenerative nature of this interesting work. But I soon realized that I had to fit into its visual rhythm, 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?

This touches on that idea of a layered and perturbed equilibrium in the work. The process is as much systematic as it is

intuitive; it is quite literally intuitive material arranged systematically and vice versa. By design there is no single meaning to be found in Lemniscate - the threads are viscera spilling out in all directions. On the surface it could read as a sexual/social loop or a sort of thanaterotic audio visual tone poem. Another layer is my inescapable sense that the bare facts of existence are ineffably odd. All of this is complicated by the indeterminate scale, the uncertain spatio-temporal narrative and my gilding of the lily with the Whitehead, Bruno and Kepler quotes. As with much of my work, the music is crucial–even primary. It establishes the rhythmic framework and *attempts* to perturb the subjective experience of time, as music and sound are so uniquely suited to do. I would prefer that people were to experience all my audio and video work - this piece in particular - in the proper physical/technical context. A laptop screen and speakers do not present the work as it is intended - it should be overwhelming in auditory volume and visually inescapable. That sort of direct visceral engagement is crucial to my intent, which is to short circuit analytic function with light and volume–at least on initial viewings. Double meaning intentional.

I have found particularly stimulating your investigation about the idea of mutation and change in relation with the elusive concepts of time and mass, that you have accomplished in Mass Wasting. While questioning about the disconnect between physical experience and abstract concepts, you seem to suggest the necessity of going beyond symbolic strategies to question the relationship between reality and the way we perceive it. Would you walk our readers through the genesis of this video? In particular, I have appreciated the combination

between a severe geometry and a subtle sensuality that pervades the shapes and the way they are animated: what importance has for you the aesthetic problem?

Mass Wasting is a geological term

ART Habens Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Mass Wasting // HD Video // Sound // 10 Min // 2014 Object

relating to erosion wherein rock and earth move downslope under the force of gravity. The music in this piece is based on a time stretched sample from the 1977 AOR chestnut “Dust In The Wind” by Kansas. Like a lot of people over 40, I

periodically succumb to the comforting balm of nostalgia, and songs from my childhood are nothing if not nostalgic. I don’t have any special affection or affinity for this song, but I do feel as if there is a sort of sympathetic magic to be taken

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

advantage of in bending this sort of culturally ubiquitous material to my will.

You will see platonic solids - particularly dodecahedrons - recurring in my work. My idiosyncratic conception of them is a bit

outside their traditional symbolic meaning. In western esoteric thought, the dodecahedron is an idealized form symbolizing a sort of perfected divine order in the universe. I conceive of them as a stand-in for the Lacanian Other or as

ART Habens Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

symbols of reductionist and materialist modes of thinking. In Mass Wasting I employ dodecahedrons as analogues of the ideological forces exerted on the individual by our primate social arrangements. Contrasts are important to me here -

luminal contrast as well as the pseudomaterial contrasts in the simulated virtual materials. The cubic “body” is soft and resilient while the ideological rain is hard and unyielding. Another important contrast is between individually perceived duration and geologic time. Dust in the wind indeed.

The impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top and has dramatically revolutionized the idea of art making: we are incessantly forced to rethink about the intimate aspect of the materiality of an artwork, that just few years ago was a tactile materialization of an idea. I'm sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and I will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

I see what your are saying about the virtualization and changing conception of materiality. With Mass Wasting I addressed this issue by utilizing 3d printing to actualize the cubic “body” in the video as a serialized set of objects. In this case the resulting objects are a literal tactile materialization, to borrow your phrase.

Regarding the notion of an art/technology dichotomy and assimilation - I feel like my ideas on this are a bit outside your framing here. I think technology is somehow both more and less than the application of scientific knowledge for practical purpose. I see technology as *any* strategy for dimensional mastery. With this broader framing I see technologies such as computing in a continuum with technologies such as the inclined plane and pictorial perspective as well as phenomena such as binocular vision

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

and opposable thumbs. To expand this constellation of ideas further, some would propose that language itself should be viewed as a technology. Alternately, instead of humans being primates using language, we could be primates being used by Language– a sort of less provocatively worded take on Burroughs’ idea that language is a virus. To return this line of thinking at least halfway back to the matter at hand, I could also say that art is a technology - a technology for relating to and therefore extending an understanding of reality. So if art could be a technology, how then would it self- assimilate and how could there be any dichotomy ? At the very least, in an arts context I see technology as simply a medium - albeit a medium capable of virtualizing other mediums and even potentially reality itself.

Another interesting piece of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is the video Declension, that seems to elaborate a spatial translation of the concept of time-based evolution. By definition video is rhythm, movement and continuity. In your videos you create timebased works that induce the viewers to abandon themselves to personal associations, looking at time in spatial terms and I daresay, rethinking the concept of space in such a static way: this 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. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

Declension is one of my oldest pieces and certainly the most personal. About 5 years ago I changed my personal life drastically. I ended an unhealthy relationship and began the art practice we are discussing here. During this tumultuous time I met the

woman who is now my wife. She very quickly destabilized my life in the most wonderful, constructive way. In many ways Declension is about this very positive transformation of my personal

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Declinsion - HD Video // Sound // 33 Min // 2012

circumstances. In the excerpted form of Declension on my website it is not possible to hear the tonal arc of the music - particularly in the second half of the piece. Earlier I mentioned my desire to

manipulate the subjective experience of time with my work in reference to Lemniscate. That sort of strategy is followed here with the slow motion and the extremely slow tempo of the music. Prior to

ART Habens

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

falling into my career in advertising my identity was very much anchored by my conception of myself as a musician - primarily a drummer. Consequently, rhythm is something that is deeply ingrained in everything I do creatively.

While referring to a "fruible" set of symbols and geometries that comes from universal imagery, you seem to urge the viewers to perceive in a more absolute form, so I would take this occasion 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?

Personal experience is primary. The filmmaker Michael Haneke said “I'm lucky enough to be able to make films so I don't need a psychiatrist.” and I can absolutely see his point. I suppose an artist’s process could be de-coupled from their life experience, but I am so invested in my navel gazing/sense-parsing and apophenic tea leaf reading that the idea of work just *happening* is a bit alien– but no more alien than the dizzying array of truly bizarre phenomena we are confronted with in every moment.

Recently you have exhibited in several occasions and museums, including The Asheville Art Museum, Alfred State College’s “What The Festival,” and in online exhibits at Niche Videoart LA among others. 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?

While conceiving and producing the work, I attempt to eliminate audience considerations from my decision making process. The idea

Feedback, Installation

Tube Amplifiers, Speaker Cabinets, Electric Guitar, Aluminum, Motor, Ableton, Max For Live, Arduino, plexiglass, wood, water, led lighting, video cameras, video projectors // 2015

ART Habens Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

being that by doing so, any audience reaction or dialog will be more honest and enlightening to me personally. When people enjoy the work or find some value in it, it is of course gratifying, but that has very little do do with my initial motivations. The process of contextualizing and presenting the work is met with no small amount of brow furrowing on my part - questioning how best to support my intent with the intertextual material and if such a strategy is effective or not. As someone who has no formal training and is beginning an art practice much later than most do, I feel a bit at sea about these sorts of issues. All I can do is make the work and present the work as I feel it should be made and presented.

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

My work takes what feels like a very long time to actualize, but lately things are seeming to come together a bit faster and I have quite a few exciting projects in progress. Musically, I have just released a collaborative recording with the artist Retconned called Scratched Glass. I also have a solo recording nearing completion. On the visual side, I am finishing a new 3-channel video piece “Borromean Not.” I am also working on an interactive installation “Feedback” as well as constructing a series of objects “Strategies Against Certainties” that will also have video components. Perhaps most indicative of a new direction in the work are my explorations into utilizing virtual reality–particularly with regard to audio spatialization–in an attempt to induce a sort of guided technological synesthesia.

ART Habens Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf

Aluminium, Iron Plate, Copper, Hardware // 18 in x 18 in x 74 in // 2015

Allison Ch Ch Cheung eung eung

Allison Cheung is a young Chinese interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago and Hong Kong, currently studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As an interdisciplinary artist, her work is curious and extends into a variety of different mediums including painting, drawing, installation, printmedia and film.

Allison best describes her work as "the physical manifestation of accumulated overthinking and feelings", as many are inspired by personal experience and observation. Meanwhile, the topics of her art are often presented in a manner that stands at the crossroads of romanticized perception and the empirical reality. Regarding her more recent piece, Babyhive, Allison explains, “As human beings, we have evolved to seek security and social hierarchy through living in groups. Babyhive, through substituting bees with babies, attempts to allude our primal desire to stay within close proximity of others, while simultaneously calling out the unease inflicted by the rapidly increasing population density”.

Allison aims to maintain the characteristic of honesty and sincerity in her artwork while expressing her consistent fascination of nature, human behaviour, and of the world around her.

Allison Cheung

Untitled (Phoenix and Dragon) (2015)

Acrylic and dry point etching on silver styrene, clay, copp

Allison Cheung

ART Habens

er, and plywood24.5 x31.5 x18 in

Untitled (Phoenix and Dragon) (2015)

Acrylic and dry point etching on silver styrene, clay, copper, and plywood24.5 x31.5 x18 in

An interview with interview

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

Allison Cheung is a young artist from the Chicago scene: splitting from the United States and Hong Kong, she draws from her multicultural substratum to explore a variety of themes including nature, sensuality, inner emotions as well as living matters as the conflictual relationships between contemporariness and human behaviour. Through a refined interdisciplinary approach, Cheung provides the viewers of an Ariadne's thread capable of guiding us in a liminal area in which Man and Nature unveil unexpected relationship: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Allison and welcome to ART Habens. To start this interview I would pose a couple of questions about your background and the way it informs the way you currently conceive your works. First, you are currently pursuing your BFA from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago: how do these experiences impacts on your current process? Moroever, how do your Chinese roots influence the way you relate yourself to art production?

Hi and thank you, I am very excited to be here. My year at School of the Art Institute of Chicago has been hugely inspirational for me, both as a person and as an artist. I have spent the first 18 years of my life in Hong Kong. While I love it dearly as my hometown, I find that is it a place where there are just too many idealised expectations, and they are expectations of everything. Perhaps to some extent, having high expectations can be healthy in terms of inspiring motivation and ambition. But there is one fundamental issue that hinders it all: a lot of us have been so conditioned to have and fill certain expectations, that sometimes

Allison Cheung Cheung

we forget to find out who we really are, not to mention what we really want! For example, I was planning to study law in college before I changed my mind, dyed my hair and went to art school, and thank god I did! Spending merely a year abroad at a well-diverse city such as Chicago has aided me in realising my identity and potential. I’ve had new expectations since then, and I’ve been working hard to live up to them.

Allison Cheung

However, this past March, having just returned from Hong Kong after winter break, a particular issue came to my attention: the issue of gender expectations in traditional Chinese values, specifically the familial roles inflicted by gender. My father, as the son of the Cheung family, devoted decades of his life to my grandfather’s company. My boyfriend at the time, although having studied product design in college, was putting it aside to join his father’s business in selling construction tools. It made me sad, because they have convinced themselves that it was what they had to do, simply because they were ‘the son’, and that they were too trapped by this identity to even wonder if they had a choice. My father eventually got out after my grandfather passed away, but my boyfriend hadn’t. I loved him, and that inspired me to make

Untitled (Phoenix and Dragon)

Untitled (Phoenix and Dragon), is probably the piece that most eloquently encapsulates my psychological transformation at SAIC. It is an interactive installation, where a phoenix and a dragon, traditionally utilised to represent gender in Chinese imagery, is etched onto doublesided mirror panels. The mirror panels are connected to knobs on top of the installation, where the audience can rotate and rearrange the image. To put it simply, it was a physical metaphor for the notion of the self beyond gender. Although I am no longer involved with my ex-boyfriend, this piece continues to have vastly significant and of personal value to me, which brings me to one of SAIC’s school motto, “Meaning and Making are Inseparable”. I make art to show what I mean, and I honestly mean what I show in my art.

You are a versatile artist and I would invite our readers to visit http://a1113.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production, which is marked out with a stimulating

multidisciplinary approach, extending into a variety of different mediums ranging from painting, drawing and printmedia, to installation and film. While crossing the borders 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?

On one hand, I think it is not uncommon for a person to have conflicting thoughts or feelings, and to capture these feelings in art, it is only logical that conflict exists within the art itself. In that sense, I believe that conflict is often transformed into the element of contrast in order to provide visual stimulation while conveying a particular concept. Contrast in a piece could appear in the form of its aesthetics, its material, its form, its content or even its relationship with reality. It is contrast that inflicts the viewers’ contemplation upon speculating a piece of art and thus being able to comprehend its intention. I’d like to think that the most successful of art are the ones that, through providing enough clues, guide but still allow the viewers to arrive at a conflict resolution on their own.

On the other hand, speaking for myself, sometimes people are just simply drawn to conflict in art because it is more interesting. Honestly, life is full of conflicts, people are full of conflicts, and our relationships with people and things are full of conflicts, but don’t our conflicts, and the tension we get from conflicts, let us know that there are things we care about? Conflict is with what we resonate, it is to what we relate and what we know feels like. I believe that it is only when art is relatable that specific concepts can be expressed, and certain intentions can be learned.

I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from Untitled (Phoenix ad Dragon), an extremely

ART Habens

Allison Cheung

Untitled (Phoenix and Dragon) (2015)

Acrylic and dry point etching on silver styrene, clay, copper, and plywood24.5 x31.5 x18 in

Allison Cheung

interesting installation that our readers has started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. In particular, I have appreciated the way you combine different elements into a coherent unity, to create a visual language capable of accomplishing both a formal equilibrium and an autonomous aesthetics: the multilayered experience provided by this piece invites the viewer to relate to your both a subconscious and a conscious level. Do you conceive this in an instinctive way or do you rather structure your process in order to reach the right balance? Moreover, how important is the aesthetic problem for you when you conceive a work?

I’d say that my art-making process usually begins with a “spark”, a central notion, a seed. With Untitled (Phoenix and Dragon), it was gender expectations in traditional Chinese culture. With that, a range of questions and solutions arise; What type of imagery represents gender? How can it be contextualised? How do I emphasise individuality? How do I convey choice? And more importantly, how do I inflict selfreflection? After that, the process becomes more or less instinctive, solving technical issues while rendering the components within the aesthetic domain of the main imagery.

