ISSUE # 28-OCTOBER 2016 EDITOR IN CHIEF / ART DIRECTOR Attilio Brancaccio EDITOR Charlie Clemoes CONTRIBUTORS Francesca Tassini Charlie Clemoes MonyArt ARTISTS Alicja Symela Stefano Ronchi Theodore Livesey Jacob Storer Mathias Rat Hsu Chen Wei Grip Face THANKS TO NEU NOW Maxi Meissner
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ISSUE #28 | CONTENTS
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ARTIFICIAL HUMAN
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Theodore Livesey & Jacob Storer
FROM MATTER TO STEAM
Alicja Symela
THROUGH THE LENSES: THE UNEXPECTED MICROCOSMOS OF RONCH Stefano Ronchi
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THE SACRIFICE OF ROARING”
GRIP FACE
MY SILICON LOVER
MADE IN IRAN
Mathias Rat
“It was very emotional for me. I was scared at the beginning but at the end it was like a katharsis to me.“ 4
ARTIFICIAL HUMAN
ALICJA SYMELA
“Artificial Human”, Alicja Symela’s work for Neu Now, is divided into three separate elements: a traditional wood carving of a figure of a young man to scale; a film documentation of the act of destroying it with a chainsaw; and a figure created from dismembered parts, not dissimilar to an anatomical dummy. According to the artist, the work is about “transformation, resculpting and re-imagining the human figure in various ways”. As this suggests, the work offers up intriguing questions surrounding what is, in our contemporary technological world, an increasingly obscured line between objects and humans. In a bid to find out where she stands on these questions, we caught up with her ahead of the exhibition.
Words & Interview: Charlie Clemoes
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What is it about artificial life that you find compelling? The need to create an artificial human is very intense today, we see it in the field of advanced technology, but this is not the only field of human activity which focused on this topic... In the last two decades, the mainstream movie industry has been full of examples depicting artificial life as vivid, interesting and clearly very important to people. And today the big questions raised by this subject also apply to the doll industry. There are now dolls on the market (Real Dolls, Reborn Dolls) which simulate a human body almost perfectly. Furthermore they are designed to replace a lover or a baby and in some cases it seems that they are a solution for people who need contact with another person but who cannot handle such an undertaking. How did you feel during the process of cutting up the sculpture? Do you have any difficulty destroying something you’ve carefully crafted? It was very emotional for me. I was scared at the beginning but at the end it was like a kind of catharsis to me. It’s good not to be too attached to the objects and works that you create and understand that everything can be changed and you are free to experiment and explore ideas with your art, throughout it’s existence. In your opinion, is there a particular point in which an artificial human is sufficiently real that destroying it becomes a violent act? Is there a clear line? My work is not only about artificial humans 7
but also about an image that somehow represents a human being. I think that if an object simulates a human body well enough, destroying it will be always considered as brutal. Do you think the problem of what constitutes a violent act, specifically at what point an artificial human can be violently attacked, is a problem that is going to have to be addressed increasingly often in the near future? I don’t think so. I think that line between artificial and non artificial beings will disappear someday. They are more and more like us, but we also change. We already put artificial organs into our body. You have said that the work lead to a surprising outcome, what did you expect when starting to formulate the concept of the work, what things surprised you in the process? At the beginning I was thinking about creating my own “beast” like Dr Frankensein. I discovered instead that this act is not only scary but that there is also a kind of beauty in it. Have you noted any curious reactions to the work, have different people reacted in different ways to it? I noticed that reactions, especially to the movie in which I use chainsaw, are almost always very strong, but I’m not exactly sure which emotions were provoked. How are you planning to develop this interest in artificial life in future? I don’t know yet but I’m planning some continuation of this project, it will evolve. 8
Photo: Igor Sarzyński 9
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THROUGH THE LENSES: THE UNEXPECTED MICROCOSMOS OF RONCH THE MIND BLOWING WORLDS CREATED BY LONDON-BASED ITALIAN ARTIST STEFANO RONCHI (AKA RONCH) ARE INSTANTLY EYE CATCHING.
Interview & Words: Francesca Tassini Images: Stefano Ronchi
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In the beginning there was a magnifying glass. The place was the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan, where Ronchi studied. Here, he turned this basic tool into a medium. What Ronchi saw in that lens was indeed a lot more than a basic tool, it was the magic hat of Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter. RONCH’s meticulous maximalism and his miniaturistic approach allowed him to create stories within stories, like a Russian Matryoshka. As he would say, everything is out there “if you just pay attention to every square inch of the work”.
