LandEscape Art Review // Special Issue // Autumn 2017

LandEscape Contemporary

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Anniversary Edition

SONIA GIL THODORIS TRAMPAS GILSUK KO SHAHAR MARCUS JAMIE LEE ELLEN PEARLMAN NICOLAS VIONNET HOLLY MARIE ARMISHAW JACQUELINE VAN DER GEER

ART iQhiya, The Portrait, 2016, performance Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA)—Pireos Street (“Nikos Kessanlis” Exhibition Hall)

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

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Nicolas Vionnet

Thodoris Trampas

Natsuko Hattori

Carla Forte

Gilsuk Ko

Ellen Pearlman

Switzerland

Greece

Canada

USA

Germany / South Korea

USA

I work with synergies, but it was never inten- ded to do so. I very often rely on my gut instinct and just try to bring the work to a coherent state. One advantage of interdisciplinary approach is that a work, through the interaction of different techniques, automatically focuses on several aspects and thus can be read on several levels. However, I am not consciously looking for these multiple layers. My work often focuses on the topics of integration and irritation. In other words, I'm trying to integrate something new into the existing environment and thus to irritate at the same time. The phrase "nonhierarchical dialogue with the environment" describes my conviction that the artwork itself may never be dominant.

Thodoris Trampas is a visual artist has been working with performance art and installation in space. He searches the limits inside and outside the body; while it moves, it generates some pace, which affects its relation to the space, it makes natural sounds, which sometimes interrupt and sometimes connect the constant flow. He changes the properties of the said materials to give certain meanings to them, which are related mostly to the concerns of the human and in general, of the today’s society. Through improvisation he lets respiration get into every cell, recall memories, awaken the existence. Through experiential reality, he aims to highlight a human condition.

Fabric is my medium of choice because people everywhere can relate more easily to this material, which conveys warmth, natural softness and the intimate human touch.

My primary intent as a Filmmaker is to communicate my personal and social concerns, transforming them into a magical realm where anything becomes possible.

Images, dialogues, silences, colors and movement join to create a visual equilibrium, speaking for themselves.

Within my cinematographic work, movement is a key element for narrative and visual development; achieving a frame in motion from the image. Beyond an unorthodox narrative and aesthetic, my work focuses on experimenting new visual sensations through conflict: reflecting a world of emotions that can be both very near reality and on the side of the nonexistent, creating a parallel universe in which the palpable and the desired become possible at the same time. being, but that also present a new realm of sensations that we can be a

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.

I had to take different roles and attributes. 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.

Noor (which translates as ‘light’ in Arabic) is a brain opera that asks, though metaphor, analogy, sound, text, light, movement, brain sensors and audience interaction with an ‘actor’ wearing an Emotiv EEG brainwave headset just one simple question – “Is there a place in human consciousness where surveillance cannot go?”

Noor is an original ‘brain opera’. Though artists have been working with EEGs producing musical events, no one has ever created a full audio visual brain opera. Using an EEG enabled headset, the performer’s emotional states, at various times, launch digital databanks of video, audio and spoken word enabled events while simultaneously displaying the performer’s brainwaves live-time for audience viewing.

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The act of wrapping is central to my sculptures. My sculptures are created from balls that are individually wrapped with fabric and bounded together to make up an entire whole. Each ball represents the inner state of mankind.

The gesture of wrapping each round ball, is an act of transformation that converts pain, sadness and despair into positive energy, such as love or a prayer for comfort. My work conveys a sense of happiness and celebrates the human spirit.

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Jacqueline van de Geer 4 lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

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Gilsuk Ko lives and works in Münster, Germany

Holly Marie Armishaw 32 lives and works in Vancouver, Canada

Ellen Pearlman

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lives and works in Boston, Massachussets, USA

Carla Forte

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lives and works in Miami, Florida, USA

Jamie Lee Holly Marie Armishaw

Jacqueline van de Geer

Shahar Marcus

Canada

The Netherlands

Israel

Repressions embodies a unique approach to the formal qualities of the photographic medium while simultaneously provoking socio-political discussion. Each of the photographs in the series depicts a partial view of a woman either releasing various objects, or interacting directly with the frame. The white exhibition frames are no mere formal devices, but active participants in the minor performances of the artworks. The treatment of the frames, and the subject’s engagement with the surfaces of the photographs, connote a consciousness of the invisible confines of the medium.

Viewed collectively, one is able to piece together a unifying thematic thread. Three of the works contain pills, which are used to treat pain, anxiety, and depression.

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. I

Shahar Marcus (b. 1971) is an Israeli based artist who primary works in the medium of performance and video art. His initial works dealt with the exploration of his own body and its limitations- incorporating various perishable materials, such as dough, juice and ice. His body served as an instrument, a platform on which various ‘experiments’ took place: lying on the operating table, set on fire, dressed in a ‘bread suit’ and more.

Food is also a major theme in Marcus’s works. For instance, his recurrent use of bread as a symbol of essentiality and survival is juxtaposed with military symbols. By working with food, a perishable, momentary substance and by turning it into a piece of clothing or a set, Marcus also flirts with art history; transforming arbitrary objects and materials into something immortal and everlasting.

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lives and works in Münster, Germany

Shahar Marcus

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lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

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Sonia Gil lives and works in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Nicolas Vionnet

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

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LandEscape meets

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 and

, curator , curator

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

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

Hello Jacqueline and welcome to LandEscape: 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?

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 work in

Jacqueline van de Geer

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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.

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?

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!

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' 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.

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?

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!

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

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 performances, although I certainly present these

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themes in an unorthodox and very often playful manner!

For this special edition of LandEscape 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

Jacqueline van de Geer

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Jacqueline van de Geer

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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?

Improvisation is my key to connect with what is happening in the moment it self, what is happening

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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 most intelligent species, where as we might still be in

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Jacqueline van de Geer

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the prehistoric times, disguised as if we are civilized, contemporary, modern...

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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 connect on that level and show my willingness.

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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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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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LandEscape meets

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 and

, curator , curator

Hello Gilsuk and welcome to LandEscape: 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, 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

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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 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.

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 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.

For this special edition of LandEscape 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

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home country. Back in Germany the feeling of holding back and alienation came back 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

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not give a concrete goal or wanted perception to them.

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

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to have their own personal feelings relating to my work.

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

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metaphor of protection is almost 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.

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 decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

An interview by and

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Holly Marie Armishaw Lives and works in Vancouver, Canada

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LandEscape meets

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.

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Hello Holly and welcome to LandEscape: 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?

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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 post-human 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 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.

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.

For this special edition of LandEscape 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 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

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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 selfawareness, individual human experience, immortality, individual purpose, and the nature of existence or reality and truth. Often truths are uncomfortable for

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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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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

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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 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 self-indulgent profession”. I would like to see contemporary art prove this wrong.

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

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 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.

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

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 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

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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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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.

have a certain city or venue in mind while I am creating a series. I assume that you are speaking about my text-based 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.

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?

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

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 inperson 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.

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 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, 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.

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?

