LandEscape Art Review // Special Issue // Spring 2017

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Anniversary Edition

EDAN GORLICKI MEHDI RAFAJPOUR BETH KRENSKY SPYROS KOUVARAS JOHANNES DEIMLING MAJA SPASOVA RAM SAMOCHA SVETLIN VELCHEV AYELET COHEN , 2016 by

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Edan Gorlicki

Johannes Deimling

Maja Spasova

Spyros Kouvaras

Beth Krensky

Mehdi Rafjpour

Germany

Denmark/Germany

United Kingdom

Greece/ France

USA

France

The philosophy and beliefs surrounding my 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. My work always explores psychological and emotional realms. I believe that through personal experience he can use his work as a mirror for both his audience and himself.

In the past I made stage works on numerous subjects such as communication & human interaction, power & control, hierarchy, sexuality, fantasy, stress, addictions, belonging and perceptions amongst others. Every work of mine has been a personal and touching transparency of what we all as humans go through on a daily basis.

To begin the creative process I form single images. I continuously invite a dialogue between other art forms including poetry, sculpture, architecture, dance, sound, and drawing. My performative Collages are a forum for interdiscipli-nary discourses where performance is used as tool for communication where viewers are invited to take part in the performative process. With a deep interest in the aesthetics and transformational potential of materials and objects, I enter the performative field with a purely visual approach.

My work shows both elements of installation and performance episodically reconstructed events in a milieu which is often city, and the character of more or less integrated forms found in the urban landscape. The point of departure is an idea where the message has both poetic and existential character.

Aesthetically I am at home in the conceptual traditions of art and I always address a larger part of the beholder than merely the cognitive and reflecting aspect. I contemplate the fundamental conditions of life in my art. SMy works are always in relation to a certain room, physical or mental, and to those who take part in it by looking, moving around, listening, feeling, speaking.

My choreographic research consists on a mechanistic approach of movement using at the same time the body as a canvas, as an abstract surface, so that the movement can be in the image and the movement can vibrates the image. I practice a research that focuses on the relation between body, sound and image and I am interest- ing on the sculpture tangibility of the bodies, the prolonged duration of the movement and the aes- thetic precision. It is about a study of abstraction where its strength consists on the intensity between human subject and visual object, between time and space, movement and sound.

Beth Krensky is an associate professor of art education and the Area Head of Art Teaching at the University of Utah.

She is an artist, activist and educator. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally. She is a founding member of the international artist collective, the Artnauts.

Her work is intended to provoke reflection about what is happening in our world as well as to create a vision of what is possible.Her co-authored book, Engaging Classrooms and Communities through Art: A Guide to Designing and Implementing CommunityBased Art Education, was published by AltaMira Press in 2009.

To me, creating comes from an inner need like the hunger. It s a wild feeling and it need to be responded immediately. One can’t learn how to become creative unless s/he feels that need. Then s/he will find his/her way to make it. No need to pass through Academic education although the professional network of art (nowadays) requires it.

Recently I read a phrase from Oscar Wild that makes sense to me: « Education is an admirable thing.

But it is well to remember from time t time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught».

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Mehdi Farajpour lives and works in Paris, France

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Johannes Deimling lives and works in Germany and in Norway

Edan Gorlicki

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lives and works in Mannheim, Germany

Beth Krensky

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lives and works in Salt Lake City, USA

Maja Spasova

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lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Ayelet Cohen Ram Samocha

Ayelet Cohen

Svetlin Velchev

Israel/United Kingdom

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The Netherlands

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.

For several years now, I have been an independent choreographer, while I also serve as a dancer in some of my work. I work in collaboration with composers, creating a combined form of art as dance and music merge into each other.

We are conducting a collaborative process of defining and implementing the idea in two different fields and the final result presents a very unique and authentic artistic statement.The actual process of creation always starts with a specific idea or a particular topic I want to research.

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. We were once singing in my performance Serenity from the program Mind in Motion, but that was one-time case. I am intrigued by the symbiosis between the design of the lights, the choreography and the music, merged together and used to achieve powerful visual effect.