RONCH’s paintings first provoke a feeling of pure astonishment and then one of curiosity mixed with discomfort, similar to certain dreams, so full of symbols and details that you can barely remember when you wake up. But somehow they leave you with a feeling, an idea. Filling the canvas is a parallel universe with bizarre animals, acrobatic monsters and midgets going about their daily routines, surrealistic sceneries à la Salvador Dali. But despite the use of glossy colors, symbols from pop culture (a disquieting Mickey Mouse’s head for instance) and humorous medieval themes based around the jester, the king and the villain, the message beyond the paintings is a sarcastic yet crude criticism of contemporary society.
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Stefano, who and what are your major influences? For sure Salvador Dali, Hieronymus Bosch, Moebius, Agostino Arrivabene, the Italian ‘500 art, but also videogames like Grand Theft Auto and music. My favorite bands are Korn, the Queen, Neffa (an Italian rapper and funky music singer). What images do you wish your art to create in people’s minds? My paintings are metaphors, anagrams, brain teasers that force you to see beyond, observe patiently, like I do in my daily life in order to get inspired. What I do is basically give birth to new meanings, starting from everything I notice around me. If I were to give you a magnifying glass, what would you see in your works? Well, there are definitely multiple levels. Through the lens you can find the solution to an enigma, literally “walking” with the eyes into the scenery, almost hearing the sound of the characters and figures - a sort of crackling. As you look closer, the more you find new situations and paradox. Perhaps a tiny rune is battling against a dragon on the farthest hill, peeking behind the window of a castle upon a mountain, maybe you can see someone pleading for his life. It’s a kind of mental masturbation, in a way.. What are the main themes or motifs in your work? The sickness of the modern world, social relations disrupted, hypocrisy. 14
How do you make these themes visible to the audience? I create a chiasm [a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order], where the urban contexts are dismembered in fancy architectures and figures, provocatively juxtaposed with no apparent order. Where did you first get your inspiration from? Mostly from childhood memories. I also have recurring obsessive nightmares. Very often they offer good material to work on. Can you tell us something about your process and the techniques you use? At first, I draw in my sketchbook. Then I prepare the canvas or board (usually small or medium size) with chalk and sandpaper. After finishing the drawing, I fill it in with acrylic. The next step is the underpainting. I only add color after that, defining the lights and shadow. And then to finish things off I add brilliant varnish gloss.
You can find more information about the artist on: www.ronch.it And the Fan Page 15
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Theodore Livesey & Jacob Storer are interested in the written word, how language is performed and how it can be reconfigured. At Neu Now they performed an act of automatic writing that lives up to the name under which they work: “Amphigory” (a nonsense verse or composition which initially seems meaningful). In an interview ahead of their performance we asked them, among other things, about the performativity of language, “Manufacturing Consent” and the writing of William Burroughs. Words & Interview: Charlie Clemoes Images: Iris Duvekot | Courtesy of NEU NOW 20
How has your perception of language changed in the process of developing your work? And how has your understanding of the performative aspect of language changed? Jacob – Well I think my perception of language is a constantly changing thing, but it feels more like I’m deepening my understanding of what language is/does for me. Then there’s the fun of playing and exploring with people’s perception of language, including my own. To shake up, to distort, combine, juxtapose, all that stuff. Breaking away from the idea that when I speak or write, it has to be a vehicle for MEANING. Loosen the constraints, move away from the ‘sacred’ nature of meaning in language. Theo - Until we started working on the piece, I was unaware of how to translate my desire to write into a performative act. And as Jacob said, moving away from the MEANING, I had a chance to escape from the angsty, insular, reclusive writing I was residing in. As the project progresses, it feels as though the ‘framing’ of language and the context it is placed in becomes the key to the performative aspect you mention. It’s quickly apparent that the brain holds a countless number of words, in all sorts of orders, and for this work the adrenalin rush of (attempting) to access this stochastic anthology is exhausting and kind of addictive.