Certainly the work is more successful if the audience can find a relationship to it, and at times I

An interview by and

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Ellen Pearlman Lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Artist’s statement Noor (which translates as ‘light’ in Arabic) is a brain opera that asks, though metaphor, analogy, sound, text, light, movement, brain sensors and audience interaction with an ‘actor’ wearing an Emotiv EEG brainwave headset just one simple question – “Is there a place in human consciousness where surveillance cannot go?” Noor is an original ‘brain opera’. Though artists have been working with EEGs producing musical events, no one has ever created a full audio visual brain opera. Using an EEG enabled headset, the performer’s emotional states, at various times, launch digital databanks of video, audio and spoken word enabled events while simultaneously displaying the performer’s brainwaves live-time for audience viewing.

Noor is loosely based on the true story of Noor Inayat Khan, a Russian born, European raised Sufi Muslim Princess whose father Hazrat Inayat Khan brought Sufism to the West. During WW II Noor became a covert wireless operator for British Intelligence by parachuting deep inside occupied Vichy ruled France. For a period of three months Noor (code name “Nora”) was the only communications link transmitting critical information back to the Allies. Caught by the Gestapo, who were unable to break her to find out any information about her transmission cell, Noor was shot inside the infamous Dachau prison shortly before the end of the war. Noor is also a metaphor for issues of surveillance, privacy and faith. The performer’s brainwaves are displayed live-time for the audience to see as she interacts with them, and the story. As the performer’s emotional states change, different videos, sonic environments, and parts of the libretto are triggered on four different screens.

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LandEscape meets

Ellen Pearlman Lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts, USA Noor is loosely based on the true story of , a Russian born, European raised Sufi Muslim Princess whose father Hazrat Inayat Khan brought Sufism to the West. During WW II Noor became a covert wireless operator for British Intelligence by parachuting deep inside occupied Vichy ruled France.

An interview by and

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Hello Ellen and welcome to LandEscape: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid formal training: after having earned your diploma in Film/Video and Photographic Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, you nurtured your education with a MA of Telematic Art, that you received from the University of Calgary and with a Ph.D. from the School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University: how do these experience influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does the relationship between your cultural substratum and your travels inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem and art making in general?

Having a global perspective is enormously important in terms of joining the conversation about issues that affect large groups of people, which is the direction my arts practice takes. It has also helped me see my own and other’s regional differences and strengths. Although I am a native New Yorker, some of the focus of my concerns is not particularly supported in New York. This has led to me form three art and technology organizations to curate

and promote my focus; The Volumetric Society, ArtA-Hack™ and the ThoughtWorks Arts Residency, which I am able to direct with a fantastic ThoughtWorks employee who is also an artist, Andrew McWilliams.

At this point in my life, my personal issues and struggles only enter my creative works if they touch upon themes that resonate with larger concerns; surveillance, systems of control, new technologies, stream of consciousness, and the birth of repressive systems, especially when confronted with individual and collective resistance. I have also, inadvertently touched upon my own reservoir of epigenetic memories. Although my family has resided in New York for over a century, my current arts practice is delving into issues that have never touched me personally like racial annihilation, and persecution.

Having advanced degrees that combine art and technology has been helpful in two ways. The first is it has given me a container, or structure to create complex, original works that otherwise would not have been possible since they often take two or more years to develop. The second is it has enabled me to jump outside of the sales directed art world to present my work at conferences, panels and in publications that have nothing to do with the typical profit-driven venues for arts production.

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Ellen Pearlman

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Your approach reveals that you are a versatile artist, capable of crossing from one media to another. The results of your artistic inquiry convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. So 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. In particular, when do you recognize that one of the mediums has exhausted it expressive potential to self?

Due to the overwhelming inundation of multitasking devices and apparatuses that inundate us on a daily level, the single channel art object, whether a painting, sculpture or even installation, though compelling, does not usually engulf one, though on occasion it can. The real world is a dazzling momentto-moment display of visual, auditory, interactive, olfactory, kinetic and somatic experiences. It is occurring constantly, and never shuts off or stops, not even in sleep. In sleep, or at least section of it, dreams take over as complete immersive experiences. How can a creative practitioner incorporate, emulate, or compete with that?

Attention and focus are the only way I have found to differentiate consistent mental static from deeply felt lived experience. Noor had to be a brief opera because the performer was only able to wear an EEG headset for 20 minutes. Having only 20 minutes to change the perception of the viewer from the moment they stepped into the space was quite challenging For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected Noor: A Brain Opera, that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of this interesting transdisciplinary research project about the theme of surveillance is the way you provided the visual results of your analysis with autonomous aesthetics: when walking our readers through the genesis of Noor: A Brain Opera would you shed a light about your usual process and setup?

The issue of surveillance was paramount to my process of developing the opera. I was (and still am) particularly focused on biometric and especially

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brain surveillance. When I conceived of the opera in 2013/14, I was vaguely aware of actual brain surveillance. By the time the opera premiered, I had read extensively on the academic and military research being done on consciousness, cognition, and mapping the brain. This is why I subtitled the opera, “Is There A Place In Human Consciousness Where Surveillance Cannot Go?” – it was a rhetorical question. After the opera premiered, both Facebook’s Building 8, as well as Elon Musk’s Neuralink came into being. Facebook’s Building 8 signed a deal with 17 research universities to work on optical imagining for the brain, part of which is using something called the ‘semantic’ brain, or how the brain stores and recognizes specific types of images both live time and in dreams. A former DARPA U.S. Military director is spearheading the initiative.

Neuralink wants to eventually implant chips into the brain, and is also working with former DARPA employees.

How does one show this without being didactic, or literal? The answer I came up with was a cross between the limits of technology using metaphor and allusion.

After much testing of different consumer grade brainwave headsets I chose the Emotiv because it offered the most stability and widest range of emotions. Most headsets only offered two and it offered four: interest, excitement, meditation and frustration. Once I was worked with those four emotions using a performer (the amazing Saba Arat, originally from Istanbul), I built databanks of images, sounds and a words from the actual life of Noor in a prerecorded libretto that bore a resemblance to the main heroine of the opera, Noor Inayat Khan, a Sufi Muslim Princess and WWII covert operative for British Secret Intelligence. I used video images I had shot over the years, and worked with my sonic artist Taras Mashtalir, and librettist, Natali Federova (both from St. Petersburg, Russia) to hone the sonic environment and background dialogue.

The development of the opera took about 8 months of technical testing – it was extraordinarily difficult, as I was essentially asking a collection of technologies to do things they were not originally designed for. I wanted a certain measured threshold of the performer’s emotional response to turn on and off corresponding videos, sounds, and spoken words. This

Ellen Pearlman

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meant for example, if the performer was experiencing high levels of frustration (in relation to the story) the visual, sonic environment, and spoken words would correspond mood-wise to frustration, anger or fear.

The same held true for meditation, etc. Once the technology was actually functioning I had less than a month to test it out on volunteer audiences. What became clear is the technology and its immersiveness was overwhelming. The test audiences asked for a story, or narrative to help them navigate through the environment. Saba and I worked out a spoken live time dialogue about Noor Inayat Khan’s life to help the audience navigate through the experience.

We have appreciated the insightful combination between words and sound featured in Noor: A Brain Opera. According to media theorist Marshall McLuhan there is a 'sense bias' that affects Western societies favoring visual logic, a shift that occurred with the advent of the alphabet as the eye became more essential than ear. In Noor: A Brain Opera you seem to go beyond such paradigm: how do you see the relationship between sound and images?

