ARTiculAction Art Review // Special Issue by ARTiculAction Art Review

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THE FLAG, 2014 Drawing performance by Ram Samocha Photo by Geraldine Gallavardin

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

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Rory Tangney

Ram Samocha

Veski Yeh

Esther Eigner

Joan Oh

Joas Nebe

Ireland

Israel

Taiwan

Austria

USA

Germany

My practice has widened from an initial basis in sculpture to include drawing and sound as central aspects while allowing for forays into other media. Selftaught as an artist, I have training both as a cabinetmaker and as a sound engineer. My experience of making furniture, in particular, has ingrained in me an appreciation of the significance of objects, while giving me a rootedness in the material world even as life itself becomes increasingly ‘virtual’. With this experience also comes the understanding of process which I bring with me to all aspects of my practice.

I am a multi-disciplinary artist working in performance and visual arts, creating individual artifacts through actions of performance. My work stems from my need to communicate effectively, which has always been a struggle for me.

Technical art pieces often lack emotions, and it is rare to see arts that combine technology, interactions, Chinese ink paintings, documentary all together in one. Veski Yeh’s displays a whole new form of art, using image recognition and interactive technology, the viewers can use their smartphones to interact with the artworks. Connecting through the internet and cloud systems, the viewers can discover the artwork’s main character, who they are and what is their life story, whether by images, videos, or just sounds. Although the Chinese ink painting by glance is twodimensional, but Veski broke through the walls and made it fourdimensional, giving his work the sense of “time” through interactive technology.

Every painting is deeply influenced by my feelings. The range of my works or “palette” depends on the topic of the painting. But basically I use pastel and dim colors for my works. That is why I like egg tempera, pastel-pencils or my own “plant colors”. My style and the colors I use changed over time, when I was young I used more powerful colors. I take my inspiration from everyday life. Sometimes it happens by accident, while hearing the lyrics of a song, being in a special mood. I can be inspired by a flower, works from another artist, or anything else. For instance, in “Ways of Color” my source of inspiration was the way I had to follow to find the right plants to produce my colors.

Joan Oh is a Chicago native with a BFA in Photography at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington and she attended the University of Pennsylvania and received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies. Oh's work is the materialization of skeptical thought. By way of humor, she finds ways into the deepest level of insecurity- flaws found in the system that's been infiltrated by a capitalist spectacle society and the false notion of the American Dream.Oh is attracted to what's become lost in (Google) translation; a misplaced language that exists within the fragmented field of identity. She examines the tongue bound by social constraints and investigate the sting of legacy by reframing traditional concepts of daily ritual.

To Nebe, “fantasy and

Drawing is a seminal element in my methodology as it allows me to work with very basic materials that construct a clear and succinct communication. My work is very dynamic and always responds to the place and situation that I am in. As these constantly change, I have a very diverse body of work. That stated, the core elements of my work are constant.

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creative intelligence are important survival skills today.” So is chess, an analogy he keeps referring to: “Chess exemplifies my game with the viewer. In a world of shortening attention spans, it’s an ideal concentration-practice. One always has to think a few steps in advance.” By screening the insanity of our daily chase towards evolutionary bankruptcy, Nebe in a clever move takes the reason prisoner, only to appoint reason to be the king of his game of chess. He calls for a close review of the encyclopedia of our philosophical and cultural foundations.

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Ram Samocha

lives and works in Brighton, United Kingdom

Gil Goren lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Rory Tangney

lives and works in Dublin, Ireland

Joan Oh

lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, USA

Pako Quijada

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lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Joas Nebe Gil Zablodovsky

Pako Quijada

Gil Goren

Israel

Germany

Israel

”You don't need eyes to

The way I conceive my works nowadays is very intuitive and based on some principles that feel very natural to me because I have interiorised them. When I come up with an idea for a new work I let it sink and let the concept “ask” me what type of medium I should go for. There are some works that will work better as a series of photographs and some others will be better as video pieces. Also the aesthetics are very important to me. Sometimes a new body of work will be born from an image that I have seen or that is just in my head. I aim to create beauty with my work but also make this beauty be a multilayered vessel for its true purpose, which is to get to people’s

I think of myself as a kind of visual icon hunter, arranging the urbanic view and landscape in new order. Most of the people dont pay any attemtion to the small parts that build the big picture of our life. people in a hurry, in rush and dont pay attention to the road. I shoot urban closeup photos of objects, that nobody realy pay attention to, and create an art work that is never ending story tell of what people call boring objects. I capture the mood of the moment, create a new language which I translates into soaring pieces of art that convey turbulent movement, rhythm and sound. My photography is not an independent body of artistry or documentary, but rather captured as background material that cumulates into a wealth of potential imagery.

see, You need vision” Working now as a graphic designer & new media visual art in video medium, as I believe we are in the world of new collaborations, and making ourselves (the creators) all that is necessary to know about the future, integrated design is my future for moving forward, learning new techniques, Mechanisms and more. making it to the front by making design art projects.

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lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Gil Zablodovsky

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lives and works in Haifa, Israel

Esther Eigner

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lives and works in Vienna, Austria

Veski Yeh

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lives and works in Taiwan On the cover The Flag, 2014, Performance by Ram Samocha

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

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R am Samocha Lives and works in Brighton, United Kingdom

am a multi-disciplinary artist working in performance and visual arts, creating individual artifacts through actions of performance. My work stems from my need to communicate effectively, which has always been a struggle for me. Drawing is a seminal element in my methodology as it allows me to work with very basic materials that construct a clear and succinct communication. My work is very dynamic and always responds to the place and situation that I am in. As these constantly change, I have a very diverse body of work. That stated, the core elements of my work are constant. My journey to Drawing Performance stated in 2004 when I did my first live drawing action. The one thing I remember very clearly from this first live action is the massive wave of energy that channeled through me following the live interaction with the audience. This overwhelming experience laid the path for my future activity in Drawing Performance. When I came to London in 2012 I knew that I was not alone and that artistically there were many wonderful artists doing fascinating work, exploring the same practice of Drawing Performance in the UK and all over the world. This realization was partly responsible for me setting up the Draw to Perform project in 2013, as well as the desire to create an international community that speaks the same artistic language as I do. The first international Draw to Perform Symposium was held in East London on

December 2013 and gathered 20 artists from the UK, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, the USA, Egypt, Portugal and Israel. Draw to Perform1 started as an ambitious ‘one men’ project that was a great success, resulting in a dedicated community of artists and art lovers from all over the world, all eager to turn the Symposium into an annual tradition. Draw to Perform2 took place in 2015 in South London and gathered 17 artists from the UK, Australia, France, Brazil, the USA, Taiwan, Germany and Israel. The focus in Draw to Perform2 was on durational performances and all of the acts took place simultaneously over 6 hours. In September 2015 Draw to Perform was the subject for a Performance Symposium and workshops at Goldsmiths, University of London and in February 2016 it was the subject for a Drawing Symposium and workshops at OCAD University in Toronto. Retrospectively, I can see that the focus of each Symposium reflected the topics that I was busy investigating in my own work at that time. Combining performance, animation, video, installation, and drawing is challenging, but it’s rewarding too in that it allows artists to examine the relevance of contemporary drawing and investigate the future of mark making.

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Ram Samocha Draw to Perform An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Dario Rutigliano, curator articulaction@post.com

Multidisciplinary artist Ram Samocha's work utilizes a wide variety of media to explore the relationship between basic media, traditional drawing materials and physical gestures. His approach rejects any conventional classification and crosses the elusive boundary that defines the area of perception from the realm of imagination. Correspondingly, his art creates a multilayered involvement with his audience, who are urged to investigate the ubiquitous order that pervades the reality we inhabit. One of the most convincing aspects of Samocha's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating a deep and autonomous synergy between our limbic parameters and our rational categories. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted art. Hello Ram and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BFA from the Bezalel Academy of arts you nurtured your education with a MFA, that you eventually received from the University of Waterloo: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform

Ram Samocha

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Ram Samocha

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the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

My main practice divides into two complimentary sections, drawing and performance. Trying to think about my evolution as an artist, I think that Bezalel Academy gave me the first introduction into multi disciplinary practice. Before I started my studies I was very passionate and much focused on painting. The school introduced me to many other means of expression, which widened my artistic language and paved my way into multidisciplinary creation. Going back to school after fifteen years of practicing art was a great experience; I came to this practice much more mature and extremely focused knowing exactly what I am hoping to gain from it. When I picked the MFA program in Waterloo University I knew that I looking for a relatively small, but very professional place; a place that would focus on my personal artistic expression and would allow me to develop it further. In Canada I had the chance to work more on my live performances, to work on a larger scale, to start using colours more freely and to deeply explore abstraction. Aesthetics is something that you carry with you from the beginning; you surround yourself with it and always use it. Coming from Israel I was already very influenced by the long and fascinating tradition of drawing, writing and Hebrew text. That focused me and inspired me to follow the path of wonderful artists such as Aviva Uri, Moshe Kupferman, Raffi Lavie, Moshe Gershoni, and Gabriel Klasmer. Your approach coherently encapsulates several techniques and - ranging from Painting to installation, from Drawing to

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Performance - it reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a consistent sense of harmony. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.samocha.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines as well as different disciplines is the only way to express and convey the ideas you explore.

I always find myself balancing between different disciplines; it is in my nature. This amalgamation in some strange way balances me. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have black or white, floor or wall, painting or sculpture, I am moving freely between two to three dimensions as I am essentially blind to the boundaries that define them. Combining different disciplines both extends and enriches my point of view. This also happens with materials. Often, the materials I choose to work with are not traditionally related to drawing or painting but to other different skills, hence they always have new and interesting qualities. The complexity of my work comes from combining all of these elements into one piece. You are the founder and director of the Draw to Perform community: the works that you have developed condens physical gestures and descriptive perspectives into a coherent unity, to establish direct relations with the viewers who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. How do you see the relationship between public

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sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?

The seeds for my career as performance artist were set a long time ago after my very first sole exhibition. First sole show is a very exciting and festive milestone. What I mostly remember from mine is being in total shock realizing how static the connection between the artist and the viewer was in the traditional exhibit format. It seems that in the most important stage of sharing the art with the viewer the artist is almost dispensable. This format did not work for me. I needed to share my process with the viewers in a reciprocal interaction. I do need my privet creation time in the studio but the process, the focus and the outcome are completely different from those done in live action. Work in a studio has the meditative quality; it is multilayered, dense, and meticulous. The live action brings me to state of trance that is not present in the studio. It adds tension, it adds risk. I have created the Draw to Perform community in 2013 with the first Draw to Perform symposium. I wanted to find more artists that shared the same practice as me and the same passion and erg towards this discipline. Drawing live in front of people is so different and charged with such strong energy that there is nothing that replaces this unique situation. The Draw to Perform events are even more powerful as they gather artists from all over the world, each one brings his own angle and energy to the overall experience. For both participant and viewers these events are extremely powerful and incompatible to any other

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art experience. Today you must think more than ever when you invite people to come and view a piece of art. The Internet offers so many alternative new ways of exposing and sharing work online and maybe that is the reason why coming to see a live action by an artist in real time is so relevant and meaningful at this moment of time. It opens a lot of new questions about future options of collaboration and communication. What has at once caught our attention of your approach is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of establishing a channel of communication between the subconscious sphere and the conscious one, to unveil and challenge the manifold nature of human perceptual categories and to draw the viewers into a multilayered experience. So we 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 do believe that all you experience in life, your personal and general struggles are reflected in an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, through the creation and in the final result. There are certain shapes and colures that I keep using and repeat again and again without knowing or thinking why. Many times it relates to the body or the arm movements, but sometimes it connects to an instinctive need to deal with something or to realize something that has bothered me in the past, a situation, a thought, or a trauma. Each action or drawing that I start work on, starts with a thought or vision that I build in my head beforehand. Sometimes unexpected things happen on the way to achieve this

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idea, but the vision is always there in my head as a first layer of expression. This artistic way of investigation is very different, in my opinion, to what was more common in, let’s say, the 70’s where investigation was the target and the process. I feel that in my work today the target is set and the process of investigation is a journey geared towards it. Three pieces which we found particularly intriguing are the three dimensional metalpoint pieces, Ima, Aba and Shalom (Hebrew wards for mother, father and peace respectively). These pieces capture non-sharpness with an universal kind of language, capable of bringing drawing as a seminal element to a new level of significance, unveiling the elusive but ubiquitous relationship between experience and memory: What is the role of memory in your process? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.

To draw is for me a way to calm, to reflect. If I don’t draw for a while I become very restless, very anxious. When I draw I instinctively remember and the memory leads me to a repetitive action, a therapeutic act that releases tension or longing. To answer your question I don’t try to translate these memories but use it as a starting point of creation. It is magical because the outcome has a live of its own and can than reflect back on the initial memory or experience. For example, in Ima (Mum), which is a metalpoint drawing made with pure gold, the repetition of these three letters was very calming and bought up many comforting childhood memories; the

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outcome however, was very surprising as the two-dimension marks transformed into a three- dimension scarred object. Your work is a successful attempt to highlight the relevance of drawing as a modern medium: 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. We daresay that your work seems to go beyond the dichotomy between Traditional media and a contemporary approach, capable to work as an extension of Tradition: do you agree with this analysis?

