LandEscape Art Review // Special Issue // Spring 2016 by LandEscape

LandEscape Anniversary AnniversaryEdition Edition

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Anniversary Edition

The Players, performance, 2016 by Edan Gorlicki photo by Karel Zwaneveld

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

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

Ivonne Dippmann

Geneviéve F. Petroff

Edan Gorlicki

Denmakr/Germany

United Kingdom

Germany

Switzerland

The Netherlands

Eating is an act of self-affirmation. This mythical gesture, motivated simply by desire, hunger or gourmandise, stands as the symbol of a deliberate act, the act of choosing one's destiny and rejecting the ignorance imposed by a higher power.

I am a multidisciplinary artist working in performance and visual arts, creating individual artifacts through actions of performance. My work stems from my need to communicate effectively, which has always been a struggle for me. Drawing is a seminal element in my methodology as it allows me to work with very basic materials that construct a clear and succinct communication. As these constantly change, I have a very diverse body of work. That stated, the core elements of my work are constant.

My works generally starts from relatively small-scale drawings. A starting point, because these small formats will later encounter a different situation, an exhibition space, a stage or a book. They will transform themselves in order to adapt to a new room.

Performance art allows me to express myself in a trans-disciplinary way bridging art, digital art, fashion design, music and technology.

The philosophy and beliefs surrounding Edan’s artistic approach are based on searching the self within its surroundings. Inspired yet confronted by the world around him, Edan finds artistic comfort within the search for belonging and connecting. What better way to explore life then through movement and researching the body within the space around it? Edan’s work always explores psychological and emotional realms. He believes that through personal experience he can use his work as a mirror for both his audience and himself.

Johannes Deimling

Israel

Food is also a major theme in Marcus’s works. By working with food, Marcus also flirts with art history; transforming arbitrary objects and materials into something immortal and everlasting.

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Gerd Brockmann

Shahar Marcus

Shahar Marcus' body served as an instrument, a platform on which various‘experime nts’ took place: lying on the operating table, set on fire, dressed in a ‘breadsuit’ and more.

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The creation myth no longer holds us in thrall, but another form of authority has sprung up in the global garden and it dictates many of our behaviours.

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Nothing remains as it was and if Dippmann uses templates – which were originally used as illustrations for a book – and converts them into large-scale murals combined with colorful yarns

As singer and visual artist, I am particularly interested in the interplay between sound and light, voice and surrounding, music and costume. The spectators is invited to take actively part in some of my performances, I discuss and debate live with them.

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

Johannes Deimling

lives and works in Berlin, Germanu

Edan Gorlicki

lives and works in The Haugue, the Nethelands

Ram Somocha

lives and works in Brighton, United Kingdom

Shahar Marcus

lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Svetlin Velchev

lives and works in Amsterdam, the Nethelands

Lisa Birke Lisa Birke

Ye'ela Wilschanski

Svetlin Velchev

Canada

Israel

The Netherlands

Lisa Birke examines notions of ‘self’ through the lens of gender, bringing the cultural tropes of woman into focus and into question. Filmed unaccompanied in the Canadian landscape, absurd yet insightful performative acts become entangled in nuanced and complex narratives in single and multi-channel video works that make reference to art history, mythology and popular culture. Revealing what lies beneath the surface of femininity, her work toys with a conclusion that is problematic, comitragic, and most essentially, human.

I started my way as an artist sewing clothes for my dolls. I needed to sketch my sewing designs, and those sketches progressed to paintings. Yearning for tools to paint, I went to art school. There, I was exposed to sculpture. I found that three dimensional is much more interesting than two. The more I learned sculpting techniques, the more I became interested in the movement my body makes when I engage with a material. The process of creating an art work excited me, but once there was a final product, I lost interest in it.

lives and works in Montreal, Canada

Geneviève F. Petroff

lives and works in Paris, France

Ivonne Dippmann

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lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Ye'ela Wilschanski

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lives and works in Tel Aviv, Isreal 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, Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar and Robyn Ellenbogen.

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BBB Johannes Born 1969 in Andernach, Germany. Lives in Norway

Deimling

An artist's statement

ating is an act of self-affirmation. What better example than Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who in choosing to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, declared their independence of God? This mythical gesture, perhaps motivate simply by desire, hunger or gourmandise, stands as the symbol of a deliberate act, the act of choosing one's destiny andrejecting the ignorance imposed by a higher power. The creation myth no longer holds us in thrall, of course, but another form of authority has sprung up in the global garden and it dictates many of our behaviours. In a way, the agri-food industry has become a new godfrom which citizens must proclaim their autonomy. Eating is thus a deliberate act. It is no longer a mere reflex linked to bodily survival, but an action prompted by more or less conscious emotional, economic and political choices. While tastes may not be open to discussion, they entail consumer decisions that have repercussions on our environment. The provenance of foodstuffs and their methods of production (intensive or organic) and management (exploitation or fair trade) are political and nutritional options by which people manifest their social commitment and express their individuality. On the art scene, food is a subject/object that has fascinated and

â&#x20AC;&#x153;nourishedâ&#x20AC;? numerous performers. In many cases, their work goes far beyond the simple aesthetic event to address the eating behaviours of our society. Obviously, not all artists who use edibles as materialare political or environmental activists, but most have eating related experience or habits or attitudes that influence their every action. Food aversions, allergies, diets, special treats and childhood memories thus become food for thought in developing their art practices. Often prompted by a desire to blur the line between art and life, their performances resemble routine daily activities, such as cooking, eating, handling or sharing food. Some reveal a wish to retake possession of a body too often abandoned to the dictates of fashion and aesthetics; others, a determination to point up and alter social behaviours acquired over decades of industrialization. Bread is one of the foods most widely used in performance art. A dietary staple in most cultures, a bodily symbol in Christianity, bread in performance inevitably leads toreflexion on the artist's corporeality.

BBB Johannes Deimling http://www.bbbjohannesdeimling.de/

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LandEscape meets

Johannes Deimling An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Hello Johannes, and welcome to LandEscape. 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? My main medium since years is Performance Art and Action Art. Even though I also draw, write poems, make video works this art form is to me the most adequate form to articulate my visions and visual concepts as it per se a process oriented form of art. The process implies that there is no goal to reach, but more a way to go, so even there is a presentation of my performance the process is still going on, guiding my thoughts and decisions even within the performance itself. This is because in Performance Art the ‘production’ is trying to sculpt the unknown. I never rehearse my performances before the public presentation, so even I conceptualize and think a lot of how the work should look like I have no concrete knowledge about how it will actually be. The absence of rehearsal is a distinct separation to other performing arts (theatre, dance, music) and focusses on the uniqueness of the creative act with all risks of failure. This requires that I need to take the process always with me in order to keep my awareness within the public presentation as

high as possible. To begin the creative process I form single images. The so called ‘acted images’ (agierte Bilder) consist of reduced, simple actions often with only one object, one material or one gesture. A visual alphabet of acted images accrues, allowing me to literally and visually write my art that is performance. Using the technique of collage I combine several acted images that allows me to play in a cinematic way with all of the visual elements by deconstructing the course of actions and putting the parts anew together. During this process various intersections appear in which unpredictable new images emerge. The term for this working method would be: ‘performative collages’. The quality of this working method is that there is no end result, each performance is unique which cannot be repeated and creates new questions which opens a new research. An open and free field of choices, responsibilities and possibilities. The process itself becomes the technique.. “It’s not the action that makes the performance” is the title of a recent published catalogue of my work (an online version is available here: http://j.mp/PPLxX9). The title of this publication is a statement which includes the thought that even the artist and his body is a main focus in performance art, it is not the only quality. The combination of the present body with various artistic components (size, shape, colour, light, space, sound, ...) - and very important - time creates this holistic universe of a performative art work which - if it comes altogether - creates this ‘magic’ moments in which art is in direct conversation with the present audience.

Performance, photo: Monika Sobczak

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BBB Johannes Deimling

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

In all my works and as well in my philosophy I am looking for simplicity. “simplicity of complexity” is a term which describes my research on things, situations and moments. I am looking for an artistic language which can be understood by a lot people and not only by some. Looking on my work one can see that I use all day materials and objects. Transforming those simple elements in my performative works tries to shape an insight of complex subjects or feelings. The centre of my interest is the image as I see myself as a visual artist rather than a “performer” or “performance artist”. The visual image transports and transforms my artistic vision. It is a great pleasure for me to have Monika Sobczak (www.mmonikasobczak.com) as my personal photographer who is following me since more than 4 years. Performance Art and Photography are sharing an interesting intersection. Both art forms are interested in moments. In this collaboration the moment is one integral meeting point of both art forms and creates something that is pointing beyond the two forms. My working method creates a tension which is needed for the intensity of the presence and focuses on the artistic action. As I never rehearse my performances the failure is always present. For Monika Sobczak this is a challenge and set’s her profession in a similar state. While not knowing what will happen next she is in a similar attentive moment like I am and tries to catch the moment that I am creating. Monika Sobczak needs to read and follow the action and to capture the spatial composition, the relation with the audience and the artistic, aesthetic action and much more the atmosphere in one moment. This cooperation produces ‘after images’ which are more than only documentation of that what was happening. It is a dialogue between two persons and two art forms. Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from a rolling stone gathers no moss, an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, and I

Performance, photo: Monika Sobczak

BBB Johannes Deimling

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A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss, Calgary, Canada, Photo by Monika Sobczak

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A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss, Calgary, Canada, Photo by Monika Sobczak

BBB Johannes Deimling

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would suggest to visit your vimeo page at https://vimeo.com/bbbjohannesdeimling in order to get a wider idea of it.Would you tell us something about the genesis of this works? Since more than 20 years I am working with the concept of cycles or series in my performative art practise. ‘What’s in my head’, ‘Blanc’, ‘leaking memories’, ‘Around the World’ and ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’ are just a few titles of cycles in which I include several performative collages. The given titles are often metaphors for topics or themes which I cannot specify or extract in one art work. They are more like fields or landscapes on which I need to look from different perspectives in order to grasp their holistic meaning and potential. In several performances I try to shape this territory. This work is highly process based. Even though each piece of a cycle is standing for itself, each piece is transporting the experience of the performance before. “a rolling stone gathers no moss” is a new cycle of visual performances which I have started in 2013 and have presented over 11 performances since then. In this cycle of performances I focus metaphorically on motion and use very much the language of poetry to create these visual pieces. Following the fact that our whole life is based on motion as a consequence of a variety forms of repetition (e.g. breathing), I try to create performative statements talking about the coexistence of motion and its end. The English proverb “a rolling stone gathers no moss” can have both a positive or a negative acceptation, on one hand being in a constant state of movement means to keep on evolving, changing without letting time impose its traces, on the other to be a perpetual wanderer implies do not have the capacity to settle down some necessary roots. Simple wooden chairs, a metaphor for the English proverb, are appearing in all of the performances within the cycle in various forms (piled up on a heap, standing in line or circle, …) and formally creating a repetitive form through the whole cycle. Other elements and materials are changing according to the stage of the research and process of the cycle. There is a connection