Untitled (Phoenix and Dragon) was a particularly difficult project for me as it was the first interactive object I’ve ever made, not to mention that it was about to be displayed publicly at SAIC’s ArtBash 2015. The most challenging obstacle was making compromises between technical resolutions and maintaining the aesthetics of the object. Ultimately, it all worked out, but if it comes down to the decision between functionality and aesthetics, I probably would chose the former.

In terms of the importance of general aesthetics in my work, I definitely value

intrigue over pleasantness. Needless to say, a certain extent of visual qualities and craftsmanship is required such that the piece isn’t immediately overlooked or invalidated at first impression. However, my favourite pieces are always the ones I can’t stop thinking about.

Another work from your recent production that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Babyhive: in which you investigate about the conflictual relationship between our primal desire to stay within close proximity with each others and the unease caused by the increasing population density. I like the way you have implemented such effective allegory using references to human dimension: it 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". 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?

Personally, I like to believe that I’ve maintained a sense of sincerity in my body of work. Not in the sense that the contents of the work can’t occasionally be intentionally off, or that the aesthetics can be made to be deceptive. It is rather that I wish to generate some sort of resonance or infliction on the viewers’ end that feels as true as I feel it to be. Bringing it back to your question on whether personal experience is indispensable as part of the creative process, my answer is most definitely yes. In my opinion, personal experience is absolutely necessary in order to form a connection to the meaning of the work, and to even develop that meaning

further through the art making process. For example, Babyhive, which explores the living element of urban environments, speaks directly from my 19 years of living in busy, fast-paced cities. Babyhive isn’t meant to express the fascination of human achievement or the excitement of the big city, but rather the strange combination of turmoil and gloriousness of being in this overly crowded yet consistent and functioning hierarchy.

As Demand says, “Art […] has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead”, and that is exactly what Babyhive aims to do. I took the connotations of babies, which are often associated with livelihood, reproduction and fertility, and combined it with the connotations of bees, which are often swarming, working, hierarchal, and infesting. The action of replacing bees with bee-sized babies on an actual hive-like object creates a rare effect where the representation becomes both real and unreal, familiar and yet uncanny. Babyhive’s likeness to a real beehive inflicts a sense of unease and tension, or as my friends like to call it “creeps”, which represents one of the aforementioned aspects of city life. Meanwhile, the substitution of the babies brings the piece to a more metaphorical level where it explains the source of the unease and moreover, compare the primal similarities between man and animal.

Your exploration about living matters as the runaway growth of population may also reveal a subtle sociopolitical criticism: I daresay that Babyhive could be considered as an allegory of the tension between Nature and the role humans play in the unstable contemporary age. Many contemporary artists, as Thomas Hirschhorn and Michael Light, used to include socio-political and environmental criticism and sometimes even convey

explicit messages in their works. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in this way or do you seek to maintain a neutral approach?

To some extent, yes, my work could be considered political, but only as far as the expressed notion is made to be a political issue by the world. Personally, I view Babyhive as more of a social comment on the way growing population densities have affected the empirical reality of the people living within it. Nevertheless, I do not reject

ART Habens Allison Cheung

Babyhive, detail Installation/Sculpture

the idea of my work having political impact on individual viewers. I think my job is really just to make an observation, regardless of whether or not it is politically opionated, because ultimately people see what they want to see.

The performance nature of storytelling behind The Truth About Fortune Cookies that our readers can view at https://vimeo.com/128004102 suggests me an attempt to go beyond a mere interpretative aspect of the reality you refer to. As the late Franz West did in his installations, this work seems to reveal unconventional aesthetics in the way you deconstruct and assemble memories in a collective imagery, to draw the viewer into a process of self-reflection. Would you like to talk our readers through the genesis of this work? In particular, what is the role of memory in your process?

The origin of the idea behind The Truth

About Fortune Cookies was a particularly convoluted one. I’d like to start by asking our viewers this question: Is there such a thing as fortune, or fate? The notion of the fortune cookie is similar to that of horoscopes or magic 8 balls, that one’s fate is determined the moment an answer is given by an arbitrary and impartial source. We believe in that because we believe that out of all the possible outcomes, we must have received that particular one for some cosmic reason, and because of that the future was no longer up to us, but was rather already meant to be. Personally, I found this logic ludicrous at the beginning.

However, after contemplating further, I had a realisation. What if these so-called “fortune tellers” are not the determinators of fate but rather, the catalyst to one’s selfactualisation? What if fate will be whatever fate is regardless of what these fortune say? What if these fortunes simply aid one in realising one’s potential, allowing one to

fulfil one’s “fate” by letting one subscribe to the idea of fate and thus receiving the confidence and comfort required to take the leap and operate with one’s complete abilities? The Truth About Fortune Cookies deconstructs three day to day

ART Habens Allison Cheung

Stills from The Truth About Fortune Cookies

scenarios under the influence of the aforementioned “fate-inflicted” confidence. As the camera films in a first person perspective, I attempted to show the viewers that the choices that are made based on cookie fortunes are choices that

can, nonetheless, be made without the fortunes. It is simply that we choose to believe in ourselves more when we are told to by another source other than ourselves. Like the Russian proverb describes, “No man shall drown if he perseveres in praying

ART Habens

Allison Cheung

The Memory Memorial (2015)

Embroidery thread and acrylic on canvas

to God, and can swim”. The man will not drown if he can swim, but it is his belief in a saviour that makes him believe in survival. Certainly, memory and personal experience played an important role in the creative process of The Truth About Fortune Cookies. Honestly, I do not know how I would wake up tomorrow morning and do what I do if I didn’t believe that it is what I am meant to do. Of course, I understand that the choices made are ultimately mine, but that isn’t going to stop me from having a fortune cookie once in a while when doubts arise.

In The Memory Memorial you have brought to a new level of significance the role of written words, showing the aesthetic consequences of a combination between the abstract concept of language and the tactileness communicated by embroidery, exploiting the notions of language itself, exploring unexpected aspects of the functionality of language on an aesthetic level: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

I think this is a very interesting question because I believe that in the contemporary age, we must occasionally stop seeing art for what it means, but rather for what it is. Take text and language as an example, in literature we examine the words for their message through the content, literary devices and style within; in the visual arts, however, we contemplate upon the way it is displayed, its material context, and the relationship of that with its content in order to find meaning. In The Memory Memorial, even though the content of the words is still highly relevant to the theme, I urge the viewers to speculate the text in the form it is aesthetically displayed: a list. A list is something that one goes through,

again and again, and in this particular case, I did so through embroidery. The incorporation of embroidery was inspired by this radio broadcast on the topic of memory. During which, they said something along the lines of memories being warped the more times one thinks about it. Referring to that, my act of embroidering through the listed memories was both a metaphoric and literal way of “going through” them. The more I do, the more it becomes crossed out from the list, thus erasing the original event.

While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy and clear reference to sensuality, The Shrine of Our Love seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: offering to the viewer a key to shed a light on the concepts you investigate about, you encourage us to find personal interpretations: rather than 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?

The Shrine of Our Love definitely encourages personal interpretations. I am certain that a lot of us have experienced and lost love that was all so unforgettable, glorious, excruciating, yet forever so strong and gentle at the same time. This piece, as it is named, is a shrine, a salute, a monument to that of my own and for every viewer that resonate. I would most certainly say that it was an intuitive process. I had hoped to convey a genuinely, raw and complex, and in no way organised emotion in The Shrine of Our Love. I hardly think that I would be able to through a systematic process.

Your works are connected to the chance of creating an area of intellectual interplay with the viewers, that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience: so, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the

ART Habens

Allison Cheung

The Death Of Our Youth (2015)

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?

Most of the time, I aim to generate a sense of resonance to which the audience can connect. Due to this, I attempt to maintain some kind of neutrality in my work, whether it is of a vague contextual nature or through involving the audience’s participation. But overall, I think audience reception is not as crucial of a component as my own personal investment in the piece, as it is often the foundation on which I build the aforementioned audience connection. In

more simple terms, I cannot expect my viewers to connect to the piece if I’m not.

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

Well currently, I am working on part II of The Shrine of Our Love, I have recently developed an interest in mixed media art. As for future projects, I don’t really know actually, after all, I am only beginning my second year of college. I am open to all possibilities though, so I am as excited to find out as you are! Finally, I’d like to say thank you again for having me!

Allison Cheung

Acrylic, yarn, paper, dice, gladwrap on wood

The Shrine of Our Love (2015)

Allison Cheung ART Habens

Acrylic on wood, rose petals, marker on paper, yarn

Georgios GreeKalo GreeKalo GreeKalo GreeKalo

In my fine art practice, since 1999, I have used different materials and a mixture of techniques. Experimenting on sound and light has been a major part of my artistic development. The challenges of my early work(s) in oil and acrylic painting helped me realised that painting was not the medium I was interested to work with. As a result, I engaged with what I found fascinating in my surroundings, day-life materials. My work experience in metal construction and iron buildings was a major influence, leading to artworks where I combine a multitude of materials with construction chemicals and various techniques ‘Man and nature’ as well as ‘life and death’ were long-lasting topics of this experimental period of my life, which I named "11". Ten years later, I decided to make a self-portrait, choosing to cut Gainsborough's "blue boy" (c 1770) from an embroidery pattern and use it as my portrait behind a big, framed and chemically cleaned mirror. Despite the impressive result, something was missing from the painted background, with the boy standing in the middle and all behind the surface of the mirror! It took me a few months staring at it to realise that lighting was essential for completing my new creation. This realisation signaled the beginning of my artistic period called "6". The use of sound, videos, small screens and any type of lighting extended my limits and opened the doors of my artistic imagination.

From the beginning of my studies in art at the University of Westminster, sound clip installations became my main preoccupation. Rotating machines and moving parts added on to my list of mediums and eventually, a theatrical result came up through my exploration in the field of installations. Comparing the "11" period and its mixed media artworks and all the sound clip installations of period "6", I find them equally powerful and interrelated. Even though their temporal duration was disproportionate, they brought me stability as an artist and selfconfidence to progress to my present art practice, the stainless steel sound-sculptures.

The "S" project is drawing demarcate a completely different artistic period despite marked connections with my artistic past. The "6" period made me realise that sound is extremely important to me as it links memories, supports all visual incentives and gives vibrations to people’s souls. This is the reason why I am using a special sound vibrator in my sculptures, which turns the metal surface of the sculptures into a massive speaker. The subtle vibration on my sculptures is meant to be visible with a naked eye, aiming to connect the vibrated sculpture with the viewers’ internal and emotional vibrations.

The "S" project was initially inspired by the ancient Greek pottery and its two dimensional figurative representation of daily life. My extensive research on classical Greek sculptures of the same period and Parthenon's pediments has furthered my artistic idea and professional development. Day-life materials captivated my interest as a young boy and as an artist in later years. Nonetheless, I now realise that once you choose a specific material, the stability you feel allows you to expand your limits and boost your artistic imagination. I hold this feeling in the making of my next sculpture or artistic furniture, planning and organising out-door installations and street art, and more boldly, in contemplating the creation of massive sound clip installations with special lighting and kinetic parts from stainless steel.

Georgios GreeKalogerakis

No 5, stainless steel, sound vibrator speaker, 235X120X

gerakis gerakis

Georgios Georgios GreeKalogerakis GreeKalogerakis GreeKalogerakis GreeKalogerakis

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

After having explored the expressive potential of a wide variety of media, London based artist Georgios GreeKalogerakis now focussing on a suggestive combination between sculpture and sound. Installing sound vibrators, his sculptures act as physical resonators, so the sound that we hear is produced by the sculpture itself, providing the work of a new level of coherence and multisensorial unity. Probing the viewers' capability to understand unexpected relations between the concepts he conveys in his works, GreeKalogerak's approach explores the emotional dimension, but also speak us of living matters tha affect the contemporary age: We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted and unconventional artistic production.

Hello Georgios and welcome to ART Habens: I would start this interview, posing you a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold a BA degree in Mixed Arts, that you received from the prestigious the University of Westminster: how has this experience influenced your evolution as an artist? Moreover, it is also important to remark that you came from a wide experience in the iron-buildig industry as a specialist of metal construction, so I would like to ask you how this aspect of your cultural substratum impacted on the way you relate yourself to art making.

Hello and thank you so very much for the hosting.

Studying as a mature student gives you the ability to perceive and process information differently. My studies in England undeniably expanded the boundaries of my fine art practice, more than that I believe that London as a multicultural and metropolitan city enhances the artistic development in general. England’s art Universities are almost the same and quite close in terms of knowledge and curriculums, what is important for an art student I think is the support and help that gets to boost his career afterwards and I think some Universities struggling to provide that kind of service.

My past experience in constructions was a foundation for my fine art practice skills working on stainless steel, let alone in my sound clip installations.

In my time-based installations I have used a lot of rotating machines, special lighting and loads of extraordinary materials most of them bought from open markets and second hand shops. In my first studio, at the age of 21, I experimented with almost every type of material, I mixed them in all extraordinary combinations and finally got the result I wanted. Ten years later I added light

Georgios GreeKalogerakis

and then sound in an effort to give a “voice/speech” to one of my pieces of this period. That was the first big change of my fine art practice I could say. Sound branded my art practice, both my sound clip installations and my beloved S-project, Stainless Steel Sound Sculptures, which is presented today by your magazine.

I would suggest our readers to visit http://ggks.com, in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production: your approach is strongly multidisciplinary, both in terms of formal aspect and as regards the way you combine a variety of materials to pursue the kaleidoscopic nature that marks your works. While superimposing such a wide variety of materials and crossing the borders of different artistic fields, have you ever happened to realize that such uncoventional symbiosis between different techniques is the only way to achieve some results, to express specific concepts? In particular, after having experimented with a variety of materials, you are now focussing on stainless steel: could you walk our readers through your choice?

What intrigues me as an artist and as a person is risk. I take risks, mixing and matching being one of them, and wait for the feedback. My aim as a young artist and as a student was to mix the binary world, male and female, personalities and lives. My stainless steel sound sculptures are possibly my riskiest ‘mix-up’ today. I wanted to present something different and unique to the public, thus I pointed to an unconventional symbiosis which overcomes both media. I tried to give “life” to the steel and extend the limits of the sound.