I always look for new materials to draw with and new ways to work and express myself with these materials. For me, entering an art supply store is like entering a candy store, I want it all, but I have to think carefully before I finally choose what to take with me. I am also well aware of what‘s been created in the past and try to use materials in a different way that will also challenge me. I’m constantly exploring the methodology of both modern art forms – drawing, video and performance - and ancient drawing techniques like metalpoint, to find new ways to combine these processes to produce new forms of expression. That may involve the movement from two dimensions to three dimensions or working on new little known surfaces such as the stone paper. Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some

words is entitled Black Hole Sun: We definitely love the way you extract the visual feature of information: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

This drawing began as a vision. I saw it very clearly in my head but it took me a long time to find the material that I should use to create it. The moment I saw in the art supply store these boxes of children’s black crayons, I knew that this was the material I wanted to use to construct this large drawing. I drew in stages for more than six months and at one point it shifted from simply drawing marks and started to become more of a sculptural shape, as the materiality of the wax crayons started to build up. While captured in the process of intense repetitive drawing, I gradually figured out the emotional context and personal experience, which lead me to this specific image. The continuous work on this image allowed me to deal with this experience and move on. Many of these subjects and teams in my work evolve though similar process, and represent abstraction of a very specific personal experience. While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your works seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your works... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a certain sense

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representative of the conflictual relationship between content and form: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you combine a texture with your performative gestures? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

In my work I deal with very particular topics, I raise questions, I protest and highlight problems. I deal with personal, political and social matters but I try as much as I can to touch the core of these matters and not to be too illustrative. It is important to me that each one of my viewers would be able, at first to connect intuitively with the images, the colors and the movement and interpret it in their own way. The way I guide and direct the viewers to my original context is through the titles, which I choose very carefully. As for my palette, colour and light are significant elements in my work, maybe because I am a colour blind. Being colour blind has made me extremely sensitive to colour. Funny enough, I am so sensitive to colour that despite being colour bind I was for many years a lecturer on form and colour. Coming from the Israeli tradition of bleak drawing that is strongly tied to a narrative, I felt that the move to Canada gave me freedom to investigate more deeply working with colours and abstraction. It also opened to me the opportunity to work on large- scale pieces and to develop my practice as a live drawing performer. It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the ones you have established for the Draw to Perform community are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most

exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

When I started Draw to Perform, in the first symposium I was overwhelmed by the responses I received from artists and their willingness to come from all over the world to commit to this project. I think that what was fueling this commitment is the power in collaboration and in creation of a community. I believe that artists who work with drawing performance are by nature drawn to collaboration and communication, as the very first urge to perform is the wish to intact with the audience. Obviously it is easier to collaborate with the audience than with fellow artists. You are more secure, you are not in any sort of compactions and you are promised to be the center of attention. This is much more challenging to collaborate with artists where two egos are standing in line but it is ever so fulfilling. I have started to collaborate with other artists fairly late but I absolutely love it. I recently collaborated with artist Nava Waxman who specializes in encaustic (hot wax) paintings. When we started our conversation, Nava described the process of encaustic paintings. I immediately saw the huge performance potential with this technique. There is something about the initial scratching/drawing that seems aimless, as it leaves no visible traces on the wax and

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the exciting revealing of the image with the paint. We planned this action for months and it was captivating for us but also, I believe, for the viewers who got to see the potential of working with this technique and witness its magic in live action. As far as I know, it was the first live encaustic drawing performance. I have learned so much from every single collaborative event and stretched myself to the limit. Currently I find that I am seeking collaboration with people from completely different disciplines, dance, music, and poetry. In fact the upcoming Draw to Perfom symposium will be dedicated to collaborative creations. Over your twenty-two years long career you have internationally exhibited in several occasions: so before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

The need to communicate with the viewer and sharing the process of creation is central to my work. That stated the need to communicate should not be mistaken with an eager to please and stratify the viewer or to try and target their expectation. I bring myself, my core, for good and bad and the audience can love it, hate it, or completely not understand it. The power of performance is that while you share the process of creation you are in a way arguing your reasoning for it; so, even if the audience is rejecting the outcome, the rejections turn to a debate. Moreover, esthetic and harmony are crucial to my work but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t create traditionally â&#x20AC;&#x2122;decorative artâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. I think that in the format of performance where what you

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offer is an overall experience, audience becomes more open to less conventional and more challenging visuals. They become part of the process and through the process grow to understand the image, to witness its development and connect to it. As long as I live I will seek out feedback with regard to my work, by connecting with audiences. Throughout my artistic career I have believed in self actions and I still think that an artist must do all he can to share his work with the public and in a variety of different ways. Artists should continue to push their boundaries of self- expression, as by not moving forward creatively you engender a sense of frustration and disappointment that can have nothing to do with the quality of your work. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Ram. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

This year the third international symposium of Draw to Perform will take place in London and we have already booked another international event at Fabrica, Brighton for 2017. Workshops are being planned in Japan and other events are in the pipeline for New York, Warsaw, Berlin and more. On a personal level, I am working on my next solo show with a new series of metalpoint drawings and will continue developing the connection between drawing and performance in general and between 2D and 3D pieces of work. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Dario Rutigliano, curator articulaction@post.com

Photos by Emilia Romano, Geraldine Gallavardin, Teena Lange, Tobi Asmoucha, Marco Berardi, Vinny Montag, and Ram Samocha

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G il Goren Lives and works in Haifa, Israel

An artist's statement

think of myself as a kind of visual icon hunter, arranging the urbanic view and landscape in new order. Most of the people dont pay any attemtion to the small parts that build the big picture of our life. people in a hurry, in rush and dont pay attention to the road. I shoot urban closeup photos of objects, that nobody realy pay attention to, and create an art work that is never ending story tell of what people call boring objects.

I capture the mood of the moment, create a new language which I translates into soaring pieces of art that convey turbulent movement, rhythm and sound. My photography is not an independent body of artistry or documentary, but rather captured as background material that cumulates into a wealth of potential imagery. My art contain secret and encrypted codes

whose messages provide a real challenge for viewers to decipher. when words are rearranged, put back together, and creates a pleasurable experience. All of the photos that i use in my art are taken by me. for each art work that i make for a city or so. i use only pictures that i took at the city herself. those photos and are the basic materials of the artworks. All of the photos are printed directly on small pieces of wood in the shapes of squares and rectangles. These individual pieces are modern icons that are than glued in a collage form onto a large slab of wood. Each piece has his own unique concept and message. The artwork is all made by hand.

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Gil Goren An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Dario Rutigliano, curator articulaction@post.com

Gil Goren's work accomplishes an insightful investigation about emerging visual context, highlighting a variety of elusive parts of our unstable reality that build the big picture of our existences. His works are often pervaded with encrypted codes whose urge the viewers to a process of deciphration: in his recent THE WIDE ONES series, that we'll be discussing in the following pages, the spectatorship is invited to explore the liminal area in which visual language blends its elusive boundaries into image to walk them through a multilayered experience. Goren's approach rejects any conventional classification and acts as a visual hunter, to cross the elusive boundary that defines the area of perception from the realm of experience: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production. Hello Gil and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you degreed in Visual Arts from the Wizo College of Design in Haifa: so we would lie to

ask you how does these experiences influenced your evolution as an artist. In particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

As far as I can remember myself I have always aspired to do things in a different way. I have never wanted to do something that had already been done .throughout the years, while I was involved in advertising, branding and graphic design I have always started working with the intention of creating something new, to arouse interest, to be remembered by the target audience and create a real, pure experience that will last for a long time. Uncomplicated, joyful and loved. While studying graphic design twenty years ago, in all art classes I constantly refused to paint in a realistic style , to copy what is already there, whether it is a forest ,a vase, nudity or scenery . god created our world much more beautiful than any one of us might be able to copy it .in the days when photography can paint a perfect picture I see no point in trying to copy reality even though I do appreciate the technique. This is what I have taken with me to the world of art. For three years I have mapped the

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world of art, explored, studied , learned and categorized whatever exists in the art world, many pages were filled with names, techniques, subjects and then- I have erased any known subject as well as any familiar technique. I was left with a blank page knowing the road for creation is open to start from scratch. I have erased all ways of artistic expression, known techniques subjects that had been dealt with and started a new journey , aiming to create something brand new that has not been done before. My internal urge is to create art which is both intriguing and joyful , a kind of a riddle and loved, one that will never bore and will always tell something new to the spectator, leave him with a smile, a memory and a feeling of love for that moment of revelation. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected THE WIDE ONES, an interesting series that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of establishing a channel of communication between the subconscious sphere and the conscious one, to unveil and challenge the manifold nature of human perceptual categories and to draw the viewers into a multilayered experience. So, while asking you to walk our readers through the genesis of this captivating project, we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a

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Gil Goren

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

In my opinion , the artistic process is inevitably connected to the directed experience. You cannot really describe a flower unless you have smelled one and obviously you will describe it the best if you have planted its seeds, watered it and followed the process of its growth and blossom including its decay. Of course , there are various kinds of artists and various ways of art to describe landscapes , people, objects or dreams that have never existed or ones artists have never encountered. In my case, anyhow, the processes has to be totally connected to the experience itself. Every little detail which I use in the process of building and assembling my piece of art, is something I have touched in reality, examined, saw, sometimes even cleaned or polished- found it or as I call the process- I hunted it while wandering in the city streets. I know for sure in which corner of the street it is located, in what time of the day the sun shines on it even stronger and on my next journey , I am happy to meet it again. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you think of yourself as a kind of visual icon

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hunter, and a crucial part of your art practice is to highlight a variety of small and often elusive parts that build the big picture of our lives. As the late Franz West did in his installations, your art contain secret and encrypted codes whose messages provide a real challenge for viewers to decipher, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

Most people's life simply pass by. People don't really pay attention to the small details which comprise life and when they do reach a point when they have time to have retrospective , they realize that they have missed almost everything. The same is true about the endless race of life in the city streets. When I saw and realized that people around me don't really pay attention to the details their life is comprised of but simply pass by, I have decided to create the world from my perspective when it is a collection of "unseen or transparent" items in urban landscapes. I told myself or actually "spoke" to my audience as if saying " you disregard the

Gil Goren

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Gil Goren

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transparent items which compose the place itself, I will put them in the light and show you the love of a place, the passion for finding out, happiness of creation, because god –if you haven’t paid attention, is in those little details , just as David Ogilvy said. The urban world like the natural wild world is comprised of endless number of items and not of the whole general picture. The same sticker, brush of paint on a brick wall, same water hose, sewer cover or garbage bin , expressing your opinion on a wall in a street corner or a cry for love stuck by a guy – are the things that create the urban landscape and for most people they are meaningless. I take them all along with typographic messages, disassemble the urban landscape and reassemble it to create my own world, my urban life, or actually the landscape of us all. This way I actually expose the unseen and unpredictable aspect Of urban nature and reveal it to the world in a new surprising way. the typographic messages , these codes that are slowly exposed while we observe and explore, expose what I myself expose from my own internal nature as a personal , universal statement of the place to the locals and evoke thinking. Your collages capture the mood of the moment and its intrinsic nonsharpness with an universal kind of language, capable of bringing to

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a new level of significance the elusive but ubiquitous relationship between experience and memory, to create direct relations with the spectatorship: What is the role of memory in your process? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.

Early memory has no major function in my life as far as creating , only about what can be said. From quite an early

age I grew up in a boarding school, absolutely insecure about any human contact. The defense mechanisms I have used and the walls I have built throughout the years have been, very slowly, shattered until I have reached a point when I say "this is who I am. Use it as you think best". Choosing "NOWYOULOVEME" as the title of my first solo exhibition, is based mainly on such insights one can reach when he is exposed" musk less" as if to say , now I will show you who I am and there will be a kind of a contract between us

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where I will do my best to arouse your interest , make you curious , happy, evoke your thoughts, make you feel good, uncover new things every day, take you out of your comfort zone to a place where life really begin and you, in return, will love me. As a starting point for any of my creations, I get out of my comfort zone to explore new places while memories are always there but just as a statement hidden as a code which is both explicit and implicit. The same universal language which brings you to a new level of

meaning as far as the elusive relations between an experience and memory, is the point I lean on and base my art on. That same point where every human being stands in front of the art creation knowing that pleasure is in front of him and within him. I do not think that art is meant to be complicated, up high there, philosophical in a way people have to deeply contemplate aboutâ&#x20AC;Ś. I know and I believe art has to evoke happiness, light and endless joy and this belief makes me create.

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While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your paintings seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to

the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your collages... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a

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certain sense representative of the conflictual relationship between content and form: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you

decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

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This is a very interesting question which I keep asking myself every time I start a piece of art or when I come back to one which is in the process donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really know where it all begins. Organizing the first palette is often done after much struggle and many trials , is what determines the final destination , however, the piece of art starts much earlier , while wandering endlessly around the big city streets,

when I inspect its sidewalks, examine its bulletin boards , looking at those signs and statements that were left there, endlessly hunting for the visuals , stopping every few steps, leaning back or forth and taking close-up pictures, always close , unable to see the real general picture which everybody else can seeâ&#x20AC;Ś.after printing those visuals on small wooden pieces , I treat them as my color palette. One can find there the greens,

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the oranges are here, here are the blue shades and also the words. Reconstructing the landscape requires focus and concentration when I organize things , days of thinking, attempts of matching until finally the first small palette is there, just like the first brush of paint and it leads the way and the process as well as the decision of what messages will accompany the texture of the picture. It happens that I spend whole days

working with no seemingly purpose and then in one single moment everything falls into its right place, amazingly, and I am satisfied and know it is right, it is the complete creation which will be loved somewhere on the globe, it will bring joy to a certain family and home. Throughout the last two years I have changed the thickness of the small wooden pieces and now there is an almost half an inch difference between

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them. This technique adds another layer and makes it three dimentional. Slowly , I have also started painting again on the final art pieces I have made adding a fifth layer (searching, taking pictures, printing, constructing, coloring . painting) We definitely love the way you question the abstract feature of images, unveiling the visual feature of information you developed through an effective non linear narrative, establishing direct relations with the viewers: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? What is the role of symbols in your work?

Just like Thomas Demand I consider myself a conceptual artist who uses photography techniques, printing and constructing in order to transfer personal ,social and political messages from time to time. I completely agree with Thomas Demand who claimed art cannot go on relying on symbolic strategies ,as I have referred to earlier in this interview, but should find emotional elements which tell a story within the art itself. Painting a visual element, as perfectly as one can, will evoke admiration to the technique and nothing more. The question is- is there a message? Is there a

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statement? Will I find in that technically perfect painting a story, because if I do not- I will lose interest fast. Thomas Demand's attitude towards art suits me very much and with your permission I shall quote his words " working with existing pictures like I do you constantly think about the flood of images we are subjected to and you want to figure out how you can make sense of it" Therefore, the function of symbols in my work is to send messages that include an implicit, hidden code. The symbols in my work express the feeling of the place, the

location and the urban rhythm as far as colorfulness and materials are concerned ,while the symbols and typography as I disassemble and reassemble them transfer the psychological, mental and story- telling elements which exist in the medium itself. The connection between them- is what creates interest and feelings within each spectator. Your works are always pervaded with an effective narrative and the stories you represent are surrounded by visual beauties. Playing with the evokative

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power of a wide variety of elements, your collages could be considered as tactile biographies that accomplish the difficult task of capturing nonsharpness with an universal language, capable of establishing direct relations with the viewers: language is our dominant mode of communication. How much important is narrative for your works and how do you develope it?