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

between the single performances which underlines the quality of a series. It is mainly done by used materials or symbols which will be reused in one of the next performances. For example the swing I used in #2 appeared again in #3, #5 and #8. The white dress I used in #8 appeared in a different context in #9 and the melody I used in #9 was sung by a choir in #10. Different to other cycles in ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’ I am challenging myself with different tasks which should bring me out of my comfort zone as a performer and condense the created atmosphere. In some of the performances I build in one element which is embarrassing for me and in some performances I take other people to perform with me. In the performance #8 - which I have presented at Savvy Contemporary in Berlin as part of the ‘Present Tense series’ curated by Chiara Cartuccia - I performed together with Lotte Kaiser, a 15 years old teenager. I know Lotte since a few years as she took part in a few workshops I gave for young people and knew that she was able to do the performance with me. Her appearance was very important for the concept of the performance as I was using a memory and a picture of my great grandmother as the source of this piece. Lotte at one point taking the position of the shown photograph of my great grandmother became a link between future and past. Or during the performance #10 – which I presented at the CREATurE festival in Kaunas, Lithuania – a choir with more than 20 young people appeared suddenly and were singing the anthem of Europe (Ode to joy). In all of my artistic works I try to talk about something which I cannot explain in words. If I could I would write or talk about it. I try to articulate through my visual language feelings, emotions, moments connected with my research on a broader topic and offer them in the shared moment of the public presentation to my audience. It is not important that the audience understands

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss, Calgary, Canada, Photo by Mo

what I am doing, as I am not producing a direct narrative, but more important is to me to offer a dialogue about the unknown and that what they see and how they respond to it. Besides producing your Art, you also gained a wide experience as a teacher: since 2012 you hold the position of associate Professor for Performance Art at NTA – Norwegian Theatre Academy at the Østfold University College: as you have stated one, although not everybody

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nika Sobczak

needs to get a performance artistâ&#x20AC;?, to understand performative processes is a vital knowledge which can inspire one self, life and society and of course all other art forms... I sometimes happen to wonder if Art could play as a substitute of Traditional Learning: so I couldn't do without mentioning PAS | Performance Art Studies that our readers can get to know at http://pas.bbbjohannesdeimling.de Art and education are in my opinion twins

and when they are together they have an immense force. All started in 1996 when a friend of mine who worked as an art teacher in a high school asked me to give a workshop in Performance Art for her pupils as part of a project week at her school. Until this time my studies in pedagogy and communication were separated from my work as an independent artist which often caused quite a confusion inside of me. With this first teaching opportunity an incredible interesting process started which

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BBB Johannes Deimling

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

completely changed my direction in so many different ways. Teaching and Performance Art practice have a lot in common. The situation a teacher – in any subject – creates is very much the same alike the situation an artist creates who is creating a performative piece of art. Both are trying to point on something which is unknown until the moment the actual teaching/learning or creative act happens. Both are sharing a space within a certain time frame with people. Both are trying to transfer an experience. Starting from these simple similarities I started to research within the intersections of art practice and education now since more than 17 years. Teaching Performance Art became more and more important as young generations of artists were interested in this art form, but didn’t had a direct access or connection to this art form. Still in Europe for example there are just a few academies offering a BA or MA in Performance Art, but the interest in this art form in the past years has increased enormously. Performance is for young artists therefore important as it has massively influenced the production of art and perception of art within the past 30 years. Even though Performance Art is experiencing a boom right now, but still it plays a marginal role in the market – which perhaps is not the worst thing to happen. The strategies and philosophies of performative art practice are useable for all kind of art practices. It can be seen as chameleon which has the potential to adjust in each artistic and as well non-artistic process. In 2008 I founded the independent, educational project PAS | Performance Art Studies of which since then I am the artistic director. The aim of this project is to provide interested people a comprehensive form of teaching on Performance Art, everywhere in the world and always in cooperation with Performance Art festivals, art academies, museums and galleries.

BBB Johannes Deimling

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A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss, Calgary, Canada, Photo by Monika Sobczak

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I have to admit there is too little space for to say more about this project as it has grown enormously since its foundation. But the readers are invited to look at the website of PAS | Performance Art Studies (http://pas.bbbjohannesdeimling.de) and get in contact with PAS if they have any further questions or are interested in taking part in one of the studies. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us, Johannes. 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 am happy that my schedule is quite filled this year and that I have the chance to continue working on my cycle â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a rolling stone gathers no mossâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; which I will show in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia and Canada this year. I will continue working on this cycle until I decide to find an end, which I cannot foresee now. With PAS | Performance Art Studies we are going in October this year to Calgary, Canada as we are invited by the M:ST festival to realize a PASyouth studies with teenagers which will present their performances developed within the studies as part of the festival. This is a really rare opportunity made possible by the festival organizer Tomas Jonsson to let teenagers perform at the festival where established artists are presenting their works. This is for me not only a nice gesture, but more a statement to offer the audience an insight about the process of performative works which will be in the dialogue possible to witness. I am sure there will come some more projects up in this year, so the readers are welcome to visit my regular updated website in order to stay informed about my activities and hopefully I can welcome the one or the other to one of my performances or studies. Thank you very much for this interview.

BBB Johannes Deimling

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A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss, Calgary, Canada, Photo by Monika Sobczak

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Ram Samocha Lives and works in Brighton, United Kingdom

An artist's statement

am a multi-disciplinary artist working in performance and visual arts, creating individual artifacts through actions of performance. My work stems from my need to communicate effectively, which has always been a struggle for me. Drawing is a seminal element in my methodology as it allows me to work with very basic materials that construct a clear and succinct communication. My work is very dynamic and always responds to the place and situation that I am in. As these constantly change, I have a very diverse body of work. That stated, the core elements of my work are constant. My journey to Drawing Performance stated in 2004 when I did my first live drawing action. The one thing I remember very

clearly from this first live action is the massive wave of energy that channeled through me following the live interaction with the audience. This overwhelming experience laid the path for my future activity in Drawing Performance. When I came to London in 2012 I knew that I was not alone and that artistically there were many wonderful artists doing fascinating work, exploring the same practice of Drawing Performance in the UK and all over the world. This realization was partly responsible for me setting up the Draw to Perform project in 2013, as well as the desire to create an international community that speaks the same artistic language as I do.

Ram Somocha

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Performance by Ram Samocha (in collaboration with John Wenskovitch and Heather Brand) 22

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LandEscape meets

Ram Samocha Draw to Perform

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

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

My main practice divides into two complimentary sections, drawing and performance. Trying to think about my evolution as an artist,

Ram Samocha

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Ram Samocha

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I think that Bezalel Academy gave me the first introduction into multi disciplinary practice. Before I started my studies I was very passionate and much focused on painting. The school introduced me to many other means of expression, which widened my artistic language and paved my way into multidisciplinary creation. Going back to school after fifteen years of practicing art was a great experience; I came to this practice much more mature and extremely focused knowing exactly what I am hoping to gain from it. When I picked the MFA program in Waterloo University I knew that I looking for a relatively small, but very professional place; a place that would focus on my personal artistic expression and would allow me to develop it further. In Canada I had the chance to work more on my live performances, to work on a larger scale, to start using colours more freely and to deeply explore abstraction. Your approach coherently encapsulates several techniques and - ranging from Painting to installation, from Drawing to Performance - it reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a consistent sense of harmony. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.samocha.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines as well as different disciplines is the only way to express and convey the ideas you explore.

I always find myself balancing between different disciplines; it is in my nature. This amalgamation in some strange way balances me. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have black or white, floor or wall,

Ram Samocha

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IMMOR(t)AL (in collaboration with John Wenskovitch and Heather Brand)

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Ram Samocha

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painting or sculpture, I am moving freely between two to three dimensions as I am essentially blind to the boundaries that define them. Combining different disciplines both extends and enriches my point of view. This also happens with materials. Often, the materials I choose to work with are not traditionally related to drawing or painting but to other different skills, hence they always have new and interesting qualities. The complexity of my work comes from combining all of these elements into one piece. What has at once caught our attention of your approach is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of establishing a channel of communication between the subconscious sphere and the conscious one, to unveil and challenge the manifold nature of human perceptual categories and to draw the viewers into a multilayered experience. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I do believe that all you experience in life, your personal and general struggles are reflected in an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, through the creation and in the final result. There are certain shapes and colures that I keep using and repeat again and again without knowing or thinking why. Many times it relates to the body or the arm movements, but sometimes it connects to an instinctive need to deal with something or to realize something that has bothered me in the past, a situation, a thought, or a trauma. Each action or drawing that I start work on, starts with a thought or vision that I build in my head beforehand. Sometimes unexpected things happen on the way to achieve this idea, but the vision is

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Ram Samocha

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always there in my head as a first layer of expression. This artistic way of investigation is very different, in my opinion, to what was more common in, let’s say, the 70’s where investigation was the target and the process. I feel that in my work today the target is set and the process of investigation is a journey geared towards it. Your work is a successful attempt to highlight the relevance of drawing as a modern medium: the impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the idea of Art itself: in a certain sense, we are forced to rethink about the intimate aspect of constructed realities and especially about the materiality of an artwork itself, since just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea.

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

Ram Samocha

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Autonomous Player Simulation (in collaboration with Ian F. Thomas and Alex Derwick)

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information: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

This drawing began as a vision. I saw it very clearly in my head but it took me a long time to find the material that I should use to create it. The moment I saw in the art supply store these boxes of childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s black crayons, I knew that this was the material I wanted to use to construct this large drawing. I drew in stages for more than six months and at one point it shifted from simply drawing marks and started to become more of a sculptural shape, as the materiality of the wax crayons started to build up. While captured in the process of intense repetitive drawing, I gradually figured out the emotional context and personal experience, which lead me to this specific image. While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your works seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your works... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a certain sense representative of the conflictual relationship between content and form: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you combine a texture with your performative gestures? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

In my work I deal with very particular topics, I raise questions, I protest and highlight problems. I deal with personal, political and social matters but I try as much as I can to touch the core of these matters and not to be

Untitled (Addition 3198713) is a further development of a concept test from 2012 entitled Farnsworth Additions.