In my studies I have experienced all the potential mixes, I painted on canvas with bleach and hair dye colours, mixed found objects to make a sculpture with a digital screen, incorporated Adolf Hitler’s and Mother Teresa’s images and added a mixed sound clip as a video art and a lot of more unconventional combinations. The end of my second year of my studies found me confused and artistically lost. I wanted to make a decision. Few months later the idea of using stainless steel as my only material changed my fine art practise entirely. The moment that I decided to experiment on steel I felt more

secure, today my borders are wider and clearer than ever. Thousands years ago Egyptians used granite to build up their statues, 4000 years later those statues kept their integrity in terms of

No 5, stainless steel, sound vibrator speaker, 235X120X13cm

material. In a show I had in London I have presented one of my SpiderUction pieces in a tank with water. I did that to honour my material and to make a connection of my practise with

those granite statues. There are possibly few materials in sculpturing that can be displayed under water, due to the difficulty of keeping their quality under water during time.

Georgios GreeKalogerakis

ART Habens

I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from No. 5 and SPIDERUCTION, a couple of extremely interesting projects that our readers have

already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What most impressed me of these pieces is the way you have create a point of

No 5, stainless steel, sound vibrator speaker, 235X120X13cm

convergence between a functional analysis of the context you relate to 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?

All my pieces from the beginning of my artistic career have been conceived instinctively and suddenly. No 5 for example was conceived while studying and searching about the ancient Greek sculpturing and ceramics, which have been a great influence for me the last period. When I saw Parthenon’s details, I found its pediments extremely interesting. A male vs female synthesis came into my mind and the idea of my own stainless steel pediments was born.

Most of my pieces seem to be upside down but actually they are not. My theory of the verticality of ourselves on earth is the reason that some pieces are displaying the “wrong” side down. Thus for me whatever is vertical on earth is the right side down. No 5 can be displayed both ways, male or female on the top, and still be the same piece with both sides displaying the right side down.

I remember years ago when I had one of my first solo shows in Greece, some journalists were interested to present my art practice in a local magazine. I remember a member of my family attending the opening of the show being approached by journalists to comment on ‘how it is to live with an artist and how I conceive my ideas’. “Georgios’ eyes can see things differently” was her answer. I kept that phrase into my mind as the only logical explanation of what is happening in my life in general. Last March on my way to central London I have used an overground train instead of the underground. My great love for the cranes, I have loads of pictures in my mobile the last decade from cranes I found on my way, made me stop to the next stop at a developed area alongside the river which was full of colourful both small and huge modern grains. I stood to look at them picking construction materials and equipment from the ground and passing them to different levels of the new-build constructions. Spiders construct their cobwebs step by step in order to expand their constructions and capture their quarry at the same time. Got back in to the train, opened my small sketchbook and designed SpiderUction, which title comes from the words Spider and Construction, as a reproduction of what I saw

Ozymandias , Stainless steel, sound vibrator, 55X93X12.5cm

moments ago.

Sound plays a crucial role in the sound clip installations you have produced in the past years: in particular, you created time-based works that induce the viewers to abandon themselves to personal associations, recontextualizing the relationship between the cinematic images and sound, which in your pieces never plays as a mere background. How do you conceive this aspect of you works?

During the years a need of inflaming the viewer’s senses maintained my artistic practice. Sound clip installations gave me the opportunity to work as much as possible in this direction. My first installation called “do you feel like?” contained rotation machines, light and technically produced sound in a dark space. I remember most of my colleagues and tutors felt uncomfortable staying at this dark space for long. I thought I was getting to the point and kept on adding special lighting, mixed sounds, smells, controlled room’s temperature or even changing the floor’s texture.

It may sound weird, but the true reason for using sound in my artworks had been an unsolved mystery for me. In my sound clip installations I mixed songs, old lullabies, Christian hymns, movie soundtracks and many more, without necessarily understanding why I chose those specific sounds each time.

Last year I went to Athens to visit a good friend of mine and a great professional who does past life regression. The quest was clear “Why have I used sound in my creations and why am I still using it on my stainless steel sculptures?” The recorded session could not have been harder to believe. All the sounds I used in my installations were connected with those past lives, each one related to a unique story every time. Logically, I am using sound as a part of my artistic development; metaphysically, I recall the most important sound from my past lives each time. I perceive both as viable explanations and I am giving you and your readers the opportunity to choose what you are most comfortable with.

What I have to admit has at soon literally amazed me of your installations is the way you have been capable of connecting the mechanical vibrations of the sculpture to the

viewers' internal landscape: over these years I happened to get to know a huge number of cross-disciplinary installations which attempted to create a variety of synaesthesias, but most of the time it was due to an external media. What is really fascinating of the way you turn your sculptures into a massive speakers is really innovative and I think it comes from your technical background. I would take your opinion about the relationship between art making and technology: in particular, I'm sort of convinced that the boundary between Art and Technology will grow more and more blurred in the years to come... that's your point about it?

Art has been produced with technical-mechanical means since the mid of the last century by a great list of well-known artists. The sculptor of the old times is possibly only a memory for the post-modern art world. Digital equipment, technical and technological support in art production, furthermore 3D printers and the use of laser have changed our perspective as viewers, but mainly as art producers. I use designing programs to design each single piece of my sculptures, before sending it for laser cutting. I use sound vibrators as well to give “life” to stainless steel, so I am one of those postmodern artists whose ideas possibly takes the art life a step further. The speciality of the synaesthesias you mentioned before for my pieces would not exist without the luck of technical/ technological support.

In one of my last pieces, titled “Ozymandias”, you can clearly see in the middle of the piece a city boy running forward and at the same time an old-times painter half hidden two layers back. Ozymandias was Egyptian’s Pharaoh Ramesses II alternative name and I have chosen this title for this specific piece because Egyptians were technologically and technically developed for their times. Your question reminds me the thoughts I had while designing Ozymandias, which can be clearly seen in the figures I have used, keeping man’s technical and constructional achievements as a guideline behind Ozymandias’ portrait.

I like the way your exploration of the liminal area between external reality and human

ART Habens

Georgios GreeKalogerakis

perceptual process questions the concept of direct experiece: in particular, your investigation about the intimate consequences of constructed realities gives 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?

My life has been somewhat of a paradox given the varied roles I have performed in time; I believe that this role-play gave me the ability to mix concepts and characters easier in my artworks. An artist, a writer, a poet or even an actor needs life experience and a past with multiple influences. Studies can help you develop your expressive skills rather than give you ideas to work with. What artists share with you by the end of the day is our own lives. I have a personal belief that our pieces do not belong to us, we are just the medium in between realism and imaginary reproduction. I want someday to be able to play a game with my potential buyers called “parta ola”. Parta ola (a free translation could be “get them all”) is a spinning top game from Greece, traditionally played around Christmas. It is played with a little finger-spun top which gives the options “get half”, “get them all”, “give double” etc. My experience transformed into an artwork comes mainly from the people. I wish someday to be able to play this game with my potential buyers, truly interested in a piece, and let them buy the art they loved according to their luck. I know that art market has strict rules, but I find hard to give a precise price for a piece and ask from people to pay for them once they have been my priceless “muses”.

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Tara: your juxtaposition between evokative elements from the universal imagery, as aeroplanes and handgunsg highlights the fact that art making is a way to investigate about living matters and suggests me a subtle but effective sociopolitical criticism. Many artists from the contemporary scene, as Thomas Hirschhorn or Michael Light, use to convey sociopolitical messages in their pieces. Do you

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

In most of my artworks you can find a clear political message. Tara is the name of the lady who stars at this piece. Feminism was always an influence for my artworks and Tara is a lady who is trying to escape from the inherited role given to her, to be mainly a mother or a wife and explores the limits of a man’s life. She is dressed in formal office working suit aiming to get jobs and roles forbidden for her in past decades. Working as a driver or as pilot was practically a man’s state reality, but Tara fights for her even rights. Church and the gender restrictions couldn’t be absent from this piece.

The way you probe the relationship between the immateriality of audio and the intrinsic physicality of steel 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". In particular, your exploration of the liminal area in which audio and visual find a point of convergence urges the viewers to relate all the information to a single point of view. But, as a viewer, I soon happened to realize that 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?

The truth is always somewhere in the middle. I chose day-life images to get viewer’s interest. The mixture of those figures is something that honestly never occurred to me as the main aim. I could never say to myself “it would be nice to use a flower there to achieve the right combination”. Whatever I want to say I make it clear, even if the mixture of a final piece challenge the viewer to fit into the visual rhythm as a start and then realize the concept behind the visual reality. As a person I am controlled mainly by my emotions, so a systematic process to express emotions sounds faulty to me. What you

ART Habens Georgios GreeKalogerakis

Tara, Stainless steel, sound vibrator, 73X97X15cm

will get on a systematic process is to reproduce the same themes many times and by the end to become indifferent or meaningless. I can’t express my emotions by a systematic process in my personal life, moreover in my artistic practice which is the sensitive extension of it. Family is one of my pieces which refer to a variable group of viewers. All of us have or had a family of at any structure. My intuitive approach to any subject is undeniably my main aim and reason of being an artist. In Family I have represented what I found interesting in all families and relationships in-between married couples - the man’s need to be the master of his family acting on the (inherited rightfully or not) role against a woman’s mind-controlled verbal resistance. Kids stand somewhere in the middle running away, but unfortunately will come back to the same role as an adult.

The multilayered experience you provide the spectatorship of seems to reveal the will of deleting any barrier between the viewers and the ideas behind your work, highlighting your effective communication strategy. Over these years you have exhibited your works in several occasions, both in your native Greece and around London, where you are currently based. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose 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 consider myself as a social mixer; I get information and influences from life and people, blend them in my personal perspective and present them back to the audience. As mentioned before my progress is autonomous and instinctive, on the other hand my contact with the audience and social life in general adapts and directs my art practice. From the moment that you are asking for a feedback, you are asking for permanent contact.

I believe in life that honesty, authenticity and respect can build up a stable relationship. With my art I am trying to keep my relationship with my audience according to those principles. I am not the type of artist who will try only to

satisfy the art market’s needs and give up his ideals and direction. I am more into a parallel course with my audience based on critical criticism and mutual respect.

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

The last four months I am working on a new project more minimal and abstract than ever. Geometrical shapes on flat surfaces that give a 3D effect maintained my interest this period. Platting, dark marking and etching are my new techniques added on my practice with stainless steel. This is a technically demanding art process, but I am happy to have the support and sponsorship of Reuter CmbH & Co. KG, which provides me with all equipment and chemicals I need. It is an important help for an artist to find people who really like his production and love to support art.

As my sculptures are connected via bluetooth with any device, I thought of giving my audience an extra advantage to have their own play list online. Thus I have collaborated with Chromaradio, which I found one of the most updated internet radio stations in all music categories, in order to have my own GGK channel. That includes a year free registration to your own private playlist, which the radio specialist will create based on your needs, plus the advantage of using a spot in-between the songs. This is for those who would like to have my sculptures in a working area, a building’s entrance or even a hotel’s lobby. In this way, I would like to create a community of stainless steel sound sculptures connected digitally, but always individually unique and special.

It was more than a pleasure to share my creations, moreover my thoughts with you and your readers. Hope you enjoyed this small journey in my life and promise to give you even more qualitative art in the future.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

ART Habens Georgios GreeKalogerakis

Family, Stainless steel, sound vibrator, 67X73X12.5cm

Stefan Nenov Stefan Nenov Stefan Stefan

I think of my artworks as messages that have to contain a captivating visual material, a strong concept and an open field for thoughts. I am trying to reflect the feelings and ideas that move our society and translate that to one deeper meaning.

Internet and the new technologies are one my main source of ideas and provocations. It is an interesting challenge to observe the way our society communicates and what influence have the Internet technologies on the inner unconscious movements in human soul. In other words how we humans change and what defines our time.

For a long period in my practice the structure of the computer, keyboard, screen, the inner world of Internet, all icons, pixels - all these elements were present in my sculptures.I always try to relate the representative of the new with the archetypal, existential symbols of human identity.

At the same time my eyes are wide open for new interesting objects. From a sexy knickers to a sphinx cat everything could grab my attention as long as it is challenging to be turned into a piece of art.

My focus is mainly on sculpture in wood. While working with it the aim is to present unusual for the reality objects, with strange presence which evoking amazement. That includes transformation of the form to surreal level , implementing colors and structures. To capture an unique moment or action( like leaking liquid or underwater bubbles) is another of the problems contained in my sculptures.

I reckon the wood is the most unique sculpture material, the fact it has been something alive and later transformed into a piece of art reminds of reincarnation. Physically i like the touch of wood, it gives me a full control of the process and this where I feel absolutely free to express myself. The styles and approaching in my works vary from the experience of the classic woodcarving to the modern cleared form. Whatever I do, the figurative and the recognizable is an imperative, I enjoy to see the impact of my works and their dominance over the space they are placed.

Stefan Nenov

An interview with interview

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator arthabens@mail.com

Stefan Nenov accomplishes the difficult task of conveying a deep investigation about today's society and a refined aesthetics into a coherent, consistent unity. His insightful gaze on the ephemeral materiality of an object doesn't simply deliver us a mere report but also offers a personal view on what's behind our the experiences mediated by our perceptual process. One of the most convincing aspect of Nenov's practice is the way he finds a point of convergence between several concepts that engage the viewers, and that invites us to unveil the messages that are hidden behind the world we perceive, discovering unsuspected but ubiquitous connections. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to his artistic production.

Hello Stefan and welcome to ART Habens: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you degreed at the National Academy Of Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria: you later moved to London where you are currently based. How did these experiences influenced your evolution as an artist? In particular do you think that formal training did inform the way you currently conceive your works?

Hello and thank you for the given chance to be published in your amazing art platform.

Yes, definitely my education has exerted influence over the way I think and create art. My father is an artist, so I was surrounded with art since my existence and started preparation to be professional from the age of 13. When I look back at the processes of learning and building up skills I have been through, the feeling is that the efforts I've put have created a solid base upon which I've started my development as an artist. Before I moved to London in 2008, I had already my rules and convictions of what sort of artworks I want to create. The life in London gave me opportunity to unfold my ideas, to be more brave in a way. It is a huge cosmopolitan city which could easily swallow you, but if you have the mind and ability to rise above the

Stefan Nenov Stefan Nenov

dynamic and the urgency, you will get a panoramic picture of the society and even the civilization we live in, and this is something I am trying to reflect. My favorite medium is Wood and my focus is on taking out the best of it and reaching its limits of expression. As a main everyday work I do restoration and in the last couple of years reproduction and design of period antique furniture. This includes variety of styles and objects, from human figures and animals to all sorts of floral ornaments. Being surrounded and creatively engaged with that stylistic, inevitably influenced my approach when working on my personal artworks. To deal with the requirements of the English woodcarving, for example, requires absolute attention to detail, knowledge and discipline, so that helped me immensely to improve my technical abilities. The other reflection of my experience with the

Stefan Nenov

antiques are some of my sculptures in which I have directly used the characteristic of classic woodcarving as a starting point and then blended it with the signs of modern. Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from 1 New Message and System Error, a couple of extremely interesting works that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to visit http://www.stefannenov.com in order to get a wider idea of this interesting work. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this project? What was your initial inspiration?