Color with no story doesn't interest me, I care about the conceptual narrative. Unless a work of art contain a story, an idea, the beginning of a thinking

process, it is, in my opinion, only a garnish â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a decorative element and therefore not really interesting. The narrative in my art work is very important for me and even more than that, I want the spectator, the audience who observes the art work will find the story and move along with it in its own pace. The visual beauty is highly important , the colorful completeness the fine finishing touches, all serve the idea which lies in the base form of the work of art. The language is universal , even someone who has never visited New York but lives in today's urban

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world , knows what the urban jungle is , including its abyss (in my work "jungle look") has experienced in his life some kind of an end (in my work" begin again")and realizes that life begins only when we leave our comfort zone )my work "the art of things") The story has a significant part in my art , without it art doesn't really exist. The development exists in its conceptualtypographical meaning parallel to the visual colorful meaning. A story is based on a word, a sentence, in combining meanings from which everything evolves, just like a good story that never ends and we can enjoy over and over again. The influence and necessity of arts and artists in our culture ebb and flow. Critical times, such as ours now, demand the gifts of artists, and in particular the capability to express what needs to be said and to hold fast to values often absent in the contemporary reality. We have appreciate the investigative feature of your exploration about emerging visual contexts: like many art disciplines, collage can borrow elements to create new art: in your opinion are there limits to what can or should be used to create collages? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when conceiving and creating your works?

I have no doubt regarding the need for art and , of course, for creating artists as far as conceptual ,social art which is focused on carrying a message. The ability to express what must be said is done through my art by using urban

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landscapes that surround us , a kind of landscape which is daily renewed , reborn , sometimes at the expense of the lucid items which are there for a day or a week and then are covered again by new items whose time has come. Since the collage has become a part of modern art in the early 20th century when George Braque and Pablo Picasso started using it, through the work of Richard Hamilton that was a mile-stone in Pop- Art, just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing . from 1956 until the work of Louise Nevlson LIKE Black Zag X b FROM 1969, artists borrow elements to create new art. The boundaries are in the sense of borrowing and the new creation. I insist on making use of only urban photographs and prints that I myself take and create while using a minimal part of the photo and reassembling it to many others into an art piece which expresses a totally different message. Over these years your works have been internationally showcased both in Israel and in the United States, including your recent solo NYJLMLOVE: urban love signs, curated by Noga Arad Ayalon: one of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving

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this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

Language is a critical component in my work. I have no doubt that a man who doesn't understand the language that was used while creating the work , misses a major part of the experience. My art works are a composition of words, shape and color, and to experience them fully one must figure out all three. In most of my art pieces the dominant language is English since my audience is English speaking. The audience realization is a critical element in the process of my decision making because, as I see it, art with no audience, especially conceptual art, has no conceptual value. The audience has a significant role in my art and during the last few months I was asked to present my work in China and in Germany in 2017-18. It is clear that I will and at least some of my work will be in the local language so a real experience is guaranteed for the audience. That will enforce me working with a translator when finding the objects and taking the pictures. A message is sent by colorfulness but the power of a word is irreplaceable. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Gil. Finally, would you like to tell us readers

something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I want to thank you for having this interview with me and for enabling me to share the story behind my art creation with your wonderful readers. My art progresses so fast and two years after my first solo exhibition I have had four such exhibitions, my art is presented in important galleries and I am represented by one of the leading art agents in Israel. Yet, this is only the beginning. My ambition is to leave a real mark on world art so I have created my own unique language. Using digital art, printing on wood , using levels and painting on a collage . I see my creation evolves in different conceptual directions by using intensively the written word and cooperating with parallel arts such as music and video art. This year I was chosen by ESKFF as one of the seven European artists who will work in Mana contemporary art Center and I intend to create, while staying there, a unique project combining music and posing one simple question to each spectator, I will present 16 pieces that will expose the viewers to a wonderful and exciting experience after which people will pay some more attention to life around us. Conceptual art-this is what I am talking about. Thank you for the Honor of having this interview and the time you have spent reading it. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Dario Rutigliano, curator articulaction@post.com

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R ory Tangney Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland

An artist's statement

y practice has widened from an initial basis in sculpture to include drawing and sound as central aspects while allowing for forays into other media. Selftaught as an artist, I have training both as a cabinetmaker and as a sound engineer. My experience of making furniture, in particular, has ingrained in me an appreciation of the significance of objects, while giving me a rootedness in the material world even as life itself becomes increasingly â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;virtualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. With this experience also comes the understanding of process which I bring with me to all aspects of my practice. I tend to create formal works and I strive for an aesthetic potency with which to convey ideas about the world: numerous layers of meaning are distilled without making a statement or taking a position. The overall body of work contains elements which are both familiar and strange, and which endeavour to reveal hidden aspects of the world and of ourselves. I seek out the ambiguity in a situation and in so doing allow the viewer to make up his or her own mind. My work is informed by varied interests, including in the nature of belief in a world

where increasingly only those things that can be seen/measured are valued. I am excited by a future that is possible as a result of scientific and technological achievement, though apprehensive for that same future if only the things that can be empirically verified are nurtured. I create work not just in anticipation of the future, but also with an understanding that the past continues to affect what is to come. Much of my work considers obsolescence not just of things, but of people and of ideas. The scope of my work varies quite a bit, from abstract sculpture to pencil drawings that are representative, and to sound works which occupy the space in between. It can feel incongruous to be creating, on the one hand, geometrically abstract 3dimensional works, and on the other a drawing of a house plant, for example. However, I find that it is the sound work collages built from field recordings and a range of found sounds that serves to bring it all together in a coherent way. In the end the various types of work become complementary, symbiotic, and reliant on each other for the overall context of my practice.

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Rory Tangney An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Irish artist Rory Tangney's work accomplishes an insightful investigation about the relationship of sound and space to explore the less rational aspects of being human in a world where increasingly only those things that can be seen/measured are valued: in his project When All Is Said And Done he walks the viewer through an unconventional journey on the thin line that delimits the realm of perception, to accomplish the difficult task of materializing the disconnect between perceptual categories and the viewer's cultural substratum, to urge them to elaborate personal associations and interpretations. One of the most convincing aspects of Tangney's practice is the way its subtle sociopolitical criticism offers us a key to understand the intrinsic values of being a human being in our unstable and everchanging societies. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production. Hello Rory and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview we would like to pose you a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid training and you have studied both Sound Engineering and Art History as well as Furniture Design & Manufacture: how have these experiences influenced your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

There would seem to be two aspects to this question. Firstly, the influence of my education on my artistic practice, and secondly the impact of my personal background on my work. I will start with the education which, as you say, spans different areas, none of them visual art practice. My primary training is as a furniture designer/maker, though I also studied sound and the humanities at different points. I have picked up

bits and pieces of art history, from classical art and architecture to the medieval Celtic art and on to elements of 19th and 20th Century art and design. The history of architecture was a big component in all of this, and a big draw for me. Architecture is becoming increasingly important to my practice, in my sculpture work in particular. All areas of my education have a bearing on the work I produce now. My interest in the humanities and in societal and cultural issues was part of what lead me into art from cabinetmaking, but I think in some ways the furniture background has the biggest influence, though it took me a while to accept that this is no bad thing. What I have really retained from my cabinetry background is a love of and a keen appreciation of the significance of objects and also of materials - the materials and forms and colours that surround us have a real bearing on our psychology, but we have become so distracted by the sensual clutter and the busy-ness of the contemporary world that we can lose sight of this. It has become harder to find the space to tune in to our environment, and of course to ourselves. I have largely been unable to break free of the artwork being a formal object, achieved by adherence to a process. What I mean by process is an understanding of the various stages of building/making something and an attention to detail that for a cabinetmaker is most important. I bring these with me to all my projects, whether I am making a sculpture or a drawing or a soundwork. I have mixed feelings about this if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m honest as I sometimes would like to create freer work, though I am learning to do that a bit more. Even though I have a background in sound engineering, it was a long time ago, before I ever understood myself to be an artist (though I definitely had creative ambitions, which were more focused on music at the time). It was only later, when I started listening to contemporary music, experimental music and sound art that I

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wanted to bring sound into my visual art practice. This has been made very easy by the accessibility of the technology now compared to when I trained in the mid ‘90s when I found it quite hard to wrap my head around all the hardware required. As we know, people have a special connection with music, particularly on an emotional level, and this was something I wanted to make use of in a visual art setting. I have found that not only does it sit very comfortably in the gallery among the objects, giving a fuller picture of my approach, but it serves to bind the varied work together, unifying it. When you ask about my cultural substratum, I take it to be about my earlier years. This forms for each of us our outlook and is the bedrock for our ways of being in the world. I grew up in Ireland in the 1980s in a world where the oppressive shadow of the Catholic Church was still a factor, particularly among my parents’ generation, although it was on the wane. I have many early memories which revolved around the Church in one way or another, but it always felt so empty to me, dishonest even. I came to understand later that there is of course a difference between a real ‘faith’ and a person’s conditioning, and maybe I sensed this in some way about the religious culture of the time. Along with this, my parents were physicians, and obviously there is an incongruity here between the adherence to a materialistic view of the world and the expectation of maintaining a piety and a fear of God. This seemed to reflect what was happening in the broader world: we were at a point where the emerging, freer contemporary world was overlapping with the tail end of more traditional, more insular, and backward-looking times. It takes more than a few short years for obsolete ideas and ways of being to dissipate from the collective consciousness. It takes more that a generation even, particularly after traumatic cultural periods as the hold of the Church undoubtedly was for Irish society. The underlying inquiry in my artistic practice is to be found here: what is the nature of belief and how does faith or conviction relate to one’s conditioning? How can something be so impervious to scrutiny? How can one thing be so right, making another so wrong? How can two

opposing dogmatic positions, exist side by side? Through my work I explore elements of the world, be they materials or sounds or ideas, looking for the kinks, the imperfections that would relate them more to human experience, and which would ultimately make them more convincing, give them more credibility. Your approach reveals an incessant search for an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints and techniques. The result conveys a coherent and consistent sense of harmony and unity and we would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.rorytangney.com in order to get a wider idea of your work: before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for producing your works? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating your works?

I don’t purposely impose any specific rules on myself. I think the making of art should in some ways be as free as possible. However, I’m sure we are all constrained by our individual psychology. I do try to be very careful, however, when developing a work that it doesn’t go down a certain path. This path represents the easy route and it is well trodden, full of clichés. I always find this to be a tightrope walk and to fall on one side will bring good and exciting things, while the other side brings work that is naive perhaps, or naff. There can be such a small distance between them. My setup is continually evolving. I really have a need for two different workspaces - a clean space and a dirty space. This is not a possibility at the moment. I currently have a small sculpture workshop with a little office in the corner for my computer, for drawing and for the soundwork. For the sound work, I have a very basic set-up software, a sound card, monitors and a portable digital recorder. The great thing about technology is how it has made everything so accessible. Even though this setup is fairly basic, I'm in no way limited by it. Not yet, anyway. These days I get less time in the studio than I would like. In my periods away from the studio I accumulate information and thoughts mostly through sketches and scribbles in the notebook, but also via my phone camera and my digital

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recorder. When I finally get to the studio I spend a little time going through it all, registering it and processing it in my head. For the sound work it may involve starting a project file and layering all the various sounds I have accumulated. I find with the sound and the drawing I have a pretty short window in which I’m productive and focused - certainly no more than an hour at a time. My subconscious works hard for me while I’m not directly engaging with it. Once all the information is layered, then it's about slowly stripping it back so there is nothing in the mix that is not absolutely necessary. For the sculpture work it’s about trying out some of the ideas in the notebook, either by experimenting with material or by teasing it out in AutoCad. Again these ideas are never ready to go, and always need further development: I try something, then go away from it for a while and come back to see if anything has changed. By bouncing back and forth between the various things like this, with each work evolving little by little, I slowly build up a body of work. For this special issue of ARTiculAction we have selected When All Is Said And Done, an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of these pieces is the way they accomplish the difficult task of creating an harmonic mix between a figurative, realistic approach to the evocative reminders you combine together: when walking our readers through the genesis of When All Is Said And Done, would you shed light about your usual setup and process?

When All Is Said And Done is a soundwork, roughly 4mins in length, for headphones. It is related to another soundwork, Breathe, a continuous loop for speaker installation. Each of these works is a sound collage, if you like. They consist of a variety of found sounds and field recordings which are layered together and processed to varying degrees using a software called Reaper. When All Is Said And Done is a work about obsolescence, but it is also about finding the humanity in the machine; it is about the nature of belief and the parallels between dogmatic religion and dogmatic science. The most

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prominent sound in the work is the voice of the scientist Peter Higgs recounting his lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work shortly after the discovery of the so-called God Particle, which he had first proposed. His voice lies on a backdrop of varying other sounds. Among these are the sounds of a reel-to-reel tape machine at work as well as some dialogue and music I found on old tape reels. In the background you will hear an explosive sound which is that of an MRI scanner at work. I recorded this at a hospital in Cork City. The MRI technology has been important in my work over the past few years and has given rise to not just the soundworks, but also an on-going series of drawings. It was significant for personal reasons and I started investigating its possibilities when I got my hands on scans of my own head from a few years previously. The imagery itself is fabulous, but I was interested in how it represented a sterility and seemed to reduce the human being to a mechanical entity, stripping it even of its humanity. The idea was that through the filter of my eyes and hands, I could reveal something in those images that the machine never could. The same idea applied to the use of the sound from the machine. I was looking for something in the output of this device that went beyond the chemistry or the mechanics of the brain. I was thinking very much about obsolescence at this time, and I remembered the reel-to-reel machines that I had worked with in the early part of my sound training, splicing tape by hand. My studio was in an area full of thrift shops and antique shops, and I came across one of these machines. I then went searching for tapes and I bought a box of used tapes online. I started making my way through the tapes listening to what was on them. Mostly radio junk from the 1970s, but a few radio plays and random bits of music that gave me some real nuggets to work with. In going through them I also recorded the various sounds of the machine itself at work and have used them in this piece. What resembles a breath in this piece is actually the processed sound of the tape being wound on the machine by hand. I love this accidental discovery, and it comes back to what I was looking for in the MRI images. This sound comes to the fore in the installation Breathe. In the context of the exhibition in which many of these works were shown - This Way To Enchantment - this served to unite the body of

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work within the space, giving an emotional backdrop and context for the other works. I also discovered that the tape had great sculptural properties. I have built 2 sculptural works so far with the tape - For The Record (2013) and Consensus (2014). They each consist of hundreds of lengths of tape hanging vertically, suspended on an MDF framework. The effect of the forest of tape is wonderful. It comes in many different shades of brown and when it is densely dangled like this there is an amazing depth, delicacy and uncertainty to what is otherwise a stubborn, monolithic form. Also, if there is any movement in the air, the whole thing shimmers, adding to the allure. We have appreciate your successful attempt to extract meanings beyond the materials you select: this investigative feature of your exploration about emerging visual contexts challenges our perceptual categories, urging the viewers to capture the emotional landscape that emerges from the reality we inhabit: so we 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?

