Peripheral ARTeries Art Review - Special Edition

Autumn 2016

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Special Edition Installation • Painting • Mixed media • Drawing • Performance • Public Art • Drawing • Video art • Fine Art Photography

CARLA FORTE SONIA GIL BETH KRENSKY MAJA SPASOVA GILSUK KO MAYA GELFMAN MEHDI FARJPOUR JACQUELINE VAN DE GEER HOLLY M. ARMISHAW

Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015 Official Selection New Mavericks Film Series (November 19, 2016) Georgia, Atlanta

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

Be that as it may, this catalog or any portion ther eof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without express written permission from Peripheral ARTeries and featured artists.

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lives and works in Münster, Germany

lives and works in Münster, Germany

Anastasiya Labada Totalitarian Shapes

lives and works in Paris, France

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lives and works in London, United Kingdom

BINDU, 2015

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lives and works in San Francisco, California, USA

lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Margaret Noble perform Righteous Exploits, Live Arts Fest at White Box Theater, San Diego, California, USA https://vimeo.com/68013404

lives and works in Vancuver, Canada

lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

lives and works in Tel-Aviv, Israel

Special thanks to: Julia Überreiter, Deborah Esses, Margaret Noble, Nathalie Borowski, Marco Visch, Xavier Blondeau, J.D. Doria, Matthias Callay, Luiza Zimerman, Kristina Sereikaite, Scott D'Arcy, Kalli Kalde, Carla Forte, Mathieu Goussin, Dorothee Zombronner, Olga Karyakina, Robert Hamilton, Isabel Becker, Carrie Alter, Jessica Bingham, Fabian Freese, Elodie Abergel, Ellen van der Schaaf and Courtney Henderson

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Gilsuk Ko Lives and works in MĂźnster, Germany

People must live in society, no matter if they want to or not.

In this process of making contact with other persons the role and character of the subject changes. The main topic of my work is the relationship between people. Since my childhood I was always afraid of meeting someone new. In Korea when going into a new class at the start of a semester, I was struck with fear of making new friendship. I also felt very chaotic about the different roles of people in society.

In some relationships with people I had to become a leader, with other I had to follow and with other it was on par, which left me very confused. Even though I am a human with his own distinctive attributes and character, in order to get along with different people, I had to take different roles and attributes. While having relationships with other, through other peoples’ character, background and situations etc., my role had to change. If one of these criteria changed, my role also had to change, even though I was with the same people.

In my work the role and feeling in these relationship between me and other people is a very personal aspect and also interpretation. But these personal feelings and aspects can also become universal aspects that everyone can identify with. These personal aspects are metaphorized through symbolic actions, material or people. Those short and simple and daily life actions are repeated in a performance as a communication between people, through which lies a focus on the relationship with the other protagonists in the performance.

A climate of restrictiveness is also a method to show my passive role in the relationship and also my fear and restrictiveness. Through materials I can gather in daily life, I can give my personal feelings but it is also still rooted in daily life and therefore it can probably happen. It is a question of relationships in life that continue to happen.

Everyone can experience this and reenact this easily.

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Gilsuk Ko Lives and works in MĂźnster, Germany Unconventional and captivating in its multifaceted nature, artist Gilsuk Ko's work is indeed difficult to pin down: its inquiry into the role people have in society, especially how people start relationships with others vigorously resists a traditional signature style, but persists in establishing an inclusive approach. In her Comfort distance, that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she provides us with an immersive experience to trigger the audience perceptual and cultural parameters. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

thus creating only one point in time and only one singular scene as a still frame. When I get new ideas for works they are always received through an emotional reaction or process, hence one scene and one point in time is not enough to portray my idea just through painting. This is why I early in my career developed an interest in mixed media and video art. The reason to get into performance eventually lies in Germany. Since I was in Germany I had no place for myself for a longer period of time and had to move rather often so I had a problem to keep lots of material with me for my works. I was skeptical to create something only for a particular time but needed to destroy or throw it away because of moving. I was not able to keep my works with me, so I started to work with highly available material such as my body for art works. Also things from daily life were highly available and due to the fact that my topic is often inspired from my daily life situations, therefore this choice for material seemed rather fitting.

While studying in Korea my topic focused on Myself in a mass of people, therefore in

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Gilsuk and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background.

You have a solid formal training: after having degreed with a Bachelor degree Fine Arts from the Hongik University in Seoul, you moved to Germany to nurture your education with a Bachelor and Master degree of Fine Arts, that you received from the prestigious MĂźnster Kunstakademie. How did these experience influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does the relationship between your cultural substratum due to your Korean roots and your current life in Germany inform the way you relate yourself in your artistic inquiry?

Hello and thanks for having me. I indeed started painting as major in Korea but also had a huge interest in free media, in particular to utilize not only painting but to have a free choice of material to realize ideas, that I was always curious about. While studying painting, I always had a feeling of limitation to keep my topic and idea only on a restricted canvas,

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trousers on exhibition, therefore just showing the result. Nowadays I lay my focus much more on the process of creation. This method of showing the creational process through performance and video has nowadays become my style. The audience can more easily relate to my work through this process and have more genuine feelings while watching my work.

society. Living in Seoul, there are many people in a small area, the population density is enormous. Because of that you have to be in contact with many people and cannot totally avoid meeting strangers on a daily basis.

Despite the many people around I felt quite lonely. Since I came to Germany I was without family or friends. All of a sudden there were not so many people and strangers around me compared to Korea. My topic altered therefore slightly in scope from an outward perspective to an inward, personal perspective, still investigating Myself in society but rather more about my relationship to single people rather than a whole mass of people. Back in Korea relationships with strangers were very impersonal, now the relationships I investigate are more personal like with friends or family.

Of course being in Germany I started to have relationships with foreigners, a topic like cultural differences and through that communication struggles automatically became part of my works, too.

For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected Comfort distance, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already staterd to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. While walking our readers through the genesis of Comfort distance, would you tell us if you how did you developed your initial idea?

My works’ motifs always come from my experiences and feelings in certain situations.

This work’s topic is a lot about the relationship with other people in Germany, more particularly with Germans. I have stayed quite a bit now in Germany and my communication skills got slightly better, I also think, I got more acquainted to German culture, but still I have sometimes problems to fully comprehend German people. I feel that friendships with Germans are different to friendships with Koreans. This might be due to cultural differences, to a lack of communication skills or my personal shyness, but because of this feeling I always hold back a bit when with German friends or when getting to know someone new. One time I was on a little trip together with German colleagues, myself being the only foreigner around. For three days we stayed in Poland, so everyone was in a foreign country and there our relationship grew stronger and we got to get to know each other much more intensive because everyone was not in their home country. Back in Germany the feeling of holding back and alienation came back

Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://gilsukko.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: while walking us through your process, would you like to tell to our readers something about the evolution of your style? In particular, do you think that there is a central idea that connect all your works?

My central idea is the relationship of people in society. Within this topic I would like not to create a specific result but rather emotions and feelings with the spectatorship.

Within this process of relationship, in former days I realized my message through the result of the performance and just installed this. For example, I sat on a chair and applied cement on my pair of trousers until it hardened. After hardening I put off the trousers and put the

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quickly. Through this I got the idea about the motif for my work Comfort Distance, we remained in a relationship which is not to close but also not too far away from each other.

We dare say that your inquiry into how peoples expectations of how they want the other to be unveils a subtle social criticism: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". What could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age?

Art is not much different to life, it rather derives from it. Artists also live in society like everyone else. In today’s society everyone has his or her own struggle to get by. Through art people can share their feelings, start to find a mutual basis to start communicating and thus start to heal their wounds they get through their daily life.

Art is not always high art of fine art but also a contribution to help people getting involved, instead of just standing and watching. Art should not be only for a minority that are able to get to the place of the exhibition like museums or galleries, art should rather be broadcasted widely and help people start communicating and share their feelings, even more so with the available means in this day and age of digital media.

Your observation of the social phenomena seems to be very analytical, yet strives to be full of emotion: how much importance has improvisation in your process?

When starting to film my works, I just give a description of the situation, material and actions in the scene to the protagonists. I do not give a concrete goal or wanted perception to them.

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I leave these points open to see the outcome.

Before I conduct my works, there is no trying to reach a specific goal. I have it roughly in my mind, though will never give it to my actors so they will not be influenced by the way I think of the scene.

Therefore the outcome is very analytical on one side but on the other is still full of emotion and improvisation. Improvisation is an important part of my work, because in order to identify with it, people need their own emotions to be reflected and ultimately start communicating and identifying. This can only happen if the actor in my work is allowed to be fully authentic in his or her emotion.

Your works, as the interesting performance photoseries entitled Between me and others, allow an open reading, a multiplicity of meanings: you seem to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations: how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings?

The situations on display in my works derive all from everyday life. I do not intend to give unnatural scenes to the spectators, in order to make it easier for the spectatorship to interpret their own situation through my works. They should be able to completely rethink their personal situation because they all did what happens on screen themselves one time or can at least relate to it. Everyone tied a button, braided hair or held a pack of spaghetti in his or her hand. With these material, people can more easily think of themselves doing a similar thing. Sure I worked on my personal emotion and situation but yet try to keep it universal and highly relatable to people, because everyone was in a similar situation once. Hence are able to have their own personal feelings relating to my work.

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Your work provide the viewers with an immersive visual experience: 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? Moreover, do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value?

The immersive visual experience is a result of my works, but not a necessity I think of when conceiving an art work. It is more like a consequence from the approach to my works to use daily life situations. When people start recognizing situations they are well acquainted with, then immersion is an effect that easily occurs. People tend to be more open to new ideas when they are based on situations that they are familiar with. Also another important point of my work is repetition. Many viewers do not want to watch a full video in one sitting.

Therefore my works repeat the process and action quite a lot within one take in order to quickly establish the idea of my work with the audience. What comes out of this as a result is open to the spectatorship, but they do not need to watch my videos in full length. Through the repeated actions, the viewers can speculate and think about the outcome at the end themselves.

Art stems from everyday life, because artist are normal people, too. Everyone has their personal experiences or feelings but there is also a common ground of universal experiences and feelings. All people live in society. The topics of art and society are not to be divided. Through art people share emotions, they share things that became the talking point through art and are finally more considerate about it. Everyone has his

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personal problems in life. Art should help to socialize this problem and help people get out of isolation with their particular problem.

Personal topics should be brought to a public scale through art and help people rethink their problem.

I do not feature womanhood explicitly in my works. I got asked this questions a few times but I do not try to analyze the role of women in society. That being said, my ideas always come from personal experience and me being a woman, I cannot fully separate this point and it may automatically become a minor part of my work. But foremost I try to realize my ideas about society not with any gender bias. This is quite similar to people living in society, people live as humans but on a subliminal level in certain situations also as man or woman automatically. This also applies for my works. I do not stretch on my role as a female human being, but I cannot fully dispatch my womanhood fully from my works, because my works come to existence through my personal experiences, also as a woman.

Your performances involve common objects as umbrellas, shoes and forks: 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? Moreover, would you tell us something about the importance of metaphors in your practice and their relationship to memory?

In my work exist universal metaphors, those are intelligible to most of the spectators instantly.

But there are also personal metaphors. These are not intelligible for the spectatorship at first.

As an example, in my work Green Attack I choose an umbrella as material. Umbrellas are normally used to protect oneself from rain, therefore the metaphor of protection is almost

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The problems of communication I work on are not due to merely language reasons. This is only superficial. These problems stem from relationships and not from certain language. There are much more things involved in relationships than language.

Many different layers.

instantly clear. The green pudding on the other side has no connotation to most people. I combine those element in an also metaphoric act and use them as narrative element within my work. Through the combination of universal and personal metaphor, the emotion in my work becomes obvious to the audience.

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

How do you see your work evolving?

Over these years your works have been showcased in several group exhibitions and you had also two solos, including your recent Kennen;Lernen, at the Osthaus Museum in Hagen. One of the hallmarks of your work 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?

The basis of my work will also in the future lie in the field of performance art, but its character will differ regarding place of exhibition. Form and method will change according to different locations. Sometimes I will try to do live performances, sometimes video installations, sometimes theater, through different methods of exhibition my topic should evolve naturally. The means of displaying my videos hopefully also evolves to a point where the displayed art work merges with is surrounding and tries to incorporate the spectator even more. The spectator should not only watch but also participate, enjoy, be involved and get a universal feeling.

While creating an art work, I try not to utilize very difficult and complicatd actions, so that the spectators can evolve to a protagonist themselves and try the action out. They can participate, if they want to, but this is also possible not only at the venue of my exhibition but also at home. It can be tried out in various daily life situations. I do not want to limit the audience where to reenact my work, it can be tried everywhere with daily life material.

As human being the topic about differences between my home country and foreign countries I would like to investigate even further.

I will try to continue working in Europe and Korea as well to keep in touch with both sides.

In my works there is no certain spoken language involved, all my works are nonverbal. My works use the language of emotion and body language which helps to overcome differences and opens my work towards a greater audience.

Thank you very much for this interesting interview and your interest in my works.

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Jacqueline van de Geer Lives and works in MontrĂŠal, Canada Jacqueline van de Geer is a Montreal-based artist working primarily in performance. Hailing from the Netherlands, where she studied visual and performance art, her current practice is inspired by literature, mythology, history and personal memory. Since her arrival to Montreal in 2005, her performative actions have combined object theatre, devised theatre, dance and integrated arts. Collective creation is an important part of her practice, and this philosophy informs her work both with fellow artistic collaborators as well as with her audiences. As such, developing strong connections with viewers is elemental: her performances offer many the opportunity to become active participants, with these spontaneous exchanges becoming an integral part of her pieces. Intimacy and surprise then surface as key components in her work, facets that irresistibly draw her audiences in. Mixing performance art with experimental theatre, and always working intuitively, her non-linear storytelling is infused with dark humour, absurdity and irony.

Slipping seamlessly between these varying modes, the result is an evocative hybrid form coming from a uniquely refreshing voice.

A member of the Playwright’s Workshop since early 2016, she has performed with several companies including Le Pont Bridge, Joe, Jack and John, Nervous Hunter and Compagnie Mobile Home amongst others and more recently has begun to produce solo works which have been presented at festivals in Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia, Roubaix, Rotterdam, Wakefield and Harrisonburg. In 2017 she is thrilled to travel to Norway, presenting The Paperbag Queen at Sanafest and to travel to France as part of an artist exchange with L'atelier du vent (Rennes,) and Centre SKOL (Montreal).