I have to go back in 2004 when I first was inspirited by the new technologies. I was searching for something on my shelf with materials when I found some old useless electronic device, half broken so I was able to see the its circuit board. That had an instant inspirational effect on me, I was just in search for an object absorbing enough to be made out of wood, and that electronic bit was much more than that. The message contained inside it was and still is a huge field of thoughts and provocations. This is the inception of my long period, with an element of obsession, with the new technologies.

1 New Message and System Error are part of this cycle of artworks in which I show the dominance of the cyber reality over the our, so called, physical environment. In the first sculpture the scenario was to captured a sublime moment of domestic argument, to put an accent on the reason behind it and exaggerate it to surreal level. A breakfast for two on a tray , calm Sunday morning, love ... and then that signal from the iPad again... You've got 1 New Message!, and s/he is so inpatient to open it ...

This is something which has ruined many mornings of many people I am sure. So my sculpture is an illustration of the anger caused by the impact of the mobile devices part of our lives. I decided to present the moment when the tablet crash the tray and wanted to look like a captured on slow motion explosion. System Error is was created in 2010, the inspiration behind was the well known and everyday exploited window's page. Taken purely as a

physical object it was an interesting challenge to transform it into a 3D form. The idea was to present the page bent and deformed due to the processes that happening inside it. As a philosophy I kept fallowing my concept of how we are influenced by the technologies. The object inside the page could be anything, but the egg has that strong symbolism that could be related to the human identity. System error is a reflection of the contemporary man's soul, .... confused, exactly like we are when our laptops software not working. To increase the feeling of disorder the egg's yellow and white are changed, and the yellow is fluorescent.

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 viewpoints, that converge into a coherent unity: 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?

Well I don't know if it is the only way to express, but surely for my current understandings and aims this is quite imperative. I just can not or don't feel comfortable to create and present something just in its stereotyped, widespread context. It is not enough, for me, for many reasons, I guess the main one is my desire to show an unique, discerning acceptance of the world. The surreal has always attracted me and to outline the unusual aspects of the physical world I facing in my everyday life, became almost automatically. When I find a new interesting object my first observation is what it is symbolize, how it is related to the time we live in, and then if I implement another element, what meaning and thoughts would be evoked. Mixing different medium is a key for my practice, of course this is not a random process, just for the sake of experiment, but well considered and logical one. For example I use a traditional methods of finishing wood, established some centuries ago, but also implicate my reading of modern with shapes, structures and colours.

When I first happened to get to know Try walking in my shoes I tried to relate all the

visual and sound information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its content: in your videos, 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?

When analyzing that I reckon it is a mix of both, but it seems the systematic is taking advantage. I put this down to my, sometimes standing on the way, consciousness. I am saying that because quite often in the process of creation I question every single detail, aspect and meaning of my work, so perhaps the intuition is kind of initial force. Sometimes the idea for a new work comes suddenly, I can see an object while on tube or read a story about some state, condition or feeling. It seems to be an intuitive thought, but I know how my artistic mind works, and know the idea wouldn't be left raw without exercising my personal touch.

With Try walking in my shoes I wanted to explore the state of an object underwater. Actually the initial idea was just to experiment with the shoe, because it is relatively small object.My goal was to achieve the feeling that the shoe is just dropped into the water, the most challenging were the smallest bubbles which appear to be everywhere. This is an unique moment and in the medium of photography or painting is possible to be captured, with 3D medium it is not quite like that. This is one of my struggles, I can't control the gravity, probably this is one of the things I dream of when we talk about the material side of Art. Many times I just want to put some element in the air and to glue it up to the main body of the sculpture with an invisible glue... of course this has not happened so far, and I am looking for surrounding routes to achieve it.

Your practice is intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intellectual interplay with the viewers, that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience. In particular, the way you present unusual for the reality objects has reminded me of the ideas behind German sculptor and

photographer 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 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?

I can not imagine it, because I have experienced every detail of my artworks and this is a vital part . I remember how direct was the experience of inspiration when, about an year ago, a lady came with her female greyhound to the studio I work at. When I saw that dog, such an elegant creation, I just saw my next sculpture (Shopping Rush). I couldn't just make the dog, first I can't beat Nature and match that perfectness, second I wanted to show my association with the symbolic of that animal. I had already decided to leave this sculpture without painting it, but relying on the wood texture. I needed an object that justifying the wood color, it is interesting and can be liked meaningfully with the greyhound. The green paper bag appeared to be a funny but interesting addition, which actually as a concept emerged to be my starting point. The mad for shopping bag turns into a greyhound, using it's speed to get enough. Here I looked to present in sort of indirect and funny way the eagerness of the modern material girl.

This is just one example, but I have a similar story probably about all of my artworks. I guess this is the same with most of the artists, the other way is probably based on more purely transcendental activity which, for me, refers to conceptual art. Everyone nowadays can be an artist, as long as there is someone else to execute the idea or it could even goes without physically existing object, just a pure idea, thought, concept. My problem is in that case we change the subject from Art to philosophy or writing, someone might say there is no rules or guide of what is Art, I disagree, there are and

ART Habens

Stefan Nenov

should be certain benchmark, otherwise it is an anarchy. In Art it is quintessential the strong, captivating concept to be wisely backed by technical excellency in the visual aspect of the artwork

That was my reasoning to create my sculpture

The State Of Art, where a sphinx, yoga cat painting with its tail. I haven't shown what art does the cat do, but this is not something significant for anyone. The main attraction is the image of the artist and the platform on which he performs his art. Using this allegory I attempted to give my opinion about the state of Art nowadays.

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Anima & Animus in 3D: the ambience has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by Michel Foucault and what has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to the sign of absence, which is a recurrent feature of your approach. As in Cultural Relativity, it provides the viewers of an Ariadne's Thread, inviting them to challenge the common way we 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 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?

I'm totally agree. Moreover I have to admit that revealing hidden images and meanings is among the main ingredients of my concept. I believe there are countless realities depending on the diversity of points of viewing. The role of the contemporary artist is to find his own perspective to reflect the time we've been designed to be part of. Anima & Animus in 3D is a look at the relationship between the man and woman in modern reality. The new technologies have so much changed the way we communicate, that it is seems we need a special device in order to know someone better. I also

Stefan Nenov ART Habens

Shopping Rush

Stefan Nenov

Cultural Relativity

made a hint about the changes in the deepest layers of human soul, caused by the use of the devices in our everyday life. You have rightly noticed that I like to use the absence as a tool, in this particular sculpture to make the heads not just faceless, but empty like a shell was justified by the implication of 3D glasses. And the provocation is whether by wearing them my characters see each other faces and drill inside their minds.

I also wanted to suggest about the anonymous side of online communication and made parallel with the blank profile icon, the user without identity. From that emerged a whole new project, street art, it was titled Find The User and took place in London in 2011-12. I cast the male head more than 50 times and installed it on the lamp posts of almost all top locations in the city. That was a provocation with the people and experiment with the way the city's authorities operated.

You draw inspiration from Internet as well as from new technologies: the impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the idea of Art itself: in a certain sense, we are forced to rethink about the intimate aspect of constructed realities and especially about the materiality of an artwork itself, since just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. I'm sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and I will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

This relation is inevitable and it's already part of the current Art world. The number of artists using the new technologies purely in their own language is increasing. It is coming not as a surprise that for third year in a row Turner Prize is awarded to a video artwork. I can't predict for how long and with what intensity will the attention of the Art audience will be kept. The problem of Art and not only is that the Internet gave the people a constant access to the ocean of human creativity and although our ability to appreciate is a spiritual attribute it is material enough to experience over-saturation. We're not living in the 20's or 50's of the last century, it's not easy to discover or invent a new way to

express yourself. The field of video art, new media offers a new challenge, technologies appear to be implemented in almost all mediums, for me these are all tools which contribute to creative process. The question is whether you becoming the best photographer if you have the best camera? I think here is the role of the leading galleries, museums and art figures to give a platform to the artists who can really offer something new, entertaining, the ones who's creativity attracts attention and fills the galleries with people.

As you have remarked once, figurative and the recognizable is an imperative: your works seems to provide the viewer of a subtle narrative, but engaging. The capability of discerning the essential feature of a view and to translate it into an accessible visual is a key point of your works and plays a crucial role in your process: you seem to reject mere decorative aspects, in order to focus to the inner nature of the stories you tell with your artworks. How much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your images?

It is rather interesting but a difficult process. I love to tell stories through the limited language of the still image, no matter 2 or 3D. The challenge is to keep balance, because the play with symbols, meanings, feelings, actions is like walking on the edge. I will use this opportunity and give you an example with one of my best sculptures The Fall Of Icarus.

This is a two sides sculpture. On the front side, technically, I have used the traditional method to turn the wood into gold (gilding). I took inspiration from the period carving, with ornaments emblematic for 16-18 century and transformed them into a circuit board ends, symbolizing the current technological reality. Both elements, surrounding the head of Icarus are golden and in contrast with the colorful back part, which is the splash caused by the fall of the later. At the same time this two representatives of modern and classic create a strange harmony. The brief description of the idea is: The front part works as a monument of the dead or just sleeping Icarus. The use of a traditional ornaments is there to increase his mythological value, but connecting that with the current world of technologies is also a part of the concept.. The fall should be accepted as a jump through

ART Habens Stefan Nenov

different cultural periods and societies. The colors of the splashed liquid are the same vivid as the ones of the Internet world, and that is the final destination of Icarus. His face is mine , so the artwork could also be read as a self-portrait.

As you perhaps noticed there are so many things to consider, the volume of symbols and meanings not only in this particular work is huge. My role is to clarify the essential and present it by the best possible way.

During these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions and I think it's important to mention that you have been recently received a commissions for Center for World Culture King Abdulazis in Saudi Arabia. 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?

I have had a chance to exhibit my artworks in many different places, to take part in Symposiums and art shows, and audience reaction has always been curious to me. I wouldn't say it is crucial and at the same time I don't pretend that there's no one outside and I make artworks just for satisfaction of my inner need to create. My basic decision-making rule is to excite, amaze myself, then I am sure there'll be some one else to appreciate my art.

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

At the moment I'm working on a new sculpture which will be a part of quite global project called "Play me I’m yours" A number of pianos will be turned into pieces of art and placed in public places at Canary Wharf - London. Anyone who can and wants can play. The project has already been in many cities around the world, so I am glad to be part of it and reckon my sculpture/piano will be a spectacular addition.

The State Of Art

In August I will take part in an International Sculpture Symposium in Switzerland. As for the direction of my next artworks and practice as whole, I can only share some basic ideas the near future.

After the Shopping Rush I want keep exploring the wood and use it in its pure substance. I am open and waiting to be struck by an object or idea which requires and justify the color and structure of the wood material. It might be a play with the brown recycled paper or another wooden musical instrument I have not decided yet. Nevertheless, the unknown and the expectation of the new is a driving force for me, it keeps me eager to continue.

ART Habens

Stefan Nenov

From the Memorial Benches series

Yajing Liu Yajing Liu

A refined approach to photography involving a variety of techniques, ranging from hand coloring and multimedia, allows Yajing Liu to conceive stimulating series in which she explores the ubiquitous

relationship between landscape and human condition in the unstable contemporary age. Highlightling the role of memory in our perceptual process, she accomplishes the difficult task to unveil the connections

An interview with

ART Habens Yajing Liu

between the past and the present, offering to the viewers an Ariadne's thread capable to lead us into a multilayered experience. One of the most convincing aspect of Liu's work is the way she probes the expressive

potential of the medium, to explorate the liminal area in which memory and imagination find an uexpected point of convergence. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Yajing and welcome to ART Habens. To start this interview, I would like to pose you a couple of questions about your background: you have a solid formal training and after earning your Bachelor of Photography from the Dalian Medical University, you moved to London to pursue a MA of Photography, that you eventually received from the prestigious University of the Arts, London. How do these experiences, as well as your current one as a PhD candidate at the Nanyang Technological University, influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does living in multicultural and vivacious places as London and Singapore provide impact on the way you relate yourself to your work?

I have to say, different experiences of university and multicultural life truly changes my view of the world, life and value. They also play a crucial role in my works. My first university life in China mainly focused on the documentary and photojournalism photography. It inspired and trained an instinctive view on the human condition, such as my projects of folk-custom in China and seaweed houses. However, I then realized that traditional documentary images more or less lack the rich system to support and to experiment with a variety of discourse. To solve my confusion, my Master degree in London offered an opportunity for me to develop a personal and conceptually practice grounded in cross-media and cross-genre thinking. It encouraged me to work experimentally and test the boundaries of the medium, such as multimedia, installation, fine art and digital media.

You can see the changes of thinking and methods in my works. Besides, the study life in UK attracted my interests in the research of contemporary photography, landscape and memory. Based on all these experiences and my works, I further pursue a Ph.D. degree at

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

Singapore that aim building a relationship between my experimental practice, theoretical contextualization, and active research processes. These experiences also allow me to rethink the methodologies of my works and the

systematization of long-term projects. Since I was seven years old, I began to study and work alone in different cities and countries, both in China and overseas. Therefore, childhood memory forms my foundation encompassing the

Yajing Liu

ART Habens

From the Memorial Benches series

old buildings, foods, objects, pictures. When I was living in multicultural places, I appreciate their protection of tradition, especially in the UK. Comparing with the West, I feel disappointed about all kinds of the destruction of ancient

culture, such as buildings, villages and customs in China. I would think of the current situation in China and introspect the cost of urbanization and modernization. For example, the China Construction of New Socialist Countryside brings

From the Memorial Benches series

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

benefits to the villagers; therefore, the villagers have to ignore the negative results. Some Chinese treat the city changes with indifference. In my works, I hope to take off their cold coat and rethink: What cost should we pay for the

urbanization? Can tradition and memory be forgotten in the contemporary age?