I learned something startling true early in my media career. Though we think that the eye, and visual perception is privileged over all other senses, what I learned from working in time based media is that sound is much more important. This is not true for a single visual image, but in terms of my brain opera, the sound, then the words, and then the visuals set the tone and the mood. This is not something visual artists consider as primary, but its easy to test this. Take an image and add one sound track. Take the same image and add a completely different soundtrack. The associated meaning changes. Reverse the experiment by changing the image, not the sound. The difference is not as profound. That is why in the brain opera I was very careful with who I chose to compose the sonic score, and the worlds for the libretto. Atmospheric temperament is set by the auditory sense, and supported by the visual, in a subtle combination.

Drawing from the true story of Noor Inayat Khan, your inquiry into the theme surveillance in our media driven age is pervaded with subtle still effective socio political criticism. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which

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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, could be considered political,what could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age?

Art is a symbol and sign system representative from the region it emerges from. This creates art history, which is the history of a culture as viewed through it visual symbolism. With the advent of globalism, art history has become a mash up of cultural appropriation, whether intentional or not.

The lifting of symbols from one culture into another (usually, but not always one with culture displaying more economic means than the other) is in itself a political act, whether consciously or unconsciously. Hans Belting and James Elkins discuss this quite well in the former’s books on the end of art history, and the latter’s discussions of the layers of symbolism in cultures. Elkins include graphics (charts, medical imaging), commercial (advertising and logos) and then the fine arts, all of which add to a nuanced identity of a specific time and place. The first layer of politics in “Noor” is the layer of implied brain surveillance, an implied stance that has become more real every day. The next layer is the layer of Fascism and Nazism and WWII. The layer beneath that is the layer of Noor herself, both as a woman, and as a Muslim doing covert work for British Secret Intelligence, and helping save Jews. I was stunned when I found her true story and documentary “Enemy of the Reich”, narrated by Helen Mirren. It touched every point I was interested in raising, plus it had the extra bonus of being emotionally engaging.

I thought long and hard about how to make “Noor” a work that suggested a nuanced layering of ideas, but was never overt. Being didactic or polemical would have defeated the purpose. I wanted to be evocative and leave it to the individual viewer to take the extra step into considering, or personally and privately opening up to the questions Noor raised or that they thought Noor raised. For some it was just a story about a

Ellen Pearlman

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brave woman. For others it was an engulfing experience that overwhelmed them, leaving them almost speechless when they understood the implications of actual brain surveillance. The most difficult point was conveying Nazism to a mostly Chinese audience. I discovered their association with WWII was focused on the Japanese rape of Nanking.

All the Euro-centric ideas we have, which are so fixed about WWII vanished because of the geographic location where I premiered the opera, which was in Hong Kong. That made me realize I had to tap something more universal and fundamental that went beyond just the historical.

Multidisciplinary artist Angela Bulloch once remarked "that works of arts often continue to evolve after they have been realised, simply by the fact that they are conceived with an element of change, or an inherent potential for some kind of shift to occur".

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?

This is a question that I think is two questions. There are artists who are, or who have been working in new media, and those who have not. Claire Bishop addressed that problem very well in her seminal September 2012 ArtForum piece, “Digital Divide”.

There are artists who want to work with new media, which means becoming acquainted with code, and those who don’t, or won’t. Painting will always be painting, and the same is true for the other plastic, tangible arts. Mixed media can incorporate some of these changes, but then it becomes a continuum of just how much the artist will deem it necessary to pay attention to these factors, or just bypass them. It’s a radicle jump to work in the digital or electronic, and that is how I define new media – it is essentially nontangible, though it needs to be experienced through tangible means.

Rather than attempting to establish univocal senses, Noor: A Brain Opera seems to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations: when discussing about the role of randomness in your process, would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings?

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When I contemplate creative artworks that permanently changed my perceptions of what reality, or my conceptions of reality were about, they were works that allowed me to enter the experience. Once I entered the piece, on my terms I was moved by it, and emerged thoughtful, shaken, and with fresh insights. The pieces I can associate with the experiences never dictated or directly told me what to feel, rather they created an environment or experience that provoked my own perceptions in a way that they were forever changed. A good example is the first time I ever head “The Knee Plays” from Einstein On the Beach

by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson. It was a free, excerpted performance, and I wandered into it playing at Memorial Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts completely by accident, having gotten off a bus at the wrong stop. I heard some sort of music and decided I might as well walk towards it source inside the church. Once I opened the door I almost fell to my knees with the force of a type of sound I had never experienced before.

That never left me, and absolutely redefined how I think about sound. This is a type of re-framing that guides my own practice, where the randomness is not quite as random as it initially seems. That is mastery of the art that makes it appear so seamless. I have learned over the years that what appears easy and seamless is anything but that.

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?

My starting point with a production like this is contemplating the implications of mixed reality presentations. At this point 360 cinema, VR and AR (virtual reality and augmented reality) are on the

rise. I think they are really important technologies, but limited in their scope. My ideas about mixed reality take into account these types of technologies, as well as biometric markers that measure different human responses, including brainwaves. I ask how can the technology best be deployed? During Noor not only does the main performer interact with the audience through touch, gaze, and movement, but the audience witnesses the performers brainwaves and responses live time thus creating a palpable live time feedback loop between the performer and audience in the context of a story, the immersive visual and sonic environments. This approach reaches beyond language and takes into account haptic (touch), sonic (auditory), thematic (story) interactive (live performance) and biometrics (brain signals and live time display of brainwaves).

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

How do you see your work evolving?

I am already conceiving on my next brain opera, “The Last Wedding Party of Eva Von Braun.” There will be two characters fitted with brainwave headsets, and a sort of responsive nervous system.

Currently, I am in dialogue with potential partners, but am open to new collaborators. I am also putting together curatorial proposals from the three organizations I run, The Volumetric Society, Art-A-Hack™ and the ThoughtWorks Arts Residency. Recently I taught the world’s first colab on cyborg art in conjunction with the Cyborg Foundation at Parsons School of Design in New York. In the next few months I plan to spend time in Europe getting to know the European new media scene much better, and if anyone reading this would like to get in touch, please do!

An interview by and

, curator , curator

Carla Forte Lives and works in Miami, Florida, USA

Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

An interview by and

, curator , curator

Carla Forte is a performer, writer and director. She has performed in and directed Video-Art works like Interrupta, Imaginarium Life, Assassins for One Night, among others featured at important venues and festivals such as: 20th Cucalorus Film Festival 27th Festival (2014); Les Instants Vidéo Italy (2014); Pool 14 Internationale TanzFilmPlattform Berlin.

From the first time we have got to know her works we have been impressed with the stunning way she conceives cinema as an anthropological tool to explore the incommunicable. While Interrupta overtly plays with the unheimlich nature of gestural movements, it also discusses the notion that images tend to exist in continuum, residing somewhere in memory, whereas sound tends to evoke the present moment. It is with a real pleasure that I would like to introduce our readers to her stimulating works.

Hello Carla, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any particular experiences that has influenced you as an artist and on the way you currently produce your works?