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too illustrative. It is important to me that each one of my viewers would be able, at first to connect intuitively with the images, the colors and the movement and interpret it in their own way. The way I guide and direct the viewers to my original context is through the titles, which I choose very carefully. As for my palette, colour and light are significant elements in my work, maybe because I am a colour blind. Being colour blind has made me extremely sensitive to colour. Funny enough, I am so sensitive to colour that despite being colour bind I was for many years a lecturer on form and colour. Coming from the Israeli tradition of bleak drawing that is strongly tied to a narrative, I felt that the move to Canada gave me freedom to investigate more deeply working with colours and abstraction. It also opened to me the opportunity to work on largescale pieces and to develop my practice as a live drawing performer. It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the ones you have established for the Draw to Perform community are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

When I started Draw to Perform, in the first symposium I was overwhelmed by the responses I received from artists and their willingness to come from all over the world to commit to this project. I think that what was fueling this commitment is the power in collaboration and in creation of a

community. I believe that artists who work with drawing performance are by nature drawn to collaboration and communication, as the very first urge to perform is the wish to intact with the audience. Obviously it is easier to collaborate with the audience than with fellow artists. You are more secure, you are not in any sort of compactions and you are promised to be the center of attention. This is much more challenging to collaborate with artists where two egos are standing in line but it is ever so fulfilling. I have started to collaborate with other artists fairly late but I absolutely love it. I recently collaborated with artist Nava Waxman who specializes in encaustic (hot wax) paintings. When we started our conversation, Nava described the process of encaustic paintings. I immediately saw the huge performance potential with this technique. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Ram. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

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

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

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E dan Gorlicki Living and working between Groningen, the Netherlands and Heidelberg, Germany

An artist's statement

he philosophy and beliefs surrounding Edanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artistic approach are based on searching the self within its surroundings. Inspired yet confronted by the world around him, Edan finds artistic comfort within the search for belonging and connecting. What better way to explore life then through movement and researching the body within the space around it? Edanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work always explores psychological and emotional realms. He believes that through personal experience he can use his work as a mirror for both his audience and himself. In the past Edan has made stage works on numerous subjects such as hierarchy, sexuality, fantasy, stress, addictions, belonging and perceptions amongst others.

Every work of Edan has been a personal and touching transparency of what we all as humans go through on a daily basis. Through his work he has dared to approach these difficult issues and expose them respectfully yet courageously to his audience.

Edan Gorlicki Born in Haifa, Israel, Edan Gorlicki is a choreographer, teacher and movement research artist based between Heidelberg, Germany and Groningen, the Netherlands. As a dancer he has worked in Israel with the Batsheva Ensemble Dance Company and Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Theater. In the Netherlands he has danced for NND/Galilidance and Club Guy and Roni. Edan has performed the works of may choreographers such as: Ohad Naharin, Inbal Pinto, Sharon Eyal, Itzik Galili, Paul Selwyn Norton, Emmanuel Gat, Guy Weizman & Roni Haver and many more.

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LandEscape meets

Edan Gorlicki An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Edan Gorlicki accomplishes a refined investigation about the liminal area in which the Self establishes an ephemeral relationship with the outside reality: his incessant search of an organic symbiosys between several viewpoints offers to the viewer a multilayered experience, creating an area of deep interplay that allows us to enter psychological and emotional realms urging to force things to relate andexploring suspended worlds filling them with our personal experiences. One of the most convincing aspect og Gorlecki's work is the way he lead us to evolve from a passive audience to conscious participant, inviting us to rethink about the way we relate both to the outside world and to ourselves. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production. Hello Edan, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid training and after your dance studies in California, you moved to Israel where you degreed in Performing Arts both at the Wizo School and at the Reut School, in Haifa. How did these experiences influence you as an artist and and how do they impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Hi! Thank you for having me! Yes I started dancing at a very young age and have been fortunate to have studied at very good schools

in Israel. My teachers there were a great contribution to my development as a choreographer and I am very grateful for their mentorship. At school I was the only boy in the dance department. Of course this was difficult on many levels but it was also a great benefit as I was able to receive allot of attention from my teachers. They invested allot more energy in me then they did to the rest of my class. I am not sure that my school or my teachers have a direct influence on the way I conceive and produce my works today but I imagine that being an Israeli has something to do with that. I think we all are very influenced by our cultural upbringing. Especially growing up in such a complex survival driven country like Israel. I think that that survival instinct is imbedded in my attitude towards my work and lifestyle in general. 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?

Well first of all I must point out that every creation process has a different identity, process and outcome. In most cases I have an indication of what the next work will be like but then discover as I go that actually the work is something else completely. I guess I could say that the creation process is for me more of a listening process and following where the work is taking me rather then directing the work. It is more of a relationship between my goals for the work and the work

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itself. The choreographer in me then becomes a mediator. I normally start with a clear direction that interests me, weather its a feeling, a visual image, a scenario or atmosphere, a personal experience or even just an interest to work with a certain dancer or collaborator. It is never the same. Inspiration comes from everywhere. In the freelance dance scene, unfortunately the development of a work mostly doesn’t start in the studio or experimenting with materials, those things come later. I never work alone. In dance we are always collaborating with many people. Because of this, the amount of organization, productional preparations and grant confirmations always needs to be done first. In the beginning I really had allot of problems with this because I was impatient and just wanted to get into the studio. Now I have more appreciation for this process because it shapes the way the work will be made and forces the first conceptual steps and ideas to form. I think I enjoy more the creations that are driven from a personal psychological place where the process for me might be more therapeutical. I think I just care more about those pieces. Funny enough though, with a critical eye, I think those pieces don’t end up my best work. Maybe they are too emotionally charged, Im not sure, but I can tell that those works are not the most communicative to the public in the end. Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Body Language, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://edangorlicki.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

‘Body Language’ is actually one of the works that grew more organically through time.

Production: The Herd

During the creation process of another piece of mine ‘A little too close’ I developed together with my dancers an improvisational movement vocabulary that was quite unique to me. After we finished that creation process I became quite fascinated with the idea of diving deeper into this unique physicality to explore what exists further in this quality. I went into the studio with one of my dancers who deeply

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inspires me: ’Mayke van Kruchten’. While watching her move this way it seemed to me as though her body was deciding for her what she was doing. This triggered an interest for us to see if it is possible to have our body choreograph what we do. We developed a step by step process that attempted to eliminate (as much as possible) mental creativity, judgment and decision making

while improvising. This resulted in a fascinating journey where Mayke was discovering where her body is taking her, something that was equally exciting to watch. This is where the idea came to present this form of movement and live experimentation to the public as a performance installation rather then a theatrical work. I called it ‘Body Language’ and we started to perform it in

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Production: The Herd

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diverse locations. During the performances we started to notice that Mayke’s body was behaving and producing interestingly different qualities and physicality’s based on the space and environment that she was in. Now for me ‘Body Language’ is an installation that exposes the authenticity of a certain environment created by the space, energy and people in it through the physicality of the dancers body. The hallmark of your practice is a search of the Self within its surroundings: when explorating the relationship our relationship with the ousde world, you seem to deconstruct and assembly memories in order to suggest a process of investigation about the liminal area in which the Self and the Outside share an ephemeral coexistence: maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Yes I think that is very interesting way of putting it and touches the essence of the identity of an artist as well. I do think that the role of the artist is to mirror society in some way and create a form that could offer the platform for discourse and interpretation, especially relating to our inner nature as people and our nature as a society. I think that I frame my work around exploring the self within its surroundings because it is a natural thing for me to do. I feel it is the basic need we have as social animals for belonging and connection, whether its to one another, one with nature, one with his/her beliefs and spirituality and so on… I have appreciated the way Body Language takes an intense participatory line on the conception of art. In particular, your investigation about psychological and emotional realms has reminded me of the idea behind Thomas Demand, who stated once that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements

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within the medium instead". While conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I 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?

I don’t know much about this to state a clear hypothesis. The only think I can do is speak from my own personal experience. In that case for me many of the subjects in my works are driven from an emotional place of personal experience. However, it is my inspiration more then it is my practice. I don’t think its either this way or that way. I think its possible to create something that has no personal experiential influence and it can be great. I think that its possible to do both. In fact I would encourage to give that a try and explore the difference. I definitely think that personal experience is intrinsically implemented into what ever we do - its what we know. But shouldn’t a creation process be more about what we don’t know? You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several viewpoint out of temporal synchronization, that offer to the viewer a subtle but effective sense of narrative: moreover, the reference to the universal gestures that recurs in your works seems to remove any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between sign and matter that marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any track of contingency... What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

Like I said, every work is different and therefore needs diverse strategies and

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Production: The Herd

Production: Spinsels Photographer: Koen Jantzen

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methods to be able to communicate what you want to say. Clarity is very important to me. It offers the viewer freedom to experience and feel more then to have to think, analyze or solve some sort of puzzle or mystery of ‘what is the artist trying to tell me’. In some cases the tool of narrativity can be very useful for clarity. I try my best to layer my works in a way that offers the viewer both the clarity of what this work is discussing but also the abstraction to interpret your own take on it. In my work ‘A little too close’ I consciously chose to work with a very well known pop-song. I am aware that this creates a very specific association to most of my audiences, immediately narrating a direct story. However, I then repeat this song in the piece using 7-8 different cover versions that then distorts this association, suggesting that there are many ways of seeing something that was a moment ago perfectly clear and simple. Simultaneously very aesthetically presenting abstract movement that offers plenty of room for interpretation. Another intersting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Hunger, in which you accomplish a deep investigation about the psychological and social affects of addictions: when I first happened to get to know with this experimental piece I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

I guess its a little bit of both. In general I am quite systematic in my head with what I want but the moment intuition comes to play I immediately let go of my systematic thinking and let the intuition take over. I appreciate what you say about HUNGER, I really wanted

in this piece to show the complexities of the addictive patterns and cycles. The triangular psychological relationship between the addict, co-addict and the addiction itself was at the heart of this work. This systematic cycle is very clear when you lay out the roles of each participant, however, the cycle itself becomes an entity of its own when you begin to look at the bigger picture and consider all three participants as one existing issue. As Marina Abramovich once stated, "to be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre", to reject the idea of a fictional representation of the reality you are questioning in your works. But when it comes to investigate about the semiotic of power and control as you did in A little too close it is almost impossible to split form from substance: the thin line that separates positive leadership with intimidating hierarchal control and dictatorship is almost embedded in a male-constructed culture, that conveys apparently innocuous symbols to in order to convince people to take it as true ... what's your point about this? In particular, the capability of discerning the essential feature of a concept to translate it into an accessible visual is a key point of your practice: how much do you explicitly think of such communicative aspect for your work?

Quite allot. I make work for public of all kinds of people. Although (unfortunately) most of my audiences are cultural intellectual types of people and I very much care for their experiences while watching my works. I am still very interested in capturing the hearts of the (lets call them) un(dance)educated public who for whatever reason find themselves in the theater watching this. A little too close talks about such a simple subject that anyone can relate to which is the power of and in a relationship. It was important for me to make this work very easy to watch. That is actually another layer in the piece as well. Relationships are tricky yet from the outside they always seem simple. Other couples always look like they have it all figured out -

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Production: The Herd

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but do they really? The visual aesthetics in this work offer that kind of starting point. It seems so beautiful, until you get used to the attractive image and then you see whats really happening inside. Everybody understands this, and I love that. By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naĂŻf, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical issues: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

Absolutely! I not only believe this is true, we even have the evidence to prove it. In 2007 I had the privilege to co-found Random Collision together with my friend Kirsten Krans. Random Collision is a company that develops work in a very unique way involving the general public in the creation process. Part of our programs were collaborations with other fields, especially scientific fields of research. Recently, Kirsten developed a trilogy titled Experiment A, B and B+. This project was a scientific experiment about group formations and was collaboratively developed by social psychologists and choreographers. These experiments manage to prove that the visual performance that the public is watching directly affects the behavior of the public after the performance and the way they interact with one another. This is a fascinating project and I recommend looking it up at www.randomcollision.net Over these years your works have been performed in several occasions around the world, including your recent participation including a recent participation at OpenFLR in Florence, Italy. Moreover, I think it's important to highlight that you are the creator of LAMA movement research, that allows you to get in touch with a worldwide scenario, teaching both to dancers and non-dancers. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I

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would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, 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 for a particular context?