The hallmark of your approach is an insightful investigation about the

From the Memorial Benches series

boundaries of the medium in photography that reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between different techniques, as hand coloring and multimedia, and I would suggest our readers to visit http://www.yajingliu.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted approach. While superimposing concepts and images, have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different viewpoints and practices is the only way to achieve some results, to express specific concepts?

In my opinion, it is very important to find a symbiosis between mediums, perspectives, and practices. It ensures the unity of the project. In addition, the basic reason is that I regard photography as a medium for social-cultural research and therapy. It expands my thoughts and methodologies. For example, I have tried to develop photography, video and sound side-byside with one another, rather than in conflict. Therefore, the final expression should be based on the symbiotic relationship between the

subject, object and medium in order to show the specific concepts.

I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from Memorial Benches, an interesting series featured in the introductory pages of this article: your insightful investigation about the idea of memory highlights the entropic feature of contemporary age and what at soon caught my eyes of these photographs is the way you have combined functional analysis with a suggestive and autonomous aesthetics. Did you conceive this mix in an instinctive way or do you rather structure your process in order to reach the right balance? Moreover, what is the role of memory for your process?

As I mentioned in the artist’s statement, this project inspired by London’s benches on my way to school. Moreover, I was deeply attracted by the Western expression of remembrance. In China, the way of the memorial is tangible and prepared: a photo of the deceased, three

From the Memorial Benches seriesFrom the Memorial Benches series

incenses, and some offerings. Moreover, people cannot go to the cemetery without choose an appropriate time. However, remembrance happens regardless of specific time and place that will occur at an unpremeditated moment, as my experience of benches in this project. When I saw and sat on one bench, I had a very wonderful feeling that mix of imagination and memory. I asked, what kind of person wrote this plaque; what kind of elderly has this plaque, and so on…

I also recalled my deceased grandparents and their stories. Then I took the first photograph after the rain and sunshine cleared up. The ground is slightly wet with the reflection of the bench. I squat down to record all the characteristics. After the production of the film, I surprised by the peaceful atmosphere that showed in the black and white film. The images not only reflected the realistic sense but also embodied with warmth, meditation and nostalgia. After the first film, I began to discover different benches in various environments to show the relationship between untouchable memory and materialized landscape.

In this project, the role of memory contains two aspects, memory as outwardness and the combination of the imagination. People inevitably leave a memory since there have been the traces of the human. As Simon argues, “scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.” In other words, memory embodies in the characteristics, symbols and details of the landscape, as the benches of this project. Secondly, memory does not exist in the photos but exist in the viewer’s mind. People see these photos to find the personal feelings and reflect the collective consciousness. For me, I would like to associate this behavior with the imagination. All these combinations indicate that, memory is the mixture of the media and the public imagination.

The psycho-geographical nature of your investigations about human condition reminds me of the idea behind Thomas Demand's works, when he stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

From the Memorial Benches seriesFrom the Memorial Benches series

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 the 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

From the Memorial Benches series

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

From the Once There Was series

process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

In my case, my works are influenced by my personal experience. Most obviously, my

growing experience determines my mind, which inspires my interest in the human condition, the cultural and psycho-geography. However, in the archaeology, history and other artistic subjects, personal experience needs to give a way to the

ART Habens Yajing Liu

From the Once There Was series

objective facts and archival materials. In that case, more and more contemporary photographers, such as Norfolk and Pollard and my new works on seaweed houses, now work in a multifaceted discipline as a photo-researcher.

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Once There Was…: in particular, at first it urged me to relate all the visual

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

From the Once There Was series

information to a single analytic and representative point of view.

But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the entire

project, 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...

Yajing Liu

From the Once There Was series

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

I would like to thank you for sharing your experience with me. Many curators and viewers

have the same feeling with you. The most important purposes of Once There Was are a process shift from the symbolic analysis to the personal reflection. Another purpose is the expression of personal memory. Therefore, I

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

From the Once There Was series

have to say, it is more a systematic process because the detailed plan and various considerations before the artistic creation. For example, I took advantage of the time and space to create conflict, conflict of ancient and

modern details. During this process, the audience notes the urbanization changes, and then allows to rethink and introspection. While exhibiting introspection and a particular attention to human inner

ART Habens Yajing Liu

From the Once There Was series

process, your projects reveal a subtle but effective attempt to establish a channel of communication with the viewers. Many interesting contemporary photographers, as Edward Burtynsky and Michael Light,

use to include socio-political criticism and sometimes even explicit messages in their works, that often goes beyond a mere descriptive point of view on the issues they face: it is not unusual that an artist, rather

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

From the Identification Card series

than urging the viewer to take a personal position on a subject, tries to convey his personal take about the major issues that affect contemporary age. Do you consider that your works are political in this way or

do you seek to maintain a neutral approach?

Edward Burtynsky and Michael Light are my favorite photographers when I research on the

From the Identification Card series

environment and its relation with human being. I admire their undisguised political position in the works. Regarding the themes on the transformed nature, it’s hard to get rid of political issues. Some of my works establish a

political attitude, mostly in my documentary works, such as Where Should I Live?. However, later works, I try to keep a neutral point, as the works of Bernd & Hilla Becher and the deadpan approach. For instance, in my latest works of

Yajing Liu

From the Identification Card series

seaweed houses, I collect and document the found objects to establish a relation of human and house. This conservative approach helps me to seek problems from different perspectives, as from insider and outsider. The role of photography is not to freeze things, but to keep things in order to reconstruct our perception.

In Once There Was you have explored the theme of the vanishing of ancient houses in China. What appeals me of this series is the way you have highlighted the elusive but ubiquitous connection between the past and the present, suggesting the idea that informations are hidden, or even

ART Habens Yajing Liu

From the Identification Card series

"encrypted" as microscopic grains of sand in our environment, 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 agree with the opinion that, art can decipher the secret of nature and art can uncover the

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

surface of things. Once there was direct shows the appearance of the everyday environment, but it has revealed the forgotten issues. My new on-going project Identification card is going to explore and reveal cultural memory through the found objects. For me, it is excited to decrypt the encrypted information via artistic creation.

Over these years your works have been displayed in a wide number of solo and group exhibitions both in UK and China, including your recent participation to the Dong Gang International Photo Festival, Korea. Your approach is strictly connected to the chance of establishing a direct involvement with the viewers, who are called to evolve from a mere spectatorship to conscious participants on an intellectual level, so before taking leave from this interview 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?

In all honesty, the issue of audience reception is a part of my process. It raises questions that of, how do the audiences immerse in my works and how will they receive the codes is embedded in the images and the objects. For instance, out of consideration to the audiences, I leave a blank space of color to the audiences in Once There Was. I also respect all the feedback from audiences, positive and negative. However, I can’t follow all the advice. Only a few of them may influence my works.

Thanks a lot for this stimulating conversation, Yajing. Finally, would you like to tell our readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

At the moment, I’m still working on the investigations of the seaweed houses. As I

From the Identification Card seriesFrom the Identification Card series

mentioned earlier, I intend to create a systemic data of seaweed houses. I have finished surveys of major villages, including the situations of houses, the histories of houses and the removal conditions of owners, and so on. However, there are more works to be done. Also, I’m also working on some cultural-heritage projects. Most of them are multimedia videos. One of them Rural Teacher and His Shadow Puppetry just received the Excellence award in the Twenty-fifth National Photographic Art Exhibition in China awarded by the China Photographers Association.

Moreover, with the rapid development in China, my future works will keep examining the situation of tradition in the contemporary age.

At last, thank you so much for this opportunity and your insightful questions. ^-^

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

From the Identification Card series

ART Habens

Yajing Liu

RC Cam RC Cam RC Cam RC Campos pos pos pos

Masculinist Embodiments, Feminine Envoicements is as a technicalimagetical physical-digital, superficially and ambiguously futurist performative mash-up embodiment.

This work is part of Futuro Mendigado (Begged Future) series that is based on a confluence of theories theories and poetics related to body, technology and ludic-political action. Cyberspace metaphor is understood here beyond digital and physical dichotomy, as a continuum, comprehending intersections between spatiality, embodiment, image production and image recycling (remix, mash-up, etc) in contemporary times.

Futuro Mendigado is constituted in relation to the wearing structure created by the artist for Cyborg-Begger (fictional performative character) cyberspatial performances. A wi-fi video mouth and EL-WIRE eyes, a face-remix of a body with punk aesthetics (studded jacket with woodcut-made afro backpatch) and animal-like movements in a swing-LED circus action.

Performer’s body imagophagizes a mashup of videos that have as subject Chinese, Russian, Indian and NorthKorean military women embodiment in parades. This mash-up articulates a fragment of the image population shared on cyberspace related to military demonstrations of non-western women and embodies to the body-hardware of the performer an experience of military embodiment that antagonizes the embodiment experienced by the circus and animal-like elements of the performance.

RC Campos

video, 2013

An interview with interview

RC Campos RC Campos RC Campos RC Campos

An

interview by

Josh Ryder, curator and Katherine C. Wilson, curator arthabens@mail.com

RC Campos accomplishes the difficult task of communicating dystopian that does not come from imagination, but that draws from our reality. Rejecting a didascalic approach and an explanatory strategy, Campos' videoperformance urges the viewers to rethink about the ambiguous dichotomies that pervade contemporariness, walking us through the liminal area in which we are forced to question the cornestones of our social paradigms. What mostly impresses of RC Campos' approach is the way it creates an unexplored area of interplay where we are invited to explore unexpected relationships with reality and the way we relate to it. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his refined artistic production.

Hello RC Campos and welcome to ART Habens. Your work is marked out with an incessant search of a point of convergence between a synthesis between physical reality and digital space, rejecting any apparent dichotomy that comes from an interpretation of outside reality as a manifestation of our perceptual process. To accomplish such captivating exploration you take advantage of the expressive potential of up-to-date technology to create multichannel videoinstallations marked with a deep performative approach. Do you think that such symbiosis and the chance to use different media is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

For me there are intense affections involving, nowadays in a peculiar way, the relations between body, technology, art and science. I think audiovisual and the media that emerged in digital culture got integrated to subject bodily and social experience in a diversity of ways that are still piled up in the landscape and space of sociability networks fundamentally imagetical. I

have, then, a theoretical and aesthetic interest in contemporary relations between body, technology and network images, inspired by ethnographic-based approaches to concepts or metaphors such as embodiment, emplacement, cyberspace, videosphere, cyberscape, posthumanism and animalism. My interpretations of these concepts/metaphors are influenced by

RC Campos

artistic medium and results just as my artistic mediums and results are influenced by these concepts/metaphors. There is a retroactive feedback in this relation, then.

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?

I do not know how to measure the time I dedicate for a single piece, as it may be a quickly growing result of a long-time work. I am living recently a vigorous process of creating artworks satisfying and mixing a wide diversity of interests that I have personally, bodily/intellectually/imagetically. This moment is the result of quite a few years researching and exploring these interests separately, fragmentally. Suddenly, these fragments got together and right now it’s like if many plants were growing quickly in a garden.

My process now involves training my body in animal-like and circus-like movements; reading inspiring texts, books, articles in my areas of interest; looking for spaces and places where audiovisual occupies or can occupy an interesting aspect of contemporariness and also of my interests.

The technical aspects I’ve been focusing are theoretical just as imagetical and bodily. If it’s a videoperformance, I try to focus in expressing body energy in the picture plane, having to deal with the issues each different place/location makes emerge for my body and for the recording camera. I look for embodying, while recording, affections I recognize in the images of my mashups or multi-screen videos. At the same time I deal with technical cinematographic choices, since I don’t take video in videoperformance as just a tool for registering performance, but as a tool for experimenting with audiovisual language. However, if it’s a videoperformance, I won’t worry about cinematography, as the video part of videoperformance is my persona (CyborgBegger) mouth, it’s embodied, and I can focus in my persona body experience and how it is socially interactive.

My experience with installation is of handful months researching and planning culminating in 2 days to execute these plans.

Now let's focus more specifically on your works: I would start from Masculinist Embodiment, Feminine Envoicements, an extremely interesting piece of videoperformance that is part of Futuro Mendigado (Begged Future) series and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to visit https://youtu.be/cyMGSsqZjUc in order to get a wider idea of it. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

For graduating with a Bachelor degree in Audiovisual and New Media this month (July 2015), I worked in an art-based research as final project. It is entitled Militarily Uniformed Bodies and Electroshock Weapons: a recycling of Youtube videos. ( https://vimeo.com/131603476 ). Theory and installation as data visualization feeds retroactively one the other in this research where military embodiment in masochistic rituals is investigated in its relation to contemporary spatiality and image production. There, I quoted and affirmed different connections between masculinism, heteronormativity, image, space and masochism in a military ritual of pain with electroshock weapons. The presence of women in these ritualized videos made me feel a need to create something in the same vein of my final project research, but focusing on women in military, integrated as part of this masculinist and heteronormative culture. It was necessary for me to have more consistency on what I was affirming and on how women are incorporated in this culture. Therefore, I did a mainly visual and also textual research apart, edited in a mash-up and after Cyborg-Begger character and Begged Future series were born, I embodied these images in Cyborg’s body to contrast this character embodiment (totally non-military and nonmasculinist, cyborgian and animalist) to the bodies of female non-western soldiers.

Answering this question now, I realized how curious is that there are different layers of

creation in this sequence of works with military embodiment theme. Firstly, I created a screenplay for a fictional short-film (never recorded). In the process of research for this screenplay, I found out videos of militarily people being electrocuted in a masochistic ritual by their fellows. So I wrote a hundred pages text and created an installation that made me feel the necessity to do this mash-up titled Masculinist Embodiment, Feminine Envoicements. Finally, I did a videoperformance embodying this mash-up and that’s the work we are talking about the genesis now. It is the fourth layer of a creation process in art and the third layer of creation in scientific research. The result of writing a screenplay for a never filmed cinema project. Now I don’t even know if I want to film it someday, since my interest (even my fun) now is more directed to videoperformance and installation than to cinema. Seems for the moment to be much more interesting creating this kind of work than shooting a more conventional narrative film, despite that can be possibly nice too (but much more costing, collective and conventional).