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 Tarán (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.

When I began to work with Director Alexey Tarán 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 tremendous

Carla Forte

interest for directing and expressing my feelings through art.

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 independent perspective. During

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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.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

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.

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

Now let's focus on your artistic production: we would start from Interrupta, an extremely interesting work that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and wewould suggest to our readers to visit your website directly at https://vimeo.com/61962211 in order to get a wider idea of it. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

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

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family has its own distinctive 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.

We definitely love the way with which, by heightening the tension between reality and perception of it, Interrupta establishes a refined visual equilibrium between still images and movement, as well as between dialogue and silences, exploring the concept of emerging language and direct experience... so we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

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 movement in many of

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Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

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Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

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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.

Another interesting work of yours that that we have selected is entitled Staring at the Ceiling: what has mostly impressed me of it is the way you alter individuals'experiences of space and time through fragmentation, which urges us to explore the boundaries between identity and the perception of the Self. As a result, you investigate about common gestures through a new perspective, creating -like in Sergej Parajanov's films- what you once defined a parallel universe in which the palpable and the desired become possible at the same time... Can you introduce our readers to this fundamental concept?

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

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of traveling 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.

In Staring at the Ceiling you have developed a highly individualistic visual language, which gives birth to a deep interplay between directness and distance. A fundamental element of your shooting style is no doubt the recurrent use of refined, central composition. Why did you chose the anamorphic format?

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.

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.

There seems to be a sense of narrative in your works and I find that your filmmaking is rich of references: in particular, I can recognize a subtle Raul Ruiz's touch in your films. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Staring at the Ceiling, video, 2015

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 communication between people. All of these

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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.

You are the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Bistoury Physical Theater and Film: I think that interdisciplinary collaboration is today an ever

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

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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, 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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supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or just the expectation of positive feedback- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

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.

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

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.

Over your career your works have been extensively exhibited in several occasions, both in America and Europe, and I think it's important to mention that you recently received a Honorable Mention at both Los Angeles Movies Awards and Lucerne International Film Festival... It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of

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 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.

Jamie Lee Lives and works in MĂźnster, Germany

Mind’s eye is a working process of her solo currently in working process. Living in Brussels after the terrorist attack in 2015 I have witnessed how dangerous living in fear can be. Fear is a present stimulus. Terrorism, fear, a malignant infection which travels from one to another. An essential part of our survival mechanism anchored in our body to keep us safe, however the dangers of living in constant fear, your system flooding with corrosive hormones can damage health and affect the way we think and influence the decisions we make. The anticipation of terror effects our behaviour and minds cultivating an infectious negative barrier in our ability to reason.

An emotional experience altering moods, temperament and personality even resulting in psychological distress. The performance will look at the bodies response to fear as a infectious malignant. The surge of fear cultivating as a living organism. The body becomes another. The ability to change form and take shape of a being not your own but by influences of the environment in which we put ourselves in. Negative minds get trapped into labyrinth which passes behaviours from one to another and often without us realising.

I question the choices of fear as I approach this solo. I believe the dangers are real but the choices of fear is not.

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LandEscape meets

Jamie Lee Lives and works in Münster, Germany I am a multi-disciplined artist; a dancer, choreographer, creative producer, director, film- maker and photographer, inspired by storytelling without words. Investigating the body through energy, emotion and physicality. As a dancer I am interested in using movement to generate a fusion of works exploring other media in the hopes that by combining multiple art forms allows production of versatile creations to encourage a cross-pollination of respective audiences. Always trying to push the boundaries of what dance can be, and an openness to collaborate with artist of other media to do so. As a dancer I research how my body can change form transform into another being. Taking inspiration from animalistic qualities and not to focus on what is typically beautiful as a ‘dancer’ but to find beauty in the bodies moving form. I let my body go past my extensions, find space where there is not and to let me breath take me from one movement to another. Co-creator of Memoryhouse Productions a platform for the creation of collaborative dance works with partner Stanislav Dobak. At Memoryhouse I have created installations, dance films, photography and performances where in recent years have been inspired by recreating her nightmares and embracing the world of fantasy where creativity is ultimately endless. As well as Memoryhouse, I also co-created Motionhouse, a video and photography production house focusing on documenting stories

An interview by and

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Mind’s eye is a captivating film by multi-disciplined artist Jamie Lee: inquiring into the notion of fear, she initiates her audience into an unconventional and heightened visual experience of psychological distress in our unstable contemporary age. Lee's incessant research into how a dancer's body can change form transforming into another being encourages a crosspollination of the spectatorship.

Hello Jamie and welcome to LandEscape: you are versatile and your practice ranges from dance and choreography to filmmaking and photography: what draws you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach?

I started looking at choreography in a broader sense, rather than just the body but choreography as the organisation of all things. I asked myself what am I really interested in? What inspires me? and the answer was storytelling. Storytelling without words. Memoryhouse

was created with my collaborator and husband Stanislav Dobak because we there was a common interest in bringing dance into other media. We both had a strong interest in work behind the camera, and honestly we felt we had something to offer in terms of dance films. We were to tired of dance films where dancers just dance in front of the camera with no storytelling or use of filmic skills. We did a lot of experiments with how the camera and movement can connect and work together. I began photography because I needed an outlet for my storytelling. I was really in a phase of fantasy and magic. I started sketching ideas and images that I wanted to recreate and it really opened a world of possibilities to have a close connection with the camera. I love the world which lies inside the lens is a world full of imagination, fantasy, a boundary less world of the unknown and dreams. A single image can have so much depth and I think that is the challenge I enjoy; to capture the energy, emotion and situation in a single frame. It really allows me to be open to endless possibilities. So, creatively I needed the outlet through the camera, to take my own creation in my own hands. Being a dancer led me to finding more artistic ways to tell a story without words.

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My practice has lead me down a path which I never thought I would enter. From dancing, to photography, to dance films and now short and long documentaries. It has introduced me to a field that I never thought I would be in, to produce and direct stories of all narrative form. The collaboration with Stanislav works because despite him also being a dancer, he is the technical lead in our work as the camera man, photographer and editor. I don’t want to stop here, I want to create works with more disciplines. To collaborate with artists of all media and continue to cross these borders in order to cross pollinate more audiences.

Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit https://www.memoryhouseproductions.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?

Interesting enough, despite being someone who actually has a lot of fears in life, it became my inspiration for my artistic work. My outlet tends to be a darker nature and became a way for me to use my fears. Memoryhouse started with project ‘Dreams’ a photography and film installation. I felt that our first project needed a concept which we did not have to work within too many boundaries. And I loved the idea to recreating dreams which were surreal and out of this world. I began documenting my dreams I had when sleeping and the only ones that kept a vivid memory in my mind were my nightmares. I connected so well with the concept and I suppose this is the mark of my style. I learnt a lot about myself through this project. I had to tap into my fears, confront them and use my fears in a creative way.

Together with the camera, body and sound I had to really find ways to tell the audience what was happening through these entities without words. The only way was for the three to be as strong as each other and to support one another. The project also encouraged me to constantly push my own creative boundaries and having to work with quite low budgets made me even more resourceful. I love to prove that you do not need a high budget to be creative, it is about thinking outside the box.