I might be making allot of my work for my own satisfaction but I first and foremost create things that I feel I want and need to share with others. Those others are my audiences. We need to be a bit more selective on what we present to the general public. If we (artists) want to make a difference on any level in whatever way, we have to think of who is watching what we are making first and then see what it is we can show them and think how can we surprise, touch, educate, transform, develop and create more thoughts, questions and discourse amongst the public. I personally do care about what they see and experience. Not necessarily what they think about it as in like or not like. But I try to remind myself that the reaction or reception I get from the public after a performance can be a great guide for me towards understanding more the way they see things. This can improve my next pieces. For me, the public reception is my critic. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Edan. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects. How do you see your work evolving?

Well, as a freelance choreographer I am forced to exist in my past, present and future simultaneously. I am still reflecting my last project, am working on several current projects and busy with organizing and developing future projects as well. I am currently working on a new full evening production called ‘The Players’. This piece is the final part of my three-year study on power and control. Inspired by the theme of Psychopathy, The Players raises questions about social status, manipulation, peoples’ intentions, what is reality, hierarchy, deceit, and how far are we willing to go to get what

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Production: A little too close Photographer: Christian Glaus

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S hahar Marcus Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

An artist's statement

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.

Shahar Marcus http://www.shaharmarcus.com/

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The fathers have eaten sour grapes, Performance, 2014 22

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LandEscape meets

Shahar Marcus An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Throughout a process of a not artificial and human mediated augmented experience, Shahar Marcus' work triggers an incessant translation that seeks to bypass the results of our technology-‐driven society, urging the viewers to question the cultural position of the concepts he explores. While contemporary artists as Mariko Mori and Carsten Höller make an intense use of high-tech to sensitise the senses, Marcus succeedes in providing the viewers of an augmented sensorial experience by primordial, almost limbic gestures. Hello Shahar, and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the features that mark an artworks as a piece of Contemporary Art?

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. Would you like to tell us something about your background? You have studied Linguistic and moreover you hold a MA History of Art that you have received from the University of Tel Aviv: how have these experiences impacted on the way you currently produce your films? By the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point?

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. Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to

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Still Burning, Performance, 2014

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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?

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.

Now let's focus on your art production: I would start from Freeze, an extremely interesting work that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, and I would suggest them to visit your vimeo page at https://vimeo.com/13003785 in order to get a wider idea of it. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this works?

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. I think it's important to remark that you shift between media as often as possible: your art practice ranges

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from Video Art to photography, from etching to performances as the interesting Sabich that our readers can view directly at https://vimeo.com/18207623: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

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 doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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. Your works are often pervaded with a deep social criticism, as The fathers have eaten sour grapes: even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical questions: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer

Shahar Marcus

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Still burning, Performance, 2015

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Pushing the equinox, Performance, 2015

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people's behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

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. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impressed me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Still burning: it's a provoking piece that effectively establishes a deep interaction with the viewer, involving her/him both on an intellectual aspect and on -I daresay- a physical one... by the wat, this piece refers to the old tradition of the art history and the traditional paintings of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;still natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;... so I would ask you: do you think tha that there's a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness?

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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n 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. And I couldn't do without mentioning The Curator that I have to admit I have extremely enjoyed: I love the way you have so ironically described a part of the complicated world of Contemporary Art. So I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... both for creating and for enjoying the creation itself? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience? Actually, I think that I would have loved this pieces also if I didn't know anything about Contemporary scene...

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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Pushing the equinox, 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 didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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. During these years you have exhibited at various artinstitutions, both in your homeland Israel and abroad, including among several others: The Tate Modern, Copenhagen- Kunsthalle and Moscow Museum of Modern Art... moroever, you have recently received The Israeli Ministry of Culture award for Encouraging Creativity. It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

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. Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Shahar. 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?

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. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Still Burning, Performance, 2014

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Svetlin Velchev Lives and works in The Hague, USA

An artist's statement

y artwork is a fusion from light, sound and bodies in space and its all about creating a movement or moving image out of those elements, under a specific theme or concept. Rarely using text or speech in my performances. We were once singing in my performance Serenity from the program Mind in Motion, but that was one-time case. I am much more intrigued by the symbiosis between the design of the lights, the choreography and the music, merged together and used to achieve powerful visual effect and specific atmosphere, which carries symbolic, metaphoric or personal values. Sometimes I can be elaborating with props or stage-set, but that varies by the different occasions. The performances I make are rather abstract and open for interpretation.

If I choose to be using narrative it is most likely to be an absurd work as one of my shows All is everywhere was. In terms of being diverse I try to reinvent myself with each next project, using different types of media from photography/video to

installations, projections, dance on location or the traditional stage performance. You might as well refer glimpses of the underground subculture and the hip-hop street culture in my creations. To start up a creation always happens I think in a way that it is mostly depending on what the assignment is, what is the initial inspiration, how much time there is to prepare it, how long the final result should be and what all the rest of the circumstances would be regarding performers, rehearsal space and deliverance. These are factors which would influence my idea and decisions. In many cases the period of preparing the actual piece is short, which can either make the work more exciting or tough to complete. However from the moment of having an idea to the moment of really getting onto making it and how might take some time so that really evolves first in my head until it seems ready to come out.

Svetlin Velchev

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Svetlin Velchev

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LandEscape meets

Svetlin Velchev An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Hello Svetlin, and welcome to LandEscape. To start this interview would you like to tell us something about your background? After studying contemporary dance at the NUTI National School of Dance Art Sofia, you moved to the Netherlands where you are currently based and you studied at the CODARTS Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Rotterdam: how have these experiences -and especially moving from Bulgaria to the Netherlandsimpacted on the way you currently create your pieces?

I am born and raised at Sofia, Bulgaria. Being involved with theatre, art and performance from the age of ten when I started studying in my secondary school, which was profiled with animation, puppetry and drama by Small Puppet Theatre “SLON”. After a couple of productions with them I was genuinely directed towards what I was found to be good at - movement and dance. That is how when I became 13 years old I got into a professional ballet / contemporary dance school NUTI. The follow up was an engagement with the National Ballet of Sofia for three seasons by the time I’ve graduated from my education. By 18 I was sure that I will not continue with the classical ballet as it was completely not of an interest for me. I knew it is a strong foundation for my further experience in dance so I appreciated it, but did not want to be focused on. I had friends dancers, which were also eager to discover the modern dance, which was not yet introduced that much to the Bulgarian art scene, so we’ve end up as a small collective chasing a common dream, all curious in the same direction and as a fellowship we’ve created several experimental performances like ‘Something else’ and ‘Metamorph’ under the umbrella of Dance Lab ‘Elea’, which was founded

by the Bulgarian choreographer Elissaveta Iordanova together with us. A short while after that I had as well some very enlightening exchange with European companies from abroad like the Cypriot ‘Amfidromo’’, the Italian ‘Fabrica Europa’ or the Swiss ‘Cie Linga’’, which I think contributed to shaping my taste and opinion about what contemporary dance is and could be, seeing so different and super inspiring examples of it wherever I went. When our young experimental company ‘Elea’ separated I had some time to reconsider what do I want to do and should out of my dance career further on and since there are not much opportunities for such an artists in Bulgaria, the question was really if I want to continue doing it there or somewhere else, where I could get the sufficient amount of information and knowledge in order to grow. All I needed was a possibility for implementation. Meanwhile figuring that out, solution was on its way. I was working for two seasons at the National Musical Theatre of Sofia, dancing at Miss Saigon and Czardasz Queen. We went on a European tour for few months, after which I didn’t return to Sofia, but left to Amsterdam, where eventually I stayed and organized my life for good. Coming to live in The Netherlands has a deep impact just as much as a turning point in my life and really think it changed my future. I got a chance to seek for what I mostly wanted - art, freedom, independence and knowledge. Quickly became part of an art collective, named OT301, where I am till nowadays and where in the embrace of my colleagues and the building’s strong statement and ideology, I found support and understanding. Two years later, after quite intense search of the right school and unsuccessful auditions, at 2009 I was accepted and followed the Choreography Studies of the Rotterdam Dance Academy CODARTS, where I’ve graduated successfully in

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2011. Even though I have never considered myself a good student as I was quite rebellious, I have managed to finish it. I had the urge to express and was always interested in making my own pieces not realizing I took it less seriously in the beginning of it all, but very soon after I knew why I want to do it and what I wanted to share. And you can see somewhat that in my creations now - they always has to expose free spirit and will. I only needed back then clearer vision and style. Since my years at CODARTS I am getting closer to the essence of my art. Surrounded by inspiration and access to plenty of data sources everywhere really gave me a push in a proper direction and I just became more literate and could easily put my ideas into exploitation. Trying to highlight the qualities I have and enhance everything I have created. While still being a student at Rotterdam had to cover my living expenses and education, so I worked parallel as a tech for the quite known Bulgarian performance artist Ivo Dimchev. We toured on some of the best festivals across Europe where I have seen some very fascinating performances including his own ‘Som Faves’ and ‘Lily Handel’. I would need another interview to tell you all about that experience as it was tremendous. Next time. 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?

My artwork is a fusion from light, sound and bodies in space and its all about creating a movement or moving image out of those elements, under a specific theme or concept. Rarely using text or speech in my performances. We were once singing in my performance Serenity from the program Mind in Motion, but that was one-time case. I am much more intrigued by the symbiosis between the design of the lights, the choreography and the music, merged together and used to achieve powerful visual effect and specific atmosphere, which carries symbolic, metaphoric or personal values. Sometimes I can be elaborating with props or stage-set, but that varies by the different occasions. The performances I make are rather abstract and open for interpretation. If I choose to be using narrative it is most likely to be an absurd work as one of my shows All is everywhere

Svetlin Velchev

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Svetlin Velchev

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was. In terms of being diverse I try to reinvent myself with each next project, using different types of media from photography/video to installations, projections, dance on location or the traditional stage performance. You might as well refer glimpses of the underground subculture and the hip-hop street culture in my creations. To start up a creation always happens I think in a way that it is mostly depending on what the assignment is, what is the initial inspiration, how much time there is to prepare it, how long the final result should be and what all the rest of the circumstances would be regarding performers, rehearsal space and deliverance. These are factors which would influence my idea and decisions. In many cases the period of preparing the actual piece is short, which can either make the work more exciting or tough to complete. However from the moment of having an idea to the moment of really getting onto making it and how might take some time so that really evolves first in my head until it seems ready to come out. Now let's focus on your art production: I would start from Monologues / Dialogues (2014), an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, and I would suggest them to visit your website directly at http://www.svetlinvelchev.com in order to get a wider idea of it. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this project?