especially considering that a dialogue always exists between speaker/writer and audience/reader? T- I find the way language is used to be performative. Language to me is defined by use, rather than a static thing, so this brings you automatically into a performative context. As artists working in this realm, we take the stance that language can and is a performative tool. The potential is unquantifiable when language is treated as material. Anything we store, whether we need to or not, becomes a mental document. What I find interesting and surprising is to eject these in a live setting, in a public situation. From brain/hand, reader/ screen, the relations between the elements of the work provides interpretation and misunderstanding, making the possible experiences very rich. J –As language is a very human way of interacting and communicating, I find language is, yes, inherently performative, in and out of a performative context. We are chopping up language; re-constructing
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“ As artists working in this realm, we take the stance that language can and is a performative tool. The potential is unquantifiable when language is treated as material. Anything we store, whether we need to or not, becomes a mental document. �
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and re-drawing the boundaries of what is understandable. One consequence being the freeing up of possibilities, understanding the same words, or mutated words, in different orders and contexts to arrive to different conclusions. To think of nonsense making sense. Observing the birth, life, and decay (but not quite death) of a body of text, without ever descending into true gibberish. You speak of the role of literature in cognitive development, to what extent do you consider the literature we read from an early age as “manufacturing consent”, to use Herman and Chomsky’s term? J – That wasn’t our focus, not on how we have retained info, its more about depositing this information onto the screen in a performative context. The focus is not on a manipulated mind, we understand the constructed nature of the material we’re dealing with, but we focus on the mode of production we use in the work. We’re playing with what we already know, to sit down at the computer and be able to divulge information. Dealing with the ‘what’. Reducing the concern of readability, 24
to increase the potential of new meanings. T – It’s not something we ever discussed from the viewpoint of “manufacturing consent”. Rather how this information was absorbed, or through which means, and the work itself stems from a fascination with how we have stored the literature we’ve ingested since we were kids. For this work in particular, by mentioning a relationship to literature that is crafted at birth, this alludes more to the fact that the wealth of information that is carried with us has been collected since before we remember collecting. By its focus on processes that operate before conscious, reflective thought, how do you think your work challenges the traditional understanding of language (which sees it as much more fixed)? T & J - A sense of meaning gradually decays throughout the work; depositing words is prioritized over congruency of understanding. As an audience, it could be challenging at first to read without an apparent grammatical structure. However, we attempt to operate with no filter during the performance, so if we get
reflective, it comes and goes. Automatic writing, as defined by dictionaries, exists in a completely separate sphere to the one we operate in. Our mode of production is effectively typing really fast, but you could consider it a poor-man’s automatic. Where does your work stand in relation to the Surrealists and their experiments with automatic writing, and where does it stand in relation to the work of William Burroughs? T - After working this way for a while, I begin to feel that automatic writing is not in fact what we do. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how it’s possible. It comes and goes in waves, and I’m not sure it’s possible without heavy drug taking or decades of monastic-like practice. As we have engaged is neither of these things for this work, we get as close to our idea of what automatic writing is, and by doing so, define it for ourselves. For this work. It’s our automatic writing, which doesn’t necessarily fit with historic practices. J - Here, I must say I agree with Theo. T - On a side note, William Burroughs is probably my favourite author, and having read pretty much everything he ever published, I would cite him as a huge influence. Go read The Naked Lunch. Everyone. J – On my side, Theo has been pushing Burroughs in my face for a while now. And for good reason. You could consider Theo my book dealer. Really, everyone, get some
more Burroughs in your life. T - The Beat Generation writers in general have guided us towards a certain style, or approach. The work of Burroughs and Brion Gysin also influenced me when considering the question of how to make writing performative. But these influences pop up everywhere, even David Bowie wrote most of his songs using a similar cut-up method. Lyrically his articulation had a huge effect on how sentences are structured in my mind from a really young age. I guess one can be trained or guided towards an appreciation of language which takes meaning to be something amorphous, that’s really interesting to fuck around with. How will you develop your concern for literature and performance in future works? T- Concern is a funny choice of word. It is more of an obsession, not an option or worry. J - Things are in the pipe lines- many things, many pipes. We have a dance training, so that’s something, it will appear sometime in the future. We develop our work under the name ‘Amphigory’ and plan to explore many options in performance, publishing, workshops, film… T – So yeah, we don’t know how yet, but our work is expanding in many different directions, so we’ll continue our process and see where we end up. 25
FROM MATTER TO STEAM. A GLIMPSE AT THE (IM)MATERIAL WORLD OF MATHIAS RAT.