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Jacqueline and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training: after your studies at the prestigious Theatre Academy in Amsterdam and Willem de Kooning Art Academy in Rotterdam, you nurtured your education in the fields of butoh, tango, creative writing, clowning and performance. How did these experience influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Unconventional and captivating in its multifaceted nature, MontrĂŠal based artist Jacqueline van de Geer's work is indeed difficult to pin down: her practice involves performative actions, combined object theatre, devised theatre, dance and integrated art. In her You are the performance, that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she provides the viewers with of the the opportunity to become active participants and are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. One of the most impressive aspects of van de Geer's practice is the way it accomplishes a successful attempt to trigger the perceptual and cultural parameters of the participants of their works to inquiry into both into the private sphere and in the social one: we are

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I like to use a variety of disciplines and skills in the performances I make, for each performance, it seems to me necessary to discover what can take out of my basket to make the performance as authentic and strong as possible.

Where as some performances need an approach that correspond with my Butoh training (for instance a

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about things. There was a lively underground scene, very active especially in the jazz scene. Spaces always moved around, since the city renovated old and carred buidlings. This mentality I brought to Canada and I am happy to merge this skill of creating on the spot with the more sophisticated way of working in North America.

work in process about the process of aging: My Bones), other performances can be more dada inspired and there fore need a wild and anarchist 'clown' aspect to be developed. And for my dada adaptation of Three sisters, I ended up using dress up dolls and a carton mini theatre! In Merz! I create a war between plastic forks , knives and spoons. It all really depends on what works for me to present an adequate, yet absurd viewpoint of the theme of the performance.

Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://www.jacquelinevandegeer.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: while walking us through your process,would you like to tell to our readers something about the evolution of your style?

And in particular, how does your cultural substratum dued to your Dutch roots and your current life in Canada inform the way you relate yourself in your artistic inquiry?

Having obtained two bachelors, one in theatre and one in visual arts, it was not easy for me to make a choice what side to take in my artistic process when I was in my mid thirties,until I kind of discovered that 'and ' is a much softer and nicer way to weigh decisions than using 'or'. This 'and' allowed me to be inclusive and through the years, have not only learned to include different media and disciplines, but in my performances, I more and more include the audience. Actually, I have started to call the audience my participants because I really feel they have so much to offer to my performances: energy, input, movement, distance, humour, the unknown and un expected element that very often give my work a push. I am very inspired by the collage, cut and paste, nonsensical style of early dada artists and expressionist culture in the early Weimar republic. It is a strong connection, I can not entirely explain in an intellectual manner: it is almost a physical attraction.

It speaks to me so to say. Some people here in Montreal call me a neo dada ist, which actually is flattering!

I live twelve years now as an immigrant in Montreal, Canada.I left the Netherlands, where I lived in Rotterdam, in 2005 with two suitcases and hope and off course also a tiny feeling of anxiety! I feel at home in Montreal, and go back to the old continent twice a year. It is interesting that even though the culture of Canada is not as far away from my own Dutch culture, I have realized, over the years, that I am not only Dutch, but as well that I am an European artist, residing in Montreal. Montreal is great, a melting pot of so many cultures and very open to what ever art there is. I love to shop around in the different neighbourhoods and there is even a very modest Dutch community here.

Art is available and I am grateful to be included in the eclectic art community here. But...from time to time I need to go back to my roots, especially to be connected with a more intuitive and expressionistic way of creating. In Leipzig , I have found my second home for that, a very inspiring art hub, with strong artists and a generous approach for real experiment and risk taking.I crave that kind of energy once in a while!

In particular, do you think that there is a central idea that connect all your works?

Off course growing up in Rotterdam formed me, for the most part of my life I lived in a scarred cty, that was actually bombed twice ( the second bombing is somewhat hidden in the history books), once by the enemies and once by mistake by the friends.Being in a city that was always under reconstruction taught me a lot about 'just doing it' instead of being to 'heady'

In my works, I search for a poetic simplicity, a notion that deep down, even coming from different places on our planet, or different cultures, life styles, genders, race and social class, we have one thing in common: we are humans and we all have the need to be seen, heard and listened to. Togetherness and communication are very important elements in my

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performances, although I certainly present these themes in an unorthodox and very often playful manner!

For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected You are the performance, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already staterd to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. While walking our readers through the genesis of You are the performance, would you tell us if you how did you developed your initial idea?

Very often my performances are fed by coincidence and sensing what is needed at that particular time and place. In 2016, I was invited to perform in an artist run gallery in Montreal and I was the last performance ina dense line up of performances that evening. Some of the performers really did not respect the time and so it became a very long and tiring evening. I am really sorry to say this, but the audience was exhausted and actually, I thought about cancelling my performance, feeling the tiredness of the people in the room. But many people had come to see me, what I really found heart warming. I felt that I needed to shift the energy in the room and instead of performing myself I 'invented' You are the performance! With the elements I had brought in anyway: a tent to be build, a dada poem by Hugo Ball, balloons, paper, pens and a duster. Soon the whole room was a festive chaos, people screaming Gadji beri Bimba, running around wit the tent, writing and dusting each other. It was fun! I concluded the performance, inviting all to sit in a circle, breathing together and I thanked them, saying: remeber this, it is always you, together...You are the performance. And because t was such a heartwarming and especially lively event, I thought about how we have this tendency to divide, even if we think we are contemporary inclusive aritsts, we often put on tis frontier between us and our so called audience.

You like spontaneity and in You are the performance you address your audience to a participative and multilayered experience, playing with objects, as toy balloons and magnifying glasses as well as artist quotes rich with references to the realm of memory: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand

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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?

That is certainly an interesting thought. Personally I like to mix and match meaning, breaking rules and invite an atmosphere where the 'unexpected' rules throughout the performance. For me, both ways works, as I said earlier, I am tempted to think 'and' more than 'or'!

More over, would you tell us something about the importance of metaphors in your practice and their relationship to memory?

Memory to me is a strange and very intimate process: we rely on it and at the same time, we kind of know that memories are always coloured and therefore not very reliable. Memories can be passing generations, think about collective memories that pass on trauma, for instance war, social injustice and discrimination. I notice that my memories over the years change in their meaning and intensity. Nevertheless, memories form us, more than we sometimes realize.

The war within, a performance about exclusion and the mechanics of war, is inspired by memories of my parents, told to me when I was a child. They grewup as children during the second world war and suffered two bombings and severe hunger. That marked them but both dealt with these memories in a very different way. To be included n these memories, I felt I lived that war too and at some point, I felt th need to transform this confusion into an interactive performance where I try together with the participants, to decode the mechanics of war. In this performance I used balloons as a metaphor for inclusion and exclusion, I played with toy soldiers and magnify glasses and became pregnant with my old doll Katinka, delivering her with the help of an audience member.

Your observation of the social phenomena seems to be very analytical, yet strives to be full of emotion: how much importance has improvisation in your process?

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Improvisation is my key to connect with what is happening in the moment it self, what is happening with me and what is happeneing within the relationship I am building with my participants. I find that if there is a strong frame or skeleton of a performative work, there is much room for the un known and I love to 'channel' in the moment and explore together with my participants. Improvisation is much needed in life as well, I find and since I love to make live art, I need to have the freedom to be as alive as possible in the work during the presentation.And I love to invite this feeling of freedom with my participants!

Your works is often pervaded with insightful socio political criticism and as you have remarked once, MERZ! is an exploration how to cope with the violence and politics that are surrounding us, and an expression of our helplessness to change the chaos in our times: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". What could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age?

Imagine a world without art, imagine a world without writers, painters, performers, musicians and so on.

Imagine a world where everything has a function in a very one dimensional way. Imagine a world, where the dream has no room. Imagine a world without a place to reflect on what is happening. And there is happening so much nowadays, and we all have acces to it through our social media, but how can we reflect on it? I think here art might have a function: to reflect, to give space to other way of thinking, to give space to feeling and perceiving the world and to wake up a certain kind of awareness.

In particular, how do you consider the role of humour in your work?

Humour is key, not so much to make my participants laugh a lot, but to soften up messages that sometime can be harsh or sad or bitter. Humour also allows me as an artist to be less 'important' with what I am presenting and mos of all, I really think humour for me represents the world in the best way: a absurd kaleidoscope where we as humans think we are the

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most intelligent species, where as we might still be in the prehistoric times, disguised as if we are civilized, contemporary, modern...

I find everyday reality sometimes far more surreal than what ever I imagine, to be honest. Like walking around in a supermarket, we all know this kind of shopping and we all find this a very normal and common thing to do.

Sound plays an important in your work and we like the uncanny atmosphere provided with the low sound of the piano in La guerre en moi part or the sweet one provided with Satie's notes in Listen to my heart beat: moreover, in many of your performances spoken words are also essential.

According to media theorist Marshall McLuhan there is a 'sense bias' that affects Western societies favouring visual logic, a shift that occurred with the advent of the alphabet as the eye became more essential than ear. How do you see the relationship between sound and images?

But for me ( and trust me, I am not against this, just saying) it is a very surreal experience sometimes. All these products, packed in plastic, like even cucumbers! And the dates, where has our own sense to feel or smell if a product is still ok to eat gone too? And the packings: coloured plastic, names of brands, illustratiosn on it to sell sell sell...

The music accompanying this 'experience', the strangeness of it all sometimes makes me laugh and who knows, maybe one day I will use a supermarket as a methafore in a piece, because the format is so weird actually.

Senses are important to us, we hear, we see, we smell, we feel, we taste and we sense! It is true that images rule our Western society in an almost invasive way: television, publicities, design, architecture...it is all meant for the eyes.

Nevertheless, the other senses certainly provide us with information too, only we do not register this information because we are so used to have the emphasis on visuals. Sound might be a second sense, taking space in our world as well; jingles, traffic, machines, pop culture and so on.

Now that is one example, but there are so many in our modern world: the way we dress, the words we use to describe our projects, the urge to always be faster, better and smarter. For me mixing imagination and reminders of our daily life is key: it invites not only a laugh but hopefully we will recognize the crazy elements in our 'reality'!

More recently you begun to produce solo works that have been presented at a number of festivals in Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia, Roubaix, Rotterdam, Wakefield and Harrisonburg: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create direct involvement with the viewers, who are provided with of the the opportunity to become active participants and 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?

It is nice to work with senses in my performances, to let silence sink in, or use sounds that are inviting a certain emotional response. In The Unknown Men, I blindfolded the participants, so that they could truly experience their other senses and it was so touching to witness the softening up of each of them during the piece! Sound colours the image, as we know from movies for instance: a shot of a door and the sound track with it will invite the expectation of what will happen when this door opens: horror, romance, sadness...you name it! In The Unknown Men, by taking away the sight, the participants could make their own movie in their head, listening to the soundtrack while tasting, smelling and touching.

This summer I was in Europe, travelling and working in four countries: France, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands. Luckily I speak four languages, so only in Norway, I had to perform in English. But still, I learned some words, just to

More precisely, how do imagination and reminders to everyday reality find a point of convergence in your approach?

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connect on that level and show my willingness.

Willingness is all. Not only in language but also in attitude and energy. Willingness to open up, will open up. It all works like a mirror, except that left is not going to be right and vice versa! I do think it is crucial the audience is involved, without them it is less intense, less alive and less of a plunge into an adventure with unknown elements. Even if I do not speak or communicate with them directly, this energy is there, I can not ignore that. Often my audience guide me trough my performance, without them realizing it. They are the most important component of the work in the end.

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

I wil be working on The String in Cyprus, making a performance and installation, inspired by the Komboloi or worry beads, used by both sides of this divided island. I am looking forward as well to present older performances like the Paperbag Queen and In Transit in festivals here in Montreal and ina festival in New York. Another beautiful thing happened: I am accepted in a residency in Montreal to work on Merz!

I really love to develop a performance about he mechanics of war for youth and adolesences. The Cube, a youth theatre here in Montreal , will host me and are willing to spoil me with technical help and space. I am so thrilled to be able to develop my dada inspired approach of this topic.

How do you see your work evolving?

More and more I am convinced that my work will find its way in the world, and I allow myself to relax, be more in the moment of creating, performing and to what is, rather than what 'should' be as I did in the past. I also gave up to fit in a trend and word my projects therefore more complicated than I like to.

More over, I hope to crawl around performing in my late nineties!

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Margaret Noble and Justin Hudnall perform Righteous Exploits Righteous Exploits is a multi-media sound, projection, and narrative performance created by Margaret Noble and Justin Hudnall. This performance work is inspired by Ann Fabian’s book, The Unvarnished Truth– a powerful cultural history of how ordinary Americans crafted and sold their stories of hardship and calamity during the nineteenth century.

Righteous Exploits is a chronicle of the life of Noble’s grandmother, Helen Hosmer, a 1940’s-era labor activist. This cinematic performance investigates the discovery of McCarthy era persecutions, FBI reports and a series of first person testimonials on the uncanny behavioral cycles shared by 4 generations of women. Each woman prospering at the expense of her family while seeking freedom.

Over 400 hand-made overhead color transparencies and a minimalist electro-acoustic score were created by Noble to illuminate the narrative writing and monologue performance by Hudnall. Righteous Exploits is a darkly funny and poignant demonstration of eternal recurrence.

Directed by Lisa Berger. Stills and video below from a workshop performance.

Born in Texas and raised in California, Margaret Noble’s experimental artworks have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her interdisciplinary work resides at the intersection of sound, sculpture, installation and performance. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego and an MFA in Sound Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Noble’s work is influenced by the beat-driven dance culture of southern California which flourished during the 1980’s and later led her to perform as an electronic music DJ in the underground club community of Chicago.

In 2004, she branched out from the dance floor into experimental sound art for new audiences which intersected the electronic sound scene and the visual arts community. During this transition, Margaret created sound works for collaborative projects in video, dance and object theatre. Her artistic works have now evolved into sculpture and installation influenced by interests in memory, history, narrative, and identity. Noble’s work has been featured on KPBS, PRI, Art Ltd Magazine, Art Forum, San Francisco Weekly and the Washington Post. She was awarded the International Governor’s Grant, the Hayward Prize and the Creative Catalyst Fellowship. Her artistic residencies include the MAK Museum in Vienna and the Salzburg Academy of Fine Art. She has had several solo exhibitions including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Ohrenhoch der Geräuschladen Sound Gallery in Berlin, and Mute Gallery in Portugal.