Monologues / Dialogues is a spectacular show in two parts with a bunch of incredible artists participating a result of the initiative â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Boiler Roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Contemporary Dance Platform DI U&A which is organized on a monthly basis at Utrecht, The Netherlands. It is a project, which has already statutory terms and conditions for making it. The artistic director Iris van Peppen invited me in December 2013 after one of their shows to participate and create one of the next editions so that is how I got to present it in May when the premiere took place. This rather alternative project is almost considered as a curatorial - it is an art experiment of improvisational meetings between musicians and dancers where they share skills and contribute to an unconventional ways of expression and performance experience.

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So I decided to invite a group of vibrant artists dancers, musicians, dramaturges, a photographer and a graphic designer to come together and create the work. I came up with a principal idea,structure and frame for the show, so that I put it all into a certain context. And that was explicitly the theme of Contradictions as a nature of reality. Monologues / Dialogues is the two sides to every story. Containing and opposing each other at the same time, both of the perspectives which neither one of them exclude the other - they eventually contradict each other. So you can as well see that in the complete stylizing of the work - in the flyer design , in the show construction, in the artists cast - that there are always two meanings and it is not said, which is right or wrong, because we need both for balance. Monologues / Dialogues has been officially selected to be presented during the next edition of Baku Biennial â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Aluminiumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in December 2014, which was the greatest accomplishment for this creation so far. Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice: and I have been asked to sum up in a single word your artistic production, I would say that it's kaledoiscopic In particular, I have highly appreciated the way you are capable of establishing a so deep symbiosis between Art and Choreography... while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

It is indeed and I like your comparison to Kaleidoscopic. Also because of the geometry of it, which is so inspiring to me and a visible feature of my work.This is very much an image, which is tangible to my creations and my attempts to perpetuate several layers to complete a visual artwork. For me in our contemporary times multitasking and multidisciplinary are keywords to art. If we say that these disciplines are options supporting the quality and resonance of my show then they must be by any means used. As an artist I am trying to bring excitement and complexity too, through the integration of each aspect bulging the concept of the piece. Dance is only one of the elements as the rest of the equally important ones costumes, light and sound to fulfill the bigger picture. Not to be misunderstood though - the best way I create is to first have plenty and afterwards subtract of what is unnecessary or too much, keeping it simple, accessible and pure.

Svetlin Velchev

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Svetlin Velchev

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Your performances are strictly connected to establish a deep, intense involvement with your audience, both on an intellectual aspect and - I daresay - on a physical one, as in the extremely stimulating Fresques. So I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process both for creating a piece and in order to "enjoy" it...Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I believe so and completely agree on providing an intense inner involvement of the audience. No matter what situation I put the audience at to observe and perceive, its very valid that their imagination should be activated. I cannot say that there is much interaction with the public or provocation of any kind during my shows, but the connection is most certainly established. And I hope that everyone can enjoy his personal journey watching my stuff. I only wish anybody can find and recognize himself for a moment in my world. I mean there must be something about my art that should resemble to anything in the life of the artists I work with or the audience attending the performance to be able to touch their hearts and minds. It is all an ongoing process. I want to energize the viewer. The creativity and the direct experience are walking hand in hand, depending on each other. During these years your creations have been shown in several occasions, in many different countries and I think it's important to mention your recent participation at the BIACI 1st Biennial of Contemporary Art Cartagena... It goes without saying that positive feedbacks are capable of supporting an artist: I sometimes happen to wonder if the expectation of a positive feedback could even influence the process of an artist, especially when the creations itself is tied to the involvement of the audience... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? Yeah! I am very glad for the chances I got and grateful for the experience last couple of years - the times right after I’ve finished my studies at 2011. See The Netherlands is in a transition period of the cultural sector since then and for quite sometime already as that started exactly the same time of my graduation. So hasn’t been fun all the time and ain’t much easier earning a living either, but I guess that was all worth - in the end beliefs, effort and constancy

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pay off. On a small land as Holland with so many good artists the aim is not to be just good, but to be better. Been part of small to big scale events, made shows at remarkable venues, presented work on some of the well known local festivals like Fringe, Balkan Snapshots and State-X New Forms. My previous dance video Breathe On got to be presented in Honk-Kong, L.A. and Berlin. And last, but not least my recent exhibit of both of my solo works Fragment #3 and Limitation Sky during

BIACI 1st Contemporary Art Biennial Cartagena De Indias at Colombia. Feedback and constructive criticism are best for me. In fact I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really deal without them. I learn to listen to the valuable opinions and expertise of people without prejudices. Sometimes people just judge for the sake of it, but I believe only in the honesty and good intention of somebodies objective remarks. I easily compromise in the name of the perfect solution and not afraid of change. I also believe in the power of mistakes as

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I think mistakes like anything else happens for a reason to tell us something right. For every artist is important what the public thinks or feels. Communication is a teacher for the artist, because creating a dialogue can be very helpful. And each work can be oriented towards specific target group or either reach to a wider range of audience, which I most definitely prefer. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Svetlin. 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?

Thank you too, the pleasure was all mine! Hope you get to hear more from me in the near future. So after the launch of my latest work Monologues / Dialogues in May, I have been invited to perform it during the next issue of Baku Biennial at Azerbaijan upcoming December. was a prominent year for me and looking towards even a better one in 2015.

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GeneviĂ¨ve Lives and works in Paris, France

Favre

Petroff

An artist's statement

erformance art allows me to express myself in a trans-disciplinary way bridging art, digital art, fashion design, music and technology. As singer and visual artist, I am particularly interested in the interplay between sound and light, voice and surrounding, music and costume. The fantasist characters I create reflect my own questionings and evolve each time in a specific and emotional visual atmosphere. The spectators is invited to take actively part in some of my performances, I

discuss and debate live with them. For my installations, the body presence is transmitted to objects or to elements of the nature that interact with the visitors. My Perfomances & Installations often flavoured with humor were several times rewarded and are internationally presented during contemporary art, digital art, performance or fashion festivals and exhibitions.

GeneviĂ¨ve Favre Petroff

Saturn, performance, 2015

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

A r t

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R e v i e w

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

One of the features of Geneviève Favre Petroff's work that at soon impressed me, is the way she effectively challenges the viewers' perception, accomplishing the difficult task of leading us to rethink about way we perceive the outside world, but also, urging us to investigate about the existence of unexpected relationships between opposites aspects of the reality we inhabit in. Through an incessant process of recontextualization, her a refined approach provides the viewers of an extension of the ordinary human perception, in order to manipulate it and releasing it from its most limbic parameters. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Geneviève, and a warm welcome to LandEscape. To start this interview would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, you have studied at the Geneva University of Arts and Design: how much has this experience impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks?

Hi Dario! I keep a very good souvenir of my studies. This period of time was very important to me. I had a total liberty to experience things. During these years I hade the chance to develop my sensibility, my affinities and define how I wanted to work, the media I wanted to use. I saw a lot of exhibitions and discovered artists

I really liked on the Swiss and international art scene. When I entered the Art school in Geneva, I started by painting portraits taken from music or fashion magazines in a realistic way that I detached on a pop monochrome background. Then I began doing short videos like self-portraits already using the transformation. I continued with video performances where I sing popular songs in front of colorful walls. In fact I felt so right and happy when I started to sing and play with my mini-DV camera, especially in my painting class, you know? It was a kind of evidence for me to use my spontaneity to express myself, to tell personal or fictive stories. I also appreciated the three months I spent at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna as Erasmus student. There was a great energy there! I enjoyed playing with classical references as Mozart, Sissi, Strauss, mixing them in video performances where I stood in the projection. When I came « Back from Vienna » (that is also the title I gave to my semester’s presentation), I built a large white construction in the studio, that I painted it turquoise at the inside. I performed different kind of things hidden in this rectangular box. The spectators could feel I was physically inside it but could have a look at my actions only via a video monitor. They watched at original points of view through the fisheye angle of the camera, as rollovers on the floor, my face turning on the screen or close-ups on my mouth gargling while intoning the Blue Dan-

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GeneviÃ¨ve Favre Petroff

Geneviève Favre Petroff

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ube! I made several box-performances between 1999 and 2001 with one, two, three or four cameras. 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?

My creative process can be very fast, especially when I work in an emergency or in response to a theme. But sometimes it takes several months to develop a technical project, as I work with collaborators (musician, programmer), give birth to a new character and bring it to stage! It depends also on the funds I have to collect to produce my pieces. My work focuses on a direct communication, the shortest way to get in touch with the public. But my task becomes more complex by the fact that I create sophisticated and even perilous performances and that I insist on having all the technical devices dissimulated (under my dresses or in the bases). I am very happy proud of my Loukoum (Turkish delight) dress which reacts and lights up by receiving wireless commands. Thus I can dance and wander without any cable lying on the floor. There is less risk of stumbling on the catwalk and it is so magical anyway! For this dazzling “delightful” performance, I actually wear a mini computer on my back and batteries on my two thighs. Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Aquarius, 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.genevievefavre.com in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us

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something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

I decided to work on the theme of the water, natural element, source of life, and to speak on the inequalities in matter of access to drinking water in the world. Especially when the biggest food brands pump resources in the poor countries to sell water in bottle and do profits.I tried to associate my different ideas through this costume made of a white cotton dress and transparent pipes fixed on it. I used the fluorescein to color the ways of the water coming down from the bowl that I have on my head into the buckles and spirals.This piece makes reference to my zodiac sign, to the African woman and also evokes the fluids flowing in our bodies. Another interesting work of yours that have particularly impressed me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Black Bird: one of the features of it that has mostly impacted on me , is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to the an image, re-contextualizing the idea of the environment we live in, which is far from being just the background of our existence. I would go as far as to state that in a certain sense this project forces the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive environment... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Yes I guess an artist has to create strong and provocative images to reflect his/her time. I like artists who are able to denounce all kind of social, cultural, economical or environmental problems with humor, irony and efficiency. For Black Bird I wanted to recall these images seen on television of oil spills, of these stuck and sticky birds - theses images that we all have seen. As a crippled, disorientated beast, I go

GeneviÃ¨ve Favre Petroff

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Geneviève Favre Petroff

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round in circles uncertainly, crossing the street and challenging car drivers. I’m wearing a big wavy dress and a horned hat, both made of netting material. Small loudspeakers integrated into the black costume produce chirping sounds that accompany my chants and shouts. During the various representations, it happened to me to fall because of the large destabilizing skirt or the wet ground, and I felt myself so fragile, humbled, that was so in the role! Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice: besides Performances, you also produce installations as well extremely interesting pieces of Public Art: if I have been asked to sum up in a single word your artistic production, I would say that it's kaleidoscopic... while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