I love seeing my sketches come to life, I feel as though I am sharing a part of my subconscious. Even though not all my dreams are of a darker nature I chose to make this first dream series about the more traumatic dreams because I think the less typically beautiful things in life are

worth talking about. I also felt that the human body is the perfect way to tell these stories as these dreams tend to have more struggle in them so physically I could transfer it to camera. This style has definitely stuck with me in my other artistic works and evolves which every project.

For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Mind's-eye, an extremely interesting film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. Inspired by your current solo, your film looks at the bodies response to fear as a infectious malignant: what has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into the notion of fear is the way you have provided the visual results of your analysis with coherent combination between autonomous aesthetics and visual consistence. While walking our readers through the genesis of Mind's-eye, would you tell what did draw your to focus on the notion of fear?

After the terrorist attack in Brussels (my current residence) in 2016 I saw and felt the aftermath affects it had not just within the city but worldwide. I found myself in the cycle of fear as I began to feel paranoid and constantly on edge. (Living with military presence has not helped). The notion that having military patrolling the streets makes us safer is so bizarre to me as feeling safe is not seeing the possibility of danger. It wasn’t until the outbreak of open racism across the world towards the muslim community that I began to be conscious of my behaviour. I really began thinking about what it was that made me feel this way and why other people are closing themselves towards muslims and refugees (something that I do not except and stand up for). I began to ask myself what, why and who was creating my fear. It was the media. We were raised to believe and trust the media but how bias is the mainstream media?

All it was doing to me was making me feel fearful to step outside and feel like the world is full is danger and terrorist. I have seen my parents obsessively watch the news everyday and yes it is good to be aware of the worlds events but are we aware of the dangers it has on our health? It’s starting to feel as though the mainstream media treats terrorist attacks like they won the jackpot and capitalising on it as much as possible. Statistics even prove that in U.S. there are more deaths caused by guns from children that terrorist, yet the impression from the mainstream media is not this. Just a couple months ago in Brussels there was a terrorist attempt at a train station, the military were able to prevent the attack from

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happening and for two days all I saw on Facebook and the news outlets was ‘terrorist’, ‘attack, attack attack’ repeated over and over. But the fact was the attack was prevented and not as blown up as it appeared in the media. It is important we are aware of these threats don’t get me wrong however the news should be that the attack was prevented safely. Humans have brains that search for the negative in response to our survival instinct and the media are aware that the more negativity they put our into the world the more we will watch.

I believe that not all of us are even conscious of the affects of fear especially in our new ‘normal’ living in this contemporary age. Fear has divided us. It has closed out hearts, our empathy and reasoning. It has made it acceptable to treat each other with hate. We have seen it in Europe with the refugees and in the United State s with Donald Trump tapping into fear for his gain and reasoning for his policies. Based on the notion of fear not fact. And yes while fear is a natural natural human body response, we need to be conscious about it. The awareness of it’s infectious effects in our behaviour should be taken more seriously and talk about.

You once remarked that the anticipation of terror effects our behaviour and minds cultivating an infectious negative barrier in our ability to reason: your observation of social and psychological phenomena seems to be very analytical, yet Mind's-eye strives to be full of emotion: how would you consider the relationship between analysis and spontaneity within your work? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticolously schedule every details of your works? how much importance does play improvisation in your process?

With Mind’s eye and often in my creations, I work with a central idea then improvise around it. The location had a significant influence on what the movement would entail. I had been to Lovenjoel chapel years ago and remembered how much energy the place had. It use to be a chapel connected to a mental institution and now functions as a art space. I was honestly scared the whole time and wanted to leave as fast as possible. Your imagination can run wild in there. The ending for Mind’s eye confronted the idea of being watched because I felt that the entire time and I actually cannot watch this part of the film. The place was so cold and incredibly dirty so I had to change what I had planned to do. I had some rough ideas to play with and so many magical things can happen when improvising that often just can’t be

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recreated. What happens is we work on a particular moment (camera angle and movement idea) then let the camera role. When a movement works, I’ll try it again and develop it further and I look at how to film it. In Mind’s eye I had scripted several movement ideas to play with e.g., arm movements hanging in hamstring position and it developed to keeping finger tips on the ground and body moving freely, and a small phrase I had worked on a bit in the studio prior. I think what works the best with dance is letting the an idea develop and end up somewhere that I didn’t start with. When it’s about the body taking over and freeing the mind opens up more possibilities.

Mind's-eye plays with parts of the body rich with symbolic values, as hair: do hair play a role of metaphor in Mind'seye?

If I could do it again, I would not show my face at all. The hair is symbolic when you think of a inhuman creature, so I use my hair as much as I can and to also cover my face. I am quite a shy person and it does make me feel safe. I did a show before where I had hair covering my face as well and I loved the feeling. It gave my body the impression that I could really transform myself like I was wearing a mask and it encouraged me to express my body even more. It is as if Jamie disappeared, and this other body like entity takes over. Taking the sense of sight awakens the whole body and I become more aware of how my skin. In the future for my solo I will explore how the hair can play a larger role and be part of the bodies movement as an extended limb. Yes i reminds people of the Japanese horror the ring so I suppose it plays on the fear a bit, not quite the intention but it does work.

Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative process. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once remarked that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": as a multidisciplinary artist involved both in Photography and Dance how would you consider the relation between the abstract nature of the ideas you explore and the physical act of producing your artworks?

It’s about taking an idea and and finding ways which makes sense for me through the body. Everyone’s outcome will always be very different and I suppose this is why people make art to give the world altering perspectives. With this concept I had to work in an abstract way. Most people when I tell them that I am exploring the concept of fear they immediately think I am going to make my audience feel scared. That would be the most obvious way to

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approach fear. I knew that this concept had something worth exploring and I just had to find a way that is true to myself to work through the ideas. When people start making works thinking of what the audience will like or purely intended for audiences response, the works often lacks depth. I have to be honest about how I see a particular concept and it is my job to create in a way for the audience to see my perspective. The worst thing is for the audience to walk out of a performance and have no idea what the show was intended to say. Yes there is no right or wrong with art however you can definitely rate whether the artist’s vision was seen. When I was conducting my research about fear itself I immediately related to the explanation that fear acts like an invisible infection and that connected to my movement ideas. My approach is for the body to be representative of the infection and it’s personality affects.

‘The surge of fear cultivating as a living organism. The body becomes another. The ability to change form and take shape of a being not your own but by influences of the environment in which we put ourselves in’.

Your remarked once that as a dancer you do not to focus on what is typically beautiful as a ‘dancer’ but to find beauty in the bodies moving form: how do you consider the notion of beauty in relation to the idea of transforming the artist's body from a form into another being?