When I first happened to get to know Masculinist Embodiment, Feminine Envoicements I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its content: in your videos, rather than a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it is more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

It is both intuitive and systematic. In Art-Based and Digital Humanities research methodology, data visualization can happen in three ways: exploratory, explanatory or the hybridization of these. I think Masculinist Embodiment, Feminine Envoicements has this hybrid perspective, in a way that data is curated and action is performed expressing a possible story or based in specific personal conceptual interests, but the openness of possibilities for many ways of perceiving is intrinsic to the use I make of body and audiovisual language. Therefore, you have multiple screens and multiple layers of sound and each subjectivity will experience it uniquely. In

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RC Campos

classic cinematographic language, cinematographer works to direct the eye of the viewer to a specific point and expects a general perceptual collective feedback. I am working with an audiovisual language that aims to leave eyes, ears and bodies free to look to many points, to choose a screen and choose a layer of sound or a place in space to experience the artwork. No body will have the same experience, no eye will be looking to the same point at the same time. So also rational interpretations and relations will follow the same logic: each one will make personal relations despite I surely have mine and it may help others to expand their appreciation of the work, just as surely others will possibly expand the way I appreciate (or not) my own work.

Your effective subversion of universal imagery about masculine institutions reveals an intense sociopolitical criticism not only about gender inequality, but ranges to an effective analysis of the marginalization of half of the world population: maybe that the following assumption would sound as stretching a bit the point, but I would go as far as to state that it could be considered as a reflection about the loss of potential concerning not only gender division but also talents that are irremediabily lost, since modern societies do not allow them to express their potentialities. Lots of artists, ranging from John Heartfield, to Michael Light and Thomas Hirschhorn use to convey explicit criticism in their works: do you consider that your works are political in this way or do you seek to maintain a neutral approach? By the way, what should be in your opinion the role of an artist in our societies?

I think neutrality is a myth in both art and science. So yeah, I’m sure my approach is of criticism, but not with an expectation of mine to direct people only to my interpretations of things. I think doing that would be a naive political failure. So I think works like Masculinist Embodiment, Feminine Envoicements are a contemporary aesthetical political experience that can (or not) be related to many previous knowledge that science, art and social experience contain. Possibilities are open and I am not the one who determines them, but I don’t think it’s

non-artistic to suggest or indicate a few, even with verbal content or academic quotes, as I do in this work. Some artists and scientists must dilute institutional borders to face contemporary issues effectively. For me we are living a peculiar and decisive moment for all earthlings and technological fascination is obscuring bizarre configurations of economic and political power. There are multiple roles that artists can play in this scenario, many of them are yet to be discovered and can be of varying modes and effects. I don’t mean Art has the specific service

ART Habens RC Campos

of enlightening the darkness the present is preparing for the future, but I really admire and thank people like John Heartfield and those who found aesthetic or/and political ways of and in modernity to express, as a reaction, the bizarreness of their time before everyone got tragically disappointed and disillusioned by unbearable images and historical facts. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Malabares en la Calle y en La Colmena Pos-

Nuclear: I like the way its inner dynamism stimulates the viewer’s psyche and consequently works on both a subconscious and a conscious level. Do you conceive such composition on an instinctive way or do you rather structure your process in order to reach the right balance?

I’m mostly in an instinctive process that is a process of systematization that, even systematized, will remain open to instinct and chance. Actually, I think instinct and chance are matters of my interest, I’m always expecting for

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RC Campos

their energy to increase the potential of the works. People (or teams) that expect rightful presuppositions of certainness in work creations for them to feel professional among professionals would have trouble or disdain collaborating with me. I got inspired for this approach to instinct and chance as matter of creation due to films such as Alamar (2009, Pedro Gonzales Rubio), El Vuelco del Cangrejo (2009, Oscar Ruiz Navia) or La Libertad (Lisandro Alonso, 2001).

Both Masculinist Embodiments, Feminine Envoicements and Malabares en la Calle y en La Colmena Pos-Nuclear are part of Begged Future series. I plan to experience variations of performance and audiovisual language, making them to relate with New Media language using a variety of multi-screen dispositions. The first 12 Videoperformance works of this series are creating the basis of New Media that will affect, in terms of language and composition, future Audiovisual and Performance works. It will also affect bodily and narratively the series, since all

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RC Campos

Mash-ups I am embodying are being imagophagized by Cyborg-Begger. Imagophagy is a conceptual adaptation of Anthropophagy, what is a kind of a cliché in Brazilian art I ended up not escaping from. Imagophagia means for me the action of interiorizing the body of the other to appropriate of its vibe, it’s energy and redirect it to one owns interests. I don’t do it exactly with anthropos, but with body-images of animals, humans and robots, inspired by Haraway’s Cyborg (1983) and Companion Species Manifesto (2003),

Macdougall’s The Corporeal Image (2005) and Laura Marks’s The Skin of Film (2000).

I like the way your visual language goes beyond any dichotomy between representation and imagination, urging the viewers to find an Ariadne's thread capable of guide them to extract a not univocal meaning. Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". Your approach seems to give a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the dystopian idealism you communicate: so I would take this occasion 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?

I think the relation between cyborgs and phenomenology as posed in Cyborg Phenomenology: Performative Inquiry in a Technoscientific World by Shauna Macdonald (2014) is interesting for one to think about contemporary experientiability and surely it expresses how I see the relations between my current creations, experience and creative process.

There she affirms that technoscience, posthumanism, and their attendant forces have altered our (orientation to) “environment[s],” “location,” “experience,” and (the) “human”. Pointing to the idea of postphenomenology, it is reproduced in her text the idea of a phenomenology with a holistic, organism/environmental model “expanding the idea of noesis beyond consciousness and emphasizing relationship over individuality, thereby hinting at the possibility of nonhuman experience.”. This happens in the action of navigation through technoscientific webs, blurring boundaries between “human and animal,” “animal-human (organism) and machine,” and the “physical and non-physical” and transforming “our environments into mash-ups of the digital and the analog, of chaos and continuity”.

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RC Campos

It’s cool that she uses the word mash-up to refer to our reality and that I’m using video mash-ups to refer visually to our reality. One can make a good relation between your quote of Thomas Demans and my quote of Shauna (as she quotes Ihde and Haraway). I found out her article after starting this series of works we are talking about it here and it curiously expresses lots of things that I identify with.

Another interesting thing she expresses in her text is the congruence between performance and phenomenology, as both focus on epistemologies of the body and experience, but the cyborgian approach displaces phenomenology humanism to the very questioning of it, in a “creative disrespect” to phenomenology.

By definition video is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity. In your videos you create time-based works that induce the viewers to abandon themselves to personal associations, looking at flow of time and I daresay, rethinking the concept of space in such a static way: this 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. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media (2001) discuss in two topics the loop, multiscreen and spatial montage as tools for new media language. My montage is rhythmical as posed by Eisenstein, but in a contemporary approach, as images do not follow each in time, but appear next to each other in a space of multiplicity and co-existence. This is a spatial approach to montage, different from cinematic sequential mode. It’s not something totally new and Manovich quotes cultural geographer Edward Soja when he argues that the rise of history in the second half of the nineteenth century coincided with the decline in spatial imagination and the spatial mode of social analysis. Contemporary Art and its relation to the “the end of Art History” and post-minimalist spatial turn may be more subversive of this modern logic than Cinema, still too modern.

The hallmark of you work is a successful attempt to establish a direct involvement with your audience, deleting any barrier between the ideas you question and the way

we perceive them. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose 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 think my consideration of audience reception is more corporeal than representational, symbolic or psychological. As Macdougall (2005) argues, the corporeal images include a triangulation of

ART Habens RC Campos

the body in the film (subject), the body of the spectator (audience) and the body of the filmmaker. I expect to articulate and create images that stimulates cognitively through contrast, dissonance, multiplicity and strangeness.

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

I want for this year to start experimenting my approach to videoperformance and new media in

relation to photographic and cinematographic language, creating short films and videophotographyperformance. I also hope to be accepted somewhere for a Master where I can, in a creative process, analyze relations between conceptualizations of displacement and multiscreen installations. Locally, I'll be doing live performances in Centro Dragao do MAr de Arte e Cultura and art institutions and also for my own independent research process.

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Katherine C. Wilson, curator arthabens@mail.com

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RC Campos

Tatjana Blinja Tatjana Blinja Tatjana Tatjana

An interview with interview

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Katherine C. Wilson, curator arthabens@mail.com

Working in a various range of techniques, Tatjana Blinja accomplishes a stimulating exploration of the expressive potential of textile, probing its inner quality as a medium and creating pieces of tapestry that reject a conventional classification and that at the same time shows a captivating vibrancy and an autonomous aesthetics. The reference to an evocative sets of images that marks out her approach, invites us to question a variety of themes, that ranges from environmental issues and human perceptual process:: one of the most impressive aspect of Blinja's practice is the way she goes beyond the dichotomy between traditional techniques and a lively, contemporary approach to art production. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production. Hello Tatjana and welcome to ART Habens: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? As a formal trained artist, how does your studies of Technology of Textile and Clothing Design at the University of Zagreb influenced your evolution as an artist? In particular, I would like to ask you if and how the relation between the cultural substratum of your native Croatia and the Canadian scene informs the way you relate yourself to art making.

First, I would like to say how grateful I am to be published in your magazine.

I was born in Zagreb, Croatia. As you mentioned, I graduated from the University of Zagreb with a degree in Bachelor of Arts with a Specialization in Technology of Textile and Clothing Design.

Being trained in traditional weaving and textile methods was a big influence for me as an artist. I am an explorer of techniques

Tatjana Blinja Tatjana Blinja Blinja Blinja

I always wanted to create tapestries, but not in the classical tapestry sense. I strive for innovation, pushing boundaries and breaking the rules of the traditional tapestry. Where traditionalists weave only textile materials, I use the textile as my canvass. Burlap and recycled objects in my work act as elements, fusing the natural world and the industrial age

and textures and I strive to break traditional boundaries and rules. My focus has been on developing my own approach.

One day, while in my Grandmother’s attic, I discovered an old burlap potato sack and

Tatjana Blinja

was immediately drawn to the versatility of this material. The sturdy porous fabric lends itself wonderfully to weaving and painting. This process enables me to express my ideas through the tactile experience. I love the feel of the wool as it runs through my fingers and my cats are fond of it as well. I always wanted to create tapestries, but not in the classical tapestry sense.

Did you know that tapestries and burlap paintings were covering walls of medieval castles, not just to aid in beauty to the walls but to add warmth too?

Living in Croatia during the war and then coming to Canada/Toronto changed my work also and how I viewed the world. I got more involved with using recycled objects and incorporating them into my tapestries (as an example – rusty metal) adding another textural element and dimension to my work.

The last two years have taken my art in a few different directions, from tapestry to painting and sculptures.

Your a versatile artist and I would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.byangel4.com in order to get a wide idea of your multifaceted production: in particular, I have appreciated your successful attempt to show that moving away from traditional aesthetics does not necessarily implies a total rejection of traditional heritage and techniques. The way you offer fruible elements from universal imagery, as well as the reference to sociological matters, invites the viewers to relate to your works in such an atemporal form. In this sense, your works go beyond any dichotomy between Tradition and Contemporariness, establishing a stimulating osmosis between materials from contingent era and an absolute approach to Art: do you recognize

any contrast between Tradition and Contemporariness?

Thank you for the comment on being versatile. It’s been incredibly rewarding as an artist to work with variety of mediums. You are correct, the traditional heritage and techniques will always have a big influence on my work, but learning new techniques and expanding my expression as an artist is detrimental to me.

A new generation of viewers deserves a contemporary presentation. My work interweaves both the traditional and contemporary. Traditional tapestry is often infused with opulence and realism.

ART Habens Tatjana Blinja

Contemporary works like mine, are more abstract and symbolic.

I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from your diptych Evolution, that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. I have appreciated your care about details: your insightful manipulation of patterns invites the viewer to elaborate personal associations with symbolic elements that you hint. At the same time, you do not reject a personal gaze on aesthetics, that leads you to create a lively combination between conceptualism. How important is the aesthetic problem for you when you conceive a work?

The aesthetics of my pieces are very important to me. My symbols and codes are

always thought through in a playful composition.

The way you subvert the usual paradigm about textile, using it as a canvas is really stimulating and reminds me of a Thomas Demand's quote: "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". Do you conceive your compositions on an instinctive way or do you rather structure your process in order to reach the right balance?

I love the quote you have mentioned, but I feel that symbols can on their own probe psychological narrative elements.

For me art is a very instinctive process. Beginning with an idea that transforms on to canvass and evolves with feelings from my secret self, becoming something tangible and meaningful.

As you have remarked once, your environmental work deals with the crisis we now face as a result of our negligence and denial: many contemporary artists, as Andy Goldsworthy and Michael Light, use to include socio-political criticism and environmental messages in their works. Do you consider that your works are political in this way or do you seek to maintain a neutral approach?

On a personal level, I am passionate about the environment and animal welfare.

It is important to me to use recycled materials in my work. I do leave room for the viewer to see it in a more political light.

I would like spend some words about your Painting series, and in particular on Angel, a refined project that combine surrealism and a compelling use of calligraphy, that offers to the viewers an Ariadne's thread to the discover of the oneiric dimension. This

quality marks out a considerable part of your paintings, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between memory and a rigorous formality, in a really engaging way. What is the role of memory in your process? And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

This is an interesting idea, as I did not consider the oneiric dimension. It is so true, Angels do come from my dreamy state, especially when I meditate. I wouldn’t say that I am religious but more that I am on a spiritual path, involved with myself on a

deeper level. This journey is what I am capturing in this series. Memory and emotions is layered on the canvas.

The vibrancy of the tones you choose provides your works of dynamism and establishes a dialogue between the thoughtful nuances you combine together, speaking of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological makeup determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a texture? And how important is the aesthetic problem for you when you conceive a work?

Tatjana Blinja

I love texture, I always have! In all of my work, texture is very present. There are layers, upon layers of different materials

and paint complimenting each other. Even nuances to me become layers in the piece. Often, I will use hot wax and varnish to

Tatjana Blinja ART Habens

finish the piece, this gives another dimension to my work and combines everything together in a cohesive way.

I joke with myself saying that I am in a blue period now. Lately I am very attracted to the colour of the sky and water and the beauty

Tatjana Blinja

of it. I have a special relationship with this colour, it makes me feel calm and

peaceful. Dialogue and the nuances in my Angels collection are reflections of my

Tatjana Blinja ART Habens

desire to share positive energy and messages. This world runs too much on

destruction, wars and negligence. Did you know that the most used nuance is “hate”?