The body is central in my art. But I often displaced the physical presence and the human feelings into objects and surroundings. I made installations where colored lights or prerecorded voices were making trees or stones speaking. The singing masks, realized in resin painted with acrylic, which were presented in parks or in the mountains recall traditional arts or automates, but express the same than video portraits or virtual avatars I use in other projects. For my solo show entitled Incarnations I had the opportunity to bring different esthetics together. Although the traditional sculptural appearance, all my installations were controlled by computers. A bust of Casanova could stick out its long tongue, seduce and influence the Soubrette sculpture placed in another room. The sensory stimuli of the Soubrette were rendered visible through the scalp in her wig revealing her brain whose

some zones lit up. The installation Conquêtes composed by thirteen large anatomical hearts pricked on stalks, which illuminate from the inside and which pulse each other independently was separating the two rooms of the lovers. In particular, I would like to spend some words about Société, tu m’auras pas, a piece inspired by the multifaceted figure of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: what has mostly impacted on me is the way this work communicates the cohesistence of the leap towards social accomplishments, and the a sense of subtle frustration that inevitably goes along people who pursue such ambitious goals... By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naïf, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical questions: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

With my large sculpture whose title is taken from a song of the French singer Renaud, I wanted to pay tribute to the Rousseau’s affection for the Nature and to show that he had to flee cities because of his frightened ideas. The philosopher who was also botanist is represented as a scarecrow, feet rooted in humus. He seems to meditate eyes closed on his fate. And I couldn't do without mentioning Electra …, a piece that I have to admit is one of my favourite ones of your rich and stimulating production: in particular, I have highly appreciated the way you create an effective synergy between mythological references -which are clearly framed in a "traditional" context- and a lively usage of modern technology, which is very recurrent in your works, as in Loukoum... In this sense I daresay that your approach creates such a bridge between

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Saturn, performance, 2015

Tradition and Contemporariness: by the way, maybe because I have a scientific background, I personally think that digital technology will soon fill the apparent dichotomy between Art and Technology... what's your point?

Tradition versus Contemporariness is exactly the theme of my performance Loukoum. I debate live with the audience on various current issues, as religion and politics, social networks, marriage. In between my five Middle-Eastern pop songs in French and English, I ask them to give me a local tradition recipe or to show me how to dance. It was a nice experience for me to approach another cul-

ture as mine - I even learned a Lebanese lullaby in Arabic. In this performance, I associate past and future references. The mini dress and helmet I wear refer to the futuristic fashion of the 60s. The cubes of increasing size on my dress, which look like Turkish delights, light up independently and draw motives in movement, synchronized with the music. The visual animations evoke the 1980s, such as disco, video games and some Arabic patterns. Electra is probably the most successful performance I created, at the encounter of the Greek tragedy, the electronic music and the

GeneviĂ¨ve Favre Petroff

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Loukoum, performance, 2015

Science Fiction. I stand in the middle of the stage as an automated diva, moving my arms, turning my face to the sky. I sing loud and let my luminous costume express itself. All the lightning effects are coming out of the long and pyramidal satin dress and jewels decorated with LED lights I wear, and which can alternately react to my words and to my actions. During these fifteen years your Performances & Installations have been extensively exhibited in several occasions and I think it's important to remark that you have been awarded as well... It goes with-

out 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 feedbackcould 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...

It is really enjoyable for me to have all these projects and these different characters in my repertoire. And of course I am really grateful of the financial supports I had from art foundations, awards and private donations, which

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helped me to produce these artworks and to travel to show my various performances. Nice feedbacks are always encouraging but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think they influence my production itself.

Furthermore, I would love to find more commercial and viable contracts with art institutions, galleries or private events. I will maybe commercialize my luminous clothes, who knows?

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Last Saturday, I went to a party wearing one of my creations, a dress highlighted by a colored neon thread and I was so complimented that I will soon have orders, for sure!!

Let me please thank you for your invitation, it was a pleasure to answer to your interesting questions!

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Thodoris Trampas Lives and works in Athens, Greece

An artist's statement

he ongoing search of the human beings for their own image is found in the conscious and unconscious need “to be”. We are in the depths of an existence experiencing the loneliness in front of two empty tables, declaratory of the absence of “those who never came”. It is waiting and searching at the same time. It experiences rejection. However, the hope that they will come transfers those human beings to the area of utopia. With stereotypical moves, with quicklymoving hands and feet and after that, with an ear-splitting creeping, they try to bridge the distance between the ideal and the real. A conflict of wishes upsets the ego, which wishes to escape from a sense of confinement by recalling desirable moments of integration in order to be able to balance. They daydream, they lead themselves beyond what has happened to them, they lose themselves within fantasy, they stand still waiting for what shall come. In the light, the form loses its outline, it fills with soil and water, it struggles to build all of “them” as well as their own image in the reality that they want to live and by means of the above-mentioned archetypal materials, that is the soil and water, by which human existence on earth begins. They free themselves from unconscious internal prohibitions, they break

the limits of compromise, they clear themselves, they take any necessary time, they consciously experience fantasy, they surrender themselves to a concealed flow, they travel towards the satisfaction of the primary need; that of “to be”. 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 also uses items and materials of modern life, such as trash bags and nylon together with organic materials, such as soil and water. 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, the free movement, he lets respiration get into every cell, recall memories, awaken the existence. Through experiential reality, he aims to highlight a human condition as an endless effort to balance within an “area”, which is constantly changing in space and time.

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Thodoris Trampas An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Diana Goldstein, curator landescape@europe.com

Multidisciplinary artist Thodoris Trampas' work ranges from installation to performance to explore the limits inside and outside the body. In his work Scorched Earth that we'll be discussing in the following pages his inquiry into the the concerns of our contemporary and unstable society allows him to draw the viewers into an immersive experience in which they are urged to rethink the elusive notions of time and space. One of the most convincing aspects of Trampas' practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating a deep and autonomous synergy between our limbic parameters and our rational categories to highlight a human condition as an endless effort to balance within an “area”, which is constantly changing in space and time: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production. Hello Thodoris and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after having graduated with honors from the Athens School of Fine Arts you started your career as a multidisciplinary artists, nurturing your education with experiences at ΜΑΙ (Marina Abramović Institute) and NEON (Culture and Development Agency): how do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you

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

At first, I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share some paths of my artistic journey with you. My embryonic relationship with performance art began in the third year of my studies in the School of Fine Arts, when my teacher, Aimilia Bouriti, trained me through physical and mental exercises. As a result, I was initiated in performance. Those exercises were directly influenced by butoh, yoga and meditation and they still help me in selfconcentration, stamina and flow to this day, aiming at the better performance of each project. As regards my collaboration with MAI (Marina Abramović Institute) and NEON (Culture and Development Agency), they brought me into contact with the legacy of Marina Abramovic, namely long-lasting performance. It was the first time in my artistic career that I faced the limits of myself and my mental and physical strength to such an extent. The process of the longlasting performance has got inside me, after 329 hours of performance at the As One exhibition, leaving me with a strong realization of the concept of present Time and the confrontation with our personal limits. Due to my education in visual education, visual terminology almost always accompanies my work, giving rise to matters about composition, light and shadow, colour and sculpture. Cohesiveness, sound and silence, movement and stillness are also a part of my aesthetics.

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Ranging from performance art to installation in space, your approach coherently encapsulates several techniques and viewpoints, revealing an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a consistent sense of harmony. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://thodoristrampas.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to express and convey the ideas you explore.

According to the way I work, convergence is the way in which I face art. Sculpture, painting, video and dance often meet performance. All of them coexist, as if the limits of one art expand within the limits of the other. The coexistence of performance through installation and vice versa is something very important to the way I work. I take care that the materials I use have the strength and the value to support the theme on which I choose to work and that they create a full installation. In addition, my purpose is to create an installation using cheap materials and elements of nature, which can invoke an emotive atmosphere to the audience even after performance has ended. The place given to me each time, along with the current circumstances and its history, allows the work to be incorporated without leaving its central core. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected Scorched Earth, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. We have appreciated the way the combination between the atemporal feature of ash and the ephemeral nature of human body accomplishes you to create a concrete aesthetics playing with the notions of time and memory. While walking our readers through the genesis of Scorched Earth would you shed light on the role of memory in your process? We are

particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.

A real-life knowledge, an experience can be so strong sometimes that they play a

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definitive role in the creation of a performance, but other times external factors can provide a reason for searching and awareness, even something from the past that comes to the present through the memories of various events; everything contributes to the creation of an idea. In this

case, being a child of immigrants myself, I felt the memories waking up after seeing the thousands of refugees being stacked and dying in their effort to come to my country, Greece, by sea. This is something that degrades human existence and an unprepared Europe, as the EU has said so

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itself. The Burned Earth deals with the bloody issue of immigration and being torn up by your roots, leaving your own country because there is no other solution. In this case I work with ash, which symbolizes the country that has been completely destroyed and has nothing to offer to you and the

endless effort of the individuals not to uproot themselves on one hand and the deep need to survive on the other hand. Then we continue to the liquid element, which symbolizes the Aegean Sea, with sea water sealed in plastic bags hanging along the installation.

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manifold nature of human perceptual categories. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Everyone carries with them their own experiences, which are an inseparable part of their life and personality. I unconsciously meet experiences in front of me too, which I have to face and insist in delving deeper inside myself and study them. The final project arises as a personal “psychoanalysis” in this effort. Through the direct experience offered by the performance, you seek the multi-sensory communication with the audience hear and now. Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is entitled Pangaia, that has been commissioned and produced by NEON + MAI. What has at once captured our attention of the process of union through destruction you have highlighted in this captivating piece is the way you unveil the elusive still ubiquitous relationship between the intrisic atemporal feature of nature and its continuous process of transformation. How did you balance the performative aspect with the performative feature for this stimulating piece?

Scorched Earth captures non-sharpness with an universal kind of language, accomplishig the difficult task of establishing a channel of communication between the subconscious sphere and the conscious one, to unveil and challenge the

Pangaea was a project which was taking shape every day. It was never the same. There were four processes in the project: •catharsis •imitation •creation • destruction. Each time the audience completed one of the processes, the project changed as regards its visual terminology depending on the intention I put into it. Every day, my body tried to experience the existence of nature through my connection with the rock. I had never imagined that this project would advance to such an extent. It was finally taken out of the platform and filled the atrium of the museum. It looked like a

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bombed place. As I have mentioned before, the balance between the performing procedure and the human factor was difficult. As the late Franz West did in his installations, Pangaia shows unconventional features in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of selfreflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

For me, the artist is a part of society itself. S/he is not isolated and s/he must listen to the heartbeat of society and observe it. The artist is the restless intermediary of the existential matters of man. The best for me is to incorporate the audience into my process so that it feels free. The nature is always there to remind us that we have forsaken it in the quest for another, unnatural life. This is the sense I am trying to give to the public with Pangaea, that â&#x20AC;&#x153;despite all this destruction, Pangaea is still thereâ&#x20AC;?. Amorphous Mass accomplishes an effective investigation about the liminal area in which the subconscious sphere and the conscious dimension find unexpected points of convergence. Your inquiry into the themes of rejections and loneliness accomplishes an insightful exploration of the thin line that separes abstract symbolism that belongs to the realm of utopia from reminders to the everyday. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative and especialy the visual unity for your works?