We live in a society that see’s beauty in a limited way. Yes you can say that ballet is beautiful. But I think that it is beauty in a superficial way, it doesn't go further than the skin. From a young age dancers are told what they are capable of based on their body type. I don’t think that creates a healthy image for young people and the perception of who a dancer should or shouldn’t be. The real challenge is how each individual can use the body they are born with to create moments which are unique. The movement should be representative as a bodies personality not having to stay in a particular form. Not saying that technique is not important, it is the foundation of tools we can apply to the body to find more possibilities. It is not about making shapes in the space and moving in a way that we have been told to move. It is about moving as a human body. Moving from the bones not the skin, it needs to come from within. To create energies and emotions, otherwise all storytelling in dance would be lyrical and not connected to any abstract exploration. I look at my body as a whole and work with what I have. It is about the transference in energy and a

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sense of totality of the body. I love to explore different ways of moving and I take inspiration from animalistic qualities and sometimes the challenge may be to go against what may feel natural or easy. Ideas like boneless, weightless and elastic. My goal is always to find uniques ways of moving. I may not always succeed but it is a working process. My daily practice is Ashtanga yoga and I take a lot inspiration from the practice in finding movement possibilities and finding space where there may be non. Also listening to the breath and allowing the breath to create a rhythm within. Dance is about exploration of the human body and challenging the boundaries of shapes and form, so the notion of beauty in transforming a body into another is inviting the audience to follow my physical journey.

You are always trying to push the boundaries of what dance can be, and an openness to collaborate with artist of other media. Motionhouse and Memoryhouse Productions are interdisciplinary collectives that you have created in Brussels with multidisciplinary artist Stanislav Dobรกk: it's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the aforesaid ones are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two artists?

I am interested in creating works where two entities influences the other rather than one as a supporting act.

To work in a true collaboration. For example a lot of the time with dance the music is put in the background. But what if a true collaboration is created when putting different media together in the space. Naturally it will push one another outside of the habitual path. These are my future goals, to work collaboratively with a wide range of artist. I am not really interested to work just as a dancer, I find collaborative work most inspiring. When collaborating with an artist of another media I think the communication has to be clear and we need to have a common ground on the topic and ideas we want to create but we also need to give each other space and freedom to create on our own.

My collaboration with Stanislav is unique because we are also married so we have had to work on our communication with sensitivity so work does not carry into

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our personal life too much. We have made our roles very separate. As well as a dancer he is a natural behind the camera and has a fondness for the technical side of productions. My role is creating, directing, producing and management, and he handles the filming, editing and all sides involving technicality. Sometimes it’s not an easy task for him to imagine what I am describing and wanting to make so this is where communication is key and working closely inside of process as a unit is vital to ensure we share the same vision.

Over the years your works have been showcased in several occasions: Cinedans Festival in The Netherlands, Cinema Prize at Choreographic Captures in Switzerland, and more recently Mind's eye was premiered at The Athens Video Dance Project: 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?

I mentioned a bit about this question in one of the recent questions above. I try to stay away from making decisions based on the audience reception. One of the aspects I do consider is the audiences experience in terms of immersion. More specially how can the audience be a part of the presentation rather than outside the envelop of the audience and performance.

With ‘Dreams’ the exhibition was presented in a way that the audience had to step into a dark room alone to listen to a story to awaken the imagination, to watch a film through wire fence, windy room, and to step onto a film projected on the floor. So in terms of presentation and the energy the audiences experience and reception is at every part of the decision making. I would like to take this process even further and create immersive works where the audience has the sense of being inside of the process and feel what the performer feels.

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

I am in the process of a few exciting projects. At Memoryhouse I will be starting my solo performance

based on my film Mind’s eye. I will take the concept further and transfer it to stage. It will be a visual performance and I hope to collaborate with different artist on it including an illusionist to play with the relationship with myself and the audiences through manipulating the space. I will take the movement further and draw influences from my yoga practice in ways of exploring movement. With Stanislav we are also going to create a new interdisciplinary performance with creative technology, the intention is to start new collaborative ideas together with technology as a source of influencing choreography and vice versa. I am very drawn to this world of art and technology and I hope to create further collaborations and be inspired by innovation. There are also some talks with different associations about creating dance films to bring alight political issues. These kinds of projects are so inspiring for me especially if it is a topic that I connect with I can support the issue in my own way.

At Motionhouse I am in the early productions stages of making a documentary. This will be my first full length documentary. The documentary will address what yoga has become as apposed to what yoga actually is. A topic I am very connected with, I have practiced yoga for over 10 years now and have seen the ‘boom’ in the industry and how capitalism has influenced the integrity of this practice. A journey investigating the now billion dollar industry will bring to light the corrupt values and fake guru’s. A practice in the hands of people with no accountability of the ancient practice as a result of quick teacher training course practically open to anybody willing to pay. Consequently perhaps through the documentary we can change the direction of where this industry is heading. I hope to be in production next year 2018.

I think my work evolves as I do, I am constantly in self development whether it is self-education or physical training. One thing I know for sure is that dance always has a place in my work and I hope to find new collaborations to push the boundaries of what dance can be and also ‘where’ dance is seen. Dance and Video will also be a part of my life and I hope to tell more stories that bring to light issues that are important to me.

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S hahar Marcus Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

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hahar Marcus (b. 1971) is an Israeli based artist who primary works in the medium of performance and video art.

His initial works dealt with the exploration of his own body and its limitations- incorporating various perishable materials, such as dough, juice and ice. His body served as an instrument, a platform on which various ‘experiments’ took place: lying on the operating table, set on fire, dressed in a ‘bread suit’ and more. Food is also a major theme in Marcus’s works. For instance, his recurrent use of bread as a symbol of essentiality and survival is juxtaposed with military symbols.

By working with food, a perishable, momentary substance and by turning it into a piece of clothing or a set, Marcus also flirts with art history; transforming arbitrary objects and materials into something immortal and everlasting. His early videoperformances feature himself along with other artists, with whom he had collaborated in the past. However, in his recent works, Marcus appears by himself, while embodying different roles and characters. ‘The man with the suit’ is a personage that was born from an intuitive desire to create a ‘clean-cut’ version of an artist, juxtaposed to the common visual stereotype of the artist as a laborer. Drawing influence from Magritte’s familiar figure- the

headless suit, a symbol of Petite bourgeoisie, Marcus embodies this man with a suit as an artist who is in charge, a director. His most recent works deal with local political issues, by approaching iconic Israeli landmarks with a critical and humorous point of view. Thus, Marcus reflects on his own heritage, environment and the creation of local historical narratives. His works are influenced by the visual language of cinematography along with familiar themes and tributes to art – history and artists, such as Ives Klein, Paul McCarthy, Peter Greenway and Jackson Pollack. *Shahar Marcus is an active artist for over a decade and has exhibited at various artinstitutions, both in Israel and around the world, including: The Tate Modern, The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Petach Tikva Museum of Art , Charlottenburg, CopenhagenKunsthalle , Moscow Biennale, Poznan Biannale, Moscow Museum of Modern Art and at other art- venues in Polland, Italy, Germany, Georgia, Japan, the USA and Turkey. Many of his works are a part of various important collections, such as The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Petach Tikva Museum of Art as well as art- intuitions in Poland and Italy.

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LandEscape meets

Shahar Marcus An interview by and

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My Opinion is that a work of art and especially a contemporary work of art is a work that rather demand from the beholder to ask a question and not

receiving messages from the artist.

The idea and message should lie in the questions that the work raise.

As an artist who didn’t go to an art school and started exhibiting his works I often find that at he beginning I wasn’t influence by teachers and older artists by how should an art work should look like. I think it gives you some creative freedom in just doing your things without having your teacher voice in your head all the time.