For me personal experience is very important. I think our motivations in life are derived from early experience. As humans we are inherently creative of course but perhaps it is experience that makes the artist? The motivation must come from somewhere, when there are easier roads to go down. Maybe it is possible, but I’m not sure how one could disconnect their selves from their creative process. Each person’s psychology pervades everything they do. Even the desire to disconnect oneself from one’s process is a product of one’s psychology. We don’t know how far a person’s subconscious can reach perhaps even beyond direct contact, who knows? In the event that one could escape that influence, what would the work amount to? If it doesn’t relate to human experience, then what’s the point? Art is a search for meaning, for truth. Truth is not the same as fact, and I think this is not always appreciated. Truth is subjective and relies on experience, whereas a fact is static. If you remove personal experience from the creative process, then you remove any truths that may be present, and you are left with facts. It ceases to be art. Let the machines do it, in that scenario.

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In your works you incorporate a variety of materials, both conventional and found, and as you have remarked in your artist's statement, found objects play an important role in your practice: would you elaborate a bit about this aspect of your work? In particular, what is the importance of the stories that materials with a previous life convey when you combine them in your artworks?

Found objects and materials can be very important to my process, even if it is not always explicit in the finished work. I gather things that resonate with me somehow, as well as with my current process and creative goals. This can be a literal, conceptual connection or it may be more ambiguous - an emotional connection, perhaps, which may be down to some kind of parallel between the previous life of the object and my own experiences, or something in my history relates to such an object, or such an aesthetic, or such a material. I can only guess, really. Much of my drawing has come to rely on found images, be they taken from the internet or printed media, or from another context such as the MRI scans. In the case of the sculpture, however, found objects/materials tend not to make it into the finished pieces. Nonetheless, my studio filled up with found objects and these infuse the sculptural work that emerges. To date all my soundworks have been exclusively composed of found sounds. The one exception was in a large-scale installation I made in 2011 called Build Your Church On The Strength of Your Fear (in this work I also used my own singing voice). The found sounds I use can come from many and varied places. I make field recordings; I take sounds from, for example, YouTube videos; and you have heard already about the reel-to-reel tape. One of the reasons I use sound as a medium is that it has an emotional potency that is very valuable in a visual art context. When a work is made up of found sounds from real-world settings there can be an added punch - each of us projects our own psyche onto the work and finds elements within that we can relate to and that resonate with our own experiences. Mostly, there is a combination of sounds some that have been processed into abstract versions of themselves and others that are still familiar and representative. This is what we hear in When All Is Said And Done.

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When inquiring into the less rational aspects of being human in a world where increasingly only those things that can be seen/measured are valued, your work sheds light on the necessity to rethink such relation on an unitary viewpoint: how would you describe the nature of the coexistence of such often conflictual and ambiguous aspects? In particular, German pioneer of visual arts Gerhard Richter once stated, "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 there are aspects of human experience that currently lack a mainstream conceptual framework which is relevant to contemporary life. These aspects lie outside the range of science, in its current disposition at least. Traditionally we may have used religion to explain things, or attributed such things to a god or a spirit, for example. I guess what I am referring to is a more instinctive understanding of the world, an allowance for unseen and ill-understood forces that permeate everything, the interconnectedness of things. I think in some ways psychology comes closest to describing these things, and obviously art relies very much on psychology for its process. Religion is past its sell-by date and we need a way of articulating such aspects of experience that is not divisive in any way, nor reliant on an archaic language/mythology. Art can provide this outlet to people, a way of tuning in to our instincts and generating greater awareness in people. We will need a greater acceptance that no one mode of thought has all the answers, and that to really have a sustainable existence in the future we need to allow other modes of thought a bit more validity, along with the material sciences. Otherwise, everything becomes about the bottom line, and the consequences of this, as we are seeing throughout the world, are catastrophic. Art can have a vital role to play in mainstream society. It is a very powerful presence in many peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives of course but it is an intangible thing. This makes it hard to justify for those who are not attuned to possibilities that cannot be so easily pinned down. Unfortunately that seems to account for most of the people in positions of power, be they in business or politics. The role of art, and its value to society is a complex, multi-faceted one. I tend to focus on its ability to generate awareness among people. This awareness can be both in terms of issues raised, for example, or in the form of perception. It is the latter where I feel the real power of art lies. It can help to engender in a

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person not just self-awareness, or awareness of others, but an understanding of the interconnectedness of things (part of the creative process is about making connections between disparate elements). With awareness comes greater compassion which in turn allows for the degree of suffering in the world to diminish. Unfortunately this kind of awareness is in short enough supply and it can feel as though contemporary society is all about ways of thwarting it: the many forms of distraction and escapism in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture keep the economic system ticking over, so it may not be in the interests of the powers-that-be to encourage practices which might help it to proliferate. The heightening of perception is naturally more pronounced among those who practice art. Was art practice embedded as a mainstream subject in our education systems, then people could become more attuned to the world from an early age, more aware. This they would take with them into

all fields as adults, and a more holistic approach to the human project could ensue. Obviously different people have different aptitudes for this, but that is true of mathematics or languages also, and a little practice could go a long way. While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your inquiry into how the human spirit still finds outlets in a post-religious world often rejects an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to hint the direction to the viewers, offering them to elaborate personal interpretations to the ideas that you convey into your pieces... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a certain sense representative of the conflictual relationship between human identity and our unstable contemporary societies: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the materials you decide to use in a piece? In particular, any comments on your choice of materials and how it has changed over time?

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My early artistic output evolved naturally from my work as a furniture maker. In the early days of being an artist I was very much a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sculptorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; whose material was wood. There is something about wood as a material that is very special. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if that is related to my own psychology, or whether it may be down to some resonance in the human psyche from earlier times when we had a much more direct relationship with the natural world. My practice now is far more varied, and my choice of material depends on different things. The subconscious can steer us both towards things and away from things. We all experience moments of synchronicity, for example, and this can be a particularly important component in a creative process. It can be one of the things that leads me to a found object, for example, or often to the title of a work. But there are other factors in my choices of material beyond the influence of my

subconscious, particularly its relevance to contemporary culture. I have already talked about the MRI scans. Another example is my recent use of MDF. This is a controversial material due to the ingredients that make it up, particularly the levels of formaldehyde which it continues to emit for the life of the object. So I chose this material for that reason, and for its association with mass production. It is a wood-based material that I would have turned my nose up at as an idealistic student. But now I am interested in how it has all the variety and the romantic associations of wood removed from it, and has been designed as a stable material from a purely utilitarian position. I discovered that in its bare state it can be quite a beautiful and soft material itself. This continues the search for something Other, something intangible, in what is essentially a sterile place, be it the MRI machine or the standardised sheet of MDF.

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The dialogue between what was, what is and what will be raises questions on our contemporary age: marked out with the impetuous way modern technology that nowadays came out on the top, we can recognize that this has also dramatically revolutionized the concept of Art, that just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. We are sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and we will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

Technology has always taken cues from art in terms of style, for example, and more recently a lot of the tech companies have learned from the process of the artist. The artist on the other hand is always looking for new means of expression, and technology can serve that. Does all this mean they will converge and become one? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not so sure. I think most artists at this stage use technology in their process to one degree or

another. Myself, I use it in various ways, be it the sound set-up I spoke of, or Autocad (which I love to get lost in), Photoshop, or Final Cut etc, etc. But I think it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily lead to art that is seen as technological. It can lead to new possibilities for the art object, be it sculpture, drawing, painting, whatever. As long as we still exist in a physical realm, with our feet on the ground then we will probably continue to use hard materials (of course, technology will decide how much longer that is for). But parallel to this there will be those artists whose work is both created and presented via technology. There is a difference, however, between using user-friendly software to create works of art and being a technologically-minded person who can manipulate or hack the technology itself, be it hardware or software, to create works which lie in the middle somehow. There is a growing number of people who work in both fields, and for those people then perhaps Art and Technology will assimilate one another. But it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily

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follow that everyone who works in technology will drift toward art, or that everyone who works in art can become the technologist. Maybe over time our minds will evolve so that everyone is tech-savvy, but that didn’t happen with the first industrial revolution - not everyone can find their way around a combustion engine, for example. There are so many possibilities for the future that we can never know. We may be moving to a point where the technology is so advanced it will maintain, procreate and evolve itself, leaving us out of the loop entirely and in a place where not many people need to have any knowledge of or training in technology. Over your career you have exhibited on several occasions, including your upcoming show at the NAG Gallery, Dublin. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Your work 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. 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 it is my concern to reach my audience in a certain way, I’m not sure that I consider the audience directly while making decisions. Rather, I have an idea of certain physical or aesthetic characteristics of a successful work of art and I aim towards that. A word I often use in describing how I would like my audience to relate to the work is ‘somatic’. That is, that the viewer relates to it not just with their mind but with their whole body; so I want to engage both their mind and body, their full awareness if you like. The physical characteristics required to allow this type of relationship rely on strong aesthetics which can come about through

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sensitive use of material in the process of making.

currently walking that tightrope with these pieces.

In a particular context, or in a particular gallery space, I very much try to create work for the space. However, my approach is to feel the space and the context rather than to infuse the work with any intellectual or literal references. In taking this approach it allows the viewer to make their own connections between the work and the context. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe that I can be fully aware of or in control of all the permutations of my work. Nor do I want to be. When a viewer tells me about what they see or feel in a work, it allows me to learn something new about that work and hence about my process.

Because time has been so limited I have also looked back at some of the work I have done over the past 3 years that has yet to see the light of day. In particular, I have discovered some drawings and a sound project that I would like to finish and exhibit. The sound work is interesting as it covers a historical moment in Irish culture, and draws on archival sources from radio and television (via YouTube). The moment in question was 1985 when there were a series of Marian apparitions, moving statues in various religious sites throughout Ireland. The most famous one occurred in a village called Ballinspittle, not too far from my childhood home. It attracted in the region of 100,000 people over the course of only a few weeks to this remote village. Looking back it seems like a bizarre and comical cultural phenomenon worthy of a Simpsons episode, but at the time it had the whole country engaged. I guess I see it as a reactionary thing in terms of people's relationship with a religion and a god whose grip over the nation was starting to slip with the opening up of society and the pending explosion in technology. Along with the sound piece there are some related video pieces comprised of both found and recorded footage. What I am unsure of is whether the various bits will come together as one work, or whether there will be a series of distinct works.

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

I became a father a year and a half ago and I am a stay at home dad. Getting to the studio has been quite tricky but last year was productive for me in a way. I had some time outside of the studio to work in my notebooks, which are now teaming with ideas and there has been a bit of a shift. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m still looking for the opportunity to really get stuck in and work my way through those ideas, to develop them and realise them. That is my first objective. I will say that I have been largely focused on developing the sculpture work. With the NAG show, which is a 2-person show, I have drawn from that store of ideas. The gallery specifically wanted sculpture, and the space is very small, so I am trying to get my head around that at the moment - I am not used to working on such a small scale. But I am finding it to be a very useful exercise. Over the past few years I seem to have made a lot of sculpture work which only got one outing as a result of less than durable materials. This has been a frustration for me as I have had a limited amount of work available at any one time to submit for exhibition opportunities. So I am currently working with harder materials like concrete and steel. I am currently putting the finishing touches to the work for NAG, and I hope it is becoming more refined, though they are still not resolved and I am

I am planning to do a solo exhibition in Dublin within the next 8 months, though I am biding my time a little on this, as I seek a suitable venue. This exhibition will incorporate some of the above works as well as new works. I have been increasingly turning my attention towards architecture and the makeup of public space, with an interest in the idea of any constructed space having its own emotional resonance or psychological charge. I am interested in this particularly with a view to how the public interest has been hijacked by commercial and political interests in the design of our public spaces. Finally I would just like to say thank you for the opportunity to show my work and to articulate some of these ideas.