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

YET UNTILTED It s an experimental & cutting

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

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Mehdi Farajpour Lives and works in Paris, France Iranian choreographer Mehdi Farajpour's work accomplishes an insightful exploration of the connection between body and digital technology to walk the viewers through a multilayered experience, inducing them to elaborate personal associations and interpretations. His style rejects any conventional classifications and is marked with freedom as well as coherence , while encapsulating a careful attention to composition and balance. One of the most impressive aspects of Farajpour's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of transforming a reality into an alternate one: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

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

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Mehdi and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your multifaceted background? You have a solid formal training and you graduated from Theater department of Soureh Fine Arts University, Tehran.

How does this experience influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum dued to your Persian roots inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

I studied drama (precisely to become an actor) but after few years of doing as an actor in the city theatre of Tehran, I gave up because I was not satisfied since I was not able to totally express myself in that discipline. So I switched my career to become a theatre director and then a choreographer. I was in high school by that time.

When I entered into the university of fine arts (department of Drama), my vision on things has become wider. Theatre had offered me a new language (as a new tool) in which I could talk and act at the same time. Although, with the poetry, I did not have that Acting tool. I do not want to say that the poetry is a passive language compare to the theatre but I can carefully say that theatre is more comprehensive form of art and more open

Hello and thanks for your interest in my work.

Actually, when I think about the beginning of my career an artist, I remember that I have been always fascinated by multifaceted artists in the history of Art. Antonin Artaud, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, …

To me, discovering a theatre play written by a poets who has been also a drawer/painter was/is not only provoking my curiosity but was/is also a joy-able effort to understand and try to perceive a huge competence that one artist can develop during years by practicing different forms and disciplines. I love Coctau’s works not as a fan but because he was the one who thought me how not to be afraid of modern classifications, labels, boxes and frames

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towards togetherness than the poetry. This is not a critic against the Poetry. It is only what I feel about it.

The poetry is a personal cure to me. I can hide in my room and live with it although living with theatre needs going out of your room, meeting people,…

During the years at Fine arts university, I spent a lot of time with the artists of other disciplines such as Cinema, Painting, Sculpture, Music,…. I should admit that I learnt more things by spending time in the courtyard of the university than sitting in the classrooms and listening to the professors. (I believe there is a profound problem with classical teaching methods). In the courtyard of my university, I noticed that each artistic disciplines is a language with its own capacities, competences and possibilities. Some ideas, concepts or emotions can be better expressed in one than the others. This is because of the particularity of that language (discipline). It is because that particular language is offering you a wider space or a certain possibility that is able to easily host your concept inside itself. But of course, to speak in that particular language (or to expresse your concept in a that discipline), you need to know how basic rules (grammar) of that language works. This was the point when I did break up with those common classifications in the university and went towards a more open area without even knowing that it is called interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary art.

To me, creating comes from an inner need like the hunger. It s a wild feeling and it need to be responded immediately. One can’t learn how to become creative unless s/he feels that need. Then s/he will find his/her way to make it. No need to pass through Academic education although the professional network of art (nowadays) requires it. Recently I read a phrase from Oscar Wild that makes sense to me: « Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time t time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught ».

Your approach is very personal and your technique condenses a variety of viewpoints, that you combine together into a coherent balance. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://mehdifarajpour.com/ in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about

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2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelo

your process and set up? In particular, we like the way it combines formal research with improvisation: how did you developed its main idea? And in particular, how would you define the

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roles of chance and improvisation in your approach?

them to be part of the creation process not only a moving object on the stage for the sake of choreographer or director. I like to offer my performers (including myself) the freedom of living in the moment although I have to admit that

Improvisation is the territory of Performers (actors, dancers, musicians) and it gives them a freedom to exist in a show (performance). It lets

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2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

I believe only in conditional improvisation not a wild improvisation. By saying « conditional improvisation » I mean a « structured sort of improvisation ». To work on this, when I work with a group of dancers, first of all I explain the situation (dramatic moment) to them,

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then I clarify the type of movement I would need to see. At the end, I explain to them « what I do not want to see ». This very last remark can take a lot of time because here is the moment when I start trimming my dancer’s movement. After these three

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About the Chance in my approach: Yes, I have to confess that it has a special place in my works. I even try to predict or open a space for it to happen during creation process as well as during the final performance. Chance is present in my works in two different forms: Good Mistakes and Miraculous random.

I just created a new performance called AFTER ALL putting all these concepts together (CHANCE, RANDOM, NOW&HERE, IMPROVISATION). It was performed only once (at Hiroshima theatre of Barcelona) and I know that if there will be a chance to re-perform it, it will become a different performance because of the above-mentioned elements (words).

For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected YET UNTITLED, an interesting experimental & cutting edge performance using body, video and object project that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article.

What has at once captured our attention of your captivating investigation about the relationship with the audience is the way you provided the visual results of your analysis with autonomous aesthetics: while walking our readers through the genesis of YET UNTITLED, would you shed light to your main sources of inspiration?

As I mentioned earlier, Persian poetry is my main source of inspiration in most of my creations including shows, performances, videos and visual art works. YET UNTITLED, is also both visually and conceptually inspired by Persian poetry in general and by several Persian poets in particular (Omar Khayyam, Molavi, Hafiz,‌). I just tried to capture and mixe their views on the univers in a contemporary context. I also borrowed some of the major elements of their poems in YET UNTITLED. For example the music that is indeed a live sound captation of my own breathing rhythm while performing with a tiny microphone installed on my jacket. I transfer the sound of my breath to a computer and with the help of a software and sound mixing desk, I create a music in front of the audience (that is of course different

steps, the conclusion (basically improvisation), does not look like an improvisation anymore and maybe only me (as the choreographer) and my dancer will know about it. The audience may think that it was not an improvisation.

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each time that I perform). Or Clay is another word/element borrowed from Omar Khayyam who has very often used in is poems. For him, the clay is symbol of the earth as well as the human.

Another elements that I focused on in YET UNTITLED are: CURTAIN, SHADOWS, TREE BRANCHES and a GARMENT on which all those words/elements are written in a calligraphic manner. So it all about poetry since the concept itself is coming from there. I just used an up-dated language to speak about it.

About SHADOW - as the main element in YET UNTITLED - I have to add an explanation as follows.

The Shadow has a powerful meaning in Persian poetry. It is the sign of existence because whatever exist has a shadow, otherwise it does not really exist (from materialistic point of view). At the same time, in Indian beliefs, shadow is considered as the illusion of reality. Our world is a Maya, meaning the shadow or the illusion of another world (which is the real world) and we can’t see it. This subject are all my inspiration sources to work with.

At the end, I would like to use this opportunity and point out a cultural difference that I discovered while creating and performing YET UNTITLED. It is again about the shadow (as a word and as an element) that as I mentioned before, has a symbolic meaning in Persian poetry which it is rather opposite to the western perception from the word. Shadow in majority of Persian poetry refers to the notion of Shelter although it does not refer to the same notion in western cultures. I assume it is because of the strength of sun in Iran that sometimes can be too sharp and even harsh, specially in the deserts.

YET UNTITLED provides the viewers with an immersive experience capable of challenging their perceptual parameters. 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?

This is a very important question because one of my interests in performing art’s world is about VIEWING. How to watch a performance matters to me. From

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which angle or which corner my audience are going to watch me also matters.

The very first concept of yet untitled (that was performed once in Toulouse in frame of a video art festival called Traverse-vidéo) was to set up the curtain in the middle of a room (gallery or museum).

The performance was supposed to happen only in one side of the curtain. The other side of the curtain (that was also open for public) there was nothing except the shadow of performer and the elements (accessorises). The aim was to make a live video art and share the process of creation with the audience.

Later I adapted the performance YET UNTITLED to the new venues where there was no possibility of setting up the curtain in middle so I was obliged to use back-wall as a curtain that also worked for me.

I love performing in public spaces because there, it is me who is obliged to adapt myself to the environment/space. Performing in the street or in a gallery is not (and should not be) the same as performing on the stage. Simply because when an artist decides to move out of a theatre n order to perform in the public space, means that he/she is looking for SOMETHING that could not ne found inside theatre or on the stage. That SOMETHING can be a direct dialogue with public, or a particular atmosphere, space, architecture,…That s why I could never understand the artists who are performing the same show in many different spaces such as galleries, theatres, museums, street, parks,…without any adaptation in the concept.

When I create a performance, first I imagine it in 3 dimensions. The floor has always an important role in my shows (performances) and it has to be seen. That is why I mostly prefer to set up my audience in a higher position (like in Greek theatres) where they can easily see the floor. For example in one of my recent shows called CORPS OUBLIÉS (the rite of spring), the choreography was made for/with the video that was being projected on the floor. The venue was a huge abandoned shipyard with a clumsy ground. Or in another show called STOP SPOT, the whole stage including dancers were all covered with newspapers. Also in YET UNTITLED, the floor has got

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its own role. To me it represent a blank canvas on which I am painting with shadows.

A crucial aspect of your work is the insightful investigation about the connection between body and digital technology: how does this ubiquitous relationship affects your work?

Well, body and digital technology in my works are completing each. They are not jus put together side by side but they are put inside each other. I do not use technology to fascinate my audience with new sciences,…. I use it as a tool. For example in most of my performances I use video mapping but it always stays very basic. I use it as far as it supports my concept not more. It does not interest me to transform my show into a technological demonstration about a particular software or technology. For example in « ETC, ETC. » that technologically - is the most sophisticated show I have ever done, I still stayed very simple and basic. I mean at the end the show/performance is becoming a demonstration for a certain software (light, video or sound,…).

The project entitled « The situation is very… » could be considered as an exploration of the interstitial point between the figurative feature of daily life objects and gestures and the abstract nature of the process of manipulation: we have appreciated the way this work unveils the flow of information through an effective non linear narrative, establishing direct relations with the viewers: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the inner narrative for your works?

I wanted to speak about food problems through an artistic medium. I am so sensible about this subject specially when I see the huge amount of food wastes in so-called developed countries although we all know that in some others countries (few kilometres away) people are dying of hunger.

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2015, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

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2015, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

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Anyway, I was sure that I am not going to make a performance around this concept because I have already seen a lot of performances with the same theme in which the artists themselves are wasting a lot of food, just to say this is happening in our world.

To me this is a contradiction between what you say and what you do. Recently, I saw a theatre piece in Paris that was directed by a well-known director where the actors were wasting hundreds of litres of honey per day (per performance) just to criticise food consumption in our societies but actually they do the same. That honey could save the life of at least hundred children in Africa, India,‌ Anyway, I decided to work with another medium and to use a natural element as food that is not eatable: The stone.

It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the one that you have established over these years for the ORIANTHEATRE dance company, that our readers can discover at http://www.oriantheatre.com, are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of several practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

I would say if an artist could be critical about himself/herself, s/he can make that synthesis happen that Peter Tabor has mentioned. Collaboration between two or more artists is a tricky subject. It can work when there is no intellectual concept behind the project but when it comes to an ideological or an intellectual concept, artistic collaborations can easily fail, simply because we are all different with different views and opinions about life, world, etc. To have a fruitful collaboration, there has to be always leading mind (general idea) other wise I consider it as entertainment not art. I never mix these two.

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Besides conceiving and creating the works for the stage that we have been dealing with so far, you also teach your creative dance and performance language called MEDITATIVE DANCE: how does this aspect of your work influence your practice? In particular, have you ever been inspired from your students' ideas?

I started working on Meditative dance (or more precisely the EMPTY BODY method) almost 15 years ago when I was writing on my thesis in the university in Tehran. The title I choose for m thesis was MONK PERFORMERS that got published as a book few years later. In that book, I am talking about the power of PRESENCE on the stage and how an actor can obtain and develop it through meditation and yoga practices. Few year later, when I switched my career towards dance, I adapted those ideas from ACTING to DANCING. There EMPTY BODY (or Meditative Dance) method was born.

Teaching is one of my passions. Actually that was one of my motivations to start a program called PARIS SUMMER ACADEMY that is growing so fast. The idea was to let artists teach their personal approches instead of art teachers. Because I believe when an artist is teaching, what is happening in the workshop is an ARTISTIC EXCHANGE but when an art teacher is teaching it is only TRANSFERRING SKILLS. So my answer o your question about getting inspiration from my students is YES. I should even say that I learn much much more from the participants of my workshops than what they learn from me.

2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

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

native city) where I will re-create a performance DO NOT ENTER!. Besides, and more generally, I would love to focus more on a concept called INSTALLATION FOR DANCE, that I started to work on since few years ago. It is a sort of interactive and interdisciplinary project to bring dance & visual arts together. It is rather a large structure than a concept for one single performance. Actually the very first project in frame of this structure was a performance called DO NOT ENTER ! that I did once in Barcelona

As a very first step after this interview, I will be performing YET UNTITLED in Krakow at Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor (CRICOTEKA). I am really looking forward for it because KANTOR was also one the multifaceted artists that I have always appreciated.

During the same period of time, I will be also teaching my workshops EMPTY BODY in a city in south Poland called Opole (that was Grotowski’s

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(March 2016) and I will re-work on it in Poland in

wondering which company/artist to bring in highlight.

couple of weeks. And at the end, I will continue with programming for PARIS SUMMER ACADEMY which has become a passion for me. It gives me an occasion to meet so many emerging artists as well as established ones and all in one place. Last year, I had the chance to invite JAN FABRE’s company to Paris to teach in frame of PSA 2016 and it was

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

absolutely satisfying. For next year, I am still

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HISTORIA, 2014 Photographer: Caroline Andersson Courtesy: Museum of Public Art, Sweden Maja Spasova and Barbro Westling read from books written by Swedish Nazis.

Maja Spasova Lives and works in

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y work shows both elements of installation, performance – episodically reconstructed events in a milieu which is often city, and the character of more or less integrated forms found in the urban landscape.

The point of departure is an idea where the message has both poetic and existential character. Aesthetically I am at home in the conceptual traditions of art and I always address a larger part of the beholder than merely the cognitive and reflecting aspect. I contemplate the fundamental conditions of life in my art.

Sound is an essential aspect of my work, but not the only one, because I use many different matters. I do not produce esthetic objects. My art is more a way of producing relations and processes even in the cases when the final result is an object or an installation or a book etc.

My works are always in relation to a certain room, physical or mental, and to those who take part in it by looking, moving around, listening, feeling, speaking. I have located many of my projects in urban public places; my expressed desire is to reach people who are not part of the professional art system while also being connected with a more fundamental desire to eradicate the differences between art and life.

In the numerous art works for public space, as well in installations and performances for the white cube, I put a lot of careful work in which I assume the double role of initiator and project leader. The advanced technological elements that I often use mean that the works develop in dialogue with technical expertise in accordance with accepted scientific methods, but together with interaction by audience, public, nature etc. – the unpredictable chance.