As an Art history student I have many works which are influence from iconic artists like Jackson Pollock (Sabich), Yves Klein (Leap of faith) and Marcel Duchamp.

, Performance, 2014

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As I prepare for producing a new piece I start thinking about the exhibition place. I always try to produce a piece which have a connection to the place.

The connection could be historical, geographical or even to have an architecture connection. After processing the idea I try to0 connect it to art history and not always in the idea level but sometimes in the level of the materials which iuse in the piece.

I always try to think about a strong physical action that will connect the whole story into coherent outline.

Some of my works are ideas that come fast and then the production will take a lot of efforts. I always think of my budget and my options at that stage because I hate to come up with ideas that I can't produce.

I like to work fast and usually it takes 3-4 months once I have the Idea until the work is done. In my video The curator which was complicated because it involved many scenes, texts and participants it took me 10 months to finish the work (of course I manage to shoot two new videos and a solo show in that time). I would say I'm a sprinter and not a long runs artist.

https://vimeo.com/13003785

At the beginning of Freeze there was the clock. I was thinking about an art work that will allow me to control time.

That work was a live performance art and in the huge hourglass filled with Styrofoam balls I was trying to control time. I stopped the balls with my belly in order to give more time to the loosing player and try to let them go through fast when it was the turn of the winning player in order to give him less time to think about his move. In the video art we shot the work at the plaza outside the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum.

This building houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the famous War Scroll, which describes the apocalyptic battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. We tried to give the video a mediate feel in which the judgment day ahs come and the last two persons are standing and playing the last game of chess until the end.

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As an artist but also as a beholder I always try not to bore myself and try to work in different mediums. I think sometime I have an idea and I find that it an not work as a performance or a video and that the best way for it is to be an installation. Freeze for example was able to be a video, a performance an etching and a photography and in each medium turn out a bit different. A good friend of mine once told me that it doesn’t matter in which medium I will work, whether it will be video photography or installation it will always look like a performance art. I try to avoid that but sometimes I think he is right. I have the tendency to revive all my art.

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, Performance, 2015

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For my opinion art can do everything and can do nothing. It all lies on the shoulders of the beholder. The only thing an Artist can do is to make a significant strong art piece that will move the beholder and make him ask questions. A good art piece can move a person out of his spot and can help him see things different but if a person come to an exhibition without curiosity and will to listen then even the best art piece in the world will fly over his head. None the less if he comes with an open mind to receive something than it is the artist responsibility to deliver him an experience that might steer his thoughts and behavior.

In many cases I think that there is a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness especially in the themes that contemporary art is dealing with. I

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in Still burning I am dealing with "memento mory" that has such a long history in art and especially in painting. Taking the theme and dealing with it in a contemporary medium such as performance allow the piece to open up to more expects which exist in this matter.

The curator was shown all over the world to different kind of audience and in many cases it was not an art audience but rather a film audience or other. As I saw People like it even without knowing what a curator is because you can easily replace the curator in an actor singer or any nobody who became a star in three minutes.

The work says a lot about us as a society which always look for the next thing and have no patience for experience but rather looking to coronate a new king in instance time. I

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, Performance, 2015

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think that personal experience always help you when you try to produce a new art piece because than it is easy to understand the process and what will be the best way to make the piece but since I always try that my works will be understandable and communicative than even if I didn’t know any curator in my life I think I would be able to pull it off just by reading or hearing about this caricature.

An expectation for an award cant really effect your work except for the understanding that a good piece of art might give you an award but I guess that what all the artists wants. I think that the only aspect that it does affect

me is that the minute that I finish one work I start thinking about the next one because you know that your audience always want more of you and as soon as possible.

I always think of me as the audience and I always imagine myself what will happen if I see that piece of art. Will I like it/ if it works for me than I can do the work. Sometimes when you have an exhibition and the commercial galleries are involved than you really need to listen to your wills and thoughts and try to walk the line between art and business. If after walking the line your art survive that clash it means you made it.

At the beginning of April I will travel to Saarbrucken in Germany and I will create a new video piece with the artist Nezaket Ekici which I have been collaborating for the last two years in a project that travel from Israel to Tbilisi, Istanbul and then to Saarbrucken Germany. This coming October we will have a big show in Saarbrucken Stadtgallery. Other than that I will show this year in Taiwan and I will be working on a new solo show in 2016.

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, Performance, 2014

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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LandEscape meets

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.

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Hello Sonia 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 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?

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 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.

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.

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 explore and we would suggest to our readers to visit https://www.soniagil.com.br in order to get a

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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.

For this special edition of LandEscape 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?

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

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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 techniques, and mixing different elements is your way of trying to translate the complexity of the contemporary life and the urban environment. How

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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.

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 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

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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?

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

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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.

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

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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 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

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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 Rio-Lisbon and make Lisbon a hub for working new networks around Europe.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator land.escape@europe.com

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Nicolas Vionnet Lives and works in Baselh, Switzerland

An artist's statement

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ionnet’s preferred medium is acrylic on canvas. His chiefly large-scale works play with space and expanse. Although almost always realistic, his paintings have more in common with abstract images than real landscapes. He paints disruptive grey strips across his clouds and allows coloured sur-faces to drip down the canvas in accordance with the laws of gravity.

Vionnet is fascinated by such irritations: interventions that approach and create a non-hierarchical dialogue with the environ-ment. This dialogue opens up a field of tension, which allows the viewer an intensi-ve glimpse of both these phenomena.

Vionnet uses the same approach and the same strategy for his installations. Irritation and integration. A fundamental confrontation with the history of a place leads to a subtler and more precise intervention of the object. Take for

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example his man-made grass island at the Weimarhallen Park (Weimar, GER), which ironically inten-sified the park’s own artificiality.

In ‘Close the Gap’ (Leipzig, GER) he bridged the space between an old-town row of houses with a printed canvas image of the now much frowned upon prefabricated buil-ding. A reference to changes in time and aesthetics.

Nicolas Vionnet lives and works in the Zuricharea. He graduated from the Hochschule fürGestaltung und Kunst Basel. He graduated in2009 from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimarwith a Master of Fine Arts degree after studyingon the university’s Public Art and New ArtisticStrategies programme.

Vionnet has partici-pated in various exhibitions at home and abroadsince 1999, including at the Kunsthalle Basel,the Neues Museum Weimar (Gallery marke.6)and the III Moscow International Biennale forYoung Art.

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LandEscape meets

Nicolas Vionnet An interview by Julian Thomas Ross, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator landescape@europe.com

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

Hello Nicolas, and a warm welcome to LandEscape To start this interview would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any particular experiences that have impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks?

I grew up in the region of Basel, Switzerland, and have completed my education at the University of Art and Design Basel and at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. During the first few years I have

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been mainly dealing with painting. Decisive for my current artistic practice was my twoyear stay in Weimar, where I graduated from the Public Art and New Artistic Strategy master’s program.

During this time I was given the chance to realize my first major interventions in public space. It was an exciting and very intense time where I mainly learned to perceive my environment in a completely different way, to react and to undertake artistic interventions.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

The principal approach in nearly all projects is quite similar, but the final work can differ greatly. In the context of an exhibition I often get a proposed specific place or I have the freedom to choose from a range of different locations in public space.