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lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Svetlin Velchev

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lives and works in Amsterdam, The Nederands

Spyros Kouvaras

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lives and works in Paris, France

Ram Samocha

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lives and works in Lonon, United Kingdom 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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Mehdi Farajpour Lives and works in Paris, France Lives and works in Paris, France

YET UNTILTED It s an experimental & cutting

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

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LandEscape meets

Mehdi Farajpour An interview by and

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Hello and thanks for your interest in my work.

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

theatre play written by a poets who has been also a drawer/painter was/is not only provoking my curiosity but was/is also a joy-able effort to understand and try to perceive a huge competence that one artist can develop during years by practicing different forms and disciplines. I love Coctau’s works not as a fan but because he was the one who thought me how not to be afraid of modern classifications, labels, boxes and frames that others (art network) are imposing on an artist. It is hard to walk on borders. People (spatially program managers and curators) are not keen of multifaceted artists. They need to be able to categorise you and your work. During years of working as a non-categorazable artist, I heard very often from the program managers that they do not know how to present my works.

They need to to put you in a box with a table such as dance artist, theatre maker, visual artist,… They even try to to create a new category nowadays labeled Interdisciplinary artist that does not make any sense since it is still not precise.

I studied drama (precisely to become an actor) but after few years of doing as an actor in the city theatre of Tehran, I gave up because I was not satisfied since I was not able to totally express myself in that discipline. So I switched my career to become a theatre director and then a choreographer. I was in high school by that time. When I entered into the university of fine arts (department of Drama), my vision on things has become wider. Theatre had offered me a new language (as a new tool) in which I could talk and act at the same time. Although, with the poetry, I did not have that Acting tool. I do not want to say that the poetry is a passive language compare to the theatre but I can

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carefully say that theatre is more comprehensive form of art and more open towards togetherness than the poetry. This is not a critic against the Poetry. It is only what I feel about it. The poetry is a personal cure to me. I can hide in my room and live with it although living with theatre needs going out of your room, meeting people,…

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

To me, creating comes from an inner need like the hunger. It s a wild feeling and it need to be responded immediately. One can’t learn how to become creative unless s/he feels that need. Then s/he will find his/her way to make it. No need to pass through Academic education although the professional network of art (nowadays) requires it.

Recently I read a phrase from Oscar Wild that makes sense to me: « Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time t time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught ».

Concerning my Persian roots and my background in theatre, I should say that both are permanently present in my thoughts as well as in my works.

But to be more precise, to me my Persian roots does not mean anything except Persian Poetry

2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelo

which is a real treasure. I am not able to avoid or to ignore the poetry in my works. I grew up with it. The poetry is everywhere in Iran, in the streets, in people’s daily conversation, on the walls of cafes, behind tracks, on top of gates,…I

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would even say that all Persian traditional art forms (music, calligraphy, miniature painting, carpet art,‌ are either inspired or directly connected to the poetry. Shortly, it is part of me and it is a part that I like the most and I would

love to conserve. Simply because I can’t imagine a life without poetry. Without poetry life is unliveable, clumsy and ugly. Concerning my theatre background: It is also part of me but not in the form that I studied in the university. I

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2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

created my own theatre form through dance and movement. The same way that I created my own dance style through theatre. What is important to me about theatre is its dramatic aspect, the dramatic moments. I try to create those dramatic

moments in my choreographies. When I work on a theatre play (that does not happen very often), I try to dance the words, the text. Like the one I did called BECKETT (premiered in 2008 in South Korea). In that show, I danced the ÂŤ situation Âť in

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Improvisation is the territory of Performers (actors, dancers, musicians) and it gives them a freedom to exist in a show (performance). It lets them to be part of the creation process not only a moving object on the stage for the sake of choreographer or director. I like to offer my performers (including myself) the freedom of living in the moment although I have to admit that I believe only in conditional improvisation not a wild improvisation.