My recent work explores the ambiguity of language, the dynamic between polarities in meaning and searches for alternative ways of expressing meaning. How much do we understand each other, when communication is loaded with continuous misreading, misunderstandings and misinterpretations?

At the moment I work with projects related to big cities’ multicultural environment and to the coexistence and conflicts of different social, ethnic and religious groups. The theme of these new works is GLOBUS HYSTERICUS/HISTORICUS and my aim is to explore several phenomena, some of them being the character of anxiety and paranoia in the society today.

BINDU, 2014

Photographer: JUJU Maja Spasova Performance, Durbar Square Kathmandu, Nepal White chalk, 3 kg hot chili powder, diameter 3 m, duration 3,5 h

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Maja Spasova Lives and works in

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An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making in general.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Quite early, already at the age of four, I knew I would be an artist. My parents were very supportive. And around my17th birth-day I decided that soon or later I would leave the country.

I grew up in Bulgaria during the communism, where the visual arts were the most controlled activity after politics. To be an artist there meant all possible privileges if one would follow the aesthetic and ideological norms of the ruling party and a practical suicide if one would ignore them.

Exploring the ambiguity of language in our unstable contemporary age and investigating the dynamic between polarities in meaning Maja Spasova is a versatile artist who transverses borders and permeates boundaries: marked out with a captivating multidisciplinary feature, her works provide the viewers with an immersive experience capable of triggering the viewers' perceptual parameters. In all of her pieces we can recognize a successful attempt to eradicate the differences between art and life. One of the most impressive aspects of Spasova's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of establishing direct relationships with the spectatorship, to draw them through an unconventional, multilayered experience: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

I spent four years at the High School of Visual Art in Sofia, an important period of education in ecstatic love for the fine arts, also time when discipline, craftsmanship and psychological resilience were systematically built up. So different from the following five years at the Art Academy which were marked by a stagnated atmosphere, the machinery for ideological conditioning, the rigorous training in the style of social realism, all those monotonous repetitions of mannerist tricks, form filled with dead content. Then I had enough.

In a totalitarian society there are only two choices to stay or to leave. Staying and working for the ruling power or staying and not working for the ruling power makes you in the both cases a collaborator as the writer Imre Kertesz says. At the age of 25 I became a refugee with asylum and a new home in Sweden. I got my first child. Then - a guest student at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm. One single year under the guidance of the American artist Prof. Bernie Kirschenbaum was

Hello Maja and welcome to LandEscape: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training and after your high school studies, you joined the Academy of Fine Art, Sofia from which you degreed with a Master of Art- Moreover, you later nurtured your education with a one-year study at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm: how do these experience influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural

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LIPSTICK CRUCIFIXION, 2007 https://youtu.be/GPhM-Wja04i Still from video performance, duration 2 min 39 sec

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with any creature, get nurture where ever he needs, experience and be part of the endless multitude in the world, and create, create, create.

more than all my previous art education, it had a major impact on my artistic growth.

All these – seeking asylum, becoming a mother, the year at the Art University in Stockholm – were life reshaping events with an enormous concentration of energy. These three beautiful existential quakes created the fruitful ground for all new which was to come.

You are a versatile artist and your approach encapsulates both installation and performance, revealing an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.majaspasova.com & www.facebook.com/Art.MajaSpasova in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

I found myself between two contrasting aesthetic systems. Not only Art was different in the West, but I could see even that there were hidden economic interests in the web of curators, critics, gallerists, collectors; a tired culture bureaucracy; murky financial methods used by private art galleries. And a lot of naivete about the context, political and social, in which artists live, ignorance about the role of the intellectuals in the society.

I wondered then and I still wonder why there are not so many artists who feel rage against the present order: the art dumbed by bloodless rhetoric, paralyzed down by market values, sold like shoe boxes at all these countless art fairs...

Yes, the multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express my ideas. First of all in order to be able to hear the personal voice and to see the unique face of each coming idea, I have to keep myself open, without preference or prejudice towards any material or media.

I felt I didn’t belong to this art system either. I had to create my own environment in which I could blossom. Without having any previous connections – I had lived on another planet my first 25 years - I went straight forward to art institutions, knocked on doors, doors opened. I was so lucky to meet people who believed in me and my ideas and supported my work.

With my first work in urban environment, Happening at Plaza Callao in Madrid 1987, I knew I had found a path which definitely was My path.

So having these two backgrounds – Bulgaria, a Slavic culture of great emotional intensity, with dramatic history of wars and bloodshed and then Sweden, a Protestant calm rationality, lack of wars for the last centuries, “folkets hem” (in English: “people’s home”) – this makes me stand with each leg on a very different land. Then living in France, Germany, UK – I must have a lot of legs!

Like a giant tree with its roots all over the world or like an octopus with thousands of arms dipped in all oceans, the artist can be anywhere, on any soil and

I like to think about the magician – take any material, do a wonder with it.

Or – a child at play. Free. Or even as it was written on a badge a friend gave to me: “Take shit and make gold out of it.”

Free to employ modest ordinary materials – a stone, some piece of paper, a candle. Take a stick and make a drawing in the sand. Or play with the wind. And at the next moment - work with high tech. Work with everything, create out of anything.

The use of language, randomness and chance, classic materials, ephemeral substances, my own person, the audience which engages knowingly or unknowingly, socio-psychological and other processes and sound, a lot of sound, all this is like the use of the different colors on the palette of a painter.

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specific installation, that have been exhibited at the Vandalorum Art Museum and 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 practice is its capability of establishing direct relations with the viewers who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship: when walking our readers through the genesis of the RUBY would you tell us something about your usual process and set up?

The idea is the engine of my work. All planning and decisions are related to the concept. But this is something else than the pure idea in conceptual art.

Although I see conceptual art as a radical alternative to conventional media and I admire its genuinely polemical position, my concepts are not based on words.

My concepts are based on visions. The ideas arrive from an unknown source and present themselves as already accomplished works of art although completely immaterial – just images in my mind.

I keep myself open, expecting the visitor – the miracle. An idea usually strikes all of a sudden. I welcome it. And I carefully watch it till I begin to see every detail, size, weight, surface. Though being just an image in my mind, the idea allows me to perceive its visual and tactile qualities as if it was a tangible physical presence. The rest is organization, funding, infrastructure, physical work – components and steps needed for the materialization of the concept.

During this secondary process also the verbalization of the idea occurs. So I believe in the beginning there was something else than the word. The beginning was made out of the image, the smell, the touch, the sound, the taste, the heartbeat. The beginning was made by the presence of those who were born by beginnings before this beginning.

RUBY came to life 2015. A drop from outer space, or a drop of outer space, it levitates 50 cm above the ground suspended by a number of tiny ropes. Its semitransparent surface radiates red light. A Dolby surround system transmits a rhythmic heart beat creating a meditative atmosphere, which explodes each half an hour in a short intensive female scream.

The scream always comes as a surprise, completely unexpected. With its height of 8.5 m and diameter 6 m RUBY fills the whole room, thus becoming an inner living tissue of the existing space. The audience experiences the walk around RUBY as a walk inside of it, inside of a living creature, inside of a womb.

Originally RUBY was thought for an exterior, but at Vandalorum it landed into the interior and changed character - the content determined by the issue of scale. Although scale in art is much more than the facts of the physical size.

And the place beyond size is what interests me and such a place always is the mind of the audience.

Perhaps this is what always comes up in my works – each time a new beginning – to create a totality of experience similar to the moment of our first breath, the very first time we opened the eyes, the sensation of the first ever human hand touching our body.

And at the end of the process, when the idea has been materialized, and though often being multidisciplinary, the art work has to have a lean laconic look, to be as minimal and as simple in its appearance as possible.

I look for a final outcome which combines both elegance and power. If I have succeeded, I always experience a punch in the stomach and then - an euphoric weightlessness.

The importance of audience is crucial. The art undertakes dialogue with a constantly changing public and the art materializes otherwise invisible phenomenas. And the audience can experience the materialization of these phenomenas only by active participation, or more precisely: the audience is part of the materialization itself. Here with materialize I mean not only tactile materialization but a whole range of media.

“Art is boring” or “I don’t understand art” people can complain at the museum/ the gallery/the white cube, where the four walls very often are a barrier between life itself and art. By working in the urban

For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected RUBY, an extremely interesting site-

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BINDU, 2014 Photographer: JUJU Performance, Durbar Square Kathmandu, Nepal White chalk, 3 kg hot chili powder, diameter 3 m, duration 3,5 h

The Golden Braid, 2015 Photographer: Kristina Strand Larsson Site-specific installation, the South tower of Lund Cathedral, Sweden Polypropylene rope, gold metal paint, diameter 30 cm, length 27 m.

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announcing in advance and without any permission from the city authorities, I just stepped at the spot on Durbar Square in front of the Parliament and did it. The most amazing thing was that after the first hour the audience wanted to be part of the artwork too, one by one people entered the round surface made of red hot chili powder and stood in its center.

Somebody brought a huge Nepalese flag, people started to perform BINDU carrying the flag. At the end of the afternoon the numerous feet walking in and out from BINDU had dispersed the chili powder in all directions, the round surface had disappeared.

A few months later a devastating earth quake stroke Nepal – the place of the performance was covered in rubble.

This autumn while in Florida and on my way to Key West I passes through a number of isles connected with bridges. And it happened again – the place was emitting such an incredible magnetism and beauty, I fell the urge to make a work there. So this must be one of the future projects to come!

environment, by exposing the idea to a direct confrontation with the public and by inviting the public to become part of the creating of the art work, I aim at art which is part of life or at life as art.

In MY DARLING each visitor created and participated in a performance of the great human saga – the life as a wandering in search for love.

Another example is the site-specific sound installation THE GAP OF TRUTH at the Church of Revelation in Stockholm, 1998.

Elements from environment are particularly recurrent in your imagery and, as in the interesting performance entitled BINDU, they never plays the role of a mere background. In particular, you use to locate most of your projects in urban places: do you see a definite relationship between the notion of land and your work?

In my work I let the land speak and reveal its hidden core. I believe the idea is born by a kind of conversation, intensive listening and talking to the place, it is important to achieve an organic entity.

Each place is being made of countless segments like geographical position, historical and cultural heritage, people.

As you have remarked once, your works are always in relation to a certain room, physical or mental, and to those who take part in it by looking, moving around, listening, feeling, speaking. In other words, your practice seems to move from experience to produce an augmented 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?

A dialogue with a place is nurtured by intuition and imagination, by using all invisible antennas humans are equipped with.

I remember walking in Stockholm August 1984 and passing by Central bridge. I immediately fell in love with the space, the forest of concrete columns, the strong current, the silence beneath though being one of city’s most trafficked bridges. The place was calling me. I knew I will do a work there. The place was talking to me though I couldn’t get the message back then. First 2010 the work took form in my mind, the urban sound installation MY DARLING was realized 2012. It seems it was necessary for me to listen to the whisper of this place during whole 28 years.

With BINDU, 2014 it was different. After a month in Kathmandu the idea appeared with all its power. I was trying to postpone and waited till the last day of my stay, but there was no way not to do it. Without

I think no, it can’t be disconnected. The direct experience is intimately woven in the creative process but definitely not the only one source of creativity.

Our experience of the world is complex. Our sense of time is open and abstract, we allow reversals and curves and movements of time across sequences and spatial segments beyond our immediate experience. And then we have the memory from an experience, and memory is changeable, it can be revised and reshaped at any time. Exactly as history is being rethought and rewritten on regular basis.

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The body of works MIGRATIONS, 2010, 2011, 2012 was partly born from my personal experience. First MIGRATIONS, 2010 – a site-specific installation at Palazio Mosquera, Spain in collaboration with Anna Spasova. 200 shoes made of different types of white paper and cotton thread stepping on the surface of crashed transparent glass. The following year 2011 the very same shoes made a dangerous journey on the river Manzanares el Real – only a few managed to survive, most of them drowned on the way. Finally in 2012 the documentary film material from the performance was edited and the short film titled MIGRATIONS became an independent art work: https://youtu.be/89Tmi6zOPP4 When creating a a dream-like atmosphere, The Golden Braid, a site-specific urban installation for the South tower of Lund Cathedral, also inquires into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a contamination the inner and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

Art gives birth to ideas much before ideas become expressed by rational mind and language and thus serves us in a fundamental way by permitting construction of unthinkable parts. Art is the place of creating consciousness and conscience, the engine of change, the program for the future. It is the Utopiamaking, an expression of extremes in human thought and paradoxes of feeling. Still few have access to art as it has been kept inside, sheltered in an ivory tower, confined to the private sphere, the white cube, the specialist.

The public domain, physical and mental, is the right place for art. But who owns the public space? Who has the right to use it, and what kind of use? In recent time the public space has gone through dramatic transformations, it is increasingly controlled by commercial interests. Art has an important role to play here, reclaiming the agora for the citizens, for Utopia.

THE GOLDEN BRAID, 2015 deals also with contradictions. The braid 27 m long hangs from the

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BRIGHT SHINY ME, 2013 Photographer: Medford Taylor Site-specific installation at UVA, USA commissioned by VCCA, USA. Collaboration for the sound composition with Luis Hillario Arevalo

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BRIGHT SHINY ME, 2013, Photographer: Maja Spasova, Site-specific installation at UVA, USA commissioned by VCCA, USA., Collabora

Over your long career you have exhibited in several occasions, including your participation at the prestigious Venice Biennial and you recent performance Calling Your Name, at the Djerassi Foundation, in California. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

South Tower of Lund Cathedral Sweden, almost reaching the ground. The golden colour vibrates with life against the grey stone wall, a feast for eyes and soul on the austere facade.

Protestant church doesn’t recognize Maria in the same way as Catholic dogma does. But women do serve as priests in the North, something still unthinkable in South Europe.

Rapunzel invites for a heroic action. Who is the witch? And who is willing to climb the long and risky way up to the top of the tower “only for love?”

Art poses questions and creates models entirely existential and tangible. I believe in art, materialized in its physical-visual form and on different scales – physical and social, which takes its place in the public realm, specially the urban space, and becomes one with life.

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I feel connected with the audience before we have met, it is always present. Already from the very first moment when an idea appears I can sense the

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tion for the sound composition with Luis Hillario Arevalo

presence of the future viewer-participator-cocreator.

“As a child of popular culture, teethed on the electronic media, I feel the neighborly nearness of nations, continents, planets. Wires, wires everywhere: our thoughts are beads on the endless chain of connectedness that is the cosmos.”