Of course there are several symbolisms in art which are necessary for some works, the purpose of which is to arouse the human mind.

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Thomas Demandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view comes to ratify to a great extent the role of performance as regards the psychoanalytic approaches of man. Of course a skeptical way of thinking nowadays has brought us to a point of material saturation and individualism. Precious values have been lost along the way and this is why the man has been isolated. This is the point where art must bring new channels to the surface in order to liberate humanity. The visual result is not an end in itself in my work. It arises through visual composition so that it serves the purposes of the narrative. In fact the narrative I use is the text of the performance, which gives the meaning in composition with image. Your works always provide the viewers with an intense, immersive experience: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience and how much importance has improvisation in your process?

My purpose is not to impress the audience but to trigger their interest. What matters is the way in which I seek the reaction of the audience and the change in its way of thinking through the performance. The times we live in are very hard and inhumane. Art cannot stay the same like the old times, by wearing â&#x20AC;&#x153;a nice suitâ&#x20AC;?. It must change and take a stand. And this change will be brought by the artists themselves and their work. During the last years, the audience has been moving towards performance art because it seeks this change. Performance art offers generously another kind of operation of society, more emotive, more real and humane. How much important is the role of improvisation in your art practice? And how do you develope your pieces?

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In general, every project seeks its own way to exist. In some projects I only improvise, without having rehearsed anything, other times I work on a concept with a kind of structureless narrative which then starts growing into a full, organized and structured performance leaving a little room for improvisation, for the mistake of the

moment. There are moments when I am moved by an internal need, an experience or a material which manages to infringe all the rules of structure on a project of mine without leaving room for a rehearsal. It is so sure and ready to be exposed.

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participants on an intellectual level, 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 would say at this point that there works of mine to which the audience must react or interact, creating thus the final result. Other times the audience must notice and feel what has happened. Given this opportunity, I would like to clarify the importance of interaction with someone else and the importance of reacting to something that is happening. Beginning with the latter, I have to say that reaction may be a shout, or stopping the action or even utter silence. Interaction needs something more: it means awareness of what has happened and what I am doing together with someone else. More specifically, in my latest project, “hostages”, I asked for the immediate reaction and interaction of the audience. I was tying people up and at the same time they had to decide for how long they would stay tied up, if they would release themselves, if they would tie me up. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Thodoris. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Over your career you have exhibited in several occasions, including your recent Mitsero/ Mine Kokkinopezoulas & Mine Kokkinogias: one of the hallmarks of your projects is strictly connected to the chance of establishing a direct involvement with the viewers, who are called to evolve from a mere spectatorship to conscious

At the moment I am already working on my next project, which is titled “Convergence”. It is a live performance laboratory where we will work together with the audience very day and record every moment through various recording means. At the same time the recordings will be projected live. In this project I want to focus even more on the common experience, the personal

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testimonies and the energy level shared with the audience. The audience will be given the opportunity to create, feel and comprehend performance in a common framework, the purpose of which will be the softening of our personal boundaries and the study of our

internal world. It is an experimental journey where I will try to incorporate various techniques and methods so that the audience becomes familiar with performance art as a new form of communication which arises mainly from the experience of every

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one. It would be ideal if we could create a global art for all, which would unite society through free expression and the emerging of human relations in common quests. I am also preparing the Pangaea documentary, which shows all the progress of the project in

almost an hour, a miniature of my experience there. Moreover, I'm going to take part to the Florence Biennale, in Toscana, Italy.. Thank you for this great interview!

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Ivonne Dippmann Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

An artist's statement

ince the beginning of my work the artistic discourse is situated very much within the aesthetics and appearance of my environment”, says Ivonne Dippmann of her own work. However, she changed her environment constantly. Born and raised 1981 in KarlMarx-Stadt, former East Germany, a city that has changed its name twice within fifty years. No place that would guarantee consistency, unless for a constancy of change and loss. Since Dippmann has left her hometown, she made stations in the United States, in the Basque country in Spain and lived in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Berlin. The origin can not explain what happens in her work, and it would also be one-dimensional to look for a simple and simplistic basis in this bundle, which defines it – technique, expression, style and color, a will and political passion which seeks for space and its power being transformed into images.

Nevertheless, the place where a drawing, graphic or other image of work is produced, plays a special role. Ivonne Dippmann generally starts from relatively small-scale drawings. A starting point, a beginning, because these small formats will later encounter a different situation, an exhibition space, a stage or a book. They will transform themselves in order to adapt to a new room. Nothing remains as it was and if Dippmann uses templates – which were originally used as illustrations for a book – and converts them into largescale murals combined with colorful yarns stretched within a space, it creates a unique effect. Because she phrases a no man’s land, which is both politically and geographically allocated. A paradoxical everywhere.

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LandEscape meets

Ivonne Dippmann An interview by Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Hello Ivonne and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be in your opinion the features that mark an artwork as a piece of Contemporary Art? Do you think that there's a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness?

Honestly, Art? I don't know. A more colorful, overpriced version of the New York Times? Good Art for me is characterized by attitude and having something to say. It derives out of curiosity, playfulness, a very own opinion and the capacity to take responsibility for. Essential a good sense of humor! Contemporary basically means today, so I guess Contemporary Art should talk about your own time and generation in an eloquent and unpretentious way. Tradition for me preserves values and rituals that influence social structures and norms, publicly and in private. Contemporariness is somehow a different basket. I associate this term more with trends in the fashion industry. Unlike tradition it comes along very unpredictable, eccentric and a bit overrated. But a well executed contemporariness may transform into a tradition one day? Would you like to tell us something about your background? Besides your studies in Visual Communication at the University of the Arts in Berlin, you have attended classes in Israel, Spain and in the USA, where, among the others, you attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. How have these experiences impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks? By

the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point?

My studies were an unforgettable 10 year life experience. I received my MeisterschĂźler in Visual Communication, cross studied in Experimental Media Design and finished with a Master in Fine Arts in Israel. Coming from East Germany, I saw my "education plan" as a free ticket to conquer and explore the world, not just creatively. Being a student at the University of the Arts Berlin, I have spent 70% of my time abroad. By learning within different creative fields and manners abroad, I created considerably, with a clear agenda attached my personal "box of tools". These skills now define the spine of my daily work flow and led to a personal freedom and artistic independence. It was a very privileged time and experience. I don't believe in a formalistic discourse of "art education". The outcome is very hollow without significant substance! In my opinion it is of relevance to have a life first and with it, hand in hand, a good education which will help to sharpen your qualities, to find your own language and to have the opportunity to encounter great people on the way. I am drawing since I am 5, I guess the only though very comforting consistency in my life so far. Now let's focus on your art production: I would start from Broad street line and Aktivisten und Westarbeiter 1 & 2, that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. Would you tell us something about the genesis of these projects? What was your initial inspiration?

A&W was based on a collaborative project with the German author J. Kuhlbordt, now living and working in Leipzig. I produced a series of black

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and white drawings for his upcoming publication "Stoetzers Lied - der Gesang vom Leben danach". Stoetzer is a character who takes on everything that rolls him over: politics, economics, art, history. Out of statics he is commenting the movements, the decay of the past and the arrival of the new millennium. It is a philosophical interwoven volume of poetry, that addresses with humor and sharpness the complex approach to history. I connected to his work right away since we shared common grounds by being raised and educated in Karl Marx - Stadt. Aktivisten und Westarbeiter works with the former qualities of my hometown, which has been the center of textile production in East Germany. I basically grew up in the middle of cotton and wool. The center pieces of the two installations in A&W 1/ 2 were made out of yarns of different colors of VEB POLAR KarlMarx-Stadt, taken from my personal archive of my family. All the drawings and wall-paintings were based on the drawings for Kuhlbordts book. My works are oftentimes inspired by texts, by works of authors I collaborated with for their own publications (J. Kuhlbrodt, C. Wagner or R. Winkler). I also use dialogues from movies (I had a great Woody Allen time in Jerusalem), the everyday talk outside, dreams and outside observations which I write down separately. Broad street line is a textile project, executed within a 3 month apprenticeship at the FWM in Philadelphia. Out of my own designs, I created a two (Broad street line) and a four way repeat (Hallah). I printed 3 months straight and it was a pleasure experimenting and playing around with techniques, shapes and colors. As in A&W the initial design was drawn out in one of my sketchbooks (Book 05 PH2012, Broad Street Line). Some of the printed fabrics were used for designing the fashion line "Hallah", a project in collaboration with the Berlin designer Kunji Baerwald. It was very much a last minute project for a shooting planed to be included in an art book publication (Ivonne Dippmann - My hostilities Are Distributed In A Justified Way, 2013 Revolver Publishing).

As you have remarked in the starting lines of your artist's statement, "the artistic discourse is situated very much within the aesthetics and appearance of my environment"... I can recognize such a socio political feature in your pieces, and even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naĂŻf, I'm sort of convinced that Art these days could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion, but I would go as far as to say that nowadays Art can steer people's behavior... what's your point about this? Do you think that it's an exaggeration?

Art talks about time, to some extend it embodies history, which is more less an archive of "steering" peoples behaviors. I think the power of art is that a piece of work keeps on communicating without you. It shapes time historically and provides a peek into someone's personal agenda and perception. By showing a specific selection of art to the public, institutions create an archive stuffed with experiences, remarks, thoughts and insides, defining and redefining a "Zeitgeist" within an era or time period. By walking through a retrospective feels like flipping through someone's fotoalbum which is for generations to keep and remember. My personal decisions or choices can be seen as a summation of experiences based on the people I met on my way and whose works and personality touched me somehow. Another interesting pieces that have particularly impressed me and on which I would like to spend some words are from your Les Modes Personnels project: by the way, as our readers can view at your website, http://www.ivonnedippmann.eu/index.php?id =123, multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice: I would go as far as to state that you seem to be interested in creating a multi-sensory, kinetic and relational art experience... while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only

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way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I think "disciplines" how you call it or a medium are simply tools to execute an idea. The more you have the more freedom you experience in expressing your thoughts and ideas. LMP just happened by going through old fabrics and towels made in former East Germany at my parents house last summer. I found those old, worn out crystal salt bags from my grand father in our basement and wanted to make something out of it. Since I planed a shooting for documenting "Broad street line" anyways, I thought why not including a recent line of textile work? I had an apartment to work in and a printing place at a friends design firm (Zwoelf Medien Berlin). Since I had no budget, I could not hire a model / make up person in Berlin. As I was looking desperately, a friend just commented on fb: "Why don t you do it yourself?" So based on the circumstances I did everything myself and I had a very patient and passionate photographer. I see LMP like a series of drawings, it flips through shapes, material and movement in real time. It is one of my favorite pieces so far, it really came out of nothing and says everything. Your pieces La vie câ&#x20AC;&#x2122;est moi!, Wir sind viele (we are many) and especially the interesting Reformation clearly show that your art practice is strictly connected with the chance to create a deep involvement with your audience, both on a intellectual aspect and on an emotive side... 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?