My process usually begins with photo tours and walks where I am trying to become familiar with a place. Important questions for me are: how do the citizens use the place, what is its function and what role does it take in everyday life? Are there any

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special circumstances or other conspicuous issues? In the next stage I start an exhaustive research, go to the library or the city archive and try to clarify the historical background of the site. During this period I normally have the first clear ideas and I start to do visualizations with Photoshop. If an idea is strong enough and can survive for several days or weeks, I move to the final phase where I start to test and to work with the needed material to finally realize the work.

Now let's focus on your art production: we would start from A New Found Glory and Men after work, one of your earlier pieces that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to our readers to visit your website directly at http://www.nicolasvionnet.ch in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of these interesting projects?

What was your initial inspiration?

The first project you mentioned, A New Found Glory, was realized together with my friend Wouter Sibum from Rotterdam.

We both graduated from the Public Art and New Artistic Strategies program in Weimar and since then, often working together as a duo. For example we realized the work Colour me surprised as part of the III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art in 2012.

A New Found Glory was conceived one year later in a closed public toilet known as the M¸llloch (litter-hole) next to the Herdbr¸cke at the Donau in Ulm. For years, this non-place is closed off for the public. It gathers more and more garbage and is overgrown by weeds and wild flowers over the years. We were looking for a funny

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response to the still unresolved problem and decided to install a fountain in the middle of the forbidden zone. A fountain that was only just visible for the passersby, but once looked into the hole reveals to be filling the space completely. Thus, not only surprising the passersby - at the same time also a touch of festivity and glory returned to the old city wall in Ulm. The second work, Men after work, was a minimal intervention that I have realized in the project room of WIDMER + THEODORIDIS contemporary in Zurich. The room consisted of a long, dark passage, which finally ended in a courtyard in the heart of the old town of Zurich. On the one hand, I was referring on the exhibition title Men at work. On the other hand, the small but noticeable road construction warning light has flashed in unfamiliar red light through this dark alley and had a magnetic effect on passersby. I have to underline that we only know road construction warning lights with yellow appearance in Switzerland. Therefore the red light was irritating and many of the passers-by saw it more like an indication of a red light bar.

Furthermore I found the idea of a road construction warning light very charming and narrative: it is clocking-off time; the light is set to red. Come on in!

One of the features that has mostly impacted on me of Jacuzzi, is the way you are effectively capable of recontextualizing the idea of the environment we live in, which is far from being just the background of our existence: you Art in a certain sense forces the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive environment... so I would like 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?

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It is indeed the case that my work tries to sensitize the people for their immediate environment. My works are often restrained, unobtrusive and directly embedded in the landscape – my work would not be readable without a specific surrounding. So it is always about this dialogue, the positioning, interaction and what can come out of these situations. This forces the viewer to perceive the environment from a new perspective.

Unimportant and inconspicuous becomes suddenly important and intrusive.

Now to your question: Our experiences shape us throughout life. I see this like a simple classical conditioning. Our experiences are a key factor of how we perceive our world and how we behave in certain situations. You thus always have an impact, even if we are not always aware. In this sense, I don’t think that a creative process can be really disconnected from experience.

Multidisciplinary is a recurrent feature of your artistic production and I have appreciated the effective synergy that you create between different materials, as in the stimulating Extent of reflection: while crossing the borders of different techniques have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I must admit in all honesty: Yes, I actually work with synergies, but it was never intended to do so. I very often rely on my gut instinct and just try to bring the work to a coherent state.

One advantage of your mentioned interdisciplinary approach is that a work, through the interaction of different techniques, automatically focuses on several aspects and thus can be read on

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several levels. However, I am not consciously looking for these multiple layers.

In 2011, I have realized the installation Out of sight, out of mind in a former Stasi prison in Chemnitz, Germany. The work consisted of a huge mountain of shredded paper, with which I have filled a former interstitial space knee-high. As additional audio-element there were hectic noises of steps and shredding machines. The whole work addressed the last days of the Stasi shortly before the fall oft he wall in 1989.

The Stasi tried to destroy as many secret documents as possible. Even today, there are thousands of bags with shredded paper remnants that are now reassembled laboriously by hand. A hilarious story. In this sense you can see my work as a staging of the last hectic hours of the Stasi in 1989.

Another interesting work of yours that have particularly impressed me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Warum Denken traurig macht, and which is a clear example of what you have once defined as "nonhierarchical dialogue with the environment". By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, I can recognize such a socio political aim in your Art: a constant stimulation that we absolutely need to get a point of balance that might give us the chance of re-interpreting the world we live in... and our lives, indeed...

My work often focuses on the topics of integration and irritation. In other words, I'm trying to integrate something new into the existing environment and thus to irritate at the same time. However, the confusion should be subtle. The phrase "nonhierarchical dialogue with the environment" describes my conviction that the artwork itself may never be dominant.

Indeed, there should be no hierarchy.

Ideally, there is a balance between work and environment. This balance allows the

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viewer to perceive both components simultaneously.

The installation Warum Denken traurig macht in my view is an oddity among my works. This project was shown in the socalled art box, a typical white cube in the shape of a container that is shown in different locations in the city of Uster. Due to the physical presence oft the box, there was already an existing hierarchy, which I could not prevent. However, I wanted to follow a particular path. Many artists before me have used the box a simple white cube to showcase their existing works. In no case I wanted to do the same. I have decided to give the box a new residential function and to turn it into a retirement home. The whole room was papered, the walls were decorated with old family photos and at the door there was a cloak hanging. In between, the phone rang and you could hear the radio.

The people have actually thought that the box is inhabited.

By the way: the work's title referred to the same-named book from Georges Steiner, an American literary critic, essayist and philosopher During these years your works have been exhibited in several important occasions, both in Switzerland, where you are currently based, and abroad: and I think it's important to remark that you took part to the III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art... It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or just the expectation of positive feedback- could even influence the process of an artist...

By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

Absolutely. An artist needs an audience; I

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think that's probably one of the most important things. I want that my work can be seen! Art is destined to be shared! It is not that much important to me that I can sell my work, however, I am more interested to exhibit my work in a professional context and on a regular basis.

Sales may of course also have a negative influence on the artist's way of working.

Many artists argue that they are completely independent - I see that as utterly false.

Let's be honest: If you feel a large interest and for example you can sell a complete series of works at once, there is a high probability that you go back to your studio and start working on similar pieces again. I think this is quite normal.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Nicolas. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

I would like to thank you for your interest.

My work is currently shown at several locations. At the Kulturort Galerie Weiertal (Winterthur, ending on September 7,2014) I present two installation works in a magnificent park (one of the works is the above mentioned Jacuzzi). Furthermore I participate in a group show entitled Small Works at Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, New York, July 18 – August 22, 2014). There will be a group show entitled Trovato, non veduto at Ausstellungsraum Klingental (Basel, November 1 – 16, 2014). Moreover I am very excited to do another project together with Wouter Sibum (Rotterdam). We will present a major intervention in the sea as part oft he 4th Biennial Aarhus exhibit called Sculpture by the sea. This show will start in June 2016. You are cordially invited to visit my website www.nicolasvionnet.ch, where you can find more information and all exhibition dates.