Camille Paglia

participation usually is a crucial component of the creative process, of the birth of the work itself. The worst could be if the audience reacts with “I don’t care” and “I don’t want to do it.” This has never happened to me and if it ever happens it would be an indicator that I have done a serious mistake.

In the sound installation TODAY, 2016 as well in the performance CALLING YOUR NAME, 2016, both created at the Djerassi Foundation, I explore the possibility of an entirely open situation, where chaos, anarchy and constant change are at play.

Minimizing my power as the artist, I give the authority to the participants. Thus I create a kind of raw material, which can be experienced, thought of and recombined in many different ways. TODAY is a sound installation based on multiple voices and random dates from past, present and future.

Several channels of non-linear time fragmented to

The language of the artwork comes specific of the idea. I always look for a fresh way to give form to the idea in both complex and simple way, in outspoken visual terms. Though I feel connected with the audience, it is impossible to predict in advance its reaction. Positive or negative, “like it” or “hate it,” actually this is unimportant. The artwork can be very vulnerable when exposed in public urban space and I find there is an incredible strength within this vulnerability. But the audience

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presumably exact entities, slowly create a volume of information, finally to dissolve into an absence of time.

The short film CALLING YOUR NAME was shot during several séances with the fellows of Djerassi as actors.

On 24 July during Djerassi Open Studios I realized the performance CALLING YOUR NAME where the visitors were invited to take part. After a short presentation of the idea and just a few words of instruction, the participants were free to create their own interpretations of CALLING YOUR NAME. Logically the choreography was unpredictable and the outcome – a complete surprise. Flow, multitude and mobility became the characteristics of this new work.

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

Usually I work with a number of projects at the same time, they develop paralelly and each with its own rhythm and timescale. Some can take a few months to realize, some – a few years. I can see how my work becomes more and more multidisciplinary, looking for expanding the concept of co-creation including not only artist and audience, but also animals, nature forces, the unpredictable chance. Next year a group of sound installations and six short films will come out.

The starting point is the numerous interviews I made with African refugees who try to make a new life in Europe. The result, though based on documentary material, is a mixture of fiction and document, myth and reality. It has been a very difficult work, emotionally and artisticly.

The project ATTENTION! YOU ARE LEAVING THE HUMAN ZONE will take place in different cities during the coming couple of years. And to mention as well – two major trilogies are on the way: 3 x RED DOT is a series of performances in urban environment staged around the globe. Red Dot comes from the vocabulary of contemporary warfare, but it can be found also as a concept in ancient Hindu and Buddhist thought.

DROPS IN THE OCEAN / IN THE VOID / NEW MOON – three ambitious projects which I have been carrying in my mind since a few years.

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BLACK & GREY THOUGHT, 2007 Photographer: Viktoria Spasova Two inflatable objects – each half an hour the two volumes reach their maximal sizes, the following 30 minutes the volumes shrink back to the floor; each 4 x 14 x 6 m, synthetic canvas, air aggregates, electric power and timers.

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Carla Forte Lives and works in Dallas, USA

Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

An interview by Melissa C. Hilborn, curator and Josh Ryder, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

First of all I would like to say that I'm thankful for the opportunity to be part of LandEscape and to share with every one of you my artistic work and my essence as a human being.

I was born and raised in the city of Caracas, Venezuela. There I attended the Instituto Universitario de Danza (Dance Institute), and specialized in movement, composition, performance and improvisation. In 2005, Alexey Tarรกn (Guggenheim Fellow 2007) and I founded Bistoury Physical Theatre, a multi- disciplinary company based in the city of Miami, for which I am currently Executive Producer and Film Director.

tremendous interest for directing and expressing my feelings through art.

When I began to work with Director Alexey Tarรกn in Caracas in 2004, I realized that during the creative process dance was only a point of departure for composition. Later I discovered that besides performing, I also had a

Since I was very young, my passion for cinema was very strong, and my older brother Vicente Forte (a visual artist and writer) became one of my greatest influences by teaching me to love this art form from an experimental and

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independent perspective. During my childhood there was always some video camera documenting our family moments, birthdays, graduations, trips, etc, and either my brother or my mother would always be in charge of directing the filming.

Despite the fact that these were very informal family documentations, it later became something serious for me and I am sure that it was had a great influence on my incursion into film directing later.

Upon my arrival to the United States in 2007, I had the opportunity to formally develop my first cinematographic works, some in collaboration with Alexey TarĂĄn, and some others co-directed by my brother Vicente, the rest of them written and directed by me, all of them bearing some important relationship to movement, even when this element may not be so evident in a few of the works.

Filmmaking became a personal means of expression and I have not stopped since; I am still a performer, but when it comes to directing I prefer to stay behind the camera.

My work deals with “in-communication� (or lack of communication), about that invisible thread thread that binds us to a common life despite and beyond our differences. Echoes that harbor secrets that can only be heard in silence.

Initially, in order to get the work going on any particular project, there must exist some kind of motivating concern or interest for something, someone, some theme to be developed. From that point ideas and stories are born, always connected to my own experiences. The need to create and to say something is an essential point of departure and it doesn't matter how difficult it might be to achieve it, I have to do it.

Before beginning to shoot, I first make the project conceptually possible in my mind; I do not limit

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myself creatively and anything that might seem impossible I just transform into something simpler. I prepare a script or a schematic outline of the scenes; not many takes are done because time is short, since these are low budget (or zero budget) productions. Shooting can take up to twelve days, in the case of a full feature, or just a few hours or a couple of days in the case of a short film. However, my last project, a documentary named The Holders, took 4 years of production, involving an intense and arduous process of research and investigative work undertaken by Alexey Tarรกn (as Producer and Director of Photography) and myself at the facilities of the Miami-Dade County Animal Services shelter, a place where dogs and cats are dropped off and abandoned daily in our city and eventually killed off when they have surpassed the maximum length of stay in the wait for a home.

I make special reference to this work because despite the fact that it was a project for which initially there was no money at all, nor the best equipment for documenting, we did have an immense will and determination to make it happen and to tell the story. As a vegan and activist for animal rights I was resolved to make this film, which ultimately in 2015 was named Official Selection for the 32th Miami International Film Festival.

Interrupta talks about family. In general, families are held together by strong bonds, by common experience, daily life, the passage of time that makes us age together. The family thus exists while at the same time all of us are independent beings, unique individuals capable of supporting ourselves. Every family has its own distinctive

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seal, its marks; we grow up and take on our own paths, carrying a certain past and history.

For this project, I decided to work with my mother, my father and my brother because it would serve as a reunion for us. Getting together for a few hours to experience each other individually and as a nuclear family was an integral part of the visual experiment. Dancing was the point of departure for the story, because I think that each individual has a unique and very particular way of moving, and because at the same time there are memories that recur in the body and make us dance or act in a certain way.

For the development of each scene, each one of us had to choose an element or object to interact with or at least to be kept in the frame during the shooting of the scene. This element was to be something that really identified us as human beings, something that made part of our daily lives. This element or object acted as a means to show that even if we are alone we will resort to something, whether out of necessity or routine.

Interrupta portrays each individual separately in this common home, and although none of the scenes are shared collectively by the family, the memories become one.

Interrupta is based on a poem I wrote, and to each of the performers I gave a fragment of the poem to be read as part of the scenes. Every excerpt was written and assigned according to the particular individual. Nothing was done randomly. It is a common poem that explains who we are and where we are going.

My stories are definitely a reflection of who I am and every element I employ has been influenced by some experience. I use the camera in

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Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

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Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

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movement in many of my works because dance is always present Our eyes are in constant movement; we look anywhere without much thought; we arrive at any unexpected situation.

We are always moving, even when we sleep. Life occurs in a sequence shot that does not stop.

I think silences are important moments that give any situation or routine a break, a rest. There is a lot of noise in our surroundings; we are affected daily by external factors that make us react to their stimuli, which constantly confirms and reminds us that we are not alone and that we are surrounded by situations that we cannot control by ourselves. The use of black and white is fundamental in many of works because a second after I have written this line I have already been past, while the use of color revives any experience because nothing dies in the attempt. I have never experimented with creating any work that is disconnected from my life or my experiences. However, I'm not closed to the possibility of directing scripts or proposals by other artists. Nevertheless, I am sure that in order to do this I would immerse myself in their experience, I would try to live it in some way and feel it as mine as I need in order to be able to tell the story.

Staring at the Ceiling is a work based on a poem by my brother Vicente, which was later turned into lyrics by my friend and Miami-based music composer Omar Roque. It is a very individualistic story and I would dare say it's even egotistical.

We have all stared at the ceiling. Thinking of something while our gaze is fixed makes it appear simple; however, the mind is capable of traveling

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to any other place or situation. This work is a tribute to the ability that we all have to transplant ourselves to that ideal place or memory. I still see my father often travel for hours while sitting on his chair. It seems as if he is simple quiet and introspective, but beyond that simple description I know that my father embarks on to the adventures of his own stories in his mind.

Staring at the Ceiling is a voyage through physical stillness and mental desires. It explores the capacity to travel in our own thoughts and live in a parallel world that distances us from reality; it is an escape from routine and monotony of daily life to free ourselves from society and yet remain enslaved by our own desires.

The amorphous format was chosen with the intent of creating a sense of enclosure, of feeling trapped in our own thoughts; a notion that no matter how free, we are always bound by our own social and personal constraints.

Each and every one of us holds a unique world of our own that is constantly trying to please its whims and desires. I think it's difficult to know other people because in a sense we never get to know ourselves fully.

Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

Many of the comments that I have heard from people after seeing this work have to do do with them feeling afraid when they are watching it, or that they experienced a feeling of anxiety. In a way, I do narrate about a very intimate world that holds a dark side of my desires and thoughts.

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I am a constant flux of influences because every day, when I go out to the street, I find myself surrounded by strange people that always leave something within me: sounds, situations, a wholeness that helps me carry on with my day to day. I believe many of my influences derive from seeing my father cry, chasing after the dog who runs astray in the streets, the homeless person asking for money at the corner with the traffic light, the neighbor's folkloric music, my aunt's uproarious laughter, my mother singing, the lack of

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communication between people. All of these moments become one more scene in one of my stories. However, I must say that there are many artists I admire and that certainly their works have created important marks in my life.

Among them are Alexey Tarรกn, Lars von Trier, Bela Tarr, Jim Jarmusch, Jan Fabre, Reinaldo Arenas, Fernando Pessoa, Steven Soderbergh, Francis Ford Coppola, among others.

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Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

I am co-founder of Bistoury Physical Theatre and Film and currently Executive Director and Film Director of the company. I have worked as collaborator in the choreographic works of cofounder Alexey TarĂĄn, integrating film as an important component for the development of his works. Every creative process thrusts us into a new world where not only dance and film join.

Bistoury is a research and experimental space in which local artists collaborate. We have had the pleasure of working with visual artists, musics, dancers, actors, poets, singers, among others,

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making every process and experience truly magical.

I find collaborative creation to be an extremely interesting process because it involves getting to know others and allowing others to get to know you in a very personal way, “viscerally� as my brother would say. I think that in order to achieve a good collaborative work there must be profound research and immersion, artists must believe in one another, egos must be put aside and the artists must plunge together into a shared world.

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I believe that feedback is vital. However, the point of departure for each of my works has its origin in honesty, in a personal and sincere source of concern, of interest, in who I am. I believe that if we created thinking initially about our audience then surely we would cease to be who we are to become an infinity of tastes and approaches and likely end up doing nothing, It's inevitable to think of the audience during the creative process because we too are audience for others, and later they will be the ones to issue their opinions, to dissect, to laugh or cry, to reject or embrace the work, those who decide whether to applaud or to get up from their seats and leave. That entire wave of emotions that I hope to arouse when I present my work is underlaid by fears, insecurities and expectations, but what holds me standing firm is knowing that my work is a true reflection of what I am.

I am currently working as collaborating film director and performer in Alexey Tarรกn's most recent project, named TRIBE, a work that tells, through physical theater, stories of homeless people who live in the streets of the city of Miami (https://vimeo.com/116922384). This project is extended through artistic residency in Barranquilla, Colombia, for the development of a video dance, thanks to the exchange program of the National Performance Network US, along with the Red de Artistas del Caribe (Caribbean Artists Network) in Colombia .

I am forever grateful for the participation of collaborators in my work, because I consider them an essential key for the process as well as the final outcome of the project.

I believe my work will find itself evolving through the new experiences yet to come; breathing with active consciousness lets me into a reality of greater suffering but one apt to be fully lived, enjoyed and then turned into a magical realm to be explored and interpreted by the audience.

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Sonia Gil Lives and works in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil I am an artist and an architect from Rio de Janeiro. My work is focused on cities and on the urban universe, an old passion, that lead me to study Architecture and Urbanism. Along my graduation years, I started to give form to my artistic expression, and gradually, after working as an architect for many years, the art experience became more and more important, so eventually, I landed in the arts for a full time experience.

However, the architectural mind is still present, as I try to capture the spirit of the contemporary city, and build, in various layers, images of the transforming urban space.

I started with watercolors and moved on to painting, and then moved on to digital. I moved back to watercolor and started to blend in the digitalized paintings with photographs. My lattest works use the re-treatment of images, mixing paintings, photographs and digital, in a process that starts with brush and paint and ends with scanning and digital collage.

Working with a diversity of techniques, and mixing different elements is my way of trying to translate the complexity of the contemporary life and the urban environment.

Art to me is a process, a very unsettling one.

I am also co-founder of the Urban Dialogues group, an network of artists from different cities, working with the idea of sharing, collaborating, constructing and re-constructing images of the urban landscape, in search of learning and reflecting about our differences and similarities

B-Site Festival / Error 404 502 410 & “Dust�/ Manheim 2015 / Germany

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Sonia Gil Lives and works in Berlin, Germany Artist and architect Sonia Gil's work is marked out with a stimulating multidisciplinary feature: her practice rejects any conventional classifications and considers the vital relationship between direct experience and visual intepretation. In her body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages she encapsulated an unconventional sensitiveness, to trigger the viewers' perceptual parameters. One of the most impressive aspects of Gil's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of straddling the boundary line between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, to draw the viewers through a multilayered journey, to capture the spirit of the contemporary city: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

artist who explored colour as a matter. I feel his meticulous colour exercises were part of my learning process, but after some time, I wanted to work more freely, in a more intuitive way, I was looking for something more fluid. This was when I discovered watercolour.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Sonia and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training and after having graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Architecture, you nurtured your education with art classes at the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro and at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage: how do these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem in general?