Words: Francesca Tassini Images: Mathias Rat
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Looking at Mathias Rat’s digital artworks you might think they have something to do with time-travel. While gazing at them you may feel like you are getting the chance to witness a catastrophe at the very moment in which the victims bodies are obliterated. Evanescent, fluid, sometimes mutilated, yet harmonic, this is the appearance of Mathias’ (mostly feminine) subjects. Mathias Rat is a self-taught artist, living in a small town on the enchanting island of Sardinia, Italy. His major inspirations are drawn from surrealistic photography and paintings, together with the imagery of cult horror movies and extreme metal music, like Kittelsen’s artworks for Burzum album cover for instance. His main references in visual arts are Beksinsky, Magritte, Hopper and David Lynch. Mathias Rat’s visionary work creeps up on you like a ghoul on its tiptoes, knocking at the doors of consciousness. It is, perhaps, a subtle nightmare but it has the power to shake and shock your senses – all the while, just about keeping you in your comfort zone. The primary subjects of his images are unspotted, pure visages and naked bodies of ladies. His imagination takes place in a desolate, dark land where all hope is abandoned. “The space is a lost, empty place where colors 27
and textures of images dance and surround the room, sick dirty shadows disturbing, corrupting and erasing the surfaces perceptible to the senses enthralled in changing vortex” There is neither fear nor sadness in his subjects’ expressions, rather a quiet, inner peace. This makes one wonder whether they might have a clue as to what’s happening to them, or what are they actually made of. Ethereal creatures, broken dolls, mostly androgynous, sometimes curvy, they all share the same destiny. A perfectly obscure symphony of faces, arms, heads turning into steam erasing parts of them like a magick rubber, leaving ectoplasms floating in the air. A place made of the same matter of dreams, an eerie omen that leaves no possibility of escaping whatsoever. “I like thinking that my works represent an escape to the exterior world, a connection to other dimensions through the derangement of the concept/canons of beauty” The figures stand in a pitch black background, rarely physical, medievalesque scenography appears to be the only backdropm thereby compelling the viewer to focus on the central subject - a dancer in the dark, frozen in unnatural poses. Uncomfortable beings, thrown in a desperate, liquified scenario. “The boundaries are totally removed: reality becomes an infinite space ruled by ruins and dream dust. This is the birth of images, made 28
of sounds and silence; a vital breath where there are no limits between reality and unreality” The series of images seem to follow a sort of evolution – we don’t know if its intentional or not - where each figure undergoes a crescent dissolution. The direction taken by the artist is eventually one of a total transfiguration, until no human is left and women turn to monsters made of steam. Mathias Rat collaborates with many photographers, including Norwegian Daria Endresen. Currently, he is working on his own shoots and directing his interest toward other visual arts such as independent film. You can find some of his artworks here: mathiasrat.deviantart.com
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“THE SACRIFICE OF ROARING”
HSU CHEN WEI Words: Charlie Clemoes Images: Attilio Brancaccio
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The opening of Neu Now festival was marked by Hsu Chen Wei’s arresting dance performance “The Sacrifice of Roaring”, a performance whose position at the very beginning of proceedings was well deserved. It was, in Hsu Chen Wei’s words, meant to show “strong traditional elements of Taiwan at its creative essence, as well as sharing my unique artistic work with the international stage.” The performance was definitely distinctive. Throughout the piece, the two main dancers engage in a harmonious combat, a possible contradiction in terms but perhaps the best way to describe a combination that constantly looked just on the edge of being out of control (though it was surely far from it). It was at once passionate, volatile and serious in a way you might see in contemporary choreography, but perhaps less likely in your typical traditional dance. Judging by how Hsu describes her work, the focus is on highlighting the self-evident merits of traditional Taiwanese dance. But as well as giving the performance a really surreal quality, the juxtaposition of a guitarist in the corner intermittently playing heavy metal-style solo and choreography that saw the dancers clashing as if almost fighting, seemed to suggest that there was more to it than a simple celebration of Taiwanese culture. The heavy lighting, and the red curtains (also adding to the surreal feel of the performance) gave the whole atmosphere a distinct gravity. Meanwhile, the noise of the dancers’ feet falling on the ground after each 35
collision provided a percussive accompaniment that was peculiarly harmonic with the guitar, creating a slow-burn rhythm that gave the performance a powerful poignancy, as if something more immediate and political was being communicated in the subtext. In her artist statement Hsu does indeed point to the fact the work seeks to incorporate social issues, and all aspects of life, into her work, although she quite rightly foregoes specifics. I say quite rightly because, due to being left to make up their own mind about the actual subject (if there even was a specific subject), the audience was (or at least I was) compelled to use this dance to think about the things for which it could be a metaphor. For me it recalled a sense of violent, irresistible attraction, of two sides who hate but need each other, reminding me of friendships forged in early years, bound together by history but shot-through with a prevailing disdain. It also recalled the always endless clash and contrast between people and the perpetual resolution and complication of differing personalities. Perhaps this extrapolates too far, but it can no doubt be commended for producing these kinds of recollections. In any case, Hsu aims to broadcast her distinctive Wally-Hsu style of dancing internationally and with such a remarkable display (in a performance that lasted no more than ten minutes), she’s surely bound to succeed.