By saying « conditional improvisation » I mean a « structured sort of improvisation ». To work on this, when I work with a group of dancers, first of all I explain the situation (dramatic moment) to them, then I clarify the type of movement I would need to see. At the end, I explain to them « what I do not want to see ». This very last remark can take a lot of time because here is the moment when I start trimming my dancer’s movement.

After these three steps, the conclusion (basically improvisation), does not look like an improvisation anymore and maybe only me (as the choreographer) and my dancer will know about it.

The audience may think that it was not an improvisation.

About the Chance in my approach: Yes, I have to confess that it has a special place in my works. I even try to predict or open a space for it to happen during creation process as well as during the final performance. Chance is present in my works in two different forms: Good Mistakes and Miraculous random. which the character of play is living (Krapp). I did not play the character itself. The show was too physical although I did not move a lot of the stage. I was on a chair for 40 minutes our of 45 minutes of the show.

I just created a new performance called AFTER ALL putting all these concepts together (CHANCE, RANDOM, NOW&HERE, IMPROVISATION). It was performed only once (at Hiroshima theatre of Barcelona) and I know that if there will be a

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chance to re-perform it, it will become a different performance because of the above-mentioned elements (words).

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

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

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

The Shadow has a powerful meaning in Persian poetry. It is the sign of existence because whatever

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2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

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exist has a shadow, otherwise it does not really exist (from materialistic point of view). At the same time, in Indian beliefs, shadow is considered as the illusion of reality. Our world is a Maya, meaning the shadow or the illusion of another world (which is the real world) and we can’t see it.

This subject are all my inspiration sources to work with.

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

This is a very important question because one of my interests in performing art’s world is about VIEWING. How to watch a performance matters to me. From which angle or which corner my audience are going to watch me also matters.

The very first concept of yet untitled (that was performed once in Toulouse in frame of a video art festival called Traverse-vidéo) was to set up the curtain in the middle of a room (gallery or museum). The performance was supposed to happen only in one side of the curtain. The other side of the curtain (that was also open for public) there was nothing except the shadow of performer and the elements (accessorises). The aim was to make a live video art and share the process of creation with the audience. Later I adapted the performance YET UNTITLED to the new venues where there was no possibility of setting up the curtain in middle so I was obliged to use back-wall as a curtain that also worked for me.

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

When I create a performance, first I imagine it in 3 dimensions. The floor has always an important role in my shows (performances) and it has to be seen.

That is why I mostly prefer to set up my audience in a higher position (like in Greek theatres) where they can easily see the floor. For example in one of my recent shows called CORPS OUBLIÉS (the rite of spring), the choreography was made for/with the video that was being projected on the floor. The venue was a huge abandoned shipyard with a clumsy ground. Or in another show called STOP SPOT, the whole stage including dancers were all covered with newspapers. Also in YET UNTITLED, the floor has got its own role. To me it represent a blank canvas on which I am painting with shadows.

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

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2015, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

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2015, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

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basic. I mean at the end the show/performance is becoming a demonstration for a certain software (light, video or sound,‌).

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

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

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I would say if an artist could be critical about himself/herself, s/he can make that synthesis happen that Peter Tabor has mentioned.

Collaboration between two or more artists is a tricky subject. It can work when there is no intellectual concept behind the project but when it comes to an ideological or an intellectual concept, artistic collaborations can easily fail, simply because we are all different with different views and opinions about life, world, etc. To have a fruitful collaboration, there has to be always leading mind (general idea) other wise I consider it as entertainment not art. I never mix these two.

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

Teaching is one of my passions. Actually that was one of my motivations to start a program called PARIS SUMMER ACADEMY that is growing so fast.

The idea was to let artists teach their personal approches instead of art teachers. Because I believe when an artist is teaching, what is happening in the workshop is an ARTISTIC EXCHANGE but when an art teacher is teaching it

2016, performed at Sala HIROSHIMA of Barcelona

is only TRANSFERRING SKILLS. So my answer o your question about getting inspiration from my students is YES. I should even say that I learn much much more from the participants of my workshops than what they learn from me.