For many years, I elected watercolour as my favorite medium, then I moved on to acrylic because I wanted to work larger. Finally, I started to work digitally mixing together all these experiences.

The way I conceive my work is very intuitive and experimental, but I am aware that I am using all the techniques I have learnt in my training process.

When I build my collages in layers, the way I search for balance and harmony or contrast of forms and colours is very “architectural”, so, I think in the end everything adds up. Likewise, the way I relate to the aesthetic problem is totally linked to being a middleclass architect, living in a cosmopolitan city in a global world. My cultural substratum is not very different from a New Yorker or a Londoner, with some touches of tropical culture. I am particularly attracted by vibrant colours.

My training as an Architect has great influence on my work, it introduced me to Art History and to a large array of graphic techniques and ways of investigating and representing 3D space. It developed my perception as well as my representational ability.

After having completed the basic years I felt I needed more art training, so I started taking classes at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage and at the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro, where I attended classes with Aluisio Carvão, a neoconcrete

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The visual language you convey in your pieces seems to be the result of a constant evolution of your searching for new means to express the ideas you

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

This multidisciplinary approach is the result of a long working process. I am glad it can be figured out. I have been working hard on it. It is a process of stop and go and come back and go again. I write a lot about my process, I also collect a lot of images and ideas and build from them.

I am always making evaluations of my process and taking down notes and trying to have new insights.

I have also been greatly influenced by other artists. I am co-founder of an international network called Urban Dialogues. The idea of creating the group was to examine the interactions between artists of different cities and cultures, using photography, digital art and video to capture contradictions and analogies of our collective histories. While building the group with the New York artist Amy Bassin, I was definitely taking my work to another level. I started making digital collages in collaboration with other artists of this network. So, my work was greatly influenced by this group.

But then again, I would stop and think, how can my work fit in, how can I work together with them and still be myself. So, I am always trying to figure out how to have my own speech. I guess in the end it is my architectural training, I am always building on top of other things. And then, once I find a track, I can let it flow and I can be intuitive.

For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected Mother's Milk, a stimulating work that is part of your Ballerina Collection Project, that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your exploration of the new geography for places we have all previously visited is its autonomous aesthetics that provides the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a contamination the inner and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

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As I said before, I started making digital collages influenced by the Art Collaboration Network Urban Dialogues. I started talks with New York City Artist Amy Bassin about art and the public space. This was back in 2009, we were questioning the excessive use of publicity images in the city. As an Architect and Artist, I was very excited about the urban habitat as a place of celebration. I had the idea of megacities as lively and colourful places, meeting places and a live lab for experimentation of innovation and new ideas. Amy´s way to look at the megacity was more critic and not so colourful. She called life in New York City “the rat race” and saw excessive individualism and feelings of abandonment and isolation in the city life. We both thought that new technologies could help us start new dialogues, create networks to bring together people with similar interests that might unite diversities and similarities. So, we started to discuss new ways of displaying art and produced collages of street scenes where art replaced advertisements on bus stops and newsstands. Excited by the first results of this collaborative work, we decided to expand the project globally, using social networks to meet and collaborate with other artists from different cities and different cultures. More than half of the world population is already living in urban areas. Our world and our lives are becoming more complex and interdependent. I believe that we are urban-beings. Cities are a collaborative construction. So, the relation between public sphere and art today, the inner and the outside, is an ongoing process of give and take, we are constantly reaching out for new experiences.

Exchanging to transform. We are living immersive experiences all the time, in the internet and in the streets. We are spectators and we are actors as well. Today everybody has a camera at hand and we are all documenting reality all the time, through our different points of view. So, what I tried to do with the Mother´s Milk series was to mix art and performance, transforming the museum into a stage, to immerse viewers on the artist´s quest.

Ranging from watercolors to painting to digital technique, your practice is marked out with a captivating exploration of disciplines and media: as you have remarked once, working with a diversity of

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techniques, and mixing different elements is your way of trying to translate the complexity of the contemporary life and the urban environment. How do you select your materials and what properties in materials do you identify with? In particular, when do you recognize that one of the mediums has exhausted it´s expressive potential to self?

I like being multi task and working with multiple resources, I enjoy exploring different disciplines and media. I love to open several windows at the same time. Too many! And, generally, I have trouble in getting focused and being more productive. Although I work with art as a process and process takes time, usually I am attracted to mediums which have quick results.

I was first captivated by watercolour because it is so instantaneous, when you get it wrong there is no going back, there is no retouching, there is transforming. A mistake can lead you to a different path, you might end up with surprising results that you did not plan. Then I chose acrylic because it is also a quick medium. It dries out very quickly. I could never work with oil painting. And digital work is very resourceful, it is possible to experiment such a lot. I have had the opportunity to work in a traditional print studio at the Visual Arts School of Parque Lage and experiment with all different printing techniques and although the old manual process is fascinating, it does not attract me at all. I want something I can handle in my small studio at home. I like to work and create out of very basic resources and build up from them. I don´t have sophisticated cameras and computers.

Recognizing the exhaustion of a medium is something very intuitive, somehow work stops flowing and you have to move on, but that does not mean quitting with a medium forever, it can be temporary, you may return to the medium. I did that with watercolour.

Today I see how watercolour had such a great influence in all my work.

In your artistic research you inquiry into the themes of displacement and isolation, fantasy and longing, in such a captivating way to trigger the viewers' personal perceptual and cultural parameters: how much you draw from your personal experience to conceive your

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works? In particular, in your opinion, is personal experience an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I think that it is impossible to disconnect creative process from direct experience. It is all connected, every artist creates from personal experience. Even when the influence is not so obvious, a careful eye will always find the influence from the artist’s biography, background and life experiences. This is valid for all arts, writers, visual artists, film-makers, choreographers. My daughter´s first Ballet Company director used to say that one dances the Museums they have been visited, the books they have been read, it is about what you experience. But you also create from the experience of others, you can be very much influenced by the work of other artists.

So, it is really a process of building up from experiences.

I love Thomas Struth and his work Audience. Even if I was not thinking particularly about this work in the creation of my series Mother´s Milk, once you are impacted by an art work, you have the influence within you.

The Ballerina Collection and it´s sequence Mother´s Milk are very emotional works. Mother´s Milk is about motherhood. My daughter left home to seek an international ballet carrier when she was eighteen. So, it is about having an empty nest, but it is also about myself, not only as a mother but as an artist. Art is about immersion and exposure. You don´t make art just locked inside your studio. You need the viewers to have the experience too.

Your works convey a captivating abstract feeling that provide them with dynamism:The way you capture non-sharpness with an universal kind of language quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and memory. How would you define the relationship between abstraction and representation in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?

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I always thought of myself as an abstract painter and a colourist. I enjoyed to zoom in and zoom out to lose track of reality and just express myself in forms and colours. Representation came as a need to make sense of what I was trying to do. After some time I felt somewhat lost, I did not want to just work with the colours leading the process, I needed a graphic frame to work on. It was when I started to create maps and work with the graphic design of cities as a first layer.

Then I started to work with digital collage. At first I worked just with aerial views of city, and later making collages of urban scenes. To keep the balance, between abstraction and representation, I felt I needed to move from the computer screen and go back to brush and paint to produce watercolour as a work itself again. But then I started to capture the process of watercolouring, photographing wet work and capturing different angles, creating a digital palette of images to make future collages. So, the process goes back and forth, but keeping the balance is always something difficult.

The dreamy quality that marks out your work inquires into the interstitial space between subconscious and a conscious level, the inner and the outside. It would seem that much of your work is designed to provoke an intellectual, non-narrative response and the brushstrokes that condense your visual vocabulary have a very ethereal quality. How do you view the concepts of the real and the imagined playing out within your works?

The ethereal quality comes from the watercolour. It is present in all of my work. My digital palette is a collection of freezed moments. I capture wet paint, brushstrokes, sometimes even the paper texture or the white of paper. The white of paper as a colour, I love that in watercolour, it shouts out and is so luminous! So, I collect instantaneous pictures of a very intuitive work. The conscious level does the planning of the scene I want to create, it is designed by the architectural mind, with the training of “place making�. After the planning, I start experimenting with the collage with the same intuitive drive as when I am working with brush and paint. So, it is a process of come and go, playing with the real and the imaginary.

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

I agree with Gabriel Orozco. When you are under a very repressive political system your work tends to be more political, it is difficult to address other issues when you do not have something so basic as freedom. So, artists under dictatorship tend to be more activists.

I lived under a dictatorship for many years when I was very young. Today in Brazil we are facing a terrible crisis, economically and politically, but there is freedom of expression.

I think the global age has changed the artist’s role, everything is so interconnected, you have so many influences. You have information overflow, it is hard to keep up and to digest everything. You must have the ability of a surfist with the big waves, otherwise you easily get drowned. People are so stressed, everything is constantly changing!! So being a digital artist is a big challenge, because unless you have a coming exhibition, you have so much flexibility with your own production deadlines, and there are so many distractions on the internet, it is so easy to lose yourself surfing around. I think the role of the artist has changed with new global comunications, one has to translate into art not only what one experiences in the surroundings, but throughout the world. Today, I suffer a terrorist attack in London in a very intense way, in real time almost, much more than my father suffered from the events of the second world war, as a teen ager living in a distant suburb of Rio de Janeiro.

Over the years you have internationally showcased your works in several occasions, including

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exhibitions at the Centro Cultural Oscar Niemeyer and at the Differences and Similarities, in Belgium. 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?

Dialoguing with the audience is very important, artists create to show, we do not produce to leave our works piled up in our studios. I think we are mostly driven by the urge to express feeling, memories, experiences, but we need to interact with the audience, so showing is crucial.

I have a psychologist friend who says that everybody needs at least a little audience. I work for myself in the first place, but also, I want to tell a story to the audience and I want them to have an immersive experience, so this has to be considered all the time. I also can adapt my work to the context in some cases.

At the Centro Cultural Oscar Niemeyer, I decided to make projections instead of prints. It was an exhibition of Architects Artists and I decided to make projections of my digital maps of Rio de Janeiro to enhance the immersive experience of the audience.

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

I would like to my work evolve to video as well and perhaps work with light boxes or 3D experience. My idea is to explore more the potential of the layers I use in the making of the collages.

My other plan is to start working more internationally.

My husband and I both work at home in a very flexible way, so we are planning to have double residence RioLisbon and make Lisbon a hub for working new networks around Europe.

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Lisa Birke performs "Semiotics of the {Post (after Martha Rosler)"

tfeminist} Kitchen

, 2014, performance

Holly Marie Armishaw Lives and works in Vancouver, Canada

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Holly Marie Armishaw Lives and works in Vancouver, Canada Unconventional and captivating in its multifaceted nature, artist Holly Marie Armishaw's work is indeed difficult to pin down: it vigorously resists a traditional signature style, but persists in establishing an inclusive approach, to draw the viewers through a multilayered journey in the realm of symbols she manipulates to trigger the audience’s perceptual and cultural parameters. In her Repressions series that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she provides us with an immersive experience to inquire into the notion of femininity and to speak of sensitivity, fragility and politics. The power of Armishaw's approach lies in her successful attempt to create photographs of the unphotographable in order to create visual hypothesis, glimpses of metaphysical realities, psychological phenomena, projections of the future or re-creations of history. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production.

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

Being involved in various positions within the art community has enabled me to assist in providing other artists with opportunities and a voice within our various institutions. For example, CARFAC (Canadian Artists' Representation/Le Front des Artistes Canadiens) is responsible for ensuring that artists receive payment for exhibiting at non-profit galleries, whereas in the U.S. artists often have to pay. My position on the Board of Directors of the CASV (Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver) provided a challenging and informative experience. It afforded me the opportunity to expand my network and to develop many cherished long-term friendships. In 2014 I organized and led a weeklong tour of Paris’ contemporary art scene for a dozen Vancouver-based art collectors. It was a wonderful to work with our consulates and an opportunity to share my passion for French art and culture with a Canadian audience.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Holly and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training: you hold a BFA in Photography (Magna Cum Laude), that you received from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and you recently attended the course "Writing About Art" at the prestigious Sotheby's Institute of Art. Over the years you have been also involved in several experiences: among others, you have been on the Board of Directors of CARFAC BC and the CASV, in Vancouver.

How did these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself in your artistic inquiry?

Another key factor in my practice has been travelling to attend various international art fairs and biennales.

I thrive on the opportunity to experience the crème de la crème of the world’s most influential artists all beneath one roof. This always proves to be a riveting experience providing both inspiration and a sense of how my own work fits into the larger context of the art world. Drawing inspiration from the works of other artists is something that often pushes me in my own work and is also an experience that compels me to come back and write as I analyze connections between them. Writing has always been an essential

I believe it is an asset to any profession to know ones industry from every angle. So, I have volunteered in galleries, served on student councils, curated shows presided on boards of arts organizations, written art criticism and theory, and organized everything from panel discussions on contemporary art to private collection visits. While each of these positions or projects has been challenging, they have also been quite rewarding.

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Holly w Damien Hirst, FIAC Paris 2012, photo by Murray Fraeme

“Marie Antoinette – Under Pressure to Produce an Heir Throughout 7 Years of Unconsummated Marriage” (2011-12) 24 x 36” Metallic C-Print Holly Marie Armishaw

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part of my practice, and Sotheby’s gave me the tools to sharpen that skill.

of other maladies. I lost my job as a result and was left with nothing but my camera, computer, and a small suite to live and work in. I used these three elements, in addition to myself, to create a series self-portraits that described these conflicts between the mind and body, again using digital imaging, but this time to describe the psychological aspects of my own experiences.

Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://www.hollyarmishaw.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: while walking us through your process, would you like to tell to our readers something about the evolution of your style?

By 2011 I was back on my feet and travelling extensively, producing a massive archive of photographic imagery thanks to the luxury afforded by the proliferation of the digital camera and it’s ability to store thousands of photos. I used some of my photos from Versailles, combined with selfportraits shot in my studio specifically for this purpose, in order to create my Marie Antoinette series. Each image contains a minimum of three photos composited together. Although technically they are self-portraits, it was an intentional shift away from the subjective to an objective focus on the trials and tribulations of another woman. Research once again became a key part of my practice, and I spent two years studying the French Revolution and the life of Marie Antoinette. By highlighting little known facts about her life, I was able to humanize a woman who served history as a convenient scapegoat for the mistakes of generations of monarchist rule. France’s financial deficit had become an issue years before Marie Antoinette even came to France to marry Louis XVI. Louis XIV and his advisors were much more to blame for France’s financial crisis because they had spent far beyond their means supporting the Americans war of independence against the British, France’s enemy at the time. This was the beginning of my interest in historical revisionism, a strategy that I am still employing in newer bodies of work today.