Well I guess this phenomena of being disconnected from a direct experience is called "conceptual art"? I am not a fan. It feels like a dry dessert. I personally admire artists who work passionately hands on, going through a work period which requires time, involves physical movement and transpiration on the way. My drawing routine is the spine of my daily life experience and vice versa. It is a safe place I can always go back to. I started literally "shooting"

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myself by documenting myself in relationship to my work or to a specific environment. It helped me to establish a connection with a new place. It caught the way I felt. For La vie câ&#x20AC;&#x2122;est moi!, Wir sind viele (we are many) I was meeting a friend in Paris who works by chance in the Louvre, Paris. He gave me a tour in the Museum after everyone left, no lines, no crowds, no school classes. The place was empty and while walking with him through this impressive collection of art, I felt the urge to make a work there. Two days later we got the permission to photograph for 10 minutes. Of course I did not find the room I wanted, so I chose the center hallway of the old Masters. The piece goes together with a 3 m x 6 m written wall work, containing excerpts of dialogues of the war movie Lakonia in combination with expressions of a crossword puzzle. The works mentioned are not performance pieces, I see them purely as a documentation of a work. And I couldn't do without mentioning E/Scapes - the disappearance from landscape, an extremely interesting collaborative project that you have established with Andrea van Reimersdahl... I personally find absolutely fascinating the collaborations that artists can established together as you did, especially because this often reveals a symbiosis between apparently different approaches to art... and I can't help without mention Peter Tabor who 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 two artists?

"We believe that interdisciplinary collaboration today is an ever growing force in the art-, fashion- and design world. We believe that our traditional distinction between these fields is rapidly breaking apart, making room for crossplatform projects that question the authority of each classification. We strongly believe that most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project." Those 3 lines are

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taken from a recent proposal for an interdisciplinary workshop "The Art of collaboration", drafted by a colleague of mine (Marek Polewski, Floor5 Berlin). There is not much to add. For me to collaborate means an enrichment of my quality of life as an artist. I do only collaborate with people I like and get along with well, based on a mutual understanding of work attitude and respect. Collaborations are a great opportunity to learn and to have an artistic dialogue on a daily basis. I don' t want to be surrounded with my own state of mind and work always, so I decided to collaborate at least once a year in whatever field, rhe more diverse the better. E/Scapes is an ongoing textile based project in collaboration with the Berlin artist and designer AVR who I met by coincidence through a friend. What finally brought us together is the empathy and the immediate use of textiles and the material related printing craft. We are still looking for funding in order to finally execute this project in the coming months. 9) During these years your artworks have been exhibited across your country and abroad, and you recently had the solo CADAVRE EXQUIS in collaboration with the French painter Asnaby at Blick Gallery in Tel Aviv... It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of positive feedbackcould even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art... Awards and grants provided me with the financial basis in order to live and to execute my art work as I do. Without this support system I would not stand where I am now and I am grateful for that. Regarding feedback,I think you are better off if you don't give a crab. It doesn't really matter what people

think of you. I did not become an artist in order to get compliments or to be liked. My audience should enjoy the ride and remain critical and opinionated. To push myself further, I appreciate honest, constructive critique. Business is something different. Therefore it is a lucky win, if you are represented by a gallerist who is professional and trustworthy. A genuine relationship? Never!, therefore the art market is too chaotic and biased. Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts Ivonne. My last question deals

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with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Well, on one hand I am looking for a studio in Berlin in order to have a home base for production and meetings. On the other hand I would like to spend some time in Paris for collaborating on a fashion project, creating exclusive designs for a brand or label. Ongoing projects are the fundraiser for the project E/Scapes - the disappearance from landscapes, which can be accessed through both of our websites. There is a show coming

up at the Kulturforum Alte Post Neuss next year and of course, worthwhile mentioning my recently published art book "Ivonne Dippmann - My hostilities Are Distributed In A Justified Way", 2013 by Revolver Publishing Berlin.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

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Ye'ela Wilschanski Lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel

An artist's statement

sing my body and voice to express myself, is what I have been doing since I was born. As an artist, my body and voice are the most readily available raw materials to create from and about. I started my way as an artist sewing clothes for my dolls. I needed to sketch my sewing designs, and those sketches progressed to paintings. Yearning for tools to paint, I went to art school. There, I was exposed to sculpture. I found that three dimensional is much more interesting than two.

The more I learned sculpting techniques, the more I became interested in the movement my body makes when I engage with a material. The process of creating an art work excited me, but once there was a final product, I lost interest in it. I felt that my body- the tool that creates my imprint on all those materials- is not given the respect and presence it's worthy of. That is what led me to performance art. Documenting my performances introduced me to the

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LandEscape meets

Ye'ela Wilschanski An interview by Julian Thomas Ross, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator landescape@europe.com

What immediately impresses of Ye'ela Wilschanski's work is the way her multidisciplinary and performative approach is capable of taking advantage from different techniques, as Sculpture, Video and Drawing to create a consistent, coherent unity that challenges the viewers' perception, accomplishing the difficult task of leading us to rethink about way we relate ourselves to modern society. Through an incessant process of recontextualization, Wilschanski goes beyond mere subjectivity and individual perception, breaking down the Four Wall and allowing the viewers to evolve from a passive audience to conscious participant of the creative process. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Ye'ela, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bezalel School of art and design that you have received from the prestigious Bezalel School of art and design: how has this experience influenced you as an artist and impacted on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Providing a helpful environment to produce art work is more complex than what a school curriculum can offer. For my needs, going through therapy gave me the strength and tools to be an artist. Travelling the world gave me sensitivity and awareness to materials, in comparison to my familiar surroundings.

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Ye'ela Wilschanski (photo by Colette Aliman)

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Ye'ela Wilschanski

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Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Body Land, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://www.yeelawilschanski.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

The inspiration for "Body Land" was refamiliarising my body in relation to the four angles of my bed, following a breakup of a relationship. For a month I stayed in bed until I had the strength to get out. A year later, I wanted to confront the feelings I had experienced, and visually recreate what I had been through, in order to recover. What I do in the performance is to take a pile of dry soil and draw the outline shapes around my moving body, then I gather back the soil and form a square around me, moving in relation to the square. The final stage is drawing a frame referring to the shape of the room and audience within it. This stage is different at each performance, depending on the space. I definetely love the way Body Land takes such an intense participatory line on the conception of art. In particular, your investigation about the intimate aspect of constructed realities has reminded me of Thomas Demand's works: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I 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?

A creative process can be disconnected, but it is much more interesting both for me and for the audience to witness my going through an one-off experience .

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My choice to be inside my works is because I feel that when I am making an object, I'm totally into it and want to continue being playful forever. When I need to let go, the object becomes a foreign body that I don't want to feel any responsibility for. "Body Land" is an example of that. The process leading up to the point of this performance began with ceramics pottery works which led on to my studying mud building. The performance absorbs all that knowledge. What I chose to share with the audience isthe relationship between body and vessel\shelter. There is no final product in the performance because the soil is dry therefore I do not form a object Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Sculpture as well as of Drawing: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I don't consciously choose the multi-disciplinary approach to my work. In the past ten years, each time I wanted to focus on one particular art medium, it opened a desire to study another field . This is an ongoing process that I hope will never end. As a result, I have slowly built up a variety of tools. When I start a new project, I analyze it through the lens of different disciplines until I feel that I have found the right medium. I get inspiration from my dreams. I wake up with a notebook next to me, and write down what I remember. I respect and listen to my dreams, because in them, a kaleidoscope of people and objects in bizarre situations make sense within one frame. That notebook is my laboratory of fascinating "raw footage" that I work with. I also make decisions concerning day-to-day life, when I am still half-awake because then I'm naturally

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(photo by Yonathan Shehoah)

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free from my brainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s limitations. I come from a multicultural bilingual family. Not having a one solid base to start from, influences my identity. Going away from my comfort zone and re-adjusting is my default. This may explain why as an artist I work with multiple disciplines. In the APPROACHING you drew outlines of the passengers silhouettes on the glass of a train station: I can recognize in this interesting project a subtle but effective

investigation about the emerging of language due to a process of self-reflection, and what has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to signs, and in a wide sense to re-contextualize the concept of a track of our existence. This is a recurrent feature of your approach that invite the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas

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are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

In the crazy city of Jerusalem, the Light Rail route reflects a political statement on the part of the Authorities. My inspiration for this project came from the text on the station screen:

‫ תברקתמ‬APPROACHING ‫ عودة‬Appearing in Arabic, Hebrew and English a minute before the train's arrival. To me, the word approaching express warm communication . People all over the city, hope to see the word "Approaching", followed by a language used by the other side of the city they would never approach. On the same screen, is a request: "‫‫‬A ‫ ‬‫‬ttention please! Before entering the train, please make sure you have not left anything at the station”. This is a forceful reminder that, at any given time, this place can become violent and even deathly and passengers

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should be aware of suspicious people and objects. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled No and it is based on a performance at the entrance to Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. I have found really stimulating the way you have extracted from the apparently simple act of shaking one's head no a distinctive feature from each of the involved people: as you have remarked once, we use your body as a tool to express

yourselves from the moment you are born : and I have appreciated the way your approach forces us to evolve from being a passive spectator to more conscious participants to the act you perform... By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naĂŻf, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical issues: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's

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behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

"NO "is a piece about my feelings as a woman, using my own hair to communicate my research . For two and a half weeks, I had a trading stand in the market designated to woman. My own braided hair advertised the hair-do I was offering to do. In exchange, I asked for posing to the camera time. One hundred and thirteen women chose to participate. With each woman, as I braided

her hair, we discussed her feelings about being a woman in the market, and how she feels about the way the society makes her feel about her body. When I finished doing the braids, I stood behind the camera. My instructions then to the woman was to nod her head, as if saying "No", simultaneously showing off the different angles of her braid. Then they left, adorned with the same hairdo as mine. Over a year has passed since, and I still meet random woman who tell me how the

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braids changed their day, and how beautiful they felt. I know, that I had taken there unbound hair and closed it firmly to form that. You have talked about projects you did in the street, communicating with random people, In "My happiness is your grief", you deal with your closer surrounding. Specifically with your close family. What is the background of this video?

The video is about my relationship with my mother and my relationship to the model of a mother I was expected to become and rejected. I based the videos sequence on childhood memories from religious rituals at family meals. On Friday night dinner, it is a tradition that the father followed by the mother place there hands on the children's head and recite a blessing that god will bless and take care of them. There is a different blessing for girls and boys and it's given in order from oldest to youngest sibling. Looking back I thought of the choreography and body gestures that made that ritual what it is. In the video, I am different generations and times in my body. I thought of the gestures I would have used, expanding on the formal ones to give expression to the complexity of the family situation. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Laurie. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects. How do you see your work evolving? Thanks for the interview! In the next couple of months I will be performing in a movement improvisation series at Barbur Gallery, for further information: http://impromovement.wix.com/2015 The project I'm working on now is a video and a performance that deal with the image of a memorial wreath . In the future, I hope to be attentive to the materials in my body and in my surrounding, and to be precise with myself.

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