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

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appreciated. During the same period of time, I will be also teaching my workshops EMPTY BODY in a city in south Poland called Opole (that was Grotowski’s native city) where I will re-create a performance DO NOT ENTER!. Besides, and more generally, I would love to focus more on a concept called INSTALLATION FOR DANCE, that I started to work on since few years ago. It is a sort of interactive and interdisciplinary project to bring dance & visual arts together. It is rather a large structure than a concept for one single performance. Actually the very first project in frame of this structure was a performance called DO NOT ENTER ! that I did once in Barcelona (March 2016) and I will re-work on it in Poland in

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

An interview by and

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

E

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

Deimling “nourished� 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

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LandEscape meets

Johannes Deimling An interview by and

, curator , curator

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.

, photo: Monika Sobczak

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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.

, photo: Monika Sobczak

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, Calgary, Canada, Photo by

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BBB Johannes Deimling

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, Calgary, Canada, Photo by

BBB Johannes Deimling

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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

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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 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

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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 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.

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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

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artist which often caused quite a confusion inside of me. With this first teaching opportunity an incredible interesting process started which 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.

I have to admit there is too little space for to say more about this project as it has grown

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enormously since its foundation. But the readers are invited to look at the website of PAS | Performance Art Studies ( ) and get in contact with PAS if they have any further questions or are interested in taking part in one of the studies.

I am happy that my schedule is quite filled this year and that I have the chance to continue working on my cycle ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’ 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.

An interview by and

, curator , curator

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

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he 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. In the past Edan has made stage works on numerous subjects such as hierarchy, sexuality, fantasy, stress, addictions, belonging and perceptions amongst others.

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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 and

, curator , curator

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

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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.

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.

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

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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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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.

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…

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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?

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

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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.

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.

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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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.

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

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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.

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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Beth Krensky Lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

An artist's statement

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

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

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

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LandEscape meets

Beth Krensky An interview by Melissa C. Hilborn, curator and Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com

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

The social psychologist, Carol Gilligan, insists that we not only listen to what someone is saying, but understand who is speaking—in whose voice, in what body, from what time period and vantage point.

With that in mind, I’ll share a little bit of information about me, because the circumstances of my life have shaped (and continue to shape) who I am. I was born in Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s—a time of great tumult but also of great hope and possibility for the United States. Activism is part of me, and has been since I first

absorbed the consciousness of my era. It has taken different forms—as a front-line activist, as a researcher tracking the far right, as an educator and as an artist.

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

That said, my own cultural roots inform my practice, even if I have not always been conscious of this. A few years ago, the art critic Doris Bittar wrote about my work. She stated that: Beth Krensky metaphorically travels to [her] ancestral well and plucks out what is most relevant. What she finds varies, from stories and objects to images and personas. She reinvents her respective cultural and ethnic milieus. … Eventually the things or detritus she has collected conjure up parables/stories that become infused with icon-like gravitas. These icons in new contexts create a space for

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teaching and learning. Krensky’s pedagogic repertoire segues into formal strategies that create templates for survival, if and when the ground underneath shifts yet again (Bittar, 2007, p. 8) I find that being a member of a diaspora tribe has meant that the “templates for survival” Bittar wrote about are barely under the surface of my existence.

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

In 1981, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua edited a collection of writings by radical women of color entitled This Bridge Called My Back. The bridge metaphor is used often in the book referring to women of color being the bridge that is thrown over a river or a tormented history for people to walk over. Twenty-one years later, in 2002, Anzaldua and Analouise Keating edited the anthology This Bridge We Call Home in which Anzaldua writes that "Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits and connectors that connote transitioning,

Portable Sanctuary

crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, A Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio.

Transformations occur in this inbetween space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-intransition space lacking clear

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boundaries....[L]iving in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. (p. 1)" I have come to feel at home in this intermediary space. I try very hard to hold that space open for my students. I believe this is where true risk taking occurs and it

is within this free space where envisioning can happen. Envisioning is the first step in transformation.

I think that borders and boundaries are not static. We can realign these groupings if we choose. It is a powerful place from which to create work and to live.