I attended art school on the cusp of the digital revolution. At the time that I was completing my photography degree, barely anyone used digital camera, and certainly not art students. I began spending less time in the darkrooms and more time in the computer labs, scanning my film and importing it into Photoshop. Perhaps it was a reaction against Roland Barthes Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that pushed me away from straight photography and into a modus operandi where I could have more freedom to create my images, rather than merely record them with the camera. Digital imaging served me well to express subjects that piqued my interest at the time. I began art school with a sideline interest in metaphysics, which led me into philosophical and scientific theories like quantum physics and the Many Worlds Theory. When the first sheep, Dolly, was cloned, it provoked me to explore genetic engineering and the Human Genome Project in my work, illustrating a strong consideration for potential discrimination in the future, such as we saw in the cult classic movie of the time, Gattaca. The concept of immortality has also been a ubiquitous theme in my practice and led me to explore posthuman endeavors, such as cryonic suspension. Digital imaging was the perfect tool to express these concepts which there was no way to photograph directly. It has remained one of the most important tools used throughout my art practice.

Post-art school, real life tends to take over. It became extremely difficult to produce work after awhile because of massive student loan debts, the high cost of living in Vancouver, and long work hours. It seems that not everyone can live without art. My work eventually became focused on more immediate and personal concerns than it was previously. The Silencieux series describes a period where I began breaking down physically and mentally, suffering from panic attacks, night terrors, migraines and a host

For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected Repressions, an extremely interesting project that has recently been exhibited at Chernoff Fine Art in Vancouver, and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. While walking our readers through the genesis of this stimulating project, would you tell us if you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist?

To answer the first part of your question, I began working on the Repressions series shortly after being

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diagnosed with PTSD in 2015. Repressions deals with the effects of abuse and trauma on the body and mind. While we commonly associate PTSD with persons who served in the military or who survived a natural disaster, the scope is actually much more diverse. A child who endures repeated abuse at home and cannot escape will suffer the same effects of trauma as a prisoner of war or a hostage situation survivor. That was my situation for ten years growing up and the result is what’s known as complex PTSD. Being perpetually put into a state of flight or fight response is extremely taxing on the body, often leaving the survivor with an impaired immune system, anxiety, depression, and a host of other disorders, many of which do not appear until later in life. Decades later I still wake up screaming in my sleep from time to time, and have on a few occasions jumped out of a moving vehicle due to trigger responses. Rape survivors or those who endured childhood sexual abuse may not only develop PTSD, but also reproductive disorders, even causing chronic pain as a result of the body’s memory of the trauma it endured.

When I confronted my family in 2013 on my history of abuse, not only was no apology offered, but they also completely denied my allegations. I have since estranged myself from them, but the stress and shock from their response (or lack thereof) to incidents that have affected me my entire life has caused further damage to my health.

For me art has become a cathartic process in learning to understand and come to terms with the world. And, as the second wave of feminism stated “the personal is political”. I know that I am not alone and by sharing my personal experiences in a symbolic way, I am able to open up dialogue about the widespread abuse of girls and women. It’s easy enough to tell survivors to “get over it”, but that contradicts the science behind trauma and abuse.

In the Repressions series, remnants from the photos spill over from the image and into frame just as repressed memories from the past spill out into the present.

In response to the second part of your question, you have already previously noted the multiple layers of meaning that runs throughout each work, and this demonstrates the complexity of my creative thought process.

Regardless of the style or technique I use in each series of work, the most essential underlying element is existentialism. As a key theme throughout my practice, according to its broadest scope, existentialism examines issues as diverse as self-awareness, individual human experience, immortality, individual purpose, and the nature of existence or reality and truth. Often truths are

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Holly with sculpture by Not Vital, Galerie Thaddeus Ropac 2014 (photo by Albarosa Simonetti)

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Holly Marie Armishaw explaining the work of Anish Kapoor, Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris CASV Trip 2014 (photo by Juan Contreras)

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uncomfortable for many people, and art is a way of bringing them to light in a more delicate manner.

We can recognize an effective sociopolitical criticism in your inquiry into the violence that lies below the surface of many women’s experience. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under".

Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered political, what could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age?

I concur with Orozco’s statement; and I would expand by saying that the most authentic art comes from a place of reality, one that the artist is intimately familiar with, even if that personal connection is disguised. Of course, metaphysics has taught us that the nature of reality is subjective. Since the world can never be known through a singular perspective and we all bring different tools and sets of memories with which to analyze and interpret our existence, it is essential that contemporary art be produced from a multitude of perspectives. We are each an authority on what we live. Politics in art signals a state of discontent. The artist who is content and bears no angst against oppressiveness towards themselves or their community may find satisfaction in making art about art, perhaps about the semiotics of painting.

Anger and discontent are very powerful motivators.

In a recent conversation I was told that “art should not be about politics; we have journalism for that” to which I must respectfully disagree. A look at some of the most important and powerful works throughout art history are a direct reflection of the conflicts of the time they were created. Examples include Goya’s Disasters of War (1810 to 1820), Picasso’s Guernica (1937), and the Guerilla Girls Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? (1989).

During this key moment in history when we are experiencing a daily assault on democracy it is essential that artists fight for ideals of hard-won liberty and equality in order to secure it for future generations. I am privileged to be an artist in Canada where freedom of speech is protected; a luxury many others around the world live without. Lately I have been developing an interest in Islamic feminism, but

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they are valued as human beings that hold as much potential as their male counterparts.

as someone who has not lived in an Islamic state, it is not my place to speak for others. As an alternative, I have written on the art of Shirin Neshat, an exiled Iranian artist, who brings the Islamic feminine existence to light for a Western public. Neshat is a powerful political voice in contemporary art, and one that I have great respect for. My father once told me that “art is a selfindulgent profession”. I would like to see contemporary art prove this wrong.

In your works we can recognize complex layers of reality and fiction: how do you view the concepts of the real and the imagined playing out within your works?

I don’t recognize anything in my works as being fictional. I think that we need to differentiate between illusion and fiction. Even a hallucinogenic experience is a “real” experience to the experiencer. My intention is often to present allusions to underlying or hypothetical truths through the use of photographic illusion.

Sometimes these allusions are in reference to taboo personal truths or historical inaccuracies, while at other times they are more are more playfully reminiscent of the type of truth portrayed in Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas un pipe” (1948) that examines perception.

The notion of femininity seems to take a leading role in your artistic research: both in How I Became a Feminist By Reading Nietzsche and in the Marie Antoinette series you have accomplished insightful inquiries into the process of dehumanization of women. What does it mean for you to explore such ideas that still exist in our media drive age?

Moreover, do you think that your being a woman provides your artwork with some special value, some additional meaning?

I have recently created a series of work that examines the history of the mirror in relationship to photography by using illusion to engage the viewer.

The mirror was invented in Murano when glass craftsmen applied silver to one side of plate glass. It is my theory that the invention of the plate glass mirror created a profound new sense of selfawareness. When early viewers of the mirror saw themselves reflected, that experience provided the impetus to preserve the image that they saw for posterity. Louis Daguerre worked feverishly to “fix” that image and soon invented the Daguerreotype, a photographic image produced on a small mirror-like silver surface. In fact, silver nitrate particles are still used in labs for photographic processes today. The Daguerreotype was the first photographic process readily available to the public, thus democratizing the practice of portraiture beyond the upper class that could afford to commission portrait paintings.

Who would have thought that today’s mass phenomena of the selfie would have originated in a glass atelier centuries ago at a small island off the coast of Venice? History has become a keen interest of mine, because it is so rich with signifiers that explain our zeitgeist.

It is a deluded and dishonest perception if anyone thinks that women are actually treated equally today. I am a feminist not because it is trendy or because of anything I learned in critical studies classes at art school. I am a feminist because I spent every day growing up having my older brother try to beat any sense of equality out of me, to break me and force me into submissiveness. (It’s not unusual that women who resist will face the most extreme measures of coerciveness.) And yet, I realized at a very young age, I had an innate sense that I was equal or better than my abusers. I am a feminist because as a teenager I worked to put myself through private school and was subjected to sexual harassment constantly in my workplace. I am a feminist because my ambitions as an athlete in my teens deteriorated rapidly after a sexual assault when I realized that no matter how fit or strong I was, there would always be some man who was stronger than me. I had to be smarter than them to survive! As I headed into adulthood, I found myself gravitating towards an intellectual and creative career path and resettling in communities where men were well educated and more enlightened. I am a feminist today in hopes that your daughters can grow up in a fairer world than I did, one where

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“Marie Antoinette Declaring Financial Incentive for Women of France to Breastfeed Their Own Children” (2013) 24 x 36” C-Print, Holly Marie Armishaw

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Holly Marie Armishaw contemplating the work of Daniel Firman, FIAC 2012 (photo by Murray Fraeme)

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Are art and technology going to assimilate into one another through multi-media? (Thinking about the materiality of your work) How is digital technology affecting the consumption of art?

as it is both my first language and spoken across the

Production of art will continue to embrace new technologies as they consecutively evolve. However, there is also a reactionary effect occurring as we see a return to materiality and a highly skilled hand; the phenomenal paintings of Kehinde Wiley are a great example of this. As an artist whose primary medium is photography, I have been forced to reconsider what that means now in an era where cell phones, filter apps and social media have induced a mass proliferation of the photographic image. I have challenged myself to think about approaching photography differently and it has affected my production, techniques and materials. As previously mentioned throughout this interview, while layers, both literal and conceptual, are still a key element in my work, the literal layers are now created out of tactile materials rather than from photographic ones.

This is my way of reacting against the immediacy of the photographic medium. By creating works that require an in-person experience in order to successfully experience their essence, I am encouraging art connoisseurs to leave their screens and to enter into the gallery space where I may interact with them more directly.

thoughts, Holly. Finally, would you like to tell us

globe.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I am very excited to have just completed a new series of work, How I Became a Feminist by Reading Nietzsche. This is text-based work painted with nail polish on watercolor paper on some pieces, and with gold leaf on others. The nail polish was deliberately chosen as a feminine material, and one that has previously been foreign to the art world. Using these materials I have composed quotes by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud, which I have edited by changing all masculine signifiers to feminine ones. This editing process of inverting assumed gender norms reflects how a woman must read the work of a misogynist in order to still benefit from his words of wisdom, rather than completely dismissing them. These particular philosophical writings had a profound effect on me at a crucial stage of my life, during a point of existential crisis when I was also becoming

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?

both an adult and an artist. Though misogynistic, these men's words provided clarity that formed the core of my adult values; their influences both inspired me and brought out a streak of defiance, which,

Certainly the work is more successful if the audience can find a relationship to it, and at times I have a certain city or venue in mind while I am creating a series. I assume that you are speaking about my textbased work. In 2011, I began etching nasty little phrases in French using a lyrical font etched onto elegant gilded antique mirrors. These phrases cast a self-reflective scrutiny on the viewers. I had hoped to show that work in France, and would have liked to witness their reaction. The work did reach a Canadian audience, and fortunately we speak many languages here, so there were those that understood. However, with more recent text-based work I am using English,

combined with my own personal experiences and existential conclusions, have contributed to my being godless, famliless, and remaining childless, all of which are deliberate and essential to my focus as an artist.

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Grayson Cooke’s “AgX” video installation presented at MAMA Murray Art Museum Albury in April

This project has been produced with the support of the School of Arts and Social Science and the School of Environment, Science and Engineering, at Southern Cross University.

Image, concept, edit: Grayson Cooke Sound: Rafael Anton Irisarri Science consultation: Amanda Reichelt-Brushett

Beth Krensky Lives and works in Salt Lake City, USA

B

eth Krensky is a professor of art education and the Area Head of Art Teaching at the University of Utah. She is an artist, activist and educator. She received her formal art training from the Boston Museum School.

She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally. She is a founding member of the international artist collective, the Artnauts. Her work is intended to provoke reflection about what is happening in our world as well as to create a vision of what is possible.

She is also a scholar in the area of youth-created art and social change. She received a master’s degree with a focus on critical pedagogy and art education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She co-founded and spent a decade as Artistic Director for the award-winning youth arts/service/action organization, Project YES (Youth Envisioning Social change). Her co-authored book, Engaging Classrooms and Communities through Art: A Guide to Designing and Implementing CommunityBased Art Education, was published by AltaMira Press in 2009.

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Beth Krensky Lives and works in Salt Lake City, USA

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

My practice is wide-reaching and brings together a material studio practice rooted in research. This practice is informed by multiple traditions of faith—including my own Jewish culture—art theory and a belief in the role of art to transform individuals and communities. It is important to keep in mind that I make up my own rituals and do not in any way intend to represent a specific religious tradition.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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

That said, my own cultural roots inform my practice, even if I have not always been conscious of this. A few years ago, the art critic Doris Bittar wrote about my work. She stated that: Beth Krensky metaphorically travels to [her] ancestral well and plucks out what is most relevant.

What she finds varies, from stories and objects to images and personas. She reinvents her respective cultural and ethnic milieus. … Eventually the things or detritus she has collected conjure up parables/stories that become infused with icon-like gravitas. These icons in new contexts create a space for teaching and learning. Krensky’s pedagogic repertoire segues into formal strategies that create templates for survival, if and when the ground underneath shifts yet again (Bittar, 2007, p. 8)

The social psychologist, Carol Gilligan, insists that we not only listen to what someone is saying, but understand who is speaking—in whose voice, in what body, from what time period and vantage point. With that in mind, I’ll share a little bit of information about me, because the circumstances of my life have shaped (and continue to shape) who I am. I was born in Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s—a time of great tumult but also of great hope and possibility for the United States. Activism is part of me, and has been since I first absorbed the consciousness of my era. It has taken different forms—as a front-line activist, as a researcher tracking the far right, as an educator and as an artist.

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I find that being a member of a diaspora tribe has meant that the “templates for survival” Bittar wrote about are barely under the surface of my existence.

You are a versatile artist and your approach reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis

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Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is an Israeli and one of the founders of the Parents Circle—Families Forum, a group consisting of hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost a member of their immediate family in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

She lost her 13 year-old daughter to a suicide bomber in 1997. When representatives from Netanyahu’s government came to offer their condolences, she left the room. In a 2001 speech to Women in Black, Dr. Peled-Elhanan explained why she would not sit with them.

between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.bethkrensky.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such crossdisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

For me, the other side, the enemy, is not the Palestinian people. For me the struggle is not between Palestinians and Israelis, nor between Jews and Arabs. The fight is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. My people are those who seek peace. Peled-Elhanan’s words give me pause and cause me to ask who are my people, and beyond that, where are my people? This quote changed my life and made me realize that we get to create, and shift, classifications. I no longer accept predetermined borders between people, ideas and places.