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Tatjana Blinja

As in I hate my job, my country, my life, my look, my body etc. If we could change this one word to “love” the world would be a better place!

I have found particularly interesting the way your sculpture shows a delicate

sensuality and anthropomorphic elements reminds of Ernest Neto's early production. As most of your works, these pieces are not merely descriptive, but open to various interpretations: in particular, they suggest me a process of deconstruction, recontextualization and assemblage from

Tatjana Blinja

ART Habens

concepts and experiences from everyday life. 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?

For me the creative process is absolutely connected with experiences, thoughts, identity, maturity, sentiment, mental state, feelings and everyday life.

Your style is strictly connected to the chance to extablish a deep invovement

with the viewers, that seem to to delete the frontiers between the artist and the viewers and over these years you have exhibited in several occasions in the Toronto area, including two solos. 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 find the audience that feels strongly connected to my work are like kindred spirits. They understand the importance of a spiritual path and deeper connection. However when I am creating I never consider the viewer, I simply put down an story and fealings in layers.

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

I am currently working on a graphic novel and blog that depicts day to day life stressful situations. My desire is to help teenagers and adults who are suffering from depression and anxiety. I use humor to break down the tension and barriers. I know one thing from my experience, that when you laugh in the face of your demons, they lose their power and control over you. These drawings are very therapeutic to me, and I hope they will be to my readers as well.

http://www.byangel4.com/blog

I am also in the process of negotiating with a Dimensions custom framing and Gallery here in a Toronto to exhibit my Angel Collection.

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Tatjana Blinja

Gregor Sc Gregor Sc Schlatte hlatte

Our reality is of bad quality. It was Hito Steyerl who said, that the internet is the realm of the “poor image”. Opposed to classical photography the poor image is of pixelated, shared, cropped and edited. Our reality mainly consists of those poor images and in a reverse development this poor images assure us that something really happened. Mobile phone shots became the new guarantor of authenticity. They assure us that the person who shot it, was really there, involved, that he/she is a witness.

We see this development also in the area of war photography. Most of the photos and videos coming out of a war zone are shot with mobile phones by people involved. The embedded journalist is replaced by the soldier, who shoots his Kalashnikov with one and photos with his other hand. In a way the romanian revolution can be seen as the prime event in this character (as shown in the work “Videograms of a Revolution” by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica). The revolutionaries took over the TVstation, assuring that the revolution is really happening. The improvised character was not a lack, it actually guaranteed that it is really the revolutionaries who are broadcasting.

In short we can say, that the bad quality photo or video is perceived as authentic. Hito Steyerl called this “the uncertainty principle of modern documentarism”. That for example Liveleak states that it is redefining the media, must been seen in front of that change in perception. To be authentic, a video has to be blurred, out of focus and it has to include moments, where the camera is moved too fast. Of course, a video has also to show some real action, but this action is viewed as true only insofar as those moments of poor filming are delivering a frame. Those moments, where nothing really can be seen, those very moments, are the guarantor of authenticity. Consequently this works centers on footage from the war in Syria and Iraq, which is probably the first war almost entirely documented by mobile phones. The images are extracted frames from those videos, posted on different platforms, and each show one of those moments, which guarantee authenticity.

Doing so this work wants to highlight the question, how can we value the authenticity and meaning of a photo or video document, when there is no time to discuss it as the attention already moves to next? Do we depend on those moments of bad quality? Or to go further, what kind of education do we need to cope with this new reality?

The reality of war by Gregor Schlatte (Mixed Media/Installation)

Gregor Schlatte

video, 2013

Gregor Schlatte Gregor Schlatte An interview with An interview with

One of the most convincing aspect of Gregor€Schlatte's work is the way he gets the audience to question their preconceived ideas about the concept authenticity: in his work entitled The

reality of war that we'll be discussing in the following pages, Schlatte moves from Hito€Steyerl's reflections, carrying out an insightful investigation about the ambiguous dichotomy between

constructed realities and a neutral gaze. His unconventional approach creates an unexplored area of 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 his refined artistic production.

Hello Gregor and welcome to ART Habens: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you graduated at the Academy for applied Photography in Graz: how did this experience influence your evolution as an artist? In particular do you think that formal training informs the way you currently conceive your works?

For me it was very important as it provided me with a set of methods. “First you have to know the rules, then you can play with them” a former teacher of mine used to say. Only if one masters different techniques one is able to experiment with them. Furthermore to get confronted with other ideas, visual approaches helps to keep the mind flexible.

Another important influence on my work is my Master in social sciences, which I finished before I got into the arts. The connection between those two fields of interest is getting stronger and stronger.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from The reality of war, an extremely interesting series that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to visit http://salon.io/gregorschlatte 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?

This work is part of a wider examination on how images shape reality, how images

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create meaning and how this relationship has changed fundamentally. At the moment I’m working with Prof. Breckner from the University of Vienna on a concept regarding how this topic can be approached from a artistic and scientific perspective. It’s a common place to say that images shape our reality more and more, but the question remains: how? In the last two decades we saw a shift in theory and practice which no longer understands photographs or videos as representations. To be precise here, to understand photographs as representations is still of value concerning documentary photography, but to understand online phenomena like selfies a different approach is needed. Those photographs are much more like objects. Selfies or videos of directly involved people are not a representation of their identity anymore, rather, the identity of the subject is constructed in the act of taking those photographs. This means that the act of taking a photo or a video becomes an integral part of my identity. To put it bluntly, I am what I’m showing through showing.

This was the general theoretical background of my interest in the Syrian war, as it is maybe the first war completely covered by cell phones. It is here where a new paradigm of authenticity and identity construction can be seen; a very bloody and shocking manifestation of a global process. The photos coming out of the war zone could be labelled with the term: “poor images” as Hito Steyerl calls them. They are of bad quality but serve a very specific purpose. Sometimes one can hardly see what’s going on. Anyway, they represent the anti-expert, the involved subjects, the one who fights.

Those photos are moments of authenticity. They are not trying to show some reality, they carry reality within them, they create a

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ART Habens

reality by showing, by assuring the witness of its authenticity. The role of images changes fundamentally in the identity construction process and turns the concept of authenticity upside down. In the age of classical documentary photography - even more in its idealized form - authenticity was provided by the objective observer, an adequate representation guaranteed authenticity. The footage from the war in Syria doesn’t try to create a legitimate representation, instead it includes moments of poor filming which have the purpose to assure the viewer that the footage was taken by a witness. Blurry and pixelated images became the warrantor of authenticity.

The success of these identity-construction processes lies in their repeatability. More and more people have access to image producing devices like cell phones and can participate, as the rules of imageconstruction easily can be understood. That’s the reason we find so much footage of people directly involved in a crisis or a war. The repeatability grants the individual access to a global visual regime. Even terrorists participate.

When I first happened to get to know

The reality of war I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its content: in the videos, 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?

Your question really nails the way I work. On a conceptual level I always include theory in a systematic way. But when producing images, or hunting images on the internet, I

have a very intuitive approach. It’s only in the process of editing that those two levels are finally intertwined.

But to answer your question, the concept and theory are very important for this project, they were the initial point, they frame the images. The images themselves always include more and less. No image ever fully corresponds with the concept, but this is also its advantage. It carries more than it is supposed too. In every image there’s something, which doesn’t fit, which shows its own reality.

4) They way you question the issue of authenticity in the contemporary process of semantic restructuration 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 we 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?

I understand the creative process in itself as an experience. Of course it is one which doesn’t correspond with the experience of the actual witness. I think abstraction is a necessary ingredient of any creative process. Only with distancing myself from the actual scene/situation/crisis I am able to say something more. Which means that this

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abstraction enables me to highlight the underlying structure of a scene.

The strength of art lies in its ability to formulate an universalistic standpoint by actualizing it in an actual object, be it a sculpture, painting or photograph. To answer your question, I think we have a three staged process: experienceabstraction - experience. At least in my work every piece starts with a personal moment. I’m shocked, moved, fascinated or thrilled by an event. Then the process of research starts: What are the underlying structures of that event? In the last stage the art piece in itself creates a new experience. Not by copying the first stage or the experience of the witness but by opening it up for a wider audience.

While Hito Steyerl 's uncertainty€principle€of€modern€docum entarism moves from the fact that the viewer identifies himself with the producer of a blurred video, lending it an inner truthfulness, it is also evident that modern cinematography - I think to Jean-Luc Godard, but especially to Yorgos Lanthimos and Thomas Vinterberg - have subverted this paradigm, making films that plays in the liminal area in which a representative gaze on reality is wisely combined with a reflection on the role of the medium in the process of conveying a message... although I'm aware that this would sound a bit naif, even Daniel Myrick ed Eduardo Sanchez's early movie exploited such paradigm: and it was totally functional in blurring the boundary between the perception of truthfulness of the represented images…

The interesting thing about faulty, blurred or damaged images is that they include a

ART Habens Gregor Schlatte

visible trace of their production. I’m really fascinated by blurred images. They bear witness of a brute force they sustained. But not by directly showing it, instead they incorporate the traces of violence. The movie you quoted, wouldn’t have worked if it showed the event, the thing directly. Blurred images become a witness themselves. They are subjected to violence. Furthermore what can actually be seen gets superimposed by another reality and they ask the viewer to look twice. They don’t give easy answers.

In addition the blur is introducing gaps which the viewer has to fill with his or her own imagination. Of course, there are other methods of providing room for the viewers imagination. I think this gap is the difference

between amateur and artistic photography. In amateuer photography everything can be seen and is clear. Artistic photography instead introduces a gap, somehow forcing the photograph to be something other than itself. Like I said, the blur is only one method to introduce this gap. If you think of the Helsinki School of Photography or the Dusseldorf School of Photography you see total different approaches to accomplish this.

To conclude, blurred or pixelated images question not only the event they document, in addition they question the way they were produced, the medium.

Your investigation about authenticity in relation not only with contemporary tragedies as war -but also with daily

ART Habens Gregor Schlatte

lively matters- reveals a deep sociopolitic criticism, that urges the viewer to recontextualize the fruible sets of images provided by today's media. Many contemporary photographers as Edward Burtynsky or Michael Light use to convey political messages in their works. Do you consider that your works are political in this way or do you seek to maintain a neutral approach, lingering most on the methodological side of the matter?

The photographers you cited or the work ‘Enclave’by Richard Mosse have a very powerful approach. The fascinating beauty of their images and the knowledge of the viewer about what he or she sees (ecologic crimes, state imposed uniformity or war)

creates a fruitful and uncanny tension. I think the best political art works are those able to create this uncanny tension by showing things not directly. An image of a dead body shocks me, but it doesn’t force me to think about it. It is pornography, it shows everything and closes the space for reason.

To answer your question, I think photography especially is always political. It always tries to show unseen moments, things, people or events. My topics and methods are different to those of the quoted artists but the underlying conviction is similar.

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me

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Gregor Schlatte

and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Another brick. 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 the environment we inhabit in. This is a recurrent feature of your approach, that provides the viewers of an Ariadne's Thread, inviting them to challenge the common way we 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 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?

You are completely right, in our environment we find multiple signs of the global as well as the very personal, the very intimate. Also, I completely agree with you mentioning the necessity of deciphering those signs. One important aspect of photography and especially artistic photography is to provide the viewer with the code on how to decipher those signs. It offers a way to gain visual literacy.

The way you take a concept and recontextualize it, brings new messages and inviting the viewer to elaborate personal interpretations: at the same time, you do not reject a gaze on

ART Habens Gregor Schlatte

aesthetics, creating a lively combination between conceptual and beauty. How important is the aesthetic problem for you when you conceive a work?

The question of aesthetics is fundamental. Like I said before, beauty or aesthetics open up a new level of tension. I also think that we have an important difference between art and science. Both are concerned with the act of making unseen things visible, enabling a viewer to understand something not obvious. Science is accomplishing this by a huge arsenal of methods and technology. Think of the Hubble-Telescope which produced astonishing beautiful images. Beauty in science is defined by simpleness (think of Einstein) and

adequacy. The arts, in my opinion, relate to a different concept of beauty in which beauty becomes a processual category. Think of the work of Trevor Paglen in which you see a beautiful sky but it is superimposed by the fact, that you know, that somewhere in this beautiful photograph a drone is hidden. This is it what I understand with processual category. Its beauty opens up the space in which the viewer can interact with the subject.

Your practice is intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intellectual interplay with the viewers, that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience. During these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions

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Gregor Schlatte

Onirologia Onirologia Onirologia Onirologia

I compose electronic music and then make accompanying video for my sound. The music I make is inspired by my experiences as a 2nd -generation Italian immigrant growing up in America. My parents came to America from Italy in 1994 and I was born in Florida in 1995. My father is a Dixieland trumpeter and taught me Jazz theory while my mother is a former Flamenco dancer that would frequently play that music to me. They would also play classical and contemporary Italian music ranging from Verdi to Pino Daniele. The sounds I was exposed to merged with the electronic dance music of the late 90’s/early millennium that I heard outside of the home. I therefore make use of Jazz, Flamenco, and Italian influences in the way I approach time signatures, instrumentation and chordal voicings. These influences are then filtered through the paradigms of EDM like sampling, tempo, and the music video. This means I ultimately present my pieces on sites like Youtube and Vimeo.

The way in which I select and treat samples is reflected in how I manipulate image. Both tend to be personal or appropriated digital materiaIs that hold sentimental value for me. I then heavily edit these until all that is left are fleeting colors, gestural shapes, erratic rhythms, vast soundscapes, and renegade pixels that are surreally detached from our world. Juxtapositions are thus created between the organic and the mechanical that suggest displacement and settlement. This forms a simultaneous expression of the nostalgia inherent in being an immigrant and the decreasing gap between humans and their technologies.

The contrast between the experiential and reflexive aspects of my work serves to confront the viewer with the Dionysian nature of memory and the fact that we continue to outsource that memory to Apollonian, electronic spaces. It is through this divisive action that a brief moment of transcendence from the self is achieved. We are then able to look with a degree of acceptance to the past and to the future at the same time, to our personal histories and to our imminent destinies as cyborgs.

An interview with interview

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Katherine C. Wilson, curator arthabens@mail.com

Costantino Toth creates time-based works that offers to the viewers a multilayered experience, urging us to rethink about the ambiguous dichotomy between the perception of time and memory. His suggestive approach introduces us into an unexplored area of interplay in which we are involved to investigate about the unexpected relationships about reality and the way we perceive it. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his refined artistic production.