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Metaphysical Handcart

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is an Israeli and one of the founders of the Parents Circle— Families Forum, a group consisting of hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost a member of their immediate family in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She lost her 13 year-old daughter to a suicide bomber in 1997. When representatives from Netanyahu’s

government came to offer their condolences, she left the room. In a 2001 speech to Women in Black, Dr. PeledElhanan explained why she would not sit with them.

For me, the other side, the enemy, is not the Palestinian people. For me the struggle is not between Palestinians and Israelis,

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realize that we get to create, and shift, classifications. I no longer accept predetermined borders between people, ideas and places.

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

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

I don’t really have a usual process; however, I do often base my work on something that has social or environmental significance, is authentic and is conceptually rooted in a sociohistorical history of place. Sometimes I gather information for years before I start to create and sometimes I create without even knowing why.

nor between Jews and Arabs. The fight is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. My people are those who seek peace.

Where is the Road to the Road was created for an exhibition at the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah. The performance was inspired by a line in his poem, A Noun Sentence. I was especially drawn to the second half of the poem:

Peled-Elhanan’s words give me pause and cause me to ask who are my people, and beyond that, where are my people? This quote changed my life and made me

…Wishing for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me or ahead of me, barefoot. Where is my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where is futility?

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Where is the road to the road? And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present tense, where are we? Our talk a predicate and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam of speech the dots on the letters, wishing for the present tense a foothold on the pavement ... 93 These words cause me to ponder where we are headed during this time of futility, growing hatred and unrest. We seem to be wandering aimlessly looking for the road to the road that can lead us in a new direction.

This piece is intended as a performative gesture for me to find my way as well as for others to engage in the metaphorical journey. In particular, I am referencing the contested land of Israel and Palestine. For me, it has become a metaphor for the multiple layers of shared existence over time and place and how we choose to interact with such a layered history. I think the time has come to forge a new road, one created by walking together.

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

My work is intended to have multiple entry points and layers of meaning. The work both references something that has happened (often a difficult and uncomfortable event) as well as an opening for a possibility to occur. I try to create opportunities for the participants to engage with the work so that they can envision a possibility for

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themselves or beyond. My process is very ritualistic whereby I attempt to infuse the object with meaning, making it a literal metaphor.

Where Is the Road to the Road?, also inquires into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a

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contamination between the inner landscape and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

I use art as a tool for highlighting and creating human experiences that are both shared and unique. I am known for my writing and practice as a community-based

artist/educator, so it should not come as a surprise that I see the relationship between artists and the public sphere as inextricably linked. Artists wield tremendous power. It is no accident that artists are some of the first people to be detained, arrested, tortured and exiled when oppressive regimes come to power.

The question is what do we, as artists,

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decide to do with our power? Do we work within the confines of the high art world?

Do we take our work into the everexpanding context of artmaking where every venue is open to interaction through art? What are the topics we address? What change do we strive to create through art?

What type of bravery is needed for such acts?

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

Benjamin Coleman, the Associate Curator of American Art at the Detroit Institute of Art wrote about my work’s relationship to

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history or significance. I perfomed Metaphysical Handcart on the Salt Flats—a wide expanse of whiteness and nothingness near the Great Salt Lake. As the cart makes its way through a landscape, everything it holds jiggles and moves.

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

the land. He stated, “With open-ended guidelines and a light footprint, Krensky offers a model for artist-driven environmental activism in the realm of lived practice.”

My work sanctifies the natural world and at times indicts those who have degraded it. I choose specific locations because of their

Another interesting project that has particularly impressed us and on which we would like to discuss is entitled Tashlich, a word that means “casting off” in Hebrew. Your inquiry into the possibility of change and renewal accomplishes an effective investigation about the relationship between perception, memory and personal imagination, to challenge the viewers' parameters. What is the role of memory in your work? We are particularly interested in how you consider memory and its evokative role in showing an alternative way to escape and overcome the recurrent reality.