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Grip Face is a creative streetartist from Palma. 38
www.gripface.tumblr.com
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‘MY SILICONE LOVER’
A MOVIE BY SOPHIE DROS
Words: Charlie Clemoes
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There’s no question there’s a loneliness epidemic in western countries, epidemic being the right word for something that genuinely harms a person’s health, primarily due to the fact that it increases the levels of cortisol in your blood, thereby heightening your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and dementia, to name just a few of the depressing ailments facing someone whose life is already pretty depressing. But there’s also no question that the increasing confirmation of this epidemic has aroused an almost sadistic fixation in the British media, who have capitalised on several studies in the past decade to really hammer home the fact that British society is even more gloomy than already thought. Then again, the British have long been fixated with the problem of loneliness. It’s a theme evident in some of the country’s best plays, such as, Shirley Valentine, which famously begins with the protagonist alone and talking to the wall while preparing an evening meal of egg and chips for her emotionally distant husband. It’s also apparent in some of the country’s best music, such as the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and Pink Floyd’s “Time”. And British depictions of loneliness often intersect with a kind of comically weird perversion which often hints at sexual deviation. Again, speaking of Pink Floyd, you have the band’s debut single “Arnold Layne”, which tells the story of a transvestite whose primary pastime is stealing women’s clothes and undergarments from washing lines. And, allowing us to neatly turn to the subject at hand, Roxy Music’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” which puts singer Brian Ferry in the role of a man pondering whether the emptiness of modern life can be filled by his mail-order, inflatable doll. This is the quite heavy backdrop to my intense discomfort while watching the film “My Silicone Love”, a brilliantly awkward and exquisitely captured depiction of one man’s relationship with a series of life-sized dolls. Indeed, as someone who grew up steeped in this culture, watching this film, set in Britain and concerned with this stereotypically British problem of tragic, buttoned-up loneliness, was quite upsetting, probably because it is indeed true for many people residing in a country where one of our most famous prime minister’s best remembered lines was to claim “there’s no such thing as society”. But while the subject matter is British, the film’s director is Dutch and I believe it is for this reason that the subject is dealt with much more equivocally and in a much less comedic and more sympathetic fashion than it would be by someone from Britain. Scenes with the dolls are beautifully shot (albeit bordering on a high-class porn film). And, speaking to the director, Sophie Dros, it sounds as if the subject Everard’s reaction was positive, specifically in response to how his girls’ looked. Dros was also keen to make clear that loneliness wasn’t the principal concern per se, and that Everard himself was quite circumspect about his solitary life. It is, as I’ve already intimated, quite an obvious topic to cover, with the subject of life-like dolls hinting at pressing contemporary questions of the disintegration of social bonds, the rise of artificial intelligence and, as already discussed, the effect of loneliness on a person’s health. But this doesn’t really matter when considering that how compassionately the subject is covered. It is also impressive that Dros was able to get someone as deeply awkward and peculiar as Everard even to agree to being filmed. And besides, even if it is obvious, there’s actually something quite timeless about this subject, at least in the context of 20C capitalist modernity. Something which is really apparent when reading back Roxy Music’s song, written in the 1970s, which is remarkably reminiscent of “My Silicone Love”, and worth concluding with, not least because it’s just such a great piece of writing...
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In every dream home a heartache And every step I take Takes me further from heaven Is there a heaven? I’d like to think so Standards of living They’re rising daily But home oh sweet home It’s only a saying From bell push to faucet In smart town apartment The cottage is pretty The main house a palace Penthouse perfection But what goes on What to do there Better pray there Open plan living Bungalow ranch style All of it’s comforts Seem so essential I bought you mail order My plain wrapper baby Your skin is like vinyl The perfect companion You float my new pool De luxe and delightful Inflatable doll My role is to serve you Disposable darling Can’t throw you away now Immortal and life size My breath is inside you I’ll dress you up daily And keep you till death sighs Inflatable doll Lover ungrateful I blew up your body But you blew my mind Oh those heartaches Dreamhome heartaches
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Made in Iran is about the touching and emotional trip of the Iranian street artists Icy (1985) and Sot (1991). In Iran, the two brothers risked their life and freedom to create murals commenting on problems and worries of the Iranian people. While having been arrested several times in Iran, Icy & Sot get invited to exhibit their work in a solo show in NYC. A unique chance, but one that comes with a big risk: a oneway ticket to NYC. There’s no way back.
WATCH “MADE IN IRAN”
ON HOOPDOOPMAGAZINE.COM FROM MONDAY 31th OCTOBER AT 9pm.
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