Hello Costantino and welcome to ART Habens: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? Growing up in a family deeply involved into music, has given you the chance to get a solid training in jazz and in flamenco: how has this experience influenced your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does nostalgia inherent in being a second generation Italian immigrant growing up in America inform the way you conceive your works?

I was born in Sarasota, Florida in 1995. I now live in Richmond, Virginia and study at the Kinetic Imaging department of VCU. Before coming to America in 1994, my parents were very involved in their respective dance and music scenes. My mother learned to dance Flamenco and later danced for a touring dance company. My father was a Jazz trumpet player who owned the Mississippi Jazz Club in Rome. He would play Dixieland, which is also a form of music that is meant to be danced to. This in turn has influenced the way I work, which is always done in reference to music. I oftentimes feel like a choreographer that organises images instead of dancers. Even before I started doing video work two years ago, I would paint and let music command

Onirologia Onirologia Onirologia Onirologia

Onirologia

the brushstrokes and even the subject matter. So the sound has always come first. When my parents finally immigrated to the US, my mother and father had to unfortunately give up these activities for awhile in order to raise me. When my father did finally pick up music again he became a one-man band and never played in a group again due to the language barrier. He would thus compose backing tracks on his keyboard, save them on floppy disks, and then play over it with his trumpet at whatever restaurant he worked at that night. This is and all the emerging dance music of the late 90’s is probably what built the foundation for my later fascination with electronic music. I remember that when I was around 8 or 9 years old, my father lent

me a floppy disk and keyboard with which I would try recording my own tracks. A lot of them were amateurish soundscapes inspired by all of the Pink Floyd I was listening to at the time. Keep in mind that these songs were composed before I had started any serious music training, so the listenability of

them was questionable. I wonder if I still have the disks though. My father probably would scoff at this statement but I consider him the first DJ I’ve ever listened to. His job demands that he works in tandem with a machine(s), which in the end becomes as much an instrument as his trumpet. Is that

not essentially what a DJ does? This symbiosis between human and machine has interested me ever since and informs the work I make. My sound is also obviously influenced by the Jazz and Flamenco that my parents would play at home. My father would later teach me Jazz guitar. Therefore I

employ Jazz theory when writing chord sequences and melodies. The tradition of improvisation that Jazz and Flamenco carry also surfaces in my sound, especially in Sospiro 0. Flamenco has also made me interested in unconventional time signatures or non-western ways to accent western rhythms.

During all this and my growing up in America, we would occasionally visit Italy. This wouldn’t happen very often because money was tight (I’ve only been 4 times in my life so far). Each trip was thus an opportunity to meet with family and friends that I would rarely see. However, it also created feelings of alienation and longing within me. Even though I feel closer to Italian culture, am I not more American? I’ve lived there all my life and I cannot deny the influence of American culture. Even when I speak Italian, there is a prominent American accent that lingers. Yet Italy has still come to feel like a home away from home. This divisive yearning is a common attribute amongst 2nd-generation immigrants. It’s a strange form of identity crisis. My art thus comments on this need to find home and also functions as an attempt to reconnect with it.

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?

I tend to start with the sound first. I always come up with an initial musical idea with the guitar, whether it be a vague melody or a chord sequence. I then begin to flesh out this idea in Ableton Live with the appropriate samples, which I’ve selected beforehand. During this part I try to

emphasise the oneiric qualities of memory by editing the samples into brief, angelic, and sometimes unsettling sounds. I then focus on where to place these new sounds in the stereo field so I can render the song as dynamic as possible. This process takes awhile because I am still quite new to digital audio workstations and I’ve only been using Ableton for a year. After that, I open up Premiere and find the necessary footage to edit for the song. Sometimes the samples are already collected from personal home footage and I’ll use that for the visuals. I don’t have a specific set of time that I dedicate to the conception or actualisation of an entire project because it’s an off and on process. I am usually working on multiple things at the same time. Then there are projects which I think I’ve finished but then I keep reiterating, like Sospiro 0. For example, there’s another piece I’ve been working on for a year now, and that’s been just for the sound.

3) I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from Sospiro 0, an extremely interesting work that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-

Gobp9qRY6A in order to get a wider idea of it. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

The piece was first conceived as a final project for a Max/MSP/Jitter class I had attended almost a year ago. I knew from the start that I wanted to build a patch that would let me affect video with an electric guitar. With the ever-patient help of the professor, I finally had a patch that could analyze the frequencies of my guitar and convert them into numerical values that would feed into an effect of my choosing.

The patch also had a loop feature where I could record and playback 8 different loops over each other. The technical aspect had been mostly solved but there was still the conceptual question remaining; what video should I manipulate? What content should

ART Habens Onirologia

be shown? I knew I wanted to talk about the search for settlement, but how? I was brainstorming with a friend one day and she recalled how a year or so ago we had given each other virtual tours of our homes and favourite places using Google Maps. In fact,

one of the places that I had shown her was the quarter in Rome that you see in Sospiro 0, Primavalle. She suggested that I recreate that, so I screen captured a video of me “traveling” through my grandmother’s neighborhood. Now I had to figure out which

effect to use. I didn’t want to pick one that was just visually interesting but something that was informed by the overarching theme. I wanted to emphasize the sense of displacement that comes with this nostalgia and the faultiness of memory itself.

Fortunately I found out that the program had an effect called “displacement” and it obliterated the image in a way that was perfect. Now I had my guitar directly interacting with this effect. The higher the note I played, the stronger the effect. So for

the video that you see in the link, I played the video in the program and improvised and looped all the guitar melodies that you hear. However, something strange happened which I did not intend. The audio interface I was using for that video was

defective, and for the first part of my video it de-tuned the guitar loops. At first, it bothered me to no end. Musicians always strive to stay in tune. But the more I thought about the audio interface, the more it seemed to reflect the reason behind the “displacement” effect. Just like how the audio interface distorted my guitar lines, does our brain not do the same to our memories? So in the end, I decided not to re-record the performance and I put up the result on the Internet.

When I first happened to get to know Sospiro 0 I tried to relate all the visual and sound information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into its visual rhythm, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its content: in your videos, 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?

The performance aspect of it is intuitive. Like I mentioned in the previous response, the guitar was improvised and will continue to be improvised when I perform this piece again. As for trying to let the viewer establish direct connections, that is more of a conscious thought process. I want the viewer to be able to slip in and not be alienated by the fact that the content is personal to me. I do this by omitting details that would rationally bring the viewer out of the irrational experience. Even if it is my grandmother’s neighborhood, you don’t see her or any other family members. I also made sure that there weren’t many implications of where the neighborhood was located, especially nationalistic ones. No Italian flags or emblems are readily visible unless you look hard enough. There are other videos I’ve been working on that use home footage from 2004 in which my family members appear. As I’ve been editing these

clips, I made sure to omit their faces, leaving only more ambiguous body parts in view like shoulders and hands. This is an example of some regimental rules that I set for each project, which then serve as

platforms from which I can perform more instinctual actions.

Your practice is intrinsically connected to the chance of establishing an area of interplay with the viewers, that are urged

to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience, both on an intellectual aspect as well as on an emotional, almost physical one. In particular, your process of recontextualization of sound 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 explore. So I would take this occasion 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?

I really can’t see any way to divorce the creative process from the experiences you’ve lived through. Even if you try to combat it consciously, what about the manifestations of your subconscious? The need to create art or the need to delve into any activity is probably already based off some event in your life and ultimately based off the way we are wired as human beings. Unless you meant the artistic decision to convey experiences or situations that aren’t personal to you, in which case you can technically do that. In that case, art doesn’t have to reference the directly personal.

Your work shows an incessant search of an hybrid synergy between music and moving images: as you have remarked once, the way you select and treat samples reflects how you manipulate images: have you ever happened to realize that such symbiosis is the only way to achieve some results and in particular to confront the viewers with the Dionysian nature of memory?

I wouldn’t say my process is the most efficient way to procure the results I want, but it is the process most natural or sensible to me. The way I let sound samples activate video and vice versa points to the abrupt way our memories surface. Just like how a photo can trigger a an enveloping memory, the “symbiosis” I create between music and image is a metaphor for that. It also informs the length of time for which I let sounds and

shapes linger, which is usually not very long. Sometimes this web of connectivity is not immediately noticeable to the viewer, but I need to have it present between all elements of a piece or it feels hollow to me. However, I think that these modes of interplay are usually quite apparent, especially in the two works you’ve seen. It is also related to my parents’ background in dance. They are used to internalizing sound and moving with it instead of experiencing it passively. So how can I bring this to an audience? I think that having these auditory reinforcements of video and whatnot help the audience to “feel” the piece instead of just viewing it.

The impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the idea of Art itself: in a certain sense, we are forced to rethink about the intimate aspect of constructed realities and especially about the materiality of an artwork itself, since just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. I'm sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and I will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

I definitely agree that art and technology will meld into one, it’s just a reflection of how our technology is drifting closer and closer to us. We can look at the evolution of the phone, for instance, and how it went from a stationary part of the home to something that is always near our physical bodies (it probably won’t stop there). I think artists that really drive this point home are Stelarc and Neil Harbisson, who have had actual technologies incorporated into their bodies. Effectively, they’ve rendered themselves and the machines used as a single object of art. We are even reaching a point in our evolution where we can build

computer programs that can make works of art and music independently. The program constructed by David Cope called “Emily

Howell” writes her own classical compositions that are already quite complex and beautiful. I am interested in

seeing how far this integration between the organic and inorganic will progress. I remain optimistic and I think we’ll soon see cyborgs

that are not far off from the ones we see in TV and cinema.

By definition video is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity. In another of your video of yours, entitled

Singolarità, you have created a time-based work that induce the viewers to abandon themselves to associations, rethinking the

concept of space in such a static way: this 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. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

Rhythmically, Sospiro 0 and Singolaritá both share a very heavy use of automatism. Both of their rhythms were improvised and thus don’t adhere to any consistent time signature. For Singolaritá, I recorded just one take of myself scatting and beatboxing. It was a very stream-of-consciousness process, I sang what seemed natural to me. I am in no way good at beatboxing or scatting but it helped establish a foundation that I could build upon. I then began replacing each note and syllable with the appropriate samples. In other works, the process is almost the same even if the rhythms are more fixed. I formulate on the guitar a melody or chord sequence which I then attach to a rhythm that seems natural. Sometimes it’s 4/4, sometimes it’s 11/4, sometimes it’s not fixed at all, like in Singolaritá

Highlighting the contrast between reflexive aspects and experiential ones, your approach seems to stimulates the viewer’s psyche and consequently works on both a subconscious and a conscious level: I can recognize this feature especially in the aforesaid Singolarità, that I have to admit is one of my favourite work of yours. How did you decide to focus on this form of video? And in particular, do you conceive this in an instinctive way or do you rather structure your process in order to reach the right balance?

This piece actually started out as a 5minute, hand-drawn animation that I made almost a year ago. Its visual subject matter was still the same (pink forms floating and convulsing in a blue space) but rendered in a sketchy, boiling style. The music that was

made beforehand was also quite different because it was more conventional and it sampled my guitar playing. The concept behind this video was still about conveying a form of afterlife or death land, although this was related to nuclear holocaust instead. I became interested in Vernor Vinge’s idea of a technological singularity a few months later and I wanted to make a video that attached this concept to that of an alternate dream-state. I looked back at that initial 2D animation and realized that these androgynous people and blobs flying about in the ether were relevant. I wanted to keep the colour palette the same because the pink suggested something organic (which would contrast well with the obvious pixels) and the blue was my reference to Joan Miró’s “color of dreams”. It needed a change of medium though so I decided to remake the video and sound from scratch. For the sound I used exclusively samples from popular songs that had the words “touch” or “tocco” in the lyrics. This was meant to hint at the ultimate connectivity that the technological singularity promises us. As stated before, I then recorded my beatboxing and replaced all sounds with the edited samples.

Meanwhile, I had decided that the best medium to use would be 3D animation since its obvious digital nature was more consistent with the theme. I then made use of the motion capture studio that was available to me and other students during a five-week course. I recorded a multitude of different actions and then imported them into Maya, where I attached several character molds to these moving skeletons. I soon had a bunch of video clips of various pink organisms drifting in this vast and flat space. By then the song was finished so I shoved everything into Premiere and cut all the video clips to the song and Singolaritá was born.

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?

As stated before, I try to make my works accessible to most people. That’s why I omit

text or audible words from the visuals and sound. You might see or hear hints of letters and syllables but ultimately they are near-gibberish. This is to emphasise the attachment to the subconscious that memory has. The only contradiction here is my decision to title all my works in Italian, and there are two major reasons behind this action. The first is because it reflects my art’s attempt to reconnect with the Italian

culture that I always find myself geographically isolated from. The second reason is to stand out in an American context. In America, the obviously-notEnglish titles immediately become exoticized and are meant to reflect how immigrants themselves in America are seen as exotic elements. However, America’s paradoxical tendency to rapidly assimilate these foreign elements into itself is

essentially very xenophobic. I use the Italian language as a way to resist this and maintain my cultural heritage.

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

Right as I’m typing this answer, I am currently staying at my grandmother’s apartment in the very part of Rome you’ve seen in Sospiro 0. I’ve been recording the actual street sounds of the places you see in that video. I plan on adding these and other recordings to the video. This reiteration will in effect be called Sospiro 1, and will be part of a semi-narrative album I’m working on that further explores the topics found in this video and Singolaritá. So far I’ve been recording the sounds of the water of Sardegna, the voices of my family members, and other things. I started this album a year ago and I have about 6 or 7 songs to finish. Some of them are very different from Sospiro 1 because they adhere to more rigid structures that don’t rely on improvisation. Each song will have its respective music video and thus you can listen to just the album or watch it as a short film. Right now the musicians that I’m listening to for inspiration are Ken Ishii, Tool, Cornelius, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Yoko Kanno’s work for the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series. It’s slow work and I expect it to be finished by 2016 if all goes well. After that, I’m not completely sure what will happen. I might dedicate some time to research Glitch art. I’m curious about bringing it into a live, improvisational context and relating it to the human organism. I also want to try reversing my usual process by crafting the visual elements first and then making the accompanying sound. It might yield good results. Thank you for having me, arrivederci!