The arts offer the possibility of transformation on both an individual and societal level by opening up a free space where anything is possible. It is this free space or possible world that allows people to name themselves, envision a different

Tashlich

Tashlich

Beth Krensky

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reality, and engage in the re-making of their world. I think that memory and imagination are linked and inform each other. Memory and possibility are so intertwined in my work that it is often difficult to know which is which. I have my own memories, yet I also draw from ancestral memories as well as the memories that land and place hold. Many of my objects are intended to create new openings and trajectories for some of these memories to either be recalled or reimagined. I have made pilgrimages to massacre sites to pay homage as well as to honor the memories that are entombed there.

We like the way you structured Skirt of Sorrow and Forgiveness: it leaves space for the spectators to replay the ideas you explore in their own intimate lives, letting them become emotionally involved in what you are attempting to communicate.

As Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Do you think that the role of the artist has changed these days with the new global communications and the new sensibility created by new media?

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

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

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

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

I began teaching in the urban core of Boston, learning and working alongside young artists who taught me grace and hope in the face of extreme odds. They have remained my greatest teachers and still inspire me. Years later, I entered the academy to teach future community leaders and educators about equity and justice through the arts and education.

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

I strive for my work as an artist and educator to engage in the type of restless and hopeful inquiry that Freire believed had the power to reinvent—or perhaps repair— the world.

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Over your career you have extensively exhibited in several occasions, both in the United States and abroad, including your solo Tashlich, in Great Salt Lake: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

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

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

My artistic practice is a living practice — one that supports sustainability of individuals and the planet — and is a flexible entity that responds to different

Where is the Road to the Road

contexts and ideas. Recent political changes in the United States have pushed me to respond.

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

I am also working on an interactive social

Beth Krensky

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practice piece, The Store of Wishes that references commerce in the art world as well as the idea of “store” as a repository. I am creating a store that sells and stores wishes—both the remembrance of and hope for these desires. In addition, I am editing a book on youth, art and social change because we desperately need these

examples to inspire us to act—to use our art as a tool for imagination and change.

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

Photos by Josh Blumental

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Maja Spasova Lives and works in

and

M

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maja Spasova

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

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LandEscape meets

Maja Spasova An interview by and

, curator , curator

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

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

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

I grew up in Bulgaria during the communism, where the visual arts were the most controlled activity after politics. To be an artist there meant all possible

privileges if one would follow the aesthetic and ideological norms of the ruling party and a practical suicide if one would ignore them.

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

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

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

I found myself between two contrasting aesthetic systems. Not only Art was different in the West, but I could see even that there were hidden economic

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

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interests in the web of curators, critics, gallerists, collectors; a tired culture bureaucracy; murky financial methods used by private art galleries. And a lot of naivete about the context, political and social, in which artists live, ignorance about the role of the intellectuals in the society.

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

I felt I didn’t belong to this art system either. I had to create my own environment in which I could blossom.

Without having any previous connections – I had lived on another planet my first 25 years - I went straight forward to art institutions, knocked on doors, doors opened. I was so lucky to meet people who believed in me and my ideas and supported my work.

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

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

Like a giant tree with its roots all over the world or like an octopus with thousands of arms dipped in all oceans, the artist can be anywhere, on any soil and with any creature, get nurture where ever he needs, experience and be part of the endless multitude in the world, and create, create, create.

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

RUBY, 2015 Photographer: John Nelander, Courtesy: Vandalorum Art Museum

realize that such multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

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

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

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

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

The use of language, randomness and chance, classic materials, ephemeral substances, my own person, the audience which engages knowingly or unknowingly,

socio-psychological and other processes and sound, a lot of sound, all this is like the use of the different colors on the palette of a painter.

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

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

My concepts are based on visions. The ideas arrive from an unknown source and present themselves as already

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accomplished works of art although completely immaterial – just images in my mind.

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

The rest is organization, funding, infrastructure, physical work – components and steps needed for the materialization of the concept. During this secondary process also the verbalization of the idea occurs.

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

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

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

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

For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected RUBY, an extremely interesting site-specific installation, that have been exhibited at the Vandalorum Art Museum and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your practice is its capability of establishing direct relations with the viewers who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship: when walking our readers through the genesis of the RUBY