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Joan Oh J

lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, USA

An artist's statement

hen I was four years old, I had (“Illusions & Reality”, 2010-13). Through a near death experience while intricate drawings and installations I having an open heart surgery. struggle to weave together the past, present and future. Recently I’m My heart stopped beating, my body fascinated with transformation temperature went low, a heart-lung (“Release”, 2014-15). The Sisyphean machine kept me alive. Coming back from Joan Oh is a Chicago native with a BFA in process evolved to a new set of rules, that threshold, I knew that opposites are Photography at the College of Art +which dictates different materials, bound together and thatCorcoran I encompass Design in Washington, D.C. Subsequent to gestures and speed. The new paintings both. It left me fascinated with edges and that, she University of are large and expressive, made in one yearning forattended meaning. the My works are born Pennsylvania and received her MFA in continuous session, like an intense ritual. from that same simultaneous sense of Interdisciplinary vertigo and stability. Studies. She currently lives I see my studio as a cross between a and works in Philadelphia, PA. womb and a lab. My practice is a tool for They deal with a dichotomous - the realization one materialization reality can reflect of skeptical understanding myself as well as the world Oh's workthat is the of phenomena around me. My goal is to many and there is noofone definition. The ways into thought. By way humor, she finds generate a change that shapes truth is endlessly evolving and expanding. the deepest level of insecurity-flaws found in perspectives and actions, thus enabling I the try and reconcile conflicts and system that's been infiltrated by a for something new to occur - symbolically, contradictions such as beauty capitalist spectacle societythat and the false conceptually and tangibly. I have a encompasses crudeness, weakness notion of the American Dream.as a distinct feeling that there is something source of strength and disillusionment beyond me, a life force, which I can’t put that innocence. The early works lost in Oh feeds is attracted to what's become into words but I can channel into art. (“Red Heart”, 2007-09) are naïve (Google) translation; a misplaced language drawings of bodies and situations, subtle that exists within the fragmented field of yet disturbing. Minimalist figures floating identity. She examines the tongue bound by Joan Oh insocial white constraints space. With time, layers appear and investigate the sting of legacy by reframing traditional concepts of daily ritual. 16

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Joan Oh An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Hello Joan, and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction. We would start this interview posing you some questions about your background: after having earned your BFA of Photography, you nurtured your education with MFA of Interdisciplinary Studies, that you received from the University of Pennsylvania. How do these experiences influence te way you conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general? While receiving my Bachelors in Fine Art Photography, I became attentive to contemporary art and refined my visual vocabulary, where I focused on the intersection between photography and video, ceramics and sculpture, and the analytical elements between the two. Subsequent to that, I attended the

University of Pennsylvania where I was able to work with renowned artists and educators that emphasized an intellectual and theory based dialogue that pushed my work to become challenging and nuanced on a multitude of levels. As my interest in the current state of photography and image making expanded into video, my involvement in ceramics increased as well. At Penn, I was able to work across these mediums and make conversations between each material. My cultural background and education has and will continue to influence my studio practice. By way of humor, my work engages with invisible customs and churning dualities of the East and West. I'm attracted to what's become lost in translation; a misplaced language that exists within the fragmented field of identity. I examine social constraints and investigate the sting of legacy by reframing traditional concepts of daily ritual. You are a versatile artist and your inquiry into the materialization of skeptical thought reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of

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viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification: so before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.joanoh.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you how do you select your sources of inspiration to convey the ideas you explore?

With a critical eye, I dictate my own method of social inquiry. I find my way into the deepest level of insecurity-- flaws found in the system that's been infiltrated by a capitalist spectacle society. My source comes from the banal, the mundane, the status quo. My ideas come from the subtleties of daily life. It comes from history, pop culture, mass media, twitter, podcasts, dollar stores, gas stations, youtube. It comes from the ordinary, the unexpected, the convenient. To question our immediate surroundings with precision, is what materializes my work into skeptical thought. For this special issue of ARTiculAction we have selected A Study of Centrifugal Forces, a stimulating project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. We have appreciated the way it unveils a variety of subtle connections between the notion of

artifact and human's uncontrived relationship to the moon. In particular, when playing with the evocative power of abstraction, you establish direct relations with the viewers that goes beyond any conventional symbolism: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it?

A Study of Centrifugal Forces creates a vacuum narrative and visual pun of circular forms. I became interested in the phenomenology of the artifact when I came across a Moon Jar at an exhibition in Philadelphia. Moon jars date back to the Chosen dynasty from South Korea and gets its name from its shape and white glaze. Considered to be universally deemed beautiful, the whiteness of porcelain became the superior color which signified purity. Interested in working with porcelain, a material that has adapted through history and survived modern changes, I attempted to throw my own. I wanted to bring back demoted artworks into a contemporary conversation. Ceramics can be treated as a material, consumer, and historical culture. And within that context, I made references to manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s uncontrived relationship to the Moon.

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Repetition is a key component to my work. Relying on repetition as a formal strategy, I not only made multiple Moon Jars to convey a message, I created a typology of masculine and patriotic power portraits of the only people that have landed on the moon. NASAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s official portraiture of these men include a peculiar straddling and ownership stance on a globe. I made a false narrative between two culturesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; investigation of circular forces. Like Thomas Demand said, art has the ability to control the narrative and reveal unexpected truths that go beyond the surface of the work. The fruible set of elements you draw from universal imagery triggers the viewers' primordial parameters concerning our relation with physicality: 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 believe that art should inform and confront the issues at hand. Art continues to parallel and reflect on the current social, political, and cultural realm. As I understand it, contemporaneity bleeds any fine lines constructed in art and absorbs all types of practices. Personally speaking, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m interested in art that provokes thought, reflects on the now, creates discussion, and extends conversations started from former

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artists. Today, Art’s function goes beyond aesthetic stimulation. It seeks knowledge and feeds our curiosities for an outside truth. “Bafflement is an integral part of the pleasure and sometimes the comedy of the intimate, just as disbelief is a core affect of the political.” - Lauren Berlant As you have remarked once, The Joy of Erasure that can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE bOnwhgEBE suggests that one must erase one's own culture to assimilate to a superior standard: there's a subtle sociopolitical criticism, or better, a kind of proposal in this work. While lots of artists from the contemporary scene, as Ai WeiWei or more recently Jennifer Linton, use to convey open socio-political criticism in their works, you seem more interested to hint the direction, inviting the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead to subvert a variety of usual, almost stereotyped cultural categories. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in a certain sense or did you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

The Joy of Erasure locates the intersection of consumerism with identity politics. The video is inspired by products that are used to erase signs of Asian ethnicity, allowing

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customers to conform to Western standards of beauty by straightening their nose bridge, whitening their skin or altering their eyelids. The video appropriates the genre of Youtube beauty tutorials, simultaneously commenting on an emergent online culture while occupying that space in order to stage a radical intervention within it. Youtube continues to play a huge role on the rise of professional amateurism. The neutrality that exists in the work comes from a place of sincerity. I recorded myself applying these products to my face for the first time. These beauty objects were estranged to me, and as I applied each one onto my face, the visual queues to my cultural ties began to disappear. The role of the artist is relative. If an artist is upset, their work becomes enraged. If an artist is sorrowful, their work transforms into grief and languish. In The Joy of Erasure, the artist is curious, and the work becomes introspective. As Bruce Nauman says, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths. Your works convey both metaphoric and descriptive research. A distinctive mark of Double Tap, Construe is its insightful exploration of the contemporary notion of iconography, in an era pervaded by digitalized imagery. The impetuous way modern technology has

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Univocal reference, 38x42, 2010

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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. We are sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and seemingly Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your opinion about this?

Saturation consumes as stimulation invades. Solely relying on lists that determine popularity according to their data, the video results in a hand swiping through an accumulation of the “most iconic images of all time”. Are these images ingrained in our memory because of the saturation of imagery that exists online? Or does the weight of each historical moment make the image easily recognizable? The catalyst to this project came from Apple’s patent on finger motions. It’s fascinating that they have the ability to claim rights on muscle memory. The tangibility of pinching through physical representations of time enables us to interact directly with history, creating an intuitive interaction that looks beyond the digital surface and peers into the details of iconic events. In Charlotte Cotton’s essay, “Nine Years, A Million Conceptual Miles”, she examines the way photography is

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opening up new ways of thinking. She states: Our attitudes to authorship, shifted massively by our common use of the Internet, confuse our understanding of where photography will fit in the cultural landscape of the future. Anyone invested in high-art photography (where authorship is king, where influences are conventionally hidden, and where reusing existing imagery is consciously acknowledged as appropriation) sees this intellectualproperty amnesia of the age of the “digital native” as a problem, at least on the level of terminology. The current state of the image isn’t necessarily in a crisis. Depending on how you think about it, the apparent rise of technology, the virtual, the digital, in relation to art can lead to innovative projects and progressive thinking. I understand the worry that comes with this reality that exists online— it’s non-linear and vast. It’s anarchy and completely free of any physical constraints. But it’s also exciting and fast paced. It’s a never ending storage unit and a well informed space that is open to anyone who wishes to utilize it. Another interesting works of yours that has particularly impressed us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled The Notebook: this video that can be viewed at

https://vimeo.com/114326830 unveils a channel of communication between the unconscious level and the conscious one. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your

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opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process both to create and to snatch the spirit of a piece of art... Do you think that a creative

process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never seen my parents kiss. I know the reason behind this stems

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Univocal reference, 38x42, 2010

from Confucian ideals. I asked my parents to re-enact a famous kissing scene inside of their store. I was

curious to know what it would look like if someone as real as my family rehearsed a hollywood script. I not

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Rehearsal is a simultaneous performance and observation of real life. As my parents continue to repeat the kissing scene, a ritualistic mimicry forms. I believe that the creative process is inherently linked to experience. The Personal is Political. As a hyphenated American, and as someone who exists marginally and walks the line between two cultures, it seems impossible to detach oneself from the work being made, no matter how hard one may try to remove themselves from it. Creative process and direct experience in my opinion, are one in the same.

only wanted to comment on the absurdity of romantic tableaux, but examine the notion of rehearsal.

Over these years you works have been exhibited in several occasions, both in the United States and abroad, including your recent participation at Down to Earth, Hangar H18 Open Space Gallery, Brussels: your work is strictly connected to the chance of establishing a direct involvement with the viewers, urging them to evolve from a mere spectatorship to conscious participants on an intellectual level, 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 decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

I think that accessibility is important in a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work. However, there is a

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difference between watering down your ideas versus creating an entry point for the audience to come in and discover on their own terms. My practice doesn’t demand or project opinions onto others, but merely suggests and asks alternative questions to conventional ideals. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Joan. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects. How do you see your work evolving?

As a recent post graduate, visibility is extremely important for personal and artistic growth. It’s also crucial for an artist to continue making work outside of an institution. I have been developing work over the past two years that thematizes the evolution of democracy and labor, love and intimacy, and conventional ideas of ‘the good life’. As of now, it is important for me to strengthen my studio practice and expose my work to a wider audience whose interests parallel my own.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

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Dalia Smayze

Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

My body of work intends to capture moments of intimacy that evoke our own individual memory. I am interested in human emotions and how these shape us.

Individualism is a big topic in my work and, with this in mind, I am looking for a discourse between our environment and how this affects us as singular beings. On this matter, my photographs and video pieces are deeply connected to my experiences in the time they are created. They are an embellished reflection of what is on my mind, what I see on my everyday life and, most importantly, what I feel.

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Pako Quijada An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator articulaction@post.com

Berlin based multidisciplinary artist Pako Quijada's work accomplishes the difficult task of capturing moments of intimacy that evoke our own individual memory. His video Intermission Prologue I that we'll be discussing in the following pages, inquires into the sphere of memory as a confused and imperfect quality in the human psyche, urging the viewers to rethink such ubiquitous still elusive notion. One of the most convincing aspects of Quijada's practice is the way it investigates about human emotions and how these shape us: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production. Hello Pako and welcome to ARTiculAction. To start this interview, we would you like to pose you a couple of questions about your background: you have a solid formal training and you studied both Photography and Filmmaking in San Sebastiàn, Spain. How have these experiences influenced the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, does the relationship between your Latin roots and living in multicultural places like Berlin inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

I was trained as a filmmaker and I learned concepts that have more to do

with film than with video art and this is the very first thing that can be noticed in my video works. My interest for art was always there but I didn’t necessarily see myself as a video artist or experimental filmmaker until a few years after I finished my studies. In the case of photography it is different and I would say that it was the starting point for me and where all my passion for creating images, both still and in movement, derived from. The way I conceive my works nowadays is very intuitive and based on some principles that feel very natural to me because I have interiorised them. When I come up with an idea for a new work I let it sink and let the concept “ask” me what type of medium I should go for. There are some works that will work better as a series of photographs and some others will be better as video pieces. Also the aesthetics are very important to me. Sometimes a new body of work will be born from an image that I have seen or that is just in my head. I aim to create beauty with my work but also make this beauty be a multilayered vessel for its true purpose, which is to get to people’s minds and emotions. The way that living away from Spain has influenced my work is how now I can visualise what I have known since I was a child in a form of idealised melancholia. When I was still living there

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it was hard to see my surroundings as something that could be made into art but after a few years detached from those spaces, I can clearly focus on certain experiences or places from my past and include them in my work. You are a versatile artist and your approach encapsulates several techniques, revealing an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. Your inquiry into the intimate dimension conveys together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. When walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.pakoquijada.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: in the meanwhile, would you like to walk us through your process and set up? What are your main sources of inspiration?

My process is often chaotic and I need a relatively long time to finish my works. The reason for that is because I never want to constrain the work from evolving into its own and for that you need time to let it rest. Also because I am a multitasker and I am always working on a few different projects at the same time. With my video works, the time between shooting and editing is often a few months because I need to detach myself from the project to be able to continue with it. During this time, I reflect on it, on

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the original idea, on the experiences created during shooting and how that may have changed the starting point. Then I go into editing and find myself discovering details that I may not have planned but that happen to be there because it’s been a long, thought-out process. With my photographic works it’s a bit different and I don’t take long breaks between shooting and retouching although it might be projects that require taking photographs during a long period of time. As for inspiration, that is something that I can’t control and I don’t have a particular source for it. Especially now that we are constantly bombarded with information it is hard to pinpoint which are the times when an idea has sinked in and presented itself as a good topic. However, I can say that my works are all born or depicting very personal views and feelings so any topic that I treat in my work is based on my own experience. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Intermission Prologue I, an extremely interesting work that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. The inquiry into the notion of memory you accomplished in this video is a successful attempt to create a work that stand as record of existence: when capturing non-sharpness with an universal kind of language, to establish direct relations with the spectatorship: What is the role of memory in your process?

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Memory is one of the main topics in my work. Even when I am treating other topics, there is an element of memory in it. Given that I take a long time before considering a work finished, this allows me to create memories on the project itself while creating it so it all becomes a bit meta. In the case of Intermission Prologue I, it was born from a moment with my sister while being on holiday visiting our mother. The way I took the camera and asked her to walk was something completely unplanned and that came naturally to me. After revisiting the footage, I realised I had a fond memory of that moment but, at the same time, that video was the only visual memory I had of it. I started reflecting on how memory works in the human brain and the way it is just a creation of our imagination even if we remember it as some sort of irrefutable truth. It took me a very long time to convey this idea with that particular video but I realised that the longer I waited, the more shape it took as a tangible thing and the less it became an idealised memory that lived in my mind. I then decided to create a project called Intermission as a 4-video installation with my mum and my three sisters on each screen. Each of them would be walking and their faces would not be seen clearly. Also, each video would be based on my own relationship with the person on it and the moment when it was created. I also wanted to create some sort of emotional landscape so the location in

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which the person walks away from the camera is also a give away on their relationship with me. Intermission Prologue I was the starting point for that project that is still in progress. In the meantime, I have also done a video piece called Study for Intermission, which continues the exploration of the concepts of memory, experience and interpersonal relationships. In this case, I reflected on the representation of memory in audiovisual works. As you have remarked once, this video reflects on memory as a confused and imperfect quality in the human psyche: your works are strictly connected to highlight the bound between experiences in the time they are created, unveiling the relationship between memory and experience. So we 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?

All creative processes require personal experience. Each person has been through different things and they live their lives according to what they know so creation works in a similar way. Of course you can decide to hide this experience in your work and try to make it more universal but I believe you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t create without putting some part of yourself in the work. As the late Franz West did in his installations, your work shows

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unconventional aesthetics in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

Art can have many different purposes and revealing unexpected sides of our nature can be one of them. I also believe that one of the responsibilities as artists is that the work has some sort of validity to the time when they are created. This doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily mean you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have topics that deal with the past, but its perspective will

always be from a present point of view. In my case, working mainly with topics like memory, it can be a tricky thing but ultimately what makes a work from an artist perspective is the latest version that exists of it before letting it go into the world and see it transform as different interpretations come along. By definition video is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity: in XV you created a time-based work that conveying a moment of time, from past to present, induces us to rethink the concept of time 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

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atemporal form. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

a very fast rhythm, kind of like pulse raising until it reaches a climax.

Rhythm is extremely important to me, mainly due to my formation as a cinema director, as I mentioned earlier. The reflection on what separates narrative cinema, experimental film and video art is also there in my work, particularly with XV. I took what was a fun and interesting topic for me, which is the representation of the devil and showing a sort of possession through a game of lights and cacophonic sounds, and with that I was able to experiment a bit with the framing and thinking how far can you go with creating a claustrophobic feeling within a frame. With that work, I knew that it had to be

With my other works, the rhythm is different. It’s paused and slightly melancholic because the topic is very personal and that’s what it requires. I mainly use rhythm in my work as the final product of a combination of sound and images that will help me take the spectator into my work, even if it is in a confused state of mind. It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the ones you have established with dance artist, performer and choreographer Martí Güell for Decidu (Deciduous) are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most

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what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two artists?

Working with Marti G端ell was such a pleasure. We had been friends for a while and he appeared in a photo series I did a couple of years before

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also been a big fan of dance for a very long time so having the opportunity to do a dance film with such talented people only made me want to continue doing more dance films, which Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure I will do in the future. I do believe that collaboration can create magical works. It is very important to keep some works to do by yourself, but I agree that when you collaborate with someone, the final work ends up being unique because two or more perspectives have put their love, experience and effort into making it a reality. I think especially with film and video, collaboration is very easy because there are so many roles that can be covered by different people and they are all pivotal to the finished work.

called Dancers. He approached me with the idea for this film and asked me to help him put the theory of his work and the choreography into film. We had a really fun time working together and were really happy with the result, considering we had some time and budget restrictions. I have

Your works have been showcased in several occasions, both in Europe and in Central America, including your participation at the 10th edition of the International Streaming Festival. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

I love hearing people interpret my work in their own way. I understand my works are a bit opaque sometimes

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so I’m fully open to people’s own views even if they differ from my idea. I wouldn’t say the audience reception is crucial in my decision-making because my creative freedom is my most valuable asset. What I can take from audience interaction is the motivation to continue doing works that make people think and, most importantly, feel something that they wouldn’t necessarily feel in their daily routines. In terms of language, it is different because it’s not the same trying to explain your work to a gallery owner than to an spectator. The vocabulary is different and I always try to keep it down to earth because I want my works to be accessible to everyone, not just a few. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Pako. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I have a couple of projects in process at the moment. One of them is a photo series I did last year and I want to put into a book. It explores topics such as loneliness, mental health and melancholia. There are some things I still haven’t figured out about the way it will be presented but I’m hoping to have it finished by the end of the year. On the other hand, I am working on an experimental film called ephemérea that talks about the world of nightmares and creating new unknown places where to

go mentally when reality isn’t enough. It will be a collaboration with a Berlin musician and sound designer so it’s a very exciting project for me.

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Lastly, I definitely see my work evolving into many different types of disciplines and ways of working. I am a very curious person and am always up

for a twist so Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m sure I will continue to explore different facets of myself as a creator in the future.

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J oas Nebe Lives and works in Hamburg, Germany

An artist's statement

o Nebe, “fantasy and creative intelligence are important survival skills today.” So is chess, an analogy he keeps referring to: “Chess exemplifies my game with the viewer. In a world of shortening attention spans, it’s an ideal concentration-practice. One always has to think a few steps in advance.” By screening the insanity of our daily chase towards evolutionary bankruptcy, Nebe in a clever move takes the reason prisoner, only to appoint reason to be the king of his game of chess.

He calls for a close review of the encyclopedia of our philosophical and cultural foundations. In his opinion reason has the potential to direct a path away from the horror vacui he is depicting: “The model of enlightenment has increasingly been discredited, wrongfully I believe. Today survival and coexistence are only possible if governed by the faculty of reason. Labeling and connoting intellectual categories help to bring new relations into sight and to gain unexpected terms of knowledge.

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Joas Nebe An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Joas Nebe's practice ranges in a wide variety of media, including Sculpture, Painting and Video: his exploration of the perceptual mechanisms and their unexpactedly wide consequences on the act of feeling, draws the viewers into the liminal area in which the usual expressive potential of the single media is hybridized into the consistent unity of his works. In the OPERA Serial work that we'll be discussing in the following pages, he merges music theatre and cinematography into a coherent unity to provide the viewers with a multilayered and intense experience. One of the most convincing aspects of Nebe's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating a deep synergy between our limbic parameters and our perceptual categories: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production. Hello Joas and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, we would you like to ask you something about your multifaceted background. After your studies in the fields of law, psychology and media sciences you nurtured your education studying stage direction at the Institut fuer Theater, Musiktheater und Film, in Hamburg: how do these different experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, does your cultural

substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

I never saw myself only in one profession these educations are guiding to. I never wanted to become a lawyer, a psychologist or media scientist. I always felt there was something else that exercised a strong influence on me, that attracted me after finishing my main subjects. So i decided to explore this other field of knowledge and started studying stage direction. Maybe one may say that my law studies formed my interest in language in general. The influence of it can be seen in films about language, for example The GRAMMAR serial/ GANGLAND films. http://www.jsnebe.de/film2.html The films of this serial are about language and communication. I explore with the camera how reliable language of spoken and written words is and how it interacts with the language of images we are subordinated to. Media science studies might exercise influence on this serial, too. Analyzing the impact of images on how we think, feel and act is crucial for this field of knowledge. Of course in this serial there is a psychological momentum, too, because language is formed in answer to the deep rooted need to communicate with each other. Another maybe better example of

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how psychology influenced my film work, is The TOTEM TOONS series. http://www.jsnebe.de/film7.html In this films I turn architecture into a kind of digital totem pole, mainly using images of american small town sites, turning an essentially functional object, building into a thing charged with psychic energy. Finally stage direction studies introduced movement in general into my artistic production, in a manner of speaking. I started working with film because film is non static. It´s about movement all the time whether you produce a single shot sequence or a multi shot film. Nevertheless one of the characteristics of my film work is a static momentum. Because i love to work with small range movement of any kind of figures on a divided-into-small- sections background. So to say movement is a mainly interest for me ex negativo. In order to drew a conclusion regarding the aesthetic problem in general- as you suggested-, there is no other approach to what aesthetics might mean in art then a multifactorial one in my opinion. The times of easy solutions are over. We are all confronted with “the other”, “the strange foreigner”, the “different attitude” etc. which means we are no longer allowed to follow the simple answer, not even in aesthetics. The world has changed into a multipolar one, so aesthetics has, too. Because of that aesthetic theory like any other aspect of Western post-enlightenment approach is obliged to multi faceted POVs on the world´s endeavors. So being familiar with different scientific and artistic approaches can mean an advantage in this regard.

Your approach coherently encapsulates several techniques that reveals an incessant search of an organic exploration of the expressive potential of media. The results convey together a consistent unity: so before starting to elaborate about your production, we

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would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.jsnebe.de in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis

between opposite viewpoints as well as different disciplines is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

I envision my art to merge different POVs. If everyone accept the point of view of

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the other- which is indeed simply utopia, we would live in paradise. Nevertheless if we donÂ´t, we are going to have an endless war on unimportant issues. Nobody wants that and we are educated and civilized enough to keep away from

it- that is at least what i hope! The heart of my work is about how to get along with all this ideologies and religions which stop us from accepting different attitudes and different believe systems. As already mentioned The GRAMMAR

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him or her? That´s one of the questions asked by the films. Another good example is the PROVERB PICTURE PROJECT http://www.jsnebe.de/film11.html which is about how prejudice is influencing our perception of the everyday other, the neighbor we are confronted with each day. If there is a description of how somebody could be perceived, we are more then willing to accept this prejudice because it makes our daily life easier. This isn´t because we are all racists or xenophobic. Not at all. Prejudices allow us to save brain activity which is more than needed to analyze our daily challenges and find an answer to them. So in order to get back to your question, yes, there is a connection between different disciplines and opposite viewpoints, indeed. It does not mean that it is the only way to express what i want to say. But in many cases it is a reasonable, good way.

serial/GANGLAND film series is including this aspect because it´s all about how even the language of media images influences our perception of reality. May a certain image of a person make us feel worst about this person without knowing

We would start to focus on your artistic production starting from the OPERA Serial work, a stimulating project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of this audiovisual work is the way it probes the capabilities of media you widely use to find unexpected points of convergence between music theatre and cinematography, to captures nonsharpness with an universal kind of language that establishes direct relations with the spectatorship. When walking our readers through the genesis of this project, would you shed light on your usual set up and process?

So to say The OPERA serial is a result of my education at Institut fuer Theater,

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Musiktheater und Film in Hamburg. The film work is about how music influences image production of cinema or cinematographic performances. We learned how to interact with music, even if music isnÂ´t the main issue of a project. By using a big footage of film sequences the music is playing a lead actor role allowing the images to appear after the music had itÂ´s setup. The musical themes

are chosen first. After that i composed the images. An feature of the Opera serial imagery is a constant flow between abstract pattern and color compositions and real life objects like cars, pelicans, buildings, flags. During the production process i emphasized on fluidity of image and music synergy. I wanted the film to sweep away the audience by urging them to stop thinking and let go.

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When we talk about opera music we are talking about 400 years of history which has been subordinated to how music had been perceived by centuries. As sophisticated as music history, even the perception of images is. Also we compare a music history of about half a millennium, the image production has more and more influenced our perception

of reality, even if we talk about just 180 years of photography an about 120 years of cinema for example. Nevertheless image production does shape on a likewise even different sophisticated impact level how reality is perceived by the individual as music does. Before photography became an important instrument of understanding

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how reality works, music was more influential to how people perceive their environment hundred twenty, hundred thirty years ago, so to say: before images start imprinting our mind. One might say first the acuesthesia was captured, then visual sense was conquered by human made attractions. Because of this history i think, opera is more then dedicated to receive a homage. Just to say it in one

word: by introducing the opera parameter to my artistic world, i honor how much we owe to opera music without forgetting how important image making is for the history of shaping our minds during the last 180 years. When instigating intense feelings in the viewers, OPERA unveils the manifold nature of human perceptual categories

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and draws the viewers into a multilayered experience: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?

Opera was not made for everybody. In history operas were produced for an elite who understood the origin and the

historical derivation of the format. Even kings used to appear in certain roles of operas centuries ago. Opera today is open for all kind of audience and it is not restricted to the aristocracy anymore. I leave the traditional ground of what is understood as an opera work by using pop music themes instead of classical music in my OPERA series. Here the interpretation, the transition starts of

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what i understand is essential for the opera format and i open a gate to the contemporary audience who isn´t familiar with codes of this genre. Of course the Opera serial is made for screening in public spaces. I can say the work is really dedicated to be screened in public because of it´s construction. The multilayered experience is prepossessing by giving the music the lead role. Even imagery is floating and holds the spectator off reasoning. The film work is easy accessible for nearly everyone because of this construction. So it fits perfectly to the public realm. To put it in general terms one can say that artistic works should be shown in public sphere if it is compatible with the expectations of the general public. You as an artist have to offer a kind of connecting point which allows the general public at least due to one aspect of the art work presented to enter easily into the strange world of the elite-made-work. In fact we should not try to deny that the business we are doing is reserved to an elite, might it be an education elite or at least an elite of “free mind”, e.g. people that are willing to open their mind to what the artist presents them. A very helping attribute to the general audience is of course the immersive nature of an viewing experience because the more immersive a audiovisual art work is the more the general public, even the part without perceptual history of art works will be bewitched by the presented piece of art. OPERA also induces the viewers to abandon themselves to free associations, looking at time in spatial terms and I daresay, rethinking the concept of time 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 visual unity of your works?

All of my film works are made of strongly altered imagery or collage-like compositions of non-mating elements

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that derive from different environments or issues. There is nearly no film that consists of simply camera shots. A powerful surrealistic, or better so-to-say collage momentum is contained in all of my films. There are works that tend to be

more realistic (e.g. GIVE MY REGARDS TO THE ALPS http://www.jsnebe.de/film12.html)

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and others that are completely surrealistic (e.g. BLACK TOONS series, The DREAM IMAGES, http://www.jsnebe.de/film10.html).

By hewing to this recipe i am able to create coherent, characteristic and unique imageries. Another important element is the sound, the music track. There is always an interaction between what kind of sound is played and the

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back to it´s main theme. These interactions create a synergy that suggests an audiovisual unity of the work, especially if these elements are repeated even in different film works. They become an characteristic element of my films which is highly recognizable for the audience. Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled PHILOSOPHICAL CARTOONS series, a collection of five fine art videos that accomplishes the difficult task of establishing a dialogue surrounding the notion of images contemporary visual arts: you seem to urge us to challenge the relation between our cultural substratum and our limbic perceptual system. parameters: to quote Simon Sterling's words, this could force things to relate that would probably otherwise be unrelated. Do you agree with this interpretation? And in particular, what is the creative role that chance plays in your approach?

things that are moving on the screen. Sometimes a certain image element enters the screen, e.g. a butterfly and the music changes at the same moment it´s tune. The butterfly leaves after a while of buffeting the screen and the music turns

PHILOSOPHICAL CARTOONS SERIAL is about metaphysical assumptions launching a more or less philosophical attempt to art. This serial is rooted in a very early approach to video work. The film series is about metaphysical aspect in life. PHILOSOPHICAL CARTOONS is about how we are involved into religion and metaphysical attempts, even philosophical ones. The limbic perceptual system is gifting us a more “visceral approach” to how we perceive the world. Even relating to PHILOSOPHICAL CARTOONs- you are right- it´s all about how our cultural knowledge is integrated into our understanding of the world guided by the limbic perceptual system.

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Even if we know something it has to be integrated into what we know as our “cultural scheme” and this is highly influenced by our emotional feelings towards the knowledge. So putting Philosophical Cartoons into an context of cultural substratum and limbic perceptual system it´s how Simon Sterling put it: surrealistic collage work for example of the facade of a building in the

neighborhood of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is forced together with religion only indirectly represented by the place where this building is situated, the town of Santiago, one of the three holy cities of christianity. Another good example of this series is the film called Lost City. In this film mirrored images of old store houses in harbor area of the city of Hamburg are combined with a story

Joas Nebe

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about a non existing, non-accessible place. Like in the other example store houses as symbols of the trading history of Hamburg merchants are forced together with a metaphysical story about an utopian place. To say it in general, different cultural aspects (religion, trading, metaphysical stories) are merged into something new by pandering to the spectatorÂ´s limbic perceptual system.

About chance and itÂ´s influence on my work: As much as possible i try to deliberate all elements of my work, even the format and language i am using to say what i want to say. Nevertheless there is a point when chance enters the stage. Sometimes chance can help to make a creation more creative or more convincing. Sometimes chance helps to

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get out of a one way i suddenly find myself caught in. Very often chance is great to combine elements that donÂ´t belong together. This is maybe the most important aspect of chance at all because putting non belonging elements together is one of the main characteristics of my art work.

When inquiring into the expansion of our understanding of what is possible in time- based practice, you seem to urge the viewers to rethink tot he notion of time and space on an unitary viewpoint: how would you describe the nature of the cohexistence of such aspects? In particular, German pioneer of visual arts Gerhard Richter once stated, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion

Joas Nebe

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about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

Indeed i love pushing boundaries. First i did it with paintings by using large formats, big brush strokes assembling rough figures on the ground and a kind of jute material instead of canvas on frame. (http://www.jsnebe.de/painting.html)

I rope-stitched different jute parts into a big kind of canvas. Then i put wall paint on it and on that i painted big figures, nudes, kind of symbols or ghosts, some of them accompanied by strange animals. The roughness of the ground can still be seen when you look at this paintings. Some of them have the size of 2x4meters or 2x6m. All of them are made for big spaces like

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the entrance hall of a theatre. Two of this paintings are today presented in two bars of Stage Theatre, Hamburg where they give Disney´s “Lion´s King” musical. Another boundary pushing project was a light/shade installation, that i call “the House of Shades”. The installation is a square of linen. Behind the linen you can see colored figures which interact with each other. The work is supposed to be installed in a complete dark room. The only light source is coming from within the linen square. http://www.jsnebe.de/sculpture.html I came to the idea of this installation by traditional galanty shows. In Asia even in Turkey there is a theatre tradition based on the light/shade effects. The figures played behind a linen in front of a light source are small scaled figures. All i did is scale up the dimensions of the traditional play and make it huge. In my film work i continued this practice. Film is time based allowing an holistic experience that has more impact on the viewer than painting or installation can have because there is movement, sound and fast changing images. What i like to do is pushing the holistic experience beyond the point that marks the border to how usually a film narration is working. I am interested in urging the spectator to what he does not expect, sometimes what he usually would not accept as viewing experience, if he knew before. To put it this way, i try to seduce the audience to follow me into the maze of irritation that my films create by presenting pleasant imagery. After a while the pleasant imagery turns into something not-yet-experienced either because i slow down the narration or

speed it up until there is no narration left. A good example for that practice is The OPERA serial, which we have been talking about already. http://www.jsnebe.de/film21.html

Joas Nebe

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Films of this series consist of converted images of landscape, even animals or people and cars. You can not recognize the single elements. All elements are

converted into fans of colors or endless mazes accompanied by pop music -inspired sound track. The musical theme is varying endlessly. After a while the sound brings the viewer into a hypnotic like state of

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mind together with the imagery of abstract pattern that slip into a pelican or a flag and back again into a maze or escutcheon. There is no space-time continuum left at least regarding images and sound. The

sound track itself follows a space-timecontinuum because the musical themes are quite traditional and harmonical. But there is a gape between how the musical part works and what the images shows. The

Joas Nebe

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shots fade out of space-time continuum when showing abstract patterns and slip back into when an element can be recognized as a well known object like a house or a train. The viewing experience

might be compared to be on a drug in some aspects. Coming back to your question that quoted Gerhard Richter i can say that my way of doing art is almost trying to manipulate the spectator´s perception of reality, pushing him or her out of the space-time continuum at least a little bit. In order to come back to contemporary art in general i think one could apply what Alfred Hitchcock once said: If he would have been able to stimulate the spectator´s brain directly, he would not have made films any more. That´s what contemporary art does today, trying to stimulate the spectator´s brain more or less directly and probably that´s what Gerhard Richter meant when he said that his concern is what art can be used for. Contemporary people possess a huge viewing experience. They all know narration strategies of different medias, especially film and photography. Today narrations are different from that 50-60 years ago. Today a hint to a well know narration technique might be enough to let this strategy be present in the spectator´s mind. In art it´s the same. People´s understanding of what an art work wants to say is different from that of former generations. This means that the functional aspect of art has changed also. Art is always taking references to art history, to well known imagery of certain famous artists. By bringing up a certain theme the contemporary artist must know who treated this issue before and how. This is more important than it was for example 100 years ago. In some ways the artist has turned into an art historian and an art work is always an quotation of an former art work. In The House of Shades you have inquired into the theme of aggression accomplishing an insightful investigation

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about intimate and unexpected aspects of violence: you successful attempt to unveil its elusive and limbic mechanism urges us to challenge the common way we relate to a variety of questions and issues that affect both our perceptual processes and their consequences on our unsable contemporary age... this way your approach seems to suggest that some informations 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 opinion about this?

Today images become more and more important. Most messages are communicated via images. Images all around us always, they are besieging us. Media, tv, film, internet are full of them and sometimes images become more important

than reality because images are between ourselves and our environment, they help us perceive our environment and our nature. Because of this it is getting more and more important which strategies are used to tell the message, which elements are presented in a certain context of a special issue or theme. Images exercise directly influence to our limbic system which creates positive or negative emotions, fear, joy, hate and aggression. The messages pull ahead, flashes by without activating reason. Images have become our ambience, the air we breath. The importance of image production to how we interact with our environment creates a need to decipher what images tell us. Images are produced, man made. Due to this they can decoded and we must decipher them in order to understand which influences they exercise

Joas Nebe

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on us. Next to this there is a second function of images. Images are a powerful tool of analysis. By producing images, e.g. The House of Shades, the artist can point to a not yet understood message of a certain correlation. Of course there are more elements around us beside images. We are always confronted to objects, other persons, nature, our inner self. Sometimes images crossfade with reality by influencing our perception of a certain thing, person or correlation. What i did with The House of Shades is creating an image for how aggression and violence exercise influence on us. Aggression is a strong emotion and violence an likewise strong interaction with our environment. They both are nurtured and interpreted by image production of cinema, game industry and even photography. Sometimes we mistake the

interpretation of aggression and violence with the real feeling and the real interaction with environment. Sometimes we loose the contact to our inner nature. Yes, i would agree that one of the artistÂ´s roles is to unveil, to decipher as you put it, this unexpected sides of nature, but not only nature, of image production, too. In my option the artist role is enlarged by producing metaphors that allow to understand more visceral what negative emotions, e.g. violence, aggression, hate, do to us and to our environment. Over these years your works have been internationally featured in several occasions and you had three solos, including your upcoming show BRAVE NEW WORLD, curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere

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spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

Of course there are always many different languages to choose between, the language of the formal aspects of a format like painting, installation, film, the language of images (real life shots, cartoon animation, experimental post produced imagery etc.), the language of narration or non-narrative. And even in narration or non-narrative there are different languages as telling a story in whole length or just showing hints to it which are to be decoded by the audience etc.. Maybe i use here a very broad sense of language. But nevertheless i think marking

these elements as language is acceptable as long as these elements transport a message and as long as a represent (an element, a symbol, a sign) is connected to the represented (some real life content). For me the system of representation (language) is maybe more important than for other contemporary artists because i understand that the system of representation influences the message in a certain way. It makes a difference if i decide telling a love story by shade installation or by experimental post produced imagery. The message that receives the audience is a complete different one if i show a hypnotic psychedelic world of signs representing the evolution of love between two persons or if i create a light-shade imagery which might be related to tradition, dream and metaphysical experience.

Joas Nebe

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So to say i always choose a special language very consciously. I try to analyze what a special language might stand for from the point of view of the audience. Due to the fact that some of my works are shown around the world, it´s not that easy to choose the right language because i never have access to all necessary information about what a special language could mean in a special cultural context. That means i can not control all aspects of impact on a special audience due to cultural difference. This is happens the more or less i am familiar with a special cultural background. The outcome might be that the message is turned or altered when such an art work made for an European audience is shown to Japanese people. Sometimes an art work works better in a different culture and sometimes it does not work at all in a special place. Nevertheless i always try to do my best to keep control on the impact a language has that i am choosing for a special art work and a special message. Beside the cultural difference there is always an aesthetic or artistic aspect of choosing a certain language. Sometimes a certain language can come out queer with a certain message or content. There are themes that demand for that queer outcome. An good example for this is The GRAMMAR serial/GANGLAND. http://www.jsnebe.de/film2.html Although the main issue is the impact of different languages (spoken, written language, imagery language) on the message i have chosen a cartoon experimental language to communicate this message. Strange elements are interacting without sense on the first glance. There are butterflies that are floating on the screen bigger than a Mercedes car crossing the lower part of the screen at the same time.

What the hell does this want to say us? might the audience ask themselves. Because this film work is all about contorted message nevertheless this is exactly the right language to tell the story. It´s all about contortion of sense that makes sense in this case. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Joas. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? Where do you see yourself and your work going in the future?

My latest plans are to work on a second volume of The GRAMMAR serial/GANGLAND. this second volume will be about what kind of positive impact a message contortion might have and how dream imagery are connected to this. An aspect of this is how much sense might dream imagery make compared to daylight communication. Another project i am planning, will be an artistic investigation about how knowledge and dream is related. Are there connection between the daylight world and dream that influence each other? Could it be that the land of dreams influences the real world we are living in when we are awake? Moreover i plan to do more work that alters space, buildings and rooms, even gardens. I want my film work to merge with what we call environment. Many of my film works are produced for projections on several screens (multi channel videos). Some of the films are consisting of 10 or 15 channels already. They need a real screening environment, huge buildings or a kind of mountain scape that allows projection of so many channels. I want to continue working on this vision of a merging nature/landscape/cityscape with artistic production which means pushing the borders again towards another, more formal kind of maybe “new language”.

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Dalia Smayze

Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

”You don't need eyes to see, You need vision”

new collaborations, and making They deal with a(the dichotomous - the all that iswomb and a lab. My practice is a tool for ourselves creators) understanding myself as well as the world realization that one reality can reflect necessary to know about the of phenomena around me. My goal is to many and there is no one definition. The future, integrated design is my generate a change that shapes truth is endlessly evolving and expanding. perspectives and actions, thus enabling I future try and reconcile conflicts and for moving forward, for something new to occur - symbolically, contradictions such as beauty that learning new techniques, conceptually and tangibly. I have a encompasses crudeness, weakness as a Mechanisms and more. making it distinct feeling that there is something source of strength and disillusionment beyond me, a life force, which I can’t put that early works to feeds the innocence. front byThe making design art into words but I can channel into art. (“Red Heart”, 2007-09) are naïve projects. drawings of bodies and situations, subtle yet disturbing. Minimalist figures floating in white space. With time, layers appear

Gil Zablodovsky

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Gil Zablodovsky An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Tel-Aviv based artist Gil Zablodovsky's work ranges from Art design to filmmaking to accomplish a multilayered investigation about the expressive potential of media to trigger the viewers' perceptual parameters in order to rethink to the elusive notion of experience. In his video Lisbon that we'll be discussing in the following pages he accomplishes an insightful exploration about Lisbonsuburbs' exotic life style that invite the audience on an unconventional and captivating journey: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production. Hello Gil and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you degreed from the Holon Institute of Technology. Besides your studies, you also gained a wide experience as Art director designer and filmmaker: moreover, you had the chance to work together with some of the biggest music artists in Israel, Rita & Ivri Lider. How do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

As for a start, I'm now in my 2nd year of my master degree in HIT, which gave a lot of experience and new perspective for my carrier, the integrated design department has the ability to take both concept studies and practice studies for a new level as combining these together. For me after finishing my bachelor degree, I decided to take a risk and make an integrated level of experience, for starting with photography & art exhibitions, from there I realized that my education in design leads me to understand in which field I'm located which is the designated filed that combines local design rules with an art aesthetics. From there the experience with music artists, has set me in a new and foreign world to understanding the cinema / wider world. and with this new approach, the perception of how to look at objects' people and the world in general has changed me in to be the artist I am today. My cultural substratum is from the point of view of making the best from the point of nothing to the point of making' I can realize to the warm cultural aspect of living in Israel as a diversity of people coming from many different cultures and backgrounds, many types of music inspirations and more...

Gil Zablodovsky, photo by Doron Ovad

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Gil Zablodovsky

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Using your instrument as a starting point for your creative journey, your approach coherently encapsulates various artistic fields, revealing an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of harmony and unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/GilZablodovsky-DesignerArtist/4738845693185 13 in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different approaches is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

First of all, I invite the readers to look at my several works of art to understand what is my approach, to artistic design and what's between them. as a designer, creator, I understood that I work in the horizontal world, which I can send my arms through sound, art, design,photgraphy, objects and more. from this point I take it the levels of feeds and make them as they were one from the start, I can hear the sound of the photo or smell the earth. so each time I have a local rule from which I create my new art, but it's the same process of work each time, and from my point of view I can say that's the way I work. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Lisbon, a recent work that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. While asking you to walk us through the genesis of this work, woudl

you shed light on your usual set up and process?

the processes for this work was very special to me from the beginning. going through a journey of 8 days in

Gil Zablodovsky

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lisbonsurubs and traveling by foot and train, I started to get the people's point of view on their city and from the look of their eyes, I was trying to find my home from the lens of the camera, so I started

filming endlessly, until I got the right angles, right movement and like acupuncture, put all together. as after seeing the films apart, I joined my good friend Shim Edri, songwriter, musician

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and also a textile designer, we felt together what is the right sound for making of this film, so he especially composed an original track for this video art, and since then we worked with layers

of the video and the music affects on its visibility. What has at once caught our attention of your inquiry into Lisbonsuburbs' exotic life style is the way your personal view on it has accomplishes

Gil Zablodovsky

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absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I do believe that it can apart for me to be disconnected from the upfront expense. I can understand culture and the arts from their influences on others, and people don't actually know the source of it, when you look at trends you can see it expands from different culture to another. By definition video is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity. In your videos you create time-based works that induce the viewers to abandon therselves to free associations, rethinking the concept of time 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?

I think that when you disconnects the x, y, z axis you create a new dimension of space and time, and when you create that, you offer your viewers a new perspective, and detach them from what they already see. Most of the time I react to a visual aesthetics and the most attractive ones are objects and people which include movements.

the difficult task of unveiling and challenge the manifold nature of human perceptual categories in relation with urban environment. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an

Ghost Prague is a successful attempt to communicate without words, to unveil the flow of information through an effective non linear narrative, establishing direct relations with the viewers: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is

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your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

I believe that in some way Thomas Demand is right, his point of view says that everything can no longer be objective and only subjective. I can understand the psychological side, people connect their habits, knowledge education into one dimension which leads to their perspective that is subjective. From my works I can defiantly understand the psychological reason, for me art and design are apart, they connect to each other and influence each other, and my state of mind, when I see blue sky or dark sky for an example, I can make a new narrative of the same story. Your establishes direct relations with the viewers: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?

I believe that if we could change our habits and understand that our energies will be, at least the most of them, in art and design, we will be able to contact with each other in a more easy way, and we will be able to see the perception of the world, in a new which wars can be with a new weapon the weapon of art, people will be able to express themselves, not through physical confrontation, but through their minds, so as for that I think when art will rule the street and accept it into their hands, and people won't judge it buy will hug it, there will be a new language of speaking same as for music. when I use materials I invite the viewers to go through a journey.

It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the ones you have established with sound producer Shim Edri who made original music Lisbon are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most

Gil Zablodovsky

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working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two artists?

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The synergy is great when you have the open making a new project with artists that comes from other filed, ideas comes from different places, and we can make the most out of it, because the conceptual world of different people from another file's and mediums you can create new dimensions of work. As I see it's like a relationship that it's over until you become full, you can make a little string. sound offers visual. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a deep involvement with the viewers, who are

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

The most fun for me, is when people said they reacted to my works' love hate laugh, cried and actually everything, it means for me that there is a place for my works, and they create a new

Gil Zablodovsky

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conversation, that leads to another aspect' or a new way of aspect of looking at my works and can actually reveal me new details. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Gil. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I would like to thank ARTiculAction for giving the time and "stage" to show the viewers a little from my exprience and my world. I can say that when i recginzed what is the processes of my work, I

understand that I am evolving as I am searching new mediums of work, how to integrate my projects who are already exists and take them to a new higher level. for the next few years ahead I know music and sound will always a great inspiration for me, as I found this very subjective, that "place" of music in my life is a deep space that I can dive into and explore and draw new ideas. An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Esther Eigner

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Esther Eigner An interview by Josh Ryder, curator

Hello Esther and welcome to ARTiculAction: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any specific experiences that has influenced your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

invitation to this interview. Already in my childhood, I was interested in art and in making experiments on my own. I also love to cook or like to do the gardening,the latter is perhaps the reason or starting point why I make colors out of plants on my own today.In grammar/secondary school, I had a good teacher who helped me to learn more about art and artistic techniques and I began to love it. Still, it is important for my current work to changetechniquesand experiment with them. Then at university I learned how to paint with and on different materials and in different styles. But also how to make objects out of stone, metal, pottery/ceramic or wood.After learning how to deal with different materials and how to reproduce the reality in a painting it became easier and interesting for me to abstract things. I don’t know if there is an “aesthetic problem” in general for me personally. Making art for me is always to meet a need of mine. That is why it is hard for me to do “commissioned work” sometimes. So if I like the painting I made I will show it, if not I will wait, maybe throw it away or leave it and make it better on another day.

Hello, first of all, thank you for the

Your approach is very personal and

and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Esther Eigner's work explores the development of the color to inquire into its genesis and ending. In her Ways of Color series she accomplished an insightful investigation about the process that is necessary to produce colors out of plants. Her works provide the viewers with a multilayered experience capable of walking them into the liminal area in which subconscious level establishes a symbiosis between the conscious sphere. Drawing from universal imagery, Eigner's approach triggers both memory and imagination, creating a compelling narrative: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production.

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Esther Eigner

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your technique condenses a variety of viewpoints, that you combine together into a coherent balance. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://esther.eigner.magnetbox.at in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, would you tell our readers something about the evolution of your style?

As already mentioned my style changed after I had learned about different techniques from almost figurative paintings to a mixture of figurative and abstract works and my painting process is always directed towards meeting a need of mine. But it is still important to me to â&#x20AC;&#x153;experienceâ&#x20AC;? the originsof the colors, pencils, canvas or papers while painting. Therefore not only the topic, but also the painting process matters to me. We would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from Ways of Color, an interesting series that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of this series is the way your inquiry into the development of the color provides your pieces with a dynamic and autonomous aesthetic and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the genesis of these pieces, would you shed light to your main source of inspirations?

I take my inspiration from everyday life. Sometimes it happens by accident, while

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hearing the lyrics of a song, being in a special mood. I can be inspired by a flower, works from another artist, or anything else. For instance, in “Ways of Color” my source of inspiration was the way I had to follow to find the right plants to produce my colors. The dialogue established by colors and texture is a crucial part of your style: in particular, the effective combination between intense nuances of tones sums up the mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a painting’s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

Every painting is deeply influenced by my feelings. The range of my works or “palette” depends on the topic of the painting. But basically I use pastel and dim colors for my works. That is why I like egg tempera, pastel-pencils or my own “plant colors”. My style and the colors I use changed over time, when I was young I used more powerful colors. Your pieces combine thoughtful nuances of colors with engaging textures: while exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, you seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to invite the viewer to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your paintings. This quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative

Esther Eigner

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Esther Eigner

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of the relationship between emotion and memory. What is the role of memory in your process? And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

It is true that I try to invite the viewer to find personal interpretations to the feelings a painting could cause and of course there are translations of my own feelings in every painting I do. On the one hand, I don’t like to explain every painting. But on the other hand sometimes, to understand the topic, it is very important to inform the viewer about my work. For example “Ways of color” has a special story and every piece is part of the way, therefore it is important to give some explanation. Other pieces allow a self-interpretation. Sometimes it is exciting to hear what other people feel watching one of my works. Everyone has different feelings and impressions that cause different interpretations. For example I even have a painting whose name is “Tell a Story”. When inquiring into the realm of the physical space, you draw from the subconscious, almost oniric sphere, inviting the viewers to challenge their primordial, almost limbic parameters to get involved into a multilayered experience. This is particularly evident in your Be Sure to WearSomeFlowersin Your Hair series: your approach allows you to capture non-sharpness of physicality with a universal kind of language that brings to a new level of significance the elusive but ubiquitous relationship between

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Esther Eigner

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experience and memory: what is the role of memory in your process? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve to trigger the viewers' memory as starting point to expand their perceptual parameters.

Well, for me it is not easy to answer that question. Of course my works are concerned with my experiences and they often deal with dreams I had during the night, especially the surrealistic ones, or with situations that came to my mind while listening to a song or while reading a text. Art as I mentioned before then gives me the chance to deal with my feelings. Therefore, those pictures are very emotive and may trigger something in the viewerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minds. We have appreciated the way your paintings show a coherent equilibrium concerning the composition: the multilayered experience to whom you invite the viewers gives a permanence to the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the notion of sight. So we 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?

The starting point for a creative process is not always the same. But my personal experience is always important. Furthermore, personal experience is a long lasting and changing process. Each piece of art starts from a different degree of experience which I see as important to start a creative process. There

Esther Eigner

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Esther Eigner

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are different kinds of experience that are important for me. Experience how to handle the materials but also how to handle my emotional feelings and how to create a picture that explains what I want

to express, but some kind of personal experience is always needed. Your captivating exploration of the expressive potential of abstract

Esther Eigner

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compositions you have accomplished in Maske seems to address the viewers to relate themselves with your work in personal way, your work shows an effective combination between

experience and imagination and triggers our limbic parameters concerning our relation with physicality: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but

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Esther Eigner

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always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

Well, although I was often confronted

with this question it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t easy to answer in a short way. Art can be everything and nothing. I know many philosophic orhistoric texts concerning art, where the authors draw different and

Esther Eigner

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conflicting conclusions what art can be, may or must be or about what is art and what is not. Therefore it is not easy for me to give a definite answer in this respect.

Art could deal with emotional, political, technical/optical topics. But there a lot people that like art only because it is nice to look at.

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“Art is not an apparatus to build a common and meaningful world-view. Art is, assumable it is at all, the opposite of common and general”.I really like this

sentence because it is the best way for me to explain art after thinking about it in so many ways. „Kunst ist kein Apparat zur Herstellung

Esther Eigner

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einer allgemein belangvollen Weltanschauung. Kunst ist, vorausgesetzt, dass sie überhaupt sein will, der Gegensatz von allgemein“ Over these years your works have been exhibited in severalo ccasions, includingyourrecentparticipation at Kunstfrischmarkt, Neubau. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a

condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

Not really. I am always curious about the viewer’s reactions and thoughts

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Esther Eigner

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concerning my works. But these are not part of my decision-making process. And I think it is the aim of almost every artist tha this pieces of art lead to a reaction, what ever this reaction might be. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Esther. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

At the moment, I am really interested in working and experimenting with plants. Still in making colors out of them, but also use them for objects or silkscreen prints. For example, in my current series I try to work with the texture of a physalis, and another one is called “Faces of the Year” which deals with photographs of faces I incidentally discovered in mud, in broken walls, in a water spotting, or maybe also in other things like clouds which look like faces. There are a few older projects that aren’t finished yet too. But it is not possible for me to work on only one project. I always have to work on a few ones at the same time. Another future project is to give painting lectures and courses. And I would like to work on bigger projects together with other people to make use of my culture management seminar. But we will see.

Esther Eigner

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Dalia Smayze

V eski Yeh Lives and works in Taiwan

Portrait of Ourselves We are all the sole copy of ourselves, there is no other one out there that's uniquely the same. A blooming flower, a tree that's facing the sky, a fallen leaf, a grass that that sways along with the wind, a cloud amongst the clear blue sky, a rock in the glaciers, a crisp wave in the ocean, the moon reflecting in the pond, a morning dew, a lightning, a wayward wind, a blazing flame. We express our uniqueness to gain resonance from others, gazing into each others' eyes, we feel our own existence through the passing of time, through our actions , life itself is the actualization of "realizing ourselves". Chou Zhi-Hua is a musical genius, who never had any formal music training, but he is probably the most productive composer on the face of the earth. It was fate, and also the pressures of living that led him onto this path towards making music.

His previous works were mostly composing for TV advertisements, TV dramas, movies, and video games. This particular artwork combines the music he made for others, along with his own words; which brings out the ups and downs of Chou's music career. The viewer has to use the smartphone with QR Code app and Junaio app to interact with the artworks. Connecting through the internet and cloud systems, the viewers can discover the artworkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main character, who they are and what is their life story, whether by images, videos, and sounds.

Veski Yeh

Veski Yeh, an artist from Taiwan that crossover to contemporary art, interactive creative and film. Multi-creativity, familiar with humor approach to expose human insight and persists at the beauty of visual. Act as a magician to continuously create new thoughts and new visual impact to the world.

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Veski Yeh Technical art pieces often lack emotions, and it is rare to see arts that combine technology, interactions, Chinese ink paintings, documentary all together in one. Veski Yeh’s displays a whole new form of art, using image recognition and interactive technology, the viewers can use their smartphones to interact with the artworks. Connecting through the internet and cloud systems, the viewers can discover the artwork’s main character, who they are and what is their life story, whether by images, videos, or just sounds. Although the Chinese ink painting by glance is twodimensional, but Veski broke through the walls and made it fourdimensional, giving his work the sense of “time” through interactive technology. It’s not really all that special if the exhibition is just about scanning and receiving the multimedia files through scanning. Veski made it a reflection of the times by combining authentic Chinese ink painting and technology. The painting is in the form of a scroll, like one of the pieces is 60 cm in height and 240 cm in length, and on

this particular piece there are a few QR codes, each code links to a different content. When the viewers use their smartphone to scan the whole piece of artwork they will see the main character’s view about her life. Veski expresses that the theme is about “I”, we all tend to find some way to express ourselves in this world, artists uses their artworks, ordinary people might use what they do in their jobs, and there are those who expresses in a form of responsibility, like say you are someone’s daughter, someone’s parents, someone’s wife, someone’s boss etc. Everyone plays a different part, and what are the roles that each of them are playing like in their minds? Or that what you expect what people think of you, might be totally different from what they actually think. With Veski’s exceptional perception towards life,, his knowledge of image manipulation, and his combination of creativity and aesthetics, theses images are not just documentaries but form of art through contemporary concepts.

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Winter 2016

Maya Gelfman

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Maya Gelfman

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Reagan Lake

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Reagan Lake

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