In 1981, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua edited a collection of writings by radical women of color entitled This Bridge Called My Back. The bridge metaphor is used often in the book referring to women of color being the bridge that is thrown over a river or a tormented history for people to walk over. Twenty-one years later, in 2002, Anzaldua and Analouise Keating edited the anthology This Bridge We Call Home in which Anzaldua writes that "Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, A Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries....[L]iving in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. (p. 1)"

For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected the Where Is the Road to the Road?, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your effective inquiry into the notion of futility in our unstable, everchanging contemporary age is the way you have provided your research with consistent and autonomous unity, accomplishing the difficult task of creating a concrete aesthetics from direct experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of Where Is the Road to the Road?, would you tell us something about your usual process and set up?

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

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

I don’t really have a usual process; however, I do often base my work on something that has social or environmental significance, is authentic and is conceptually rooted in a socio-historical history of

I think that borders and boundaries are not static.

We can realign these groupings if we choose. It is a powerful place from which to create work and to live.

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place. Sometimes I gather information for years before I start to create and sometimes I create without even knowing why.

Where is the Road to the Road was created for an exhibition at the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah. The performance was inspired by a line in his poem, A Noun Sentence. I was especially drawn to the second half of the poem: ‌Wishing for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me or ahead of me, barefoot. Where is my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where is futility? Where is the road to the road? And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present tense, where are we? Our talk a predicate and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam of speech the dots on the letters, wishing for the present tense a foothold on the pavement ...

These words cause me to ponder where we are headed during this time of futility, growing hatred and unrest. We seem to be wandering aimlessly looking for the road to the road that can lead us in a new direction. This piece is intended as a performative gesture for me to find my way as well as for others to engage in the metaphorical journey. In particular, I am referencing the contested land of Israel and Palestine.

For me, it has become a metaphor for the multiple layers of shared existence over time and place and how we choose to interact with such a layered history.

I think the time has come to forge a new road, one created by walking together.

Where Is the Road to the Road? is draws its name from a Mahmoud Darwish’s poem: we have highly appreciated the way your approach goes beyond a merely interpretative aspect of the contexts you refer to. As the late Franz West did in his installations, the Where Is the Road to the Road? deconstructs perceptual imagery in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

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

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Skirt of Sorrow and Forgiveness

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something that has happened (often a difficult and uncomfortable event) as well as an opening for a possibility to occur. I try to create opportunities for the participants to engage with the work so that they can envision a possibility for themselves or beyond. My process is very ritualistic whereby I attempt to infuse the object with meaning, making it a literal metaphor.

Elements from environment are particularly recurrent in your imagery and they never plays the role of a mere background. Do you see a definite relationship between the notion of land and your work?

Benjamin Coleman, the Associate Curator of American Art at the Detroit Institute of Art wrote about my work’s relationship to the land. He stated, “With open-ended guidelines and a light footprint, Krensky offers a model for artist-driven environmental activism in the realm of lived practice.”

My work sanctifies the natural world and at times indicts those who have degraded it. I choose specific locations because of their history or significance. I perfomed Metaphysical Handcart on the Salt Flats—a wide expanse of whiteness and nothingness near the Great Salt Lake.

As the cart makes its way through a landscape, everything it holds jiggles and moves. There are bronze and brass bells; a bowl (limned with a Hebrew blessing) filled with olive leaves; four dead birds cast in bronze. As they make their jingling and bumping sounds, I feel a sense of a narrow liminality, that the division between Heaven and Earth comes somehow aroused. I modeled this piece after the hand carts that Mormon pioneers used when they traveled across the country. For me, in our present day, it opens up a new frontier, albeit a metaphysical one: an Other space. The lived practice of the performance and the land are intended to connect with one another and engage in a dialogue of sorts.

Another interesting project that has particularly impressed us and on which we would like to discuss is entitled Tashlich, a word that means “casting off” in Hebrew. Your inquiry into the possibility of change and renewal accomplishes an effective investigation about the relationship between perception, memory and personal imagination, to challenge the viewers'

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parameters. What is the role of memory in your work? We are particularly interested in how you consider memory and its evokative role in showing an alternative way to escape and overcome the recurrent reality.

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

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

Yes, I do. I think global communications can connect us but can also desensitize us. This is why I gather stories and words from individuals. I try to make sense of larger issues by understanding specifics.

I also am very involved with a group that uses global connection as a platform for change. In 1996 I was one of the founding members of the Artnauts. It is an artist collective that was founded by curator George Rivera and uses the visual arts as a tool for addressing global issues while connecting with artists from around the world. The name derives from combining the words “art” and “astronaut” as a way to describe the process of exploring

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healing, dialogue and connection. I really only create work, or facilitate the process, so that people have an opportunity to engage with the work to make their own meaning. I always think of the participants (not viewers) and how they could possibly interact with the work to imagine some type of opening. I am interested in Joseph Beuys’ conception of social sculpture, whereby every one of us can and should play a role in helping shape the world in which we live. He asserted that “EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER.” I like to create the starting point for such imaginings and actions.

uncharted territory in the world at large. The name also denotes the practice that is “not” art as usual, going beyond the confines of the traditional or conventional art world and blurring the boundaries between art, activism, and social practice. The Artnauts have worked at the intersection of critical consciousness and contemporary artistic practice to impact change for two decades with over 170 exhibitions on four continents.

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

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

I began teaching in the urban core of Boston, learning and working alongside young artists who taught me grace and hope in the face of extreme odds. They have remained my greatest teachers and still inspire me.

Years later, I entered the academy to teach future community leaders and educators about equity and justice through the arts and education.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere wrote that, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”

My artistic practice is a living practice — one that supports sustainability of individuals and the planet — and is a flexible entity that responds to different contexts and ideas. Recent political changes in the United States have pushed me to respond.

I am working on an installation of Courageous Acts of Kindness that highlights all of the brave acts people are engaging in to create and maintain spaces of tolerance, freedom, courage and kindness.

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

Over your career you have extensively exhibited in several occasions, both in the United States and abroad, including your solo Tashlich, in Great Salt Lake: 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?

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

The metric by which I measure the success of my work is based upon the extent to which it engenders

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or several years now, I have been an independent choreographer, while I also serve as a dancer in some of my work.

In 2012, I have founded MakesounD Music & Dance Projects, a troupe that focuses on connection between music and dance, turning them into one united language.

I work in collaboration with composers, creating a combined form of art as dance and music merge into each other.

We are conducting a collaborative process of defining and implementing the idea in two different fields and the final result presents a very unique and authentic artistic statement.

The actual process of creation always starts with a specific idea or a particular topic I want to research.

Collaboration with the composer is essential prior to implementing the physical elements in the studio.

Knowing that I’m able to work with original compositions, which are created to help express my ideas, I feel that the result is much more honest and accessible compared to an arbitrary choice of music to accompany the dance from the sidelines. Following the collaborative work process, I find myself approaching my creative work like it was a process of composing a musical piece. I enjoy creating based on the principle of creating a “picture�, which allows the viewer to observe from various perspectives and distances similar to various tools that create a harmony. Relations between the dancers are usually established based on their physical movement or their placement within the movement pattern, and not on a certain narrative. My observation of the creative process is very analytical, yet strives to be full of emotion.

Ayelet Cohen

The Map, 2016 © by Ayelet Cohen

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Ayelet Cohen Lives and works in Münster, Germany An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Artist and choreographer Ayelet Cohen's work accomplishes an insightful exploration of the connection between music and dance, turning them into one united language, to walk the viewers through a multilayered experience, inducing them to elaborate personal associations and intepretations.

Her style rejects any conventional classifications and is marked with freedom as well as coherence, while encapsulating a careful attention to composition and balance. One of the most impressive aspects of Cohen's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of transforming a reality into an alternate one: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Ayelet and welcome to ART Habens: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background? For several years now, you have been an independent choreographer, while you also serve as a dancer in some of your work. How do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello and thank you very much. I’m happy to be here. I founded MakesounD – Music & Dance Projects four years ago, after earning my Masters in Choreography. The major beginning

of my journey was essentially my academic studies in the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. It was there that I was exposed to composition classes for the first time, and there that I had my first opportunity as a professional dancer to experience works by the country’s leading choreographers. The inclination to explore music is something that I developed at home. My mother is a music teacher and I understand the extent that it enables me to express myself and how important the “world of the stage” is to me. Suddenly, I discovered myself in a totally different light; it was then that I understood that this is my place.

Today, I teach ballet in addition to my creative work, and one of the amazing gifts that I am privileged to have now is the opportunity to incorporate dancers that I have personally trained in my ensembles. I believe that the fact that I come from the world of education is very helpful to me when I work with dancers.

Despite the fact that I am on stage with them, I am able to teach them my principles and the languages that I am attempting to create.

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The choice to also perform as a dancer in the pieces that I create stems from my desire to build maximum trust in the creative process and to be genuine in my movement language by bringing my true self into the entire process. I can feel, using my body, what is right for me, via all of the senses and not just visually.

I enjoy experiencing the search for the language of movement myself, alongside the dancers, and I feel that the more I develop as a dancer, the more I advance as a choreographer, and vice versa. This is a principle that is important to me and which I utilize significantly.

I am sure that my classical roots play a central role in the aesthetic considerations in my work. I believe in hard work and proper technique, and I encourage myself and my students to strive for these goals. There are those who define my style as conservative in terms of my perception of the body. Indeed, I try to present classical elements in my works, out of a desire to reconnect to those elements, to different figurations and ideas. I would like to believe that these same aesthetics can be used to serve the theme that each of my pieces explores.

In Israel, I live a religious lifestyle, which means that there are subjects, for example sexuality, that do not correspond with my beliefs and that I will not broach. This would seem to pose limitations on my freedom of expression (as a result of my own choices), yet I feel that this is what pushes me to explore deeper and search for innovation and even rebellion from a simpler and more conventional place. The cultural conservatism that I grew up with has definitely

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The Map, 2016 © by Ayelet Cohen

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shaped me into becoming who I am today as an artist, and I try to find my modernism within that conservatism, both ideologically and visually.

Instead of running away from that conservatism and structure, I place it on a new background with a specific concept, so that the aesthetics and technique serve the idea that the piece seeks to explore. I find myself making analogies from many areas of my life in my choreography, especially musical analogies that lead me throughout this entire process.

Your approach is very personal and your technique condenses a variety of viewpoints, that you combine together into a coherent balance. We would suggest to our readers to visit https://vimeo.com/user41825484 in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, we like the way it combines formal research with improvisation: how did you developed its main idea? And in particular, how would you define the roles of chance and improvisation in your approach?

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

The involvement of music in the creative process begins when the piece is still just an idea. My dialogue with the composer begins there.

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We sit together to formulate a preliminary, external sketch of the piece; in other words, how many parts it will contain, what each part will reflect, which elements will be incorporated, what the duration of the piece will be, and more.

During the practical stage in the studio, improvisation enters the scene. I use it to create central motifs that will be the basis for the entire movement scheme.

From the moment that the concept for the piece has been born, and the importance of the structure upon which the piece is based is formulated, my thoughts revert to being more figurative and I set out to search for movement that will best serve the subject. Perhaps the best way to define the physical process is the development of subject and variation.

As can be seen in the piece entitled “Windmill,� the idea is the body itself and its physical nature. The piece developed out of my desire to build music from air. Thus, the structure was very defined and clear from the start, and as a result, the preliminary improvisation in the studio was determined very quickly to express the language.

Following this stage, which ends pretty quickly in the studio, there isn’t much more improvisation involved, except for perhaps in the content that each dancer adds, in terms of their character and the figuration of their body.

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The Map, 2016 © by Ayelet Cohen

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The Map, 2016 © by Ayelet Cohen

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The involvement of emotion in the works stems from the sincerity of all of the elements involved in the piece. I do not deal with a specific narrative or with dictating specific types of relationships for the dancers; rather, they emerge from the involvement with the movement alone, and from the inspiration of the music.

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

I think that the power of creating together is stronger than ever before because from such multidisciplinary work comes innovation.

Essentially, it takes an element from a very complete area and connects it to something else from a different area that is also complete in its own right.

When the connection between them is productive, something new is created, that does not simply stand on one familiar base.

Cooperation between arts is the most effective evolution and perhaps the most thought provoking in the art world.

The cooperation between two areas allows each area to complement the other in the most effective way in

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order to express a certain idea. In addition, I think that the multidisciplinary integration in modern art blurs boundaries and involves more senses and more levels in the creative work, and consequentially, more types of audiences. I agree with Peter Tabor’s statements. The mutual productivity that takes place when working together creates a process that could not have ever been achieved through solo work. This is a process that demands thinking outside the box.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, my choice to connect to a composer stemmed from my desire to decipher the secret of the emotional accessibility in music, and the analogy that can be made regarding group dynamics between musical instruments and dancers. I learn a great deal from watching the stages of the work process of composition and recording. With Oded Zehavi, for example, this is my third year that we are working together, and I feel that he understands my way of thinking better than various dance professionals, precisely because both of us are connected to the same emotional elements that we aim for in our work. This way of thinking of “seeing the bigger picture” in composing music, as the “leader” responsible for several instruments, pushes me to take a step back all the time to see the overall image. It is clear that ultimately, this is a dance performance, at least according to the visual meaning of the field, but I have no doubt that what defines dance for me is the music that accompanies the

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Ayelet Cohen

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The Map, 2016 © by Ayelet Cohen

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The Map, 2016 © by Ayelet Cohen

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movement. Not necessarily the performance itself, but the genuine movement itself.

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

Oded and I are currently working on a new duet (a solo performance alongside a harpist).

The premiere is scheduled for the end of February 2017 in Israel.

Looking ahead, I see myself working on launching a full length show (until now, I have created performances that were approximately 20 minutes long).

My aspirations are to continue to create in conjunction with first rate composers and to create a performance for a large number of dancers, in a way that will allow me to freely use spatial formation. I also dream of appearing on various stages around the world with my works.

My biggest dream is to create a performance for a large ensemble accompanied by a live orchestra.

In the meantime, I am deeply grateful for what I have achieved during these four years, and to everyone who I have had the privilege of meeting and involving in this process on the way. I anticipate the next four years and promise that I will work hard.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator arthabens@mail.com

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