ARTiculAction Art Review // Special Issue // 2016 Edition

Anniversary Edition

Special Issue

ANNE MURRAY R.PROST SABRINA BARRIOS HASTI HICH STEPHANIE CAMFIELD NIGEL TAN SCOTT MORRISON MAYA ELIYA STEIN ANGELICA VERDAN Hasti Hich

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Sabrina Barrios

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Maya Eliya Stein

Stephanie Camfield

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Israel/USA

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In my opinion living experience is the major factor in the formation of the contemporary artist`s working period.

Unlike the modernists, a contemporary artist doses`t inspire from outside to inside, but she reaches an idea on the basis of her own living experiences. The issue of domestic art is not notable in this regard. Since an artist confronts with her living experience honestly and considers it as the eternal source of idea, her work of art will be the indicative of her social context.

The relationship between the self and the collective consciousness, our perception of reality and the gaps in history–that indicate we know very little about the world around us–are recurrent subjects in my work.

To bring them to life, research on ancient history, psychology, metaphysics and quantum mechanics is combined with tactile and bodily explorations, inspired by the work of the Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement of the 60’s.

Pieces created in different mediums take shape, so that a higher level of accuracy in the narrative is achieved.

My work deals with language and it has its roots more in visual poetry than conceptual art. The sensibility in my work is a literary sensibility and I use language as language. It is understood that words carry a multiplicity of meanings and, therefore, can be seen as vague.

I was a teenager living near Detroit when the nation’s economy began to unravel. I, like others, witnessed a bustling metro area fall into a joblessness, material decay, and widespread human depression. I have always been motivated by a desire to help others, with my inspiration being Detroit.

This body of work documents my exploration into the primary social issues: unemployment, deterioration of property, homelessness and mental illness that I’ve identified as the outward signs of urban decay in Detroit,

For me much of the process of creating work is mostly being in a location for extended periods of time and allowing the material to be captured as the experience dictates. I need to feel the place I am documenting and this reflects in the editing process. I’ll invest a great deal of time re-watching, scanning my material and where my camera may respond in the field as required, my editing and sequencing process also responds in a more intuitive way and a reexperience is happened again. The symbiosis of sound and video in my work feel more of a unity than anything.

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I create extended media paintings that investigate the urban landscape through quotidian language in architecture. My premise is that even within globalization and standardization in America, it is still possible to find elements that are uniquely connected to a place, vernacular elements, that are a worthy subject to highlight and uncover.

Since my move from Kitasono Katue, a New York to Atlanta, seminal figure in my focus has turned to Japanese visual poetry suburban life style and has said, “Words are driving culture as the most uncertain means to understand signals devised by Atlanta as well as other similar environments human beings for across America. communication.”

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lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Maya Eliya Stein

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lives and works in Atlanta and Jerusalem

Nigel Tan

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lives and works in Singapore

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lives and works in Evanston, Illinois, USA

Stephanie Camfield

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lives and works in Detroit, USA

Angelica Verdan Anne Murray

Nigel Tan

Angelica Verdan

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My work is a witness to my particular perception, my awareness and my drive to gather the evidence of our existence, of the connectedness of our experience and the creation of a personal iconography that becomes universal in its humanity. I think that others who know me would say that I am a person that cares, that strives for the best in myself and hopes for it in others. I cherish art as a means to communicate, motivate and to create change, whether through metamorphosis or a gradual redirection of the viewer's eye to something that I sense is important to look at in a particular moment in time.

My work primarily revolves around a theme that evokes curiosity through a multi sensory environment with the use of various mediums, blending form and texture to build layers within a chaotic structure. I use sound as a basis of my work, creating diverse sonic spectrums through experimentation, intuition and selfdiscovery. I am inspired by the daily life. From thought and unanswered questions to the simple use of our senses evaluating and understanding that which is around us.

Technology has always shaped society. With the rise of the Internet and social media, the integration between the physical world and digital world has been swiftly increasing.

We are surrounded by the interactivity between these two worlds. By juxtaposing the recognizable icons of the digital world with the physical world the interaction between humans and all interfaces can be explored.

The viewer is invited to examine the depth of our relationship with technology.

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lives and works in Virginia, USA

Anne Murray

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lives and works in Barcelona, Spain

Hasti Hich

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lives and works in Teheran, Iran

Scott Morrison

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lives and works in Melbourne, Australia On the cover Defeat Your Inner Demon, by Anne Cecile Surga

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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S abrina Barrios Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

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he relationship between the self and the collective consciousness, our perception of reality and the gaps in history–that indicate we know very little about the world around us–are recurrent subjects in my work. To bring them to life, research on ancient history, psychology, metaphysics and quantum mechanics is combined with tactile and bodily explorations, inspired by the work of the Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement of the 60’s.

Pieces created in different mediums take shape, so that a higher level of accuracy in the narrative is achieved. Each material delivers a distinct message. In my 3D drawings (geometric structures), for instance, the viewers are invited to participate and create their paths within

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the piece. They can opt to go left, right or turn back. Quantum mechanics investigates the possibility that the decisions not made in this universe happened in a parallel one, and my installations represent visually the exact moment these decisions are being made.

My videos, usually projected onto something present in real life, tell non linear stories using symbols and the pace recognizable in dreams. My paintings, on the other hand, have a more aggressive, emotional feeling. Like scars, they touch upon memories that built the self. They represent the bond to one’s life and body, connected with what lies beyond Earth.

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Sabrina Barrios An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator Josh Ryder and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

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

Hello Sabrina and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and having earned your BFA in Graphic Design you moved to New York to complete your MFA at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute: how do these experiences influence the way you conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum dued to your Brazilian roots

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impact on the way you relate yourself to artmaking and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello and thank you for the warm welcoming!

My parents come from the academia, and training has always been important. With studying comes community, like-minded people who you are exposed to and can change you. I went to NY for a masters in Fine Arts, which taught me things Graphic Design didn’t. And this past year I have been in a few different art residencies throughout Europe and the US, to take time for research, to think, experiment, make mistakes, open up to new possibilities, concentrate exclusively on my art. Each of these residencies showed me something I wasn’t aware of.

Besides the training and taking the time to investigate the subject to be explored in each project, I believe in life experiences. You expand as a person when going places and meeting new people. I’m inspired and curious about what motivates big crowds, what makes them believe in something. Faith.

Intuition. You don’t need academic training for that.

Culturally speaking, I was born and raised in Brasil and was a kid when dictatorship ended. Several artists left in exile, though they’ve never stopped fighting. Art became their lives because they were

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passionate and believed in a cause. Like them, I have a hard time separating what kind of experience will benefit me as a person or me as an artist. I know I have a voice and I want to motivate people to stop following and start thinking for themselves. I want people to react, to question things.

Moreover, in my work I often talk about complex subjects and use geometry to translate them into understandable symbols. I also use different mediums to communicate the narrative more accurately, since each delivers a distinct message. In my 3D drawings (site-specific installations), for instance, I ask the viewer to experience the piece with their bodies and this placement of the observer as a participant, as well as the geometric language, is inspired by the Brazilian Neoconcrete movement of the 60’s. The controlled and meditative tone of my installations, very different from my emotional paintings, show the extreme cultures I’ve been exposed to in the past several years. I’m half Italian and half Spanish, born and raised in Brazil, but lived in London, Berlin and have been based in New York for the past 7 years.

Your approach coherently encapsulates several disciplines and reveals an incessant search of an organic investigation about the liminal area in which psycho-physiological blends with absolute gaze on perceptual reality, and 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 http://www.sabrinabarrios.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your

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Sabrina Barrios

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process and set up, we would like to ask you how did you develope your style and how do you conceive your works.

My work is connected to the self, to memories and experiences that built me.

The art I’m making is coherent because it’s me, my deep research, voice and point of view.

I focus on the duality of the self and the collective consciousness, and how we all share a reality that might not be real at all.

For example, by studying ancient knowledge, I’m aware of the fact that books can be burnt by a civilization that wins a war, and therefore gets to depict history however they choose. Through psychology, I want to understand what connects and what controls us. When introducing science and cosmology, on the other hand, I look outside at the sky and constellations, to imagine what the future might hold.

These are big and heady subjects, that are impossible to be translated into art and digested at once. That is why I use several mediums when communicating, as they offer different perspectives on the same narrative. For instance, when I create a video I take advantage of time and that at every second I can add new images to it. A painting, however, has everything already there.

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Zero, 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 this work is the way your inquiry into the stages of the soul, spirit and body from before birth to afterlife challenges our primordial, almost limbic perceptual parameters,

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urging us to rethink and sometimes even subvert the way we relate ourselves to such ubiquitous concepts: while walking our readers through the genesis of this project, would you shed light on the way your main source of inspirations?

That’s exactly what I want: to question reality and provoke people to think! You don’t have to agree with the ideas I’m proposing because my goal is to simply make you stop for a second and consider your own point of view.

To start with, Zero had a very strong visual presence, which was what got people interested into exploring it. Nobody is really used to walking within a work of art, though knowing that them, the audience, is needed to complete the artwork, makes them want to engage and explore art in a different way. Then, for the curious who felt challenged, there was a solid, cohesive and provocative concept, that made sense based on what the viewer had just experienced–and on common questions that concern our universe and therefore all of us. I often investigate how Ancient Egypt, Hinduism, Spiritism, Catholicism and Alchemy approached life and death.

I’m asking that people perceive other things and don’t only trust their vision. Two of the three rooms where Zero took place were lit with ultraviolet lights and the audience put on ear plugs, so they could hear their own breathing, their inner voice– as opposed to being distracted by other people and the surroundings. They focused on the life-sized, mesmerizing 3D drawing, even if they couldn’t see properly–as in a normal light environment. And when they started navigating the piece, they had to make certain decisions, which created a unique, personal experience, based on their own choices (the movement of their

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bodies lit up the segments of the piece they walked through). In other words, the final structure looked different for every viewer. “Zero part 2: Life” was a metaphor for one’s trajectory.

Part 1 of the experience, which I call the “Before Life” or the “Blank Slate” (Locke’s philosophy), depicts tunnels of energy, placed over one’s head– that could not be reached. To me these are present energies from before we are born and that keep going after death, even though our bodies stay behind. On part 3, the full circle (Zero) of the spirit and soul leaving the body again is completed, and one is confronted by a life-sized projection of themselves walking within the artwork they were just in (Part 2). It was like one could witness their life one last time, from a different perspective. Literally from outside of one’s body.

Zero provides the viewers with an intense, immersive 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 and how much importance has improvisation in your process?

First step of creating an installation (3D drawing) involves a lot of planing and improvising. I consider the space, its angles, architecture and environment, but allow myself to surprise and be surprised when building it.

And when you have people in the equation, meaning the viewer (which accounting for is part of the process), is very hard to be completely in control, so improvisation is there again. However, because my main goal when I create a piece in a public space is to engage the audience and

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communicate accurately the ideas behind the artwork, I have to be aware of every little detail, so the whole is consistent.

My installations are ephemeral and don’t last very long, thus I tend to focus on the viewer’s trajectory and the message they will get from the experience. I want them to feel inspired, even if for a second. My 3D drawings are actually an attempt to make the moment significant. They are asking for people to be present. They are a reflexion on life and how things are born to later desapear.

When drawing from the subconscious, almost oniric sphere, you recontestualize evokative symbols: your approach is pervaded with an effective non linear narrative that allows you to capture nonsharpness of physicality with an universal kind of language that brings to a new level of significance 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.

My life experiences–and therefore my memories from these experiences–built who I am. As I have an understanding of that and as I acknowledge my inner world, I’m able to investigate the questions raised within my trajectory, to create a language that is indeed universal because we can all relate to–as human beings. We have come from and are going towards the same place, we all have a body we didn’t choose to be in, we all feel things, we all dream at night.

These may be unimportant and abstract matters for some people because we won’t have concrete answers. At least, not clear

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enough to be verbalized and explained in words.

I believe in feeling, sensation, and symbols, rather than words, translate that more accurately.

The ambience you created for Fossil has reminded us of the concept of non lieu elaborated by French anthropologit Marc AugĂŠ: conveying both metaphoric and descriptive research, this work constructs of a concrete aesthetic that works on both subconscious and conscious level. As the late Franz West did in his installations, this work shows unconventional features 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?

I think it’s time for society to see artists as the ones who might indeed find the answers and change the world. We are thinkers. We are questioning important issues, things that are happening now and concern humanity. And we are innovating when depicting these issues, so to get people interested. We have a voice and our work can shake and change things.

With Fossil I started applying the knowledge I had from my studies on communication, design and contemporary symbols, and mixed them with my research on hieroglyphics and ancient history, cosmology, astrology, alchemy, etc, to develop a new geometric language, that everyone could understand.

By provoking direct relations with the spectatorship, you accomplish the difficult task of going beyond the surface of communication. We find this aspect particularly interesting since it is probabily the only way to accomplish the vital restoration

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you pursued in this work, concerning both the individuals and thier place in our ever changing societies: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, what kind of reactions did you expect to provoke in the viewers?

I want people to question things, to stop following because it’s easier. I want them to think for themselves, to react and have an opinion. But I also want to inspire them through art and its mesmerizing beauty, because artworks have that kind of power.

They are not mere objects, but rather triggers for experiences. So I treat every piece and project as an experience one will explore with their whole body. Every bit counts to create a context and to construct a cohesive bigger narrative, that will stick with people.

Another interesting work of yours that has particuarly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled Atlantis and we have appreciated the way it shows the aestethic consequences of a combination between the concrete feature of geometry and the abstract concept of symbols, exploring unexpected aspects of the functionality of language on the aesthetic level: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

I’m concerned with both form and function (meaning the visual part and the concept) because in the work I’m doing they are complementary things. And honestly, there are so much visual pollution in the current world that is the aesthetics of something that gets people interested. At least at first.

When I create a piece or dig into a project, I consider all aspects of it. Being accurate

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when communicating is key, and using the power that art has is wise.

I often use geometry because it’s a simple looking symbolic language, but it’s also extremely complex and can hold different meanings.

Atlantis was created as a reference to advanced lost civilizations (that used mathematics and sacred geometry on their constructions) and proposes that one looks at time in a non-linear way–but as a cycle. It investigates Plato’s writings on the island to reflect on whether or not it could actually have existed in a Golden Age, and destroyed overnight due to a Tsunami. Because maybe the civilizations that came after had no technology whatsoever, which forced them to start over, from scratch, with new beliefs and ways of leading and living. Why not?

We believe that interdisciplinary collaboration as the one that you have established with Hide-and-Seek for Structure and the Multiverse is today an ever growing force in Art and that some of 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, the artist Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of several practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

I really believe that collaboration helps you grow, because another person with a different perspective, skill set and life

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trajectory can teach you things you wouldn’t be able to grasp otherwise. As a graphic designer I’m used to working in teams, and in art I’m definitely open for that.

The coding and interactive design part of Zero was actually a collaboration with an engineer and technologist called Alan Chatham, and the music behind the video in Fossil has the signature of sound artist Matt Herron.

Over these eight years your works have been internationally showcased in several occasions, including your recent exhibition at the JustMAD–Contemporary Art Fair in Madrid. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create 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?

I’m a passionate and curious person who will explore subjects that inspire or challenge the self. I’m always looking into evolving and expanding and that is my biggest motivation. What I create is directly connected to what drives me and the conclusions I reach, though also in tuned with the collective. Shaking to change people’s perspective is a very important task and I need to observe their reactions when engaging with the participatory work I make, if I want to provoke any shift. However, it would feel limiting, so I don’t start a project with the

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audience in mind, specially when I don’t require their direct participation (paintings).

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Sabrina. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects?

How do you see your work evolving

Thank you ARTiculAction for the engaging questions and the reader for getting through the end!

In the future I’ll be dealing with the natural evolution of finding a portal to another dimension, to actually creating this other dimension. Stay tuned: www.sabrinabarrios.com | Instagram: @sabrina_barrios Below are a few exhibits I’m in: - Bains Connective | Brussels, Belgium | March 1-31, 2016 - AIM–The Bronx Museum | New York, USA | April 26-August 2, 2016 - The Wassaic Project Summer Exhibition | Wassaic, NY, USA | June-September, 2016 - The Vanderbilt Republic | New York, USA | May-September, 2016

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

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Maya Eliya Stein Lives and works in Atlanta and Jerusalem

An artist's statement

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create extended media paintings that investigate the urban landscape through quotidian language in architecture. My creative process is driven by the venture of capturing a place.

My premise is that even within globalization and standardization in America, it is still possible to find elements that are uniquely

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connected to a place, vernacular elements, that are a worthy subject to highlight and uncover.

Since my move from New York to Atlanta, my focus has turned to suburban life style and driving culture as means to understand Atlanta as well as other similar environments across America.

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Maya Eliya Stein An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Isabelle Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Atlanta based artist Maya Eliya Stein's work explores a variety of issues concerning our everchanging and stereotypized society to accomplish an insightful process od decodification around the elusive notion of place. In her installation As I Lay Dying Too, that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she unveils the connections between our perceptual process and our cultural substratum to challenge it, drawing the viewers into a multilayered experience. One of the most convincing aspect of Stein's approach is the way it condenses the permanent flow of associations in the realm of memory and experience: we are really pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Maya and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and having degreed from the High school Education Ort-Ramot Jerusalem, you moved to the United States to nurture your education with a Bachelor of Fine Arts that you received from the Hunter College, New York: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist?

And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you

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

Thank you for the warm welcome ARTiculAction, thanks for having me here! My background is a little diverse. I was born in Atlanta and moved to Israel when I was six years old. My family settled on a small Kibbutz by the Dead Sea, so I grew up somewhat secluded and sheltered within the confounds of the Kibbutz. I received my High School education in Jerusalem, and a year after completing my mandatory Army service I moved back to the states and received my Bachelor’s at Hunter College. Now I’ve come full circle because I’m back in Atlanta working on my MFA. I think these experiences influence my Art making a great deal although I always feel like I want to block them out and regard them as irrelevant. I often say that I am not interested in exploring myself through art making or expressing my personal opinions, but rather the opposite, I try to imagine myself as a mirror. My work simply mirrors my surroundings a reflection of what I see. At the same time, I recognize that this is an impossible wish because nobody can completely cancel themselves out – even artists like Sherrie Levine still make the decision regarding which artist to appropriate, and my process includes many decisions, such as which element of my surrounding I’m going to abstract

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from their environment and how.

Sometimes I think of myself as a tourist in my backyard so this allows me to question everything around me no matter how mundane and trivial it is. I could argue that because of this process my cultural substratum is irrelevant, but the readers have to decide for themselves because I have a feeling I’m going to contradict myself through out the interview…

2) Your approach coherently encapsulates several techniques and your exploration of the urban landscape through quotidian language in architecture conveys a coherent and consistent sense of unity.Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.mayainthecity.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process and set up, we would like to ask you how did you develope your style and how do you conceive your works.

In short, my work stems from a wish to abstract a certain shade of truthiness of a place, and in turn to present it to the people that live in that place. I try to use different approaches and processes to speak about the idea of place and to obtain a certain truth. Right now I am very involved in the process of investigating Atlanta Georgia because I am living here now. I also think Atlanta is really interesting as a subject because the city carries a lot of contradictions. For one, it is located in the South of the United States with

all the baggage and history that’s attached to it, yet at the same time it is a paved over city invaded by people from all over the world including many transplants from the Yankee North. I think the city attempts to project a persona that I like to refer to as “The New South” and much of my work tries to question what that is. At the same time I am able to pull from my personal experience because I was born in Atlanta so there are personal elements as well. For example: My Own Private Idaho is an installation that questions if authentic individuality can be found in different states across America. To do this I used Google maps, typed in the street address I was born on, 3406 Lori Lane, and printed out the images of all the 3406 Lori Lanes I could find across America. There are many almost one or two per state. The installation of the Google map photos became both an investigation of the authenticity in the States but also of my own parallel universes that exist out there and I can visit through my computer. Another example would be As I Lay Dying 1, where I try to teach myself how to speak with a southern accent by repeating southern phrases. If I was to stay in Atlanta instead of moving away as I child, I might of had a southern accent today.

Interesting enough you doesn’t hear a lot of southern accents in Atlanta but it still feels like an authentic vernacular to this place. These things

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become investigations of myself, but at the same time they function as investigations of American identity.

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected "As I Lay Dying Too", an interesting audio installation that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your inquiry into the viewer’s preconceptions of southern vernacular is the way it brings to a new level of siginificance the notion of uniqueness in an ever standardized society, urging us to rethink about the way we relate ourselves to the elisve concept of identity: while walking our readers through the genesis of this project, would you shed light on the way your main source of inspirations?

As I Lay Dying Too is inspired by William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying published in 1930. Literature has always played an important role in my life, especially Faulkner. As a kid growing up in Israel, I was always a little different because I was the American girl from a far away land; most of the kids growing up with me on the Kibbutz have hardly ever been outside of the Kibbutz not to mention traveling to a different country. So I was always curious and a bit nostalgic about the place where I was from. As a teenager I was a big reader and it was about that time when I discovered Faulkner. Because of Faulkner, I developed this idea about the South, about it’s identity as a place. When I came back to Atlanta as an MFA student I questioned if that identity still exists or ever existed. When I conceived this project, I chose some quotes from one of

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the female characters out of the book.

Then I asked my dear friend Cheryl Passarella, who lives across the street from me, to read the quotes so I could record her beautiful voice and accent. I hung a few rusty pipes from the walls and ceilings so the pipes look like they’re venting the sound of Faulkner instead of air. It also was a conscious decision to try to fuse the vernacular of language and the vernacular of architecture together in order to speak about place. To some degree, I wanted to elevate the southern accent by using noble prize literature to question how this vernacular is valued, and challenge some preconceptions.

Drawing from accessible elements from universal imagery, "As I Lay Dying Too" provokes direct relations in the viewers and accomplishes the difficult task of going beyond the surface of communication. We find this aspect particularly interesting since it is probabily the only way to accomplish such a vital restoration you pursued in this work, concerning both the individuals and thier place in our ever changing societies: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, what kind of reactions did you expect to provoke in the viewers?

I really like the way you’re using the word restoration because there is a strong element of restoration in the work, a restoration of identity in a sense.

I find this question to be a little tricky but I will try to answer in the best way I can.

For me the best Art is always in the public sphere (or civic spaces as James Howard Kunstler calls it) but not necessarily public Art. Unfortunately, in the United States public Art functions as outdoor

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decorations because it depends on who is going to pay for it. If the city is going to pay for a public piece they definitely don’t want to offend anyone, or if a corporate office is paying they will cater to their own tastes which are often decorative. Hence, it can be challenging to figure out the right context to present the public with social engaged art. That being said, I love the idea of working within the public space and to challenge local preconceptions. For example, the Artist Kay Lee Patton and I collaborate sometimes on different projects. Currently we

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are working on a project named Writing On Walls where we paint the confederate flag on a public wall in order to see how Atlanta residents will react to it. I think the confederate flag is an arbitrary symbol today – some people are intimidated and some people are nostalgic. Essentially we are questioning who is “The New South” and what that means, but it can be tricky to find the right context to speak about these things. Luckily there are some avenues that are still open and are not afraid of being politically incorrect. In As I Lay Dying Too and in Writing

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on Walls it’s hard to tell how people would react but I like to be on a bit of shaky grounds in regards to the questions I’m asking the viewer. Unfortunately, parts of the South are still conservative especially when it comes to Art, but that’s also part of the reason why its interesting working here.

"As I Lay Dying Too" provides the viewers with an immersive 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 and how much importance has improvisation in your process?

Technically, the immersive qualities are not always important in the work. If I manage to use elements from a viewers’ familiar environment and create for them a feeling of connection and recognition, then the immersive environment would be created in the viewers’ minds, essentially that is the goal of the work. Sometimes I think of my intentions as simulating the same reaction in the brain that happens when we read a book and the fictional character happens to walk into our favorite coffee shop or something similar to that; a whole space of familiarity is created because suddenly our consciousness and the character occupy the same space in reality.

As for public art, in suburban cities such as Atlanta there is a lack of civic spaces that does not revolve around consumerism. When you think about it most public spaces constitute parking lots, highways and malls. This can be interpreted as a crisis of community and identity through out America. I think that public Art can

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be crucial in generating a sense of identity in public spheres, and slowly people are realizing this. Hopefully urban developments will move more towards developing real communities rather then just continuing to create pop up subdivisions that lack any sense of individuality.

Your successful attempt to decode the idea of a place and recreate it allows you to accomplish the difficult task of constructing of a concrete aesthetic that works on both subconscious and conscious level. As the late Franz West did in his installations, "Say it With A Kiss" and "Corner" show unconventional features in the way they deconstruct common imagery in order to assemble it in a personal vision, 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 opinion about this?

It is interesting that you speak about probing beneath the surface when I am exploring the surface itself. In Corner and in Say it with a kiss I am abstracting pieces of the environment and representing them as cultural artifacts. The surfaces here can be thought of as clothing. The use of common imagery allows me to access a vernacular language that already exists. All I have to do is tap into this language and manipulate it in order to ask questions. A fun example would be Welcme Home where I use the familiar signage of Waffle House in order to playfully question if this constitutes the idea of home. Waffle House is notorious to appear in every small town in the South

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East. The highways and civic spaces are plagued with this sign to the point that the waffle house becomes a civic concept in itself (also Waffle House originated in Atlanta and the locals know this).

Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled "welcme home" and is a part of

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your On Plastic series. Highlighting the evokative potential of elements belonging to both universal imagery and personal sphere you challenge the relation between our cultural substratum and our limbic perceptual 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?

I am a strong believer in chance. In my process I try to leave room for chance because it is a tool that allows me to make mistakes that I can learn from. I also feel that chance gives a certain airiness to the works, so they are not entirely planed out. A big influence in

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this regard is Francis Bacon. In his well know interview with David Sylvester he talks at length about chance. I know some painters plan out the composition and the colors of their work meticulously and then they just lay them out. I don’t understand the point of working this way because you know exactly what you’re going to get. I like to have a solid idea, to understand my intentions, and work from there. It is sometimes a more scary and rocky road but more gratifying if it turns out well. However, sometimes I do know exactly what the work would look like but I’m not sure how it would impact the viewer. For example, in Welcme Home I really didn’t know if people would recognize it as the waffle house sign or if they would understand the irony, yet I knew exactly what I want the piece to look like. Mimicry plays an important role here. Because I’m trying to appropriate a specific vernacular language, I don’t have to reinvent anything. The language is right there for me to mimic in order to communicate with the local viewer. At the same time the work shouldn’t be a complete imitation of the real object. I want it to be slightly uncanny so the viewer sees something familiar but altered. One of the first signage pieces I made was a gas station Shell sign. I placed the sign right side up but I realized that because we see these signs everyday they become invisible. When I turned it up side down it suddenly had presence.

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

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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

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opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

I have a lot of conversations about this subject with different artists. Because of the state the world is in, some artists

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believe that they have to use their creative powers politically and to push their agenda. I admire these artists but I’m not one of them. My role as an artist is to be a framer, possibly a framer of culture. I can’t give the answers just ask the questions. I grew up in Israel in the 90’s when the political situation was very dire, buses were blowing up daily, yet the government was trying to scramble for peace with the Palestinians. I was a teenager when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated; it was devastating then and still is today. I recently tried to watch Amos Gitai’s Film Rabin The Last Day with my Mom and both of us couldn’t get through it, it was too painful! So I am a huge skeptic when it comes to politics and their ability to create change and really help people for the better. I believe in the truth that Art offers. It has the power to reflect a truth and show people that life can be beautiful, that there is a higher purpose.

Art can elevate the consciousness and allow people to open their minds to dream of alternate possibilities. I don’t think of my art as political because I don’t have agendas, but I ask questions that might rub people the wrong way. I remember when I first showed My Own Private Idaho, one person got really upset because he thought I was making a statement about simulacra and banality in the United States. I told him I was doing the opposite; I was inviting people to find the differences, and he was upset because he only saw the similarities.

Over these thirteen years your works have been showcased in several occasions, both in Israel and in the United States. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create

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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?

The language I use is determined by the vernacular of the place. I will use whatever means available to me to access this language and challenge it.

When I lived in New York, the language I was using was very different much more layered and gritty. The different vernacular allowed me to create very different work and shifted the nature of the investigations.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Maya. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects?

How do you see your work evolving?

There are many future projects in the near future. I plan on continuing to work with literature and memory in connection to the South, specifically Faulkner’s great book Absalom Absalom. Also, I’m working on creating audio landscape paintings that would be available soon online. As for the direction of my work it depends on where I’m going to be. I might be relocating again soon and there is no way to know how that would impact my work.

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

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N igel Tan Lives and works in Singapore

An artist's statement

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y work primarily revolves around a theme that evokes curiosity through a multi sensory environment with the use of various mediums, blending form and texture to build layers within a chaotic structure. I use sound as a basis of my work, creating diverse sonic spectrums through experimentation, intuition and selfdiscovery.

and opposes comfort by discovering something new through the unique process of interpretation. Coming from a film background, I am always seeking new ways to interconnect my ideas through audiovisual experimentation, taking away the usual approach to filmmaking. I want the simplicity of silence and a blank frame to speak the same as a piece of music paired with a narrative.

I am inspired by the daily life. From thought and unanswered questions to the simple use of our senses evaluating and understanding that which is around us. My main body of work delves into experimental and abstract form that explores the daily life through contrasting cultures, space and environment. These sonic spatial structures bring about a holistic awareness that is necessary to provoke thought in turn bringing about a change. This greatly influences my work as a composer.

My main area of interest lies in the splendour and vastness of installation art. I feel the importance of creating works that are interactive, though static in appearance, by allowing audiences to participate through simple gestures and create their own unique experience. The end result changes with each indeterminate gesture where every conscious choice is in accordance to a relationship with my work. This operates similarly to a performance where the interaction between artists and audiences are vital in creating a memorable experience.

I feel a connection between sound and visuals in an organic way that formulates into a reality that we are all familiar with.

This creates an experience that challenges

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Nigel Tan An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Isabelle Scott, curator

inform the way you relate yourself to artmaking and to the aesthetic problem in general?

articulaction@post.com

Multidisciplinary artist Nigel Tan's work explores a variety of issues, inviting the viewers to rethink about the notions of perception and of memory. While using use sound as a basis of his works, his inquiry into the perceptual dimension allows him to investigate about apparently unrelated concepts as space and gesture. In his recent work Flux that we'll be discussing in the following pages, he accomplishes an insightful exploration of the interaction between past, present and future by interrogating space, memory and time. One of the most convincing aspect of Tan's approach is the way it challenges the viewers' process of interpretation drawing them into a multilayered experience: we are really pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production.

Hello Nigel and a warm 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 graduated with a diploma in Film, Sound and Video from Singapore’s Ngee Ann Polytechnic, you moved to Australia to nurture your education with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Contemporary Music that you have recently received from the University Of Melbourne’s Victorian College of Arts.

How do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum

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Thanks for having me as part of this issue.

Well, firstly I come from Singapore and I grew up as an avid self-taught musician, delving into various bands and genres of music which eventually pushed me to take it more seriously and led to a route in which music would take the front seat. The best bet at that time was to enter the media or film industry as a composer, sound designer or engineer. I then decided to do a three-year diploma in Film, Sound and Video that innately blossomed my love for cinema. During that time I focused on sound as the primary medium and decided the best thing to do was to receive formal education in music. That was when I decided to leave to Melbourne, Australia and further my education by embarking on a degree in Interactive Composition.

Another main reason why I didn’t stay in Singapore to further my education was due to the almost nonexistent music scene that to me is nothing more than a stigmatized, stifling and self-indulgent community. So anyway, the time spent on my degree molded my artistry as I became more interested in unconventional, unstructured and unpredictable music and sound. I started to dabble in unusual techniques such as graphic notations, free improv, indeterminate processes and so on.

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Thanks to my prior knowledge in video production, I decided to marry both sound and video and started creating my own audiovisual work. This then gradually pushed me to create audiovisual installations, which thankfully were very well received, and thus decided to carry on furthering my education by undertaking a Master of Fine Art at RMIT Universitythat I completed last year in 2015.

My work is a direct reflection and representation of my life experiences and it’s therefore more personal and subjective. I believe culturally it’s embedded in my blood. Having grown up in South East Asia, to tackle issues that bother me personally such as politics, environment, growth, personalities etc. and comparing it with other places I’ve lived such as Australia, is only natural.

That I believe is most evident in my work and has also shaped my current direction as an artist.

Your approach coherently encapsulates several disciplines and reveals an incessant search of an organic investigation about an unconventional kind of aesthetic experience that provide the realm of daily experience a stimulating expansion. 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 http://nigeltanmusic.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process and set up, we would like to ask you how did you develop your style and how do you conceive your works.

I have always been a sonic and visual person, more kinesthetic and process orientated since young. Influenced by the

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experimental composers of the 20th century, I began to dabble with unorthodox ways to create my work. For example if I get bored of structure, I create chaos and vice versa or maybe even a balance of both but always keeping in mind that the process is the work. I guess that’s what developed my appreciation and attention to daily life, by taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary or obvious or uncomfortable or grotesque… you get the picture.

I usually start with a theme or keywords then I begin expanding on that by drawing out a mind-map and creating relationships between my thought process and the subject of the work. From there I’ll choose my medium which will be sound, video or both, bearing in mind the importance of the exhibition space or as I call it “reaction space”. Space is extremely vital in my practice and acts as the third medium in my work. Especially with sound and video, physical architecture has the ability to make or break the work as the experience changes drastically in varied spaces.

Therefore, I’ll often think of placement, direction and overall planning of the space before I start making the work.

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Flux, 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 this work is the way your inquiry into the liminal area in which past, present and future find an unexpected point of convergence brings to a new level of significance to the elusive notion of memory, urging us to rethink and sometimes even subvert the way we relate ourselves to such ubiquitous concept: while walking our readers through the genesis of Flux,

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would you shed light on the the role of memory in your work?

Flux was a commissioned work for the Zentai Art Festival held in Singapore in 2015. Artist had to make work with zentai suits, which were skin-tight suits of various colours that covered the body head to toe.

I immediately had the idea to create a dance piece as the suit involves a body and from there it naturally evolved into movement and that became the overall theme that resounded with the work.

Interestingly enough memory became a vital part of the project as I started to think of the movement of time, and as you’ve mentioned, the inquiry into past, present and future. Not just physically but cognitively as well. The suit then became a metaphor of timelessness or agelessness also representing neutrality, as you’re unable to make out who is under the suit.

This then enabled me to solely concentrate on the aspect of memory between the past, present and future.

Another part of the work is to highlight awareness through emphasis of the everyday environment and things often taken for granted in our current technologically fueled society. This being the city of Melbourne, the locations featured are of diverse natural and manmade landscapes that beautifully highlight the transition of time that evokes familiarity yet feels distant in some way, again drawing on memory.

Drawing from accessible and evocative elements from universal imagery, Flux provokes direct relations in the viewers and accomplishes the difficult task of going beyond the surface of communication. We find this aspect particularly interesting since it is probably the only way to accomplish the vital restoration you pursued in this

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work, concerning both the individuals and their place in our ever changing societies: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, what kind of reactions did you expect to provoke in the viewers?

I feel it is extremely important that art reaches the public sphere not just as art in a public space but as a medium that transcends physicality and thought.

Society is ever changing just like art and many other things so to think that something is currently not important or worth the change, naturally affects the next generation to question why and most of the time it remains unresolved not because society doesn’t want it but because it is deemed unimportant. So with Flux I wanted to question this unimportance, the unnoticeable and toy with the idea of change.

With such a work that makes and takes the art from the public sphere and places it in a context of a gallery or indoor space, creates this irony and paradox that questions what we are really seeing. What makes art different in a gallery or in a public space? Yes, the physical properties of it changes like acoustics, volume and so on, but what really changes? We take time off to explore a gallery space intently but we don’t often choose to do the same with our immediate environments. We’re naturally wired to take things for granted and that is why I feel that Flux tackles this issue in both an obvious and subliminal way.

When it was first exhibited in Singapore and Castlemaine (Victoria, Australia), viewers who ever been to Melbourne’s inner city would mostly respond with “where did you shoot this?” or “this is familiar but I can’t recall where exactly.”

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Well this work will be exhibiting from the 18th to the 31st of March 2016 at Brunswick Street Gallery which is Melbourne inner city where I shot most of the footage so it’ll interesting to hear viewer’s comments.

Flux provides the viewers with an intense, immersive 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 and how much importance has improvisation in your process?

I believe in garnering a response or reaction for my work and Flux is no different. My intent is pretty clear and regardless whether you know the background or context of the work, it’ll still be an experience, quite a hypnotic one actually. This entire process was a learning curve as tackling something as extensive as movement might result in something too generic or far-fetched. Therefore, by dissecting movement into various groups like the physical, cognitive, conscious and unconscious, I am then able to come up with a process that truly reflects time as an encounter and experience.

Improvisation and chance is huge in all my works. Indeterminate processes are at the heart of all my work as I believe the unpredictability and eccentricity of the work gives it its uniqueness, which can never be repeated. By giving Francesca (the dancer/choreographer) the freedom to improvise accentuates the chaos aspect of my inquiry. It also gives a sense of realism by shooting in real time instead of piecing them together like a collage. I’ve gone through a series of brainstorms including contextual and technical experiments even before shooting began, keeping in mind the

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inquiries mentioned before. To kick things off, I had to firstly separate this piece into video and sound. Then split them up into preproduction, production and post-production.

Within each of this categories lay a contextual exploration/experimentation and technical execution.

Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled Cognizance: your successful attempt to accomplish an exploration of thought as an evolving landscape works on both subconscious and conscious level. As the late Franz West did in his installations, this work shows unconventional features 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?

Whatever you’ve mentioned is exactly what this work is about; the collective unconscious, which in this case, particularly within the realm of thought. It is important that artists continue to dig beneath the surface and target the subconscious as a means to directly affect our consciousness. I think for me it came about very naturally due to my background in music and from the study of psychology in music. Just like how tones, melody, timbre and rhythm affect our emotions, it applies exactly the same way in all mediums of art. Our collective subconscious is more active than our physical consciousness, from dreams to thought to pain and emotion.

Change is from within and so is our inert response, therefore much of my current work revolves around the diminished attention

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span of our society due to rapid technological advancements and dependency. From this, we have now lost the ability to react on a subconscious level and therefore have become more impulsive and result oriented.

The process is lost, the natural way of living is almost lost, therefore I wish to try and salvage what I can with my work. Cognizance plays with collage of the everyday life in contrast with jarring imagery of patients with mental illnesses. I’ve used colours and manipulation to create that discomfort for viewers. A lot goes on in that video even though it runs for about 4 minutes. The work aims to subject the viewer into a realm that is scary and frighteningly real.

I recently finished a new work titled Nature Nurture which is a direct inquiry toward attention span and our current reliance on technology. This work however is directed toward the physical consciousness and aims to create an obvious discomfort for viewers.

However, I believe on a subconscious level it works exactly the same way as Cognizance.

As you have remarked, your daily life is for you an extremely important source of inspiration: Cognizance also shows a mix between spontaneity and rigorous composition: such effective combination capable of walking the viewers into a multilayered experience. So we would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process, both to create and to relate oneself to a work of art... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

As I’ve mentioned before, my experiences directly link with the work and yes is an absolutely indispensable part of my creative process. I believe it varies from person to person and also the purpose of the work. I guess it’s very subjective but based on past

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experiences and attending different shows, as it is rather natural that the work derives from experience.

Definitely the creative process can be segregated from direct experience. Lets take for instance the Fluxus artists or Dadaists, who made work that were almost completely random. Instead of relying on experience to create the work, some artists rely on randomness to create the experience. For example, multi-sensory installations or multi-channel sound installations that seek to change physical and cognitive perception, altering reality by leading participants into creating a new experience.

I have created such works before, one of them titled Stasis, which was a multichannel sound installation for a dark room.

As you can deduce from the title, I sought to create stasis or stagnancy. This was more of an experiment rather than a resolved work as I sought to disconnect listeners to their own reality. Instead, it went the other way and encouraged them to think more. I guess that comes naturally with art as we’re meant to think and engage rather than starve the senses.

There are always extremes and I feel therefore that the disconnection with experience is possible.

We believe that interdisciplinary collaboration as the one that you have established with Francesca Meale for Flux is today an ever growing force in Art and that some of 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, the artist Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something

as a synthesis of several practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

It’s all about collaborations now not just for artistic growth but also develops communication, cultural exchange and most importantly innovation. I’ve been a firm believer of collaborations ever since attending a subject at university known as Poetics of The Body, which was headed by my mentor and teacher composer David Shea. The heart of the subject was essentially a gathering of various schools of thought and subjects into one place and seeing what happens.

This principle of mash ups and unorthodox learning became the corner stone of my entire being and practice. I started to look away from my own specialty to experience something new and fresh. If I were to write a music score, I would look to architecture for inspiration such as the study of form, space and structure. There is no right or wrong in collaborations, what is important is the vision and similar understanding to each others practice. It’s a constant exchange, which ultimately should lead to growth and new understanding.

Of course collaborations are about finding other individuals that can do what you can’t but that’s just the fundamental part of it. It digs deeper than that as you can gather from what I explained earlier on. It gets a little trickier when you work with individuals outside of your discipline like for instance a project I worked on titled Tethered was a collaboration between photographer, app developer and myself doing the music. It was an eclectic mix of talent but we managed to pull it through after multiple brainstorms. It’s really good

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as sometimes you think your idea works best but then someone else throws you an even better idea. That’s when you really appreciate the exchange. Especially when you’re collaborating with individuals outside of your discipline. So yes, collaborate. I’m keen to collaborate with anyone so please if you’re reading this and you’re even slightly interested then do not hesitate to contact me.

mentioned before, when I think about space, I naturally think about audience participation or reaction. Art is meant for the masses and to me is meant to evoke change and development. It’s more than just “oh that’s cool”, it is the ability to create a new thought, sort of like planting a seed or an idea that slowly grows with the added personal experience to eventually lead to a significant change.

One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create 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?

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

I believe all my work is somehow informed by my query toward the subconscious and how I can create this awareness is through that direct involvement. To me, even a response to the space is an involvement.

Basically, with mediums such as video and sound, it comes rather naturally that viewers react and respond to the work be it maneuvering around the space, or picking up a chair to sit directly in front of the screen or putting their ears against the speaker because the sound is really soft and so on. That to me is the “direct involvement” with my work and participants.

Yes, it is an important component to my work and practice, and I do think about participant’s involvement during the planning stages. It comes with such contemporary work that involves technology and spatial manipulation. As I’ve

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Thank you for having me on this issue, hope I wasn’t too boring. I’ve currently embarked on a local Artist in Residency at Instinc Art Space and Gallery Singapore for a month and the exhibition will take place from the 7th to 9th April 2016. If you’re in Singapore do come down and say hi. Also, they are keen to host international artists for residency programs all year round so do google them and I’ll see you in Singapore.

I guess artistically I’ll continue to endeavor toward doing work that represents my direct experiences and try to connect with audiences on a deeper level. Other than that I might want to go back to music and write some stuff for performers, since I’ve been sitting on a few compositional ideas.

I’m quite a scatterbrain so as of now I’m trying to concentrate on this residency and see where it leads me. You can get more updates and news of what I’m up to at http://nigeltanmusic.com/news.

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

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R Prost Lives and works in Evanston, Illinois, USA

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y work deals with language and it has its roots more in visual poetry than conceptual art.

The sensibility in my work is a literary sensibility and I use language as language.

I make objects in order to give words a more physical presence.

I am interested in re-linking words and things.

Emerson says, “Words and deeds are indifferent modes of the divine activity.”

Words and the objects they signify are two aspects of one entity.

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Word-objects move language from noetic space to real space.

Physical presence introduces the notion of time, but the language incorporated into these objects somehow transcends the objects themselves. Language is not finite.

My work’s ultimate goal is simple communication made possible by the intrinsic poetry of words.

There is an old Chinese adage to which I subscribe: “Only plain food has real taste.”

R.Prost

Veritas No. 47 book, cutting board, mixed media 1.75” x 13” x 10.5”

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

Unconventional and captivating, the works of R. Prost's work explores the relationship between language and physicality, providing the viewers with an unique multilayered experience. Crossing the elusive boundary that defines the tactile nature of objects and the realm of abstraction, his works urge us to rethink about such apparently conflictual relation to find unexpected points of convergence.

One of the most convincing aspect of R.Prost's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of unveiling that words and the objects they signify are two aspects of one entity: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production.

Hello R. Prost and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? While your education concerns the fiel of liberal arts, over these years you have developed an effective approach concerning the chance of establishing direct relation with the viewers: what are the most remarlable experiences that has influenced your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem?

Thank you for inviting me. I am pleased to be able to discuss my work with your readers.

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The part of my educational background which is relevant to my work is in poetry. I studied with several well-known poets and through them was introduced to many eminent members of the poetic world.

What I noticed was that there were two characteristics which these poets shared.

The first was that their art was paramount in their lives. The second was that none of them, even the most famous, could earn a living writing poetry.

I felt I had the required interest and dedication. And when I acknowledged that there would be no dependence for making a living upon my work, my work was liberated to follow its own course. There would be no temptation to make work which would sell.

One cannot be taught to write or make art.

One can learn, say, how to handle paint but you need to learn to paint on you own.

Since I was still interested in writing, I began experimenting with the typography on the page. Pieces were made which engaged the reader more as a viewer.

Purely visual elements were introduced.

Poems were made which, while still printed on paper, necessitated the viewer to move the page in various ways to take in the text. For example, several pieces were printed in a square around a center axis so that the reader had to turn the sheet to read the piece. The reader had to become more physically aware of the action of reading. I was interested in the poem as an object early on.

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Life, book, rat trap, 1” x 12” x 7”

If one is interested in writing one is interested in books. Books appealed to me both as collections of written material and as objects in themselves. I still work with books. I make artist's books and book objects.

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Your approach coherently encapsulates several viewpoints and reveals an incessant search of an organic investigation about the a multiplicity of meanings that can be carried by words.

The results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of harmony and

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did you develope your style and how do you conceive your works.

The concept of language fascinates me. So many inventions of human beings are abstractions from nature. Language is not.

Language is entirely dependent upon consensus. That a given cluster of sounds or (in my case) marks upon a page will designate a giraffe while a different cluster will mean a spoon is completely arbitrary except that it has been agreed upon by speakers of English. Yet everyone has a unique, personal interpretation for a given word. The simple word "chair" can encompass a wide range of types from a three-legged milking stool to a king's throne. Each person envisions a different version of a chair when hearing this word.

This phenomenon only increases when discussing more abstract concepts such as love or brotherhood or heaven.

I work very intuitively and language is my chosen medium.

I don't really have a consistent process.

Looking over my work as a whole, I might be said to have a strategy. Generally, I present a piece of language in an unusual or uncomfortable environment to see how it responds.

To borrow a phrase from the poet Edward Dorn, I am "road-testing the language".

unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.r-prost.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process and set up, we would like to ask you how

The intention is to make this particular conjunction of word and object interdependent and unique. The work relies on the viewer to open it individually and outward. Ezra Pound said that the job of the poet is to get the words right. I take that as my job too.

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Gaki, an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once

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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 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 believe that personal experience informs everything that we as people do. Personal experience certainly affects the way in which we view a work of art. It has to incline us to types of art which subliminally speak to us.

As far as disconnecting the creative process from personal experience, I believe it to be possible. But why would that be advantageous? I see art as a unifying practice, bringing people to a commonality. Personal experience is what we share, even if appears disparate and is interpreted in various ways.

Art's entire function may be to show what it is to be a human, what it is to be human.

Personal experience is a significant part of creativity for me. My work presents to the viewer what I have found in the hopes that he or she will find it interesting or helpful.

Highlighting the evokative potential of words you challenge the relation between our cultural substratum and our limbic perceptual 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, how would you define the relationship between the universal imagery from

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Gaki No. 4 canvas, wood, mixed media 14” x 23” x 1.5”

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Gaki No. 10, canvas, wood, mixed media, 10” x 12.5” x 3”

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which you draw from for your reminders to physicality and the cultural or even personal substratum to whim belongs the words you use? We daresay that you would to go beyond such dichotomy...

This is a complex question. I think it speaks, at least in part, to one's world view. I believe in a deep interconnectedness of everything. I'm not sure any effort is required to relate diverse concepts or images based on words.

Perhaps a useful metaphor would be quantum phase entanglement. Everything has something akin to a memory of being one with the rest of creation.

The Gaki series is pertinent here. Gaki is Japanese for "hungry ghost." This refers to a being in a realm of the afterlife caught between death and the attainment of rest.

These pieces are constructed from the materials of traditional painting -- canvas tacked to a wooden armature.

These canvases, however, are remnants and bear a word. They have both intellectual and visceral components.

Each is a single object which exists the way all other entities exist. Each can be considered singularly or within a context as big as the universe. We as organisms can be considered similarly. There is always a question of perspective.

Your unconventional approach brings to a new level of significance the relationship between time and language and allows you to accomplish the difficult task of constructing of a concrete aesthetic that works on both subconscious and conscious level. As the late Franz West did in his installations, Saku shows captivating features in the way it deconstructs common imagery in order to assemble it in a personal vision, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection.

Artists are always interested in probing to

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Gaki No. 7, canvas, wood, mixed media, 8” x 10” x 1.5”

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 opinion about this?

A concrete aesthetic is a good framework within which to discuss the Saku series.

The Saku pieces are solid, monolithic pieces.

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Saku is Japanese for "fence." A fence can include and protect or exclude and defend.

These works, like most of my works, are relatively small. Their size will not overwhelm. And again like most of my work, they are black and white. They are visually uncomplicated, yet they can remain somehow intransigent.

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Gaki No. 6, canvas, wood, mixed media, 15” x 13” x 3”

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Saku No. 23, wood, mixed media, 8.5” x 10.5” x 1.25”

The aspect of time does not enter into a discussion here because there is no implicit prior or future condition available.

These pieces present the viewer with a confrontation. This offers, as you rightly point out, an arena for personal reflection.

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Personal responses open an avenue to the inner self.

Your successful attempt to give words and time a more physical presence questions the tactile feature of abstract notions. In the interesting 1 second, you unveiled the visual feature of information

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Saku No. 2, wood, mixed media, 11.5” x 14.5” x 1.5”

through an effective non linear narrative that establish direct relations with the viewers: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within

the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

Language, by its nature, deals in abstract notions. Personal consideration of

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conceptual material needs a psychological component.

The association of one second of time with a brick is both humorous and lugubrious. A life is built of seconds the way a building is made of bricks.

Each second, each brick is both significant and easily overlooked. My piece Three Red Words is similar in its functioning. This piece is itself and nothing else. Its focus is trained inward. It is an example of itself.

Writers and poets often try to find a way to say two things at once.

The literary object is my particular solution.

The individuality of each object would preclude any narrative for the work in general. Rather, I see these works as a catalog of independent experiences. They are a series of random digits. They are akin to Wordsworth's "spots of time".

As you have remarked once, your work’s ultimate goal is simple communication made possible by the intrinsic poetry of words: how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience? In particular, how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

All communication requires two parties.

My part of the dialog is the presentation of a piece of art. The other part is provided by the viewer who brings his or her unique bundle of thoughts, memories, association, and experiences to this encounter. A pleasant conversation is the hope.

Art in public spaces makes art available to those who would not or have not intentionally sought it out by visiting a gallery or museum. Its interaction with the

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Saku No. 22 wood, mixed media 9.5” x 13” x 2.75”

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Saku No. 18, wood, mixed media, 6” x 7” x 1.5”

viewer, therefore, is on a somewhat different footing.

This work is important but it has its complications.

Art, particularly large-scale art, is a luxury.

It should be considered only after the problems of homelessness, poverty, and

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crime are managed. This art can be used, however, to draw attention to social or political concerns and possibly indicate a course for resolution. Art has many capabilities.

Your successful attempt to create works that stand as record of existence allows

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Three Red Words, mixed media on canvas, 12� x 12�

you to capture non-sharpness with an universal kind of language, capable of bringing to a new level of significance the elusive still 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

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previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.

Memory is a necessary component of life, so it must be a factor in making art.

Memory seeps into my work. It is seldom a conscious incorporation and less seldom a starting point. The past wells up unexpectedly and on its own periodically.

My work tells me to stay in the present.

I am largely shaped by my past, by my history. It then becomes inevitable that the work will be informed by what has preceded it. My work can refer to memory in a generic way without making use of it in any special way.

Over these years your works have been internationally exhibited in several occasions: 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?

In making decisions about work, I do what feels right. I generally work on the premise the the viewer and I are on similar footing when it comes to language. So if a piece feels right to me it may feel right to the viewer. I do not believe I have have a privileged position when looking at a piece I have made.

Each viewer determines if the work speaks to him or her. This is the unpredictability and beauty of language.

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Lesson No. 1, brick, mixed media, 2.5” x 8” x 4”

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

The Gaki and Saku series will continue and I have several artist's books in various stages of completion.

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Recently I have been exploring how words produce meaning by putting several random words into proximity on a page.

It appears that no matter how disjunct these words are, there is some syntax which is generated and a viable mental image is created. I am looking in this direction purely from an artistic standpoint.

This is not scientific research but a new avenue which might prove interesting.

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

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S tephanie Camfield Lives and works in Detroit, USA

An artist's statement

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was a teenager living near Detroit when the nation’s economy began to unravel. I, like others, witnessed a bustling metro area fall into a joblessness, material decay, and widespread human depression. I have always been motivated by a desire to help others, with my inspiration being Detroit. This body of work documents my exploration into the primary social issues: unemployment, deterioration of property, homelessness and mental illness that I’ve identified as the outward signs of urban decay in Detroit, Michigan.

I began my research for this project by developing a personal method of inquiry that allowed me to combine my work as a photographer and graphic designer to advocate for change. I travelled back to Detroit with a camera and a notepad to document the homeless, the obviously mentally ill, and the abandoned buildings that remained in the city. The individuals I met were angered by their circumstances and unresponsive to the questions of an obvious intruder. Half of the people I met had no job, no intention of getting a job or had a drug and alcohol problem. Some lived in government assisted housing or shelters but most squatted

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in one of the numerous abandoned buildings.

They lived as scavengers in constant need of food, shelter, health/psychiatric care, employment, and personal safety.

By combining image and text, I worked with statistics and the personal narratives from people I encountered on the streets or in shelters. These pieces attempt to recreate the impact of my recent encounters within the city of Detroit. At the same time, I have been working on a non-profit organization —Third World America — that will respond to the devastation that continues to plague Detroit and other urban areas. My hope is that this organization will create an ongoing documentation of the social problems that continue to plague America and other counties. As an individual living in America, I cannot enact sweeping social change.

However, as an artist with an affinity for typography and a need to serve her community, I can produce works of art and a creative corporation that can bring attention to our most compelling social issues.

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Artist Stephanie Camfield's work explores a variety of social issues that affect our unstable and ever changing contemporary age. For her work entitled Third World America, that we'll be discussing in the next pages, she draws from her experience as a teenager, when she lived near Detroit as the nation’s economy began to unravel. Her approach rejects any conventional classification and crosses the elusive boundary that defines the area of perception from the realm of experience, to create a multilayered involvement with the viewers, who are invited to investigate the ubiquitous and conflictual relationship between humans and their environment. One of the most convincing aspect of Camfield's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of exploring the liminal space between the ephemeral and the eternal. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to her captivating artistic production.

high school. I studied at a few local colleges before my husband and I traveled around the country.

You have a solid formal training and you hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts that you received from the Austin Peay State University. How did this experience influence your evolution as an artist?

This university had a smaller art department but we were fortunate enough, as students, to study under a diverse variety of professors. I took a 3-D sculpture course with artist Virginia Griswold, who spoke and worked mostly with physical space. This course was challenging to me, because as an artist I mainly worked with a confined computer or paper. After working with more physical materials, I began treating my forms of text superior to the information composed within. The quotes themselves are important when stood alone, but give a new unity when combined in the structure of the composition.

Hello Stephanie and welcome to ARTiculAction. To start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background?

In particular, does your cultural substratum as an American artist inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem?

Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. I grew up in Waterford, Michigan and began exploring my interests in art during my second year of

I was a teenager living near Detroit when the nation’s economy began to unravel. I witnessed a bustling metro area fall into joblessness, material

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decay, and widespread human depression. Previously sparkling and bustling areas began to lay dormant, deteriorating. To witness this as a young woman has always given me determination to create change and possible future prevention.

Your approach coherently encapsulates several viewpoints and reveals an incessant search of an organic investigation about the notion of duality that affects our unstable contemporary age. 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 that they visit http://www.camfielddesigns.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production. While walking our readers through your process and set up, we would like to ask you how you developed your style and how do you conceive your works?

Thank you, an artist’s style is like their identity. It distinguishes them and keeps one unique from the other. I developed my style from photography and typography with the inspiration from BMD Design and Craig Ward. I appreciate their placement of text and relationship to space and form. My method begins with inquiry and question that allowed me to combine my work as a photographer and graphic designer. I travelled back to Detroit with a camera and a notepad to document the homeless, mentally ill, and the abandoned buildings that remained in the city. Each of us are lucky enough to have the freedom to determine and form our own conclusions on issues.

Unfortunately, because of political agendas and deep pockets, most of the

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information we hear is told by an individual opinion. I hate to think of our communities being one sided because a broadcaster deemed the information unnecessary. Duality was my intention, to find all available information to create or show all opinions. For example, the Flint Water built of quotes; I used quotes and information from news stations and websites of all viewpoints. If people become informed and hopefully challenged by the subject matter and begin to question their original opinion, the piece was successful. My style has developed over time as I have grown as a person. What I thought, saw, and felt at the age of 16 compared to my thoughts and emotions now continue to change and evolve. I will always be influenced by the environment around me, stimulating emotions, and exposing situations to reflect each piece to incorporate the ever changing world. I will continue to develop as an artist, always changing and growing along with the world around me.

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Third World America, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. Your inquiry into the consequences of urban decay in Detroit accomplishes the difficult task of snatching the spirit that pervaded the city. 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?

Most of my work is built off involvement in a specific situation and is stimulated by

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information or experience. I believe all of our experiences help create the people that we become and the work we create.

My time in Detroit especially affected how I viewed America and how the corruption of one's ramifications consequently change that of thousands.

Traveling around to different cities and states, I was able to see and experience different environments in different stages of chaos and destruction. You cannot witness that and not be affected.

I have found in my work, personal experience is vital to the creativity process. Without feeling, learning, asking, seeing, and trying to get to know the community, Third World America would not be successful.

Your successful attempt to create works such as Third World America, stand as a record of existence that allows you to capture non-sharpness with a universal kind of language, capable of bringing to a new level of significance the still ubiquitous relationship between experience and memory in order to create direct relations with the spectatorship. What is the role of memory in your process? We are particularly interested whether you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create?

When photographing a site, every emotion or idea is documented and every quote recorded or cited within the work. My work is created by the thoughts and emotions of what I have seen and experienced, but not composed as a memory. A memory may spark an idea or emotion, but the end result is a new experience of something others may benefit from learning more

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about. I am also hoping my work creates conversations about what is happening all around us and what we can do as individuals and a society to help elevate some of these social issues. I am sure memories are a part of what may inspire me in the future, but basically each new piece is formulated from issues most individuals feel could use some more attention; such as homelessness, joblessness and the mentally ill.

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? In your opinion, what could be the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

I find myself always trying to stay neutral from a political view, if there is such a thing. I hope that my work is considered political if only to get people thinking. Jennifer Linton addresses gender-related issues such as representing the experiences of women.

Her work is driven by personal experience drawing from art history, mythology, and popular culture. Linton has a more intimate relationship being a women displaying the issues she has experienced or has identified. I may not have physically experienced some of the subject matter I cover, but the society that I am exposed to is what I use to

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analyze and educate myself. Being a more political artist in a contemporary society creates fundamental changes that are ever transforming our perceptions and question the way we live in a world together. We as a society have a responsibility to protect, aid, and keep this world a beautiful place for all people, not just a select few. Although my personal political opinion is not always detectable, I am sure it is reflected in my work.

I want to draw attention to those in need, to our homeless, mentally ill and struggling cities. I may not state politically what we should do about the problem, but I want to make sure we address the fact that there is a problem.

Ai ‘weiWei’s work usually seems to be more critical but is exhibiting that there are huge wide spread issues with human rights and with the Chinese government.

I try to be objective and thought provoking so others can reach their own conclusion. It would defeat my cause to push my perspective on others.

By the way, 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 my work is more mainstream and relatable for individuals across all socioeconomic backgrounds. As Jenny Holzer said “I used language because I wanted to offer content that people - not necessarily art people - could understand.” My pieces can be engaging to almost anyone. For example, the house built of quotes speaks to the decay of not just the architectural

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building of the home, but the family unit.

I hope it is more obvious, but I want the viewer to still be challenged and question themselves about how this affect them and how they can help bring about change. So for viewing purposes, I hope my work whether seen in print or on screens creates conversation about how it affects all of us.

The ambience created by the images you captured reminds us of the notion of non lieu elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé and we have highly appreciated the way your work forces the viewers to personal associations, suggesting that informations and ideas could be considered "encrypted" in the environment we inhabit, so we need to decipher those patterns. When addressing us to process the things we are sometimes unable to catch, you seem to suggest that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature. What's your point about this?

Our weakness as a race is driven by power and fear we are bounded too.

Nature will do what is needed to survive, but comparable in the sense we share the need for a leader or god to place our worries upon. As a race, we may be guilty of relying too much on these superior beings as our needs as a community continue to fracture. Marc Auge coined the term “non-place,” such as the abandoned locations in Detroit not holding enough significance for their place in this county to retain life. Each photograph holds a power and an unspoken hidden relationship of the viewer's imagination of what each photograph’s prior identity once was. I

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like to think my role as an artist is to constantly reveal layers. If a viewer wants to reject the idea of political engagement, surely they would be sympathetic to the material. For example, the school built of quotes plays on the Detroit teacher sick outs, declining education system, deteriorating city, broken society, poor economy, troubling system, and how this will continue to affect the children. The quotes are composed of opinions from a republican and liberal standpoint, filled with ideas of how to fix the issues, complaints, Governor Snyder, and the blame game. They’re painted in red, the color of fire and blood associated with power, war, and danger, contradicting the emotions of passion and love.

Psychologist suggest such a bright, deep, thick red raises the heart rate and catches the eye, furthering my hope to engage the viewer. As an artist I want to reveal what is happening now so I need to catch that viewers attention. Possibly offering insight for another to decode the messages and enact sweeping change.

We definitely love the way you question the tactile feature of images, unveiling the visual feature of information you developed through an effective non linear narrative that establish direct relations with the viewers. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular, how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

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It is definitely more difficult to be successful in the age of modern art to use symbolic strategies in a world filled of psychological works. I look at my work more as an arrangement of characters or a diagram of design and typography. I conceived my narrative by collecting and collaborating data of controversial topics.

For example the homelessness piece I created was by interacting with individuals at a homeless shelter. I prepared questions such as, “Do you have a place to sleep tonight?� I recorded their replies and used their responses to build each piece. Each individual I photographed came with a unique story.

All the descriptions were then used in the arrangement of building the forms. You can capture someone's attention by a recognizable symbol or pattern which could instill the messages with someone.

Over these years your works have been showcased in several occasions. One of the hallmarks of your practice is your 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. In terms of what type of language is used in a particular context, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process?

My target audience is much larger than some. If I can only speak to a small confined group of artists and art enthusiast, they may be the only ones to listen. I have never been one to seek out

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that large payout or that new concept to captivate the art community. I want to create something that will spark all individuals to enact change. I do think of my audience when I create and decide what style or medium would execute my point best, such as my mental health pieces. American society usually practices blindness to a stranger's political or personal view. I want my work to be uncomfortable in nature, but stimulating enough to carry weight in conversation. Encompassed in the mental health, self harm piece, the scars are probably the most uncomfortable to be around and need not the accompaniment of quotes.

Those individuals wanted their stories and explanations to be heard, not just documented. I formulated questions to ask trying to fathom how someone could disfigure themselves in such a destructive, unnatural, and permanent way. It was interesting to learn the manic obsession is less related to mortality and more about control.

Choosing the composition for the mental health pieces was an easy decision to place them along with the built of quotes series, photographing the repercussions of self harm with organic depictions filled with quotes from the mentally ill. If the medium was different, that message may not have been as well received. I like to think that each form has a language all its own and each medium and style speaks to a different genera.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Stephanie.

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

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projects? How do you see your work evolving?

My work will continue to evolve as the world continues to change. I plan to continue my Third World America series by traveling to various cities and eventually other countries exposing issues such as abuse and oppression, hunger and disease; subjects most Americans are aware of but not necessarily exposed to. I hope that I can provoke thought and change and maybe even inspire others. Ultimately, I would enjoy working with a team composed of all different cultures, ideas, challenges,

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and concepts; growing and evolving together with a common goal of kindness and change. I hope to continue to raise awareness and conversation about controversies across the world with the desire to display that we’re not so different. We should all be the good that's in the world, but I cannot enact widespread change alone.

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

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A ngelica Verdan Lives and works in Virginia, USA

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echnology has always shaped society. With the rise of the Internet and social media, the integration between the physical world and digital world has been swiftly increasing.

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digital world with the physical world the interaction between humans and all interfaces can be explored.

The viewer is invited to examine the depth of our relationship with technology.

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Angelica Verdan An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Isabelle Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Exploring the interaction between humans and contemporary technosphere, multimedia artist Angelica Verdan's work poses questions about the notions of mediated experience and our relationship with digital technology. In "Pass the Sticks �, that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she provides the viewers with a multilayered experience, urging them to investigate about the conflictual relationships between memory and perception that pervades our unstable contemporary age. One of the most convincing aspect of Verdan's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of investigating about the ubiquitous integration between the physical world and the digital one: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production.

Hello Angelica and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, how do your previous experiences as a student of Medicine as well as your cultural substratum inform the way you conceive and produce your artworks?

I recently graduated from the University of Virginia in 2014 with a B.S. in Chemistry, specialization in Biochemistry.

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During my undergraduate career, I planned on going to medical school. I had only taken a handful of art classes.

Through these, I realized my passion for the arts and sciences was always rooted in their pursuit of the truth. Led by faith instead of obligation, I stopped pursuing medicine.

My time studying biochemistry was hugely formational to the way I approach my artwork. The process of creating art is much like performing a scientific experiment. What is the goal? What materials do I need? What methods do I utilize to effectively carry out this project? Constants and variables? Was it successful? What’s the conclusion? Can I perform this better? This process provides some structure to accomplish and analyze my artwork.

My ethnic identity has also been a significant influence. I am FilipinoAmerican. On the spectrum of Filipino versus American culture, my own experience falls somewhere in-between.

My journey to fully understand my cultural identity is ongoing and directly impacts my journey as an artist.

Navigating between Filipino culture and American culture has molded me to be an artist that can navigate between cultures and communities. I believe artists are often the leaders of cultural change and can communicate

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contemporary issues to people of all backgrounds.

Your approach coherently encapsulates several techniques that reveal an incessant search for an organic exploration of aesthetic and structural potential of digital media in order to challenge the way we relate ourselves with contemporary technosphere. The results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of unity: so before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://angelicaverdan.wordpress.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you what has led you to focus a consistent part of your work on this theme.

Much of my interest in the digital world is rooted in my identity as a video gamer. I grew up playing video games with my family all the time (we still play whenever we are together). Our lives became deeply connected to the stories of these other worlds.

Video games acted as a gateway to my overall interest in technology, how we interact with the digital world, and the repercussions of these interactions. Video games are a unique form of entertainment because it requires player input in order to progress. At its core, a video game is just a game that requires interaction with some interface which generates visual feedback on a screen.

Deconstructing this interaction is where I started investigating this theme.

When I began exploring this idea, I was introduced to projection. Since projection

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removes the edges or frame of video, I used projection as a way to take icons or functions we regularly see in technology and placed them out in the real world. It is a way to isolate elements from the

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digital world and see their relationship with elements in the physical world.

My interest in technology also fits the larger trend of people my age and

society at large: technology is becoming a larger and more integrated part of our lives. I think it is definitely worth examining our relationship with something we are so dependent on.

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We would start to focus on your artistic production starting from Download, a stimulating work that our readers have already started to get to know in the

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introductory pages of this article.

Deconstructing our relationship with transference and time, you seem to urge the viewers to rethink to the notion of time and space on a unitary

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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?

Art always has a function. It is the functional aspect that’s changed and transformed throughout history. I wholeheartedly share Gerhard Richter’s concern. Art is a way to process and understand the world. We can then share this with the world for good. Art communicates things in a unique way. It connects us. It challenges us. I believe art should be used to reflect on the contemporary and point towards the future.

Download was definitely a way to slow down the viewer and invite them to be more aware of time and space. I thought about the action of loading — what does “loading” mean for us on and off the screen? We usually think of space in three dimensions and time as one dimension — the “fourth dimension.” The loading bar, which is normally only so many pixels on the screen, was about 7 meters long projected on the floor.

Download maintains this almost irreverent sense of humor; the bar loads for five minutes and nothing happens, over and over again. Nothing has changed, yet nothing is exactly same as five minutes prior.

viewpoint: how would you describe the nature of the coexistence of such aspects? In particular, German pioneer of visual arts Gerhard Richter once stated, "my concern is never art, but

Drawing the viewers into a multilayered experience, Double Click to Open unveils the manifold nature of human perceptual categories: how do you see the relationship between the public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?

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I view public art as a means of bringing art to the people, open and accessible for all to experience. Often, traditional art spaces seem inaccessible for people unfamiliar with the fine art world. Art in the public sphere is a great entry point for everyone. Though it sometimes feels invasive instead of inviting, public art is an opportunity for artists to reach people they otherwise would not have reached. I especially had this in mind when I was running projections outside.

Leading up to Double Click to Open, I would go out at night with a micro projector and project small images or short videos onto buildings, indoor objects, and even people—all without permission. Many people watched, some longer than others. A few of them would even ask what I was doing. The conversations I had were eye-opening on all fronts: the viewer gained entrance to a new world and I gained feedback for further audience accessibility and immersion.

Immersion is definitely something I’ve always considered. I want the viewer’s experience to be as uninhibited as possible. I believe this means mastering the formal qualities of art, even if the work is more conceptual. If the viewer “doesn’t notice” the formal qualities of work, then they can experience the work seamlessly. I enjoy projection because you can work outside of the video frame.

The projected cursor in Double Click to Open is believable because there’s no visible video frame; the illusion is maintained.

What has at once caught our attention of your exploration of the nonverbal language of video gaming you

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accomplished in Pass the Sticks is the way it captures non-sharpness with a universal kind of language, to create direct relations with the spectatorship: while walking our readers through the

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genesis of this project, would you shed light on 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 a starting point to create.

As I mentioned before, video games remain a significant part of my life.

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Though video games have always been a source of inspiration, Pass the Sticks was the first piece I finished directly involving them while investigating our relationship with the technosphere. For me, a video

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game controller is one physical manifestation of where the physical and digital world meet; this is an interface we use to connect with the digital world.

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video, I am the subject playing some of my favorite games in real time. If you have mastered the controls of a game, you will probably never look at the controller or your hands. It’s all muscle memory! Even non-players observing won’t focus on the player’s hands.

Everyone’s attention is drawn to the screen—visually and aurally. Editing Pass the Sticks allowed me to view my own actions, but also let me shift the visual focus away from the screen onto the controller.

Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled 10% Remaining: when inviting us to rethink about our interaction between technological interfaces and ourselves this work urges to question the notion of mediated 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 tend to lean on my personal experience as the starting point for creation. This video, in particular, is a faithful translation of my experience. I often view Pass the Sticks as a self-portrait. In the

I definitely think direct experience is a huge resource for creators. Direct experience is reliable and credible. It is tangible and presentable. We’ve experienced something, good or bad, and feel like we can now share that with others. Consideration of personal experience for the audience is also important. It is another tool for the artist that allows them to add multiple levels of understanding for the audience. The viewer always brings their own background to the table. The wide range of viewer experiences provides access to different layers of each work.

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Video is always a mediated experience.

The artist intentionally frames and captures images over time, which they can further manipulate in editing. Forcing a certain perspective, cutting different shots together, slowing or speeding up time — these are all possibilities in video that would otherwise be impossible to experience in real life.

I believe that the creative process can be disconnected from direct experience. I just don’t know if others necessarily see work created outside of direct experience as legitimate or authentic.

When inquiring into the notion of personal experience 10% Remaining induces the viewers to abandon themselves to free associations, looking at time in spatial terms and we 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 unity of your works?

Most of my artworks are conceptually driven rather than aesthetically driven. I investigate themes from many different angles while maintaining the same visual style. Again, immersion is important to me. I do my best to invite the viewer into my work, which often looks simple or unassuming. I enjoy manipulating the passage of time so that the viewer is allowed to notice other elements with minimal influence of the historic gaze.

10% Remaining was intentionally shot with very limited change over time. I wanted to establish a familiar world, looking only at how we must recharge ourselves like all the technology we own.

When juxtaposed with the power sign, it

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is a reminder that we can never fully escape power dynamics.

One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are

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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 audience is a significant part of my consideration. I put a lot of thought into

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how my work will be received by people of all backgrounds. Ideally, everyone can walk away with some new understanding, whether they are comfortable with contemporary art or not. I do my best to be hospitable and relatable. I genuinely

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want to invite people into something larger.

Because the focus of my work has been the intersection of the digital and physical worlds, I must rely on the

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At the same time, I’m not afraid of asking my audience to reach for understanding.

With video becoming more and more ubiquitous, it’s easy for us to just sit back and watch. I would much rather my viewers meet me half way instead of passively consuming content.

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

Thank you for having me, it’s been an honor. As a recent college graduate, I’m still searching for basic stability and balance in my life. Because I never had a traditional art education, I am looking forward to going to graduate school for an MFA in the near future. Ultimately, I would love to teach at the college level.

In terms of my work, I am still learning how to maintain an active art practice outside the structure of school. Currently, I am finishing a video series about home and transition as seen through smartphones. I am also exploring several projects on driving automobiles and vlogging. Investigating our relationship with the digital world will probably be a mainstay of my work, but I also want to do more with social media and my ethnic identity as seen through the media.

audience’s fluency in tech-speak and savvy. Technological vernacular is widely understood, but I don’t expect every single viewer to immediately catch the references. It comes with the territory.

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A nne Murray Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain

An artist's statement

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t was a very long time ago that I remember painting images of birds with oil paint while crouched in the corner of the closet of my bedroom in the small town where I grew up. I was the youngest of four children and the only daughter. I spent most of my time alone, painting, drawing, sewing and generally making things with my hands. I would not say that I became an artist, but that it became a term that others used to define my peculiar habit of keeping my own company and creating everything with my own hands. I made small books, large paintings, clothing, costumes, and always watched carefully when anyone was building something.

My work is a witness to my particular perception, my awareness and my drive to gather the evidence of our existence, of the connectedness of our experience and the creation of a personal iconography that becomes universal in its humanity.

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I think that others who know me would say that I am a person that cares, that strives for the best in myself and hopes for it in others. I cherish art as a means to communicate, motivate and to create change, whether through metamorphosis or a gradual redirection of the viewer's eye to something that I sense is important to look at in a particular moment in time.

Art is a way to move people, a way to make sense of the world. The singular experience of viewing, but one piece of art, at a moment of openness can and will change someone in an infinite number of ways and has a rebounding effect with exponential possibilities. This is why it is so important to create and use art for the good of humanity.

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

Drawing inspiration from the changing borders of our world in relation to personal identity, multidisciplinary artist Anne Murray's work explores the thin line in which imagination and experience merges together to cross the elusive boundary that defines the area of perception and memory from the realm of imagination. Her works generate a multilayered involvement with the viewers, who are urged to investigate about the non-linear, still ubiquitous narrative that she extracts from the everchanging reality we inhabit. One of the most convincing aspects of Murray’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 her multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Anne and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, we would pose you a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned a BFA in Sculpture and Drawing at Parsons School of Design, you nurtured your education with a MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art and Architecture: moreover, you hold a MFA in Printmaking and mixed media that you received from the prestigious Pratt Institute. How do

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

Working on my BFA at Parsons School of Design in Paris, I had the opportunity to see many of the works of the great masters of our time first hand in the museums around the city as well as in the galleries. I was inspired by the works of Annette Messager, Christian Boltanski, Paul Flury, and Jean Zuber. I was fortunate enough to study under Flury and Zuber and found an artistic dialogue from their teachings that has endured to this day.

Their philosophy, directness, and pure artistic vision, showed me the path of an artist, where the path was but an invisible series of creative choices, which have led me to create the video poetry and photography, I now call my own vision. At that time, I was making large drawings with charcoal, water, and tearing and gluing paper and contĂŠ marks on the works, as well as creating tiny fragile sculptures out of bone, books, pigment, wire, and shells. I began writing what I now call poems, but at the time, they were fragments. These fragments were scrawled across drawings of personified animals, my mythology of forms, unkempt and toy-like, with realistic features. The drawings sometimes became realized in sculptural forms of fabric and found objects; then they began coming together in installation pieces. I began to incorporate photography in my work, photographing the installations with different light sources and included photos in my installations. I created a small book of constructed images, false scenarios, to look like an embryo growing in the womb,

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but formed from polaroids taken of small constructions, blurred they became images of a growing embryo. I remember during my thesis show, Zuber walked up to one of my works and stretching his hands out, he said in a dramatic and poignant voice, “This should be under glass.” He then turned and walked away. I was pushing boundaries with my work, my sculptures were animals, invented and, like the images in my drawings, they were in pain, vulnerable. The final review at Parsons included six teachers on the jury.

There was a great debate, behind closed doors, about my work: afterwards, both Flury and Zuber said to me, “You, are an artist.” I call this my birth moment, the first time that I was declared to be an artist in a public forum.

I moved away from Paris, my birthplace as an artist, and continued my studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I met many wonderful artists there, such as Ricardo Monge, Jeph Gurecka, Joshua Rubin, Sky Kim, and Gloria Carr, whose work resonated with me and helped me to see my own work as a part of the context of our times. I became more and more interested in writing, poetry, and incorporating words into my work. I continued to create sculpture, installations, hand printed books with my writing and painted images. With an Irish Catholic background, images that I created in Paris had been influenced by the rich stories of the Old and New Testament, things that I saw in the churches and museums and from an art history study trip to Ravenna, Italy where I saw the wonderful flickering light on mosaics representing Lazarus. I was obsessed with death, with the idea of life and death being indistinguishable from one another, two sides to an equal state of

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being. At Pratt, I got married and then divorced, my brother committed suicide, and I worked in the library where I had access to many books that were out of print including Khalil Gibran’s play, Lazarus and his Beloved. In the play, Lazarus is angry that he has been brought back from the dead, for he was in Paradise and with his eternal beloved and then had been abruptly jolted back into the world of the living. I found this a curious and fascinating rewriting of the biblical tale and it felt right, correct, resonating something inside of me that related to my soul as an artist.

I was carrying around the, Complete Works of Emily Dickinson, every day for those three years at Pratt, in my backpack. I also found a rare copy of the fragments of the poems of Sappho in the original Greek and in English on facing pages. My writing was emerging with my sculptures and hand made books. One of my favorite poems by Dickinson was: ‘Twas a long Parting — but the time For Interview — had Come — Before the Judgement Seat of God — The last — and second time These Fleshless Lovers met — A Heaven in a Gaze — A Heaven of Heavens — the Privilege Of one another’s Eyes — No Lifetime — on Them — Appareled as the new Unborn — except They had beheld — Born infiniter — now — Was Bridal — e’er like This? A Paradise — the Host — And Cherubim — and Seraphim — The unobtrusive Guest — The idea of finding one’s eternal beloved was important to me a kind of drive to run through life to the end to find it. My last semester at Pratt, I took a video class. My brother had committed suicide and my focus changed, I created my first video poem, and that was when I really felt like I could speak as an artist in a way that

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people might listen. The work was about walking with him in my daily life, thinking about him as I looked out the window at night in Brooklyn with the car alarms sounding every night, cooking, the blue flame of the pan on the stovetop licking the edges and sparking. Video was an exciting new way to put words and images together and to combine my interest in photography. It also was a way for me to organize my thoughts, make sense of them, when my brother died. I had taken a documentary film history class during Winterim, a special new intensive semester they were trying out during the period between New Year’s and the start of the Spring semester at Pratt. I began to understand the aesthetic of film and storytelling through class discussions.

When I was very young, my father would read poetry at the dinner table and I would listen to the soft cadence of his voice, the repeated rhythm captivated me, my mind filled with vivid imagery.

Irish people are known for their writing, for their stories, for a richness in storytelling.

My father expected me to be a writer someday. Video was a way to put my storytelling and visual symbology together and to reach more people through multiple facets within one artwork.

Multidisciplinarity is a key feature of your approach, which coherently encapsulates photography, video and writing, revealing an unconventional still consistent sense of unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.annemurrayartist.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different techniques

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is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore?

I wrote stories when I was young and then stopped once I began making paintings in my teenage years. When I went away to Paris for university, I began to see the works of AndrĂŠ Breton and Annette Messager. I was interested in the objectpoem a form that Breton invented really. I believe my video poems are historically linked to the object-poems of Breton.

Messager also uses words, words that are linked to power, vulnerability. My artistic research had been following the concept of vulnerability as an element of our existence that we are expected to keep

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hidden from others. I experimented with putting images on paper with words, poems and sharing vulnerability through these thoughts revealing fears and frailties. I began taking photos of myself dressed up in homage to Cindy Sherman.

Video poetry was a natural outcome for me from my interests and the evolution of video as a an art form that allowed for the facility of putting words and images together in new combinations. Like film, this way of working is unique and has erupted from the hard work of many past artists and writers. I stand on their shoulders like a participant in the human towers of Catalonia where I live now, the younger ones stand on the shoulders of

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the older ones, climbing to the top, the youngest child raising her hand to show she has made it to the top. I feel that way, like I have climbed with the help of the work of previous artists who forged the way; I am another part of the tower. I think my video work can convey meaning without words and my words can convey meaning without images, but together they reach the largest audience, captivating the viewer, allowing them to participate in the way that is most comfortable for them, whether it is through looking or listening or both.

project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. This project explains how our dreams can be clearer when they are obstructed: your exploration of the oneiric sphere 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 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?

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Fog, a stimulating

I think that research and interaction can enhance our understanding of an

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experience enough to participate in the dialogue as an artist. At the beginning of my career, my work was isolated in personal experience that I was striving to express as universal in its humanity, my work came directly from my dreams, somehow synthesized by my subconscious mind. Now my work has more layers of knowledge, research, and interaction to understand certain cultural perspectives and histories, forming artworks that may or may not come from personal experiences, but definitely comes from actually being in a place. I use the Internet a lot to research as well. I think of the Internet as a form of the collective unconscious, anticipated by the surrealists.

In a way, I think of the Internet as a dream state, a surreal place where ideas can take shape and then be brought into the real world. I am constantly applying for opportunities to create new work in different parts of the world and with different themes all connected to an underlying interest in investigating how identity takes shape, how external and internal borders can define us, regardless of what we do or say about them.

The fog for me brings about truth, it is the reality, things are not clear, they are not defined in black and white, but they are obscured and there are shades of grey and subtle colors that appear and disappear in the fog. I love weather, it gives an artist the opportunity to show emotion, to allow for the viewer to participate, looking more closely, because the image is not defined in an instant and it takes time to search, observe, and interpret.

Your work is pervaded with a subtle but effective narrative, and the insightful combination between images and written words you created for Memory Reconstructed captures non-sharpness with an universal kind of language, capable of bringing to a new level of significance the elusive but ubiquitous relationship between

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experience and imagination, to create direct relations with the spectatorship: how would you describe this synergy in your work? In particular, you have remarked that carrying the bone also made you think about all the other things that had weighed on you: 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.

I definitely use memory as a starting point.

Experiences are elusive and to achieve universal communication through art, it is necessary to let go of linear experience and give in to the unconscious, the unconscious order and disorder of our interior selves. I found the whalebone on the beach in Iceland. I wanted to leave it there at first, but I also was compelled to pick it up, to journey with it, to see how if felt to have the bone near my body and in direct contact with my arm, shoulder, and hands. Objects carry memories and as an artist, I have an interest in how we can relate to these memories on our own terms. Touching the bone, walking with it through the countryside and placing it within the landscape, I created my own surreal experience. I felt the scale of the Fin whale, how different it would be in water because it would float inside the body of the whale. I thought about how the air brought weight, while the water would bring freedom to such a large animal and I felt myself within the body of the whale, connected to it and to the way that I felt at times, wishing for freedom to swim in a vast universe unhindered by the weight of my own experiences and vulnerabilities.

We have particularly appreciated the way your unconventional photography accomplishes the difficult task of snatching not only the atmosphere, but the elusive substance of the subjects you center your attention on. When inviting the viewers to

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re-interpret the traditional ideas of natural beauty, you seem to challenge our perceptual categories: while inviting the viewer to elaborate personal interpretations, you do not reject a gaze on aesthetics: the dream-like quality of suspended time creates a lively combination between the conceptual and beauty itself. How important is the aesthetic problem for you when you conceive a work?

I don't focus directly on the aesthetic, but my traditional training as an artist and years of looking at the work of other artists has definitely influenced my choices, when

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I present my work. The influence is unconscious, second nature, I don’t have to focus on the aesthetic, I can trust that my trained eye will keep things within an acceptable aesthetic range. With that said, I find more inspiration to photograph something that is obscured or hidden through limited light or weather conditions.

I love the rain, the fog; it draws me to investigate how the landscape is changed by light and atmosphere. Twilight is my favorite time to take photographs.

Drawing from universal imagery, your works combine accessible elements and

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we have highly appreciated the way it condenses a symbiosis between intuition and freedom of composition. Your approach reveals unconventional features 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. Would you shed light on your process? In particular, do your works tend to come out of imagination rather than out of your own life?

They come from my life experiences; I tend to throw myself towards challenges to push myself out of my own comfort zone and to see new things and new cultures. I have traveled extensively and created projects in many countries including, China, Turkey, Hungary, Serbia, Iceland, France, and Spain. Walking around, living, existing in another culture for a period of time as an artist, can challenge your world view, push your boundaries, show you that humanity is far more complex than you might have understood previously.

We definitely love the way you juxtapose symbolic elements in City Beneath the Sidewalk, creating a compelling nonlinear narrative that, playing with the evocative power of reminders to universal imagery, establishes direct relations with the viewers. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated, "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?

Often the images come first. There is an emotion to them, but also an internal philosophy, I am always questioning, I always choose the one thing that is

different, the one thing left that everyone else seems to be ignoring. I am not that interested in things that are part of popular culture, but more in the things that pass in the sidelines, that is where the real stories are, where the most interesting parts of life are taking place, in the hidden places, the darkness, the light of the early morning.

My work does have symbolism, but the symbols are not so important in themselves, rather the underlying sensation of a human being, the presence of someone who witnessed something that they want you to see. My work shows the other world, the real one beneath all the advertising and posh life of so many, the arguments between people, the poverty, the rawness of what we feel when we stare into a puddle on a rainy day and long for something, another world to escape to.

Your works could be considered as reportages of human experience: and in Betrayal you carried an insightful inquiry into the ephemeral nature of love in the digital era. 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?

Definitely, my work is about revealing the world within, the unexpected perspectives.

I tend to be the one in the group who sees things from another perspective; I speak up when I see something that doesn’t seem just, I feel it is an obligation to say something. It is my responsibility as an artist to participate and to observe.

Betrayal is about that, about how ephemeral feelings can be in this digital age, how things can seem very intimate through discussions online and then one can realize that there can still be a

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falseness even in this collective unconscious that we call the Internet. Being a part of everyone’s consciousness does not mean that you are safe from the foibles of another person, but in fact, you are often even more vulnerable because the tricksters of society have a wealth of information at their fingertips in this digital zone.

Over these years you have exhibited in several occasions, including your recent solo at the Victoria Art Gallery at Art Factory, Paterson. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

I am grateful to Michael Hanna, of Aedra Fine Arts, a talented artist himself, who organized that show, which gave each artist their own space as a solo exhibition, an entire huge wall or room was made available to each of us and he created a catalogue of the exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery. To answer, the audience is always a part of my work; sometimes they are even active participants in it, having their voices recorded even. I am showing my work to create a dialogue, to get people to look closer at a particular subject that I am concerned about, to expose something about humanity and to embrace change, to create a more compassionate society; the audience is a crucial part of any work I create and I consider how they might understand something, from a different perspective and in different cultural contexts. I think it is my responsibility to consider my audience and take their reception

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of my work into account, but I can’t control this experience, I can just try to consider it and accept that some things might disturb them or make them upset.

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

Currently, I am working on some pieces about domestic violence. I have a three part series of video works entitled, Flight, Fight, and Freeze. They are for the victims of domestic violence, particularly women who

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have been raped, to help them to explain how they feel and what happens when you are raped when talking to family and friends. The titles are the three typical responses women have when they are assaulted, they can fight, freeze in order not to be hurt more, or take flight, hoping to be faster at running than their attacker. The pieces are not literal interpretations of these titles. Flight is actually a subway train in London that keeps running over and over again a repeated scene to represent flashbacks and how difficult intimacy is when you have them. Freeze is an image of a statue of a protagonist in a Catalan novel

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entitled, La Plaça del Diamant or Time of the Doves in English, written by Mercè Rodoreda. The statue of the main protagonist is in the plaza by that name in the neighborhood of Gràcia in Barcelona where I live. I filmed the statue as if it was a person, as if it was the rapist looking at her body too closely and observing her from foot to crotch, an objectification of her form. I follow this imagery with the overlapping currents of the waves in Sitges, which is a town about a 20 minute ride on the train from Barcelona. In this video, I am singing, questioning the person who would dare to touch me. I have not finished the

third work, Fight, but it should be finished sometime this spring. I have applied for some fellowships and hope to have the honor of receiving one this spring. I wish to keep creating work that can help people, draw their attention to something that needs closer scrutiny in the world and to inspire them to reflect and create change in the world around them.

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An artist's statement

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hen I was four years old, I had a near death experience while having an open heart surgery.

My heart stopped beating, my body temperature went low, a heart-lung machine kept me alive. Coming back from that threshold, I knew that opposites are bound together and that I encompass both. It left me fascinated with edges and yearning for meaning. My works are born from that same simultaneous sense of vertigo and stability.

They deal with a dichotomous - the realization that one reality can reflect many and there is no one definition. The truth is endlessly evolving and expanding.

I try and reconcile conflicts and contradictions such as beauty that encompasses crudeness, weakness as a source of strength and disillusionment that feeds innocence. The early works (“Red Heart”, 2007-09) are naïve drawings of bodies and situations, subtle yet disturbing. Minimalist figures floating in white space. With time, layers appear

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(“Illusions & Reality”, 2010-13). Through intricate drawings and installations I struggle to weave together the past, present and future. Recently I’m fascinated with transformation (“Release”, 2014-15). The Sisyphean process evolved to a new set of rules, which dictates different materials, gestures and speed. The new paintings are large and expressive, made in one continuous session, like an intense ritual.

I see my studio as a cross between a womb and a lab. My practice is a tool for understanding myself as well as the world of phenomena around me. My goal is to generate a change that shapes perspectives and actions, thus enabling for something new to occur - symbolically, conceptually and tangibly. I have a distinct feeling that there is something beyond me, a life force, which I can’t put into words but I can channel into art.

Hasti Hich

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Hasti Hich An interview by Barbara Scott, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator articulaction@post.com

Hasti Hich is a versatile artist whose work brings to a new level of significance the combination between performance and visual arts, to explore the notions of time, reality and experience. In her project psychological warfare that we'll be discussing in the next pages, she unveils the elusive nature of silent war that exploded in the mind and invites the viewers to rethink about their perceptual categories and drawing them into the liminal area in which opposite ideas and sensations find an unexpected point of convergence. One of the most convincing aspects of Hich's work is the way she subvert the relationships between elements belonging to universal imagery to create a concrete aesthetic from experience and memories: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Hasti and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experience that have influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem?

In my opinion living experience is the major factor in the formation of the contemporary artist`s working period. Unlike the modernists, a contemporary artist doses`t inspire from outside to inside, but she reaches an idea on the basis of her own living

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experiences. The issue of domestic art is not notable in this regard. Since an artist confronts with her living experience honestly and considers it as the eternal source of idea, her work of art will be the indicative of her social context. I think any supererogation in localization of art has no outcome but the complement and useless art that abuses commonplace symbols artificially.

Your approach coherently encapsulates sound and images to accomplish a search of an organic synergy between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of harmony and unity, rejecting any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://vimeo.com/hastihich 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 techniques is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

Congruity of oppositions doubtlessly is one of the effective ways of artistic expression. In fact I should say that I had no intention to put the opposite views together. The fact that my existence as an Iranian artist is full of individual and social oppositions may be the best proof of the formation of these oppositions in my work of art. Conflict and incongruence in the points of view gives the work of art a terrible feature that some times makes it very convulsive. I personally love

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this feature and I`m glad that you have noticed it in my work.

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected psychological warfare, a stimulating project that our readers have

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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

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conscious one, to unveil 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?

Undoubtedly the relation between the conscious and unconscious arena is the most

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complicated issues and we can not claim that we have complete awareness and domination over these parameters, but an artist challenges these two arena in an special view. On one hand there is unconscious arena that is the direct source of producing artistic picture.

Before that, in the era of modernity, this source was enough to create art. The best example is surrealism that created work of art by complete reliance on unconscious arena.

But in my opinion the contemporary artist is confronted with other aspects; unconscious arena, dreams, emotions, …, are only one side of a coin and modern artist needs “thought”. In other words the artist tests her unconscious arena with her thought arena and the final work of art will be the result of unconsciousness plus thought. Undoubtedly if we remove though from the work of art of an artist the result will be worthless. I have tried to reach an exact balance between these two arena. An here is where the living experience of the artist becomes different from others, i.e where her experience is filter by her thought.

Psychological warfare is pervaded with a subtle but effective narrative, and the insightful manipulation of symbols that captures non-sharpness with an universal kind of language and brings to 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.

We can view this question in other aspect; if we consider experience equals to personal living of the artist and presume the memory as archetype, then we will reach an interesting equation. I`m very attached to mythical and ethical arena. From nation`s mythical to shamanic`s ethic, from primitive insights to hematic researches, from religion history to magic history, all are my favorite issues that are reflected in my work of art.

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But we should not forget an important point, I don`t use any of these ethics, myth, and symbols in my work of art but I create my own symbols, signs and myths. My work of art is full of personal symbols. Although they are similar to all myth but at last they are personal and they are not ethical but artistic. So the connection between archetype (collective memory) and my existence (experience) will be created.

Drawing from the collective imagery, you juxtapose evokative elements that seems to suggest the necessity of a way out from the unstable contemporary sensibility... Many artists from the contemporary scene, as Judy Chicago or more recently Jennifer Linton, use to include socio-political criticism in their works. It is not unusual that an artist, rather than urging the viewer to take a personal position on a subject, tries to convey his personal take about the major issues that affect contemporary age. Do you consider that your works are political in this way or do you seek to maintain a neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

Undoubtedly, the artist that her only concern is political and social issues, has chosen her medium wrongly. She must become an activist.

Since the work of art of such artists lack varuoius layers and they are like propaganda.

Political and social issues will be automically reflexe in the work of art of an artist that her concerns has aroused from her existence and in my opinion the effect of her art will be more than propaganda.

You sometimes seem to subvert the creative process, but always keep its identity: would you like to shed light about the aspects related to the creative potential of chance in your process? How do your ideas change in the while you conceive your works and you finally get the final results?

Creative process doses`t follow any special rule. As an artist, I have only one duty: I should stay on line; I mean the line of creating art that

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is the reflection of my existence. An artist is force to create. Like a mouse, if it doses`t use its teeth to chew, they will grow and tear its mouth. Accidents have a role in this way but don`t forget one thing, one should be faithful

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to the fundamental features of the basic idea from the beginning of the formation of an idea to signing the work of art; otherwise the result is bewilderment.

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Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impressed us and on which we would like to spend some words is the video performance EMISSARY that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/122640463. By definition

video is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity: your time-based works induce the viewers to abandon theirselves to associations, rethinking the concept of space and time in such a static way: this seems to remove any

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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?

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You face a kind of pure stagnation in this work of art. This process seems grueling and boresom, but infact that is my goal.

I don`t use typology of time, I just refer to the passing of boresome endless and long lasting

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seconds. Since the life itself is boresome, the video is boresome too!

Your performative works trigger primordial parameters concerning our relation with physicality as well as to the abstract dimension: 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?

In this view, the audience of art is one who has the same expectation of art. If someone takes art as an hobby she will be disappointed. Because there are more interesting hobbies like cinema, pop music, video games, ‌ . The real audience of art is one who believes in the great power of art and knows that art can change our life.

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

Whenever somebody asks me this question are you an artist?- I simply answer that I`m just a farmer! In my belief the work of art that the audience faces is like a farm and the audience just like the artist will harvest from this farm. The fertility of the soil and the farm is due to the artist and what to harvest from this fractious soil is due to the audience.

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

I have concentrated on different but continuous projects right now. These projects

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are performative installations. I follow no limitations for the material and the production process and I let the ideas go ahead and find their way.

For example I used people as the material of my work of art in my latest work in Tehran contemporary art museum 2015. I use these performative installations to pass the limitations. I think this is the basic concern of some one that her major issue of her life is art: going beyond the boarders to fulfill the ideas.

An interview by Barbara Scott, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator articulaction@post.com

Scott Morrison Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia

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

Challenging theviewers' perceptual categories artist Scott Morrison's work accomplishes an insightful investigation about the moving image its relationship between memory and experience. In "Tension Sketch�, that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she provides the viewers with a multilayered experience, urging them to investigate about the relationship between audience’s perception of density and time. One of the most convincing aspect of Morrison's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of investigating about how we can look and listen at the movingimage anew by reworking and reimagining the natural world: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production.

Hello Scott and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, how does your cultural substratum as an Australian artist inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Thanks for the opportunity to share my practice, is nice to be here. My background is country upbringings amongst the wide open spaces of rural NSW, Australia. I was fortunate to be in a location where I had ample space and

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Scott Morrison

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

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Winter 2016

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Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison

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

A r t

R e v i e w

Special Issue

nature about me as a rule, my upbringing and area of is intrinsically linked to how my practice responds and works with the natural world. I took myself to study Fine Arts after I finished school, focusing on video and sound production. My practice retained the interest in natural spaces throughout and has evolved its form and toolset along the way.

Much of my work has been an embracement of natural occurrence, the movement and inherent drama of passing moments. Aesthetically I’m interested in the breaking down of formal qualities and in turn affecting the reading of the framed moving image. Cyclical loop based compositional technique and the abstraction of a familiar experience (nature) are mechanisms I use when embedding thematic or critical tones within a work. Being an Australian has never been a particular point of focus for me, though more recent work and personal reactions have been addressing a burgeoning awareness of the state of Australian politics, both internal to the country and our standing internationally.

Perhaps a maturation process or perhaps also, a natural reaction to the dark times and lack of love, empathy and compassion I am represented by current.

Your approach coherently intertwines video installation and intricate sound design, revealing a stimulating search of an organic equilibrium between natural and synthetic sphere. The results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of unity: so before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://scottm.com.au in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would

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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’m a creature of comfort for the most part. For me much of the process of creating work is mostly being in a location for extended periods of time and allowing the material to be captured as the experience dictates. I need to feel the place I am documenting and this reflects in the editing process. I’ll invest a great deal of time re-watching, scanning my material and where my camera may respond in the field as required, my editing and sequencing process also responds in a more intuitive way and a re-experience is happened again. The symbiosis of sound and video in my work feel more of a unity than anything. It is something I find very hard to separate. I see them as one and the same. The experience of being in the world and the experience of re-articulating the experience for me requires both these sensory aspects. In being a creature of comfort, my works reflect the toolsets I am most comfortable. Moving beyond video and sound, I have begun approaching using still images to further my interests, but I cannot draw to save my life, nor can I play an instrument, but I can synthesize and manipulate recorded mediums.

We would start to focus on your artistic production starting from Tension Sketch, 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 video is the way the reference to universal elements from universal imagery as a quiet captures non-

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Scott Morrison

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

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Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison

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

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sharpness with an universal kind of language, creating direct relations with the spectatorship: while walking our readers through the genesis of this video, would you shed light on 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.

Aspects of both I suppose. For me memory is somewhat captured and articulated through the mediums I use - I capture recorded time. What is recorded is an instance of an experience, it is a representation of what an experience was like and a perspective specific to how it is framed and focused. This “memory� or instance of an experience is then manipulated or distorted again by the aesthetic and formal considerations employed in my edit process. But the memory of the experience also lives within my person, the foortage I use responds to not only what I captured but what I felt in the time of the recording. These instances of real-time and post time mutate and inform one another constantly. But this is something I look to use for an audience also, by focusing on somewhat known or familiar experience, I can then distort the perceived reading of the material presented. The Tension Sketch series is very focused on more singular perspective of view, more focused and short- form instances of recorded time and place where something familiar acts outside of its expected form and allows an alternate reading in the experience. Calls upon and plays with an audience’s memory of location and understanding of how something should act.

Challenging our primordial, almost limbic parameters, your work re-

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configures our perspective of environment and place, unveiling the manifold nature of human perceptual categories and draws the viewers into a multilayered experience: 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?

I think that for a very long time I approached the outcomes work as a loaded sensory overload, to seduce and bewilder in the experience. This perhaps is more of a formal consideration than a conceptual one. In a way yes I agree with the statement, the intent is to abstract something whilst retaining its original context. This allows a suspension or interruption to something we have a relation to. But this is something with the newer work and the Tension Sketch series I’m aware of – that there is potential for both. Chance, well yes it’s a massive thing for me. The very act of my content collection is reliant very much on chance and me improvising to the unplanned actions of the natural environment. It’s part performance also – I react to the environment as the weather dictates and as the passing of time and experience in any given environment. This creates experience, the experience informs the material captured, the memory informs the edit, the edit develops new experience. New experience informs future directions and decisions…

Tension Sketch 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: while referring to a contingent event, this seems to remove

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Scott Morrison

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any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more a temporal form. How do you conceive the visual unity of your works?

The point of conception for any particular piece is never set. I find something within the available footage and this becomes a starting point to build upon as I structure the overall piece. It sounds a little basic, but is somewhat like cooking. Find the right ingredients and build the dish up, moments of reduction and variation and a lot of experimenting along the way. It’s a process, a process of spending time within the footage itself. Along the way by having an active interrogation of the material, moments are found that may have been hidden in the original collection moment.

It’s all very improvised to a point, but once something is found, it is built upon, pulled apart, expanded, reduced and rebuilt anew. In a way I look to expand the singular or collected instances of time.

Dissect it down to its bare elements and then explore the putting it all back together. The Tension Sketch series are designed very much for gallery viewing, you don’t need to view or consider with a linear consideration of time passing.

Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled Plume which offers to the viewers an unconventional journey: 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?

Nature is, has and dare say will always be an active influencer and source of

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materiality in making works of art. There is something inescapable and alluring in the gaze upon the world that surrounds us. This certainly was the case for me when in making this work, both in the edit stage and the period of content collection.

A truly affecting and transitional process in collecting this material. The piece does embed (encrypt) a loose directive of gravity and meandering to an unspecified

Scott Morrison

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location, in fact its no where in particular and returns you to where you started. The location encountered and used in this work affected me greatly at a time when I was really struggling with the worlds state of play. This piece alludes to a search for home, for the act of gravity to be felt and to have solid grounding in our place of the world. The nature of my location (Banff, Canada) reflected a real sense of turmoil

and unrest in particular to my own privilege of nationality of opportunity for free travel and security of home. The nature of my experience deeply affected an internal response that is encrypted very much in this work.

Drawing the viewers into a multilayered experience, Plume unveils the manifold nature of human perceptual categories, forcing the viewers to recontextualize

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their perspective of environment: 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?

For me, the relationship between public viewing of work has always carried a responsibility and a need to retain a value in the making and presenting of. We have

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so much management towards the time allocated in our lives to so many things, the power of art and I guess the immortal of art can transcend, influence and create new perspectives on the lives we lead. It can also disrupt and challenge I suppose, I used to focus on the idea of immersion and seduction of the senses as a tool to draw a viewer in - but I feel now more so that this can carry with it an empty vessel,

Scott Morrison

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When inquiring into the expansion of our understanding of what is possible in time-based practice, you seem to urge the viewers to rethink the notion of time and space on an unitary viewpoint: how would you describe the nature of the coexistence 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 about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

I think that whilst the immersion that often is automatic with audiovisual art, needs to have a conceptual base or at the very least a great deal of honest heart beyond just a sensory overload. This again, is subjective and speaks only of my evolving and changing approach to making work. I guess my mandate and affirmation of making is still not defined as yet.

In considering myself as an emerging artist, I feel very much that I am still developing my conceptual framework and indeed worldly views overall. For the last couple of years it has felt that my work has been a refinement of process and toolsets to articulate the mediums I use. It feels like I employ techniques to break down and study the passing of time, using visual and sonic references of location to do this. Perhaps my responses here today are reflective of my more recent headspace, but I feel that in developing my practice I need to create works that have a use, that have messages however obscured or obvious to provoke and create dialogue towards issues beyond how we experience art. Art has a most powerful and important function that can act as a catalyst to discussion and movement, both slight and at large. How this is reflected and integrated into a very busy world of information and simultaneous virtualised networks is a challenge all or most should welcome in contemporary contexts.

Over these years your works have been showcased in several occasions, both in Australia and abroad. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement

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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?

More and more so, I see the the reception or how to gauge a reception as being critical. From early on I guess Iw as hoping to find an audience, a response or a sense of legitimacy in the process of what I was compelled to make. An audience response, any audience was a relationship. As touched on previously, I would intend to have an immersive seduction and present what I felt was my own language of expressing myself through the work. I think I’ve established a language in my practice thus far that has a consistent form and this can now be bent to express more wider themes and touch on a maturation of world view and my own person. So yes, to the undisclosed audience of future works, you are informing my decision making process, but more so in my own understanding of how I articulate my experience ongoing and how this can have a context beyond a passive gaze into a reconfigured natural world.

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

For 2016 I’m working on a new gallery show for the Tension Sketch ideas, where I’ll be presenting a configuration of the

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existing and new pieces in the series. I also recently returned from a residency in Iceland for January 2016, an amazing experience of an environment completely and utterly foreign tooth my person and practice. It was a challenge to capturing material and also in how I think about

Scott Morrison

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looking all over again. A welcomed challenge and I’m soon to start working on a new body of work from this material and time exploring the available Winter landscapes. This will lead into a residency for September in Feldafing, Germany and presentation of new work with the

Frameless Festival. really looking forward to being back in Europe. That and looking and listening - as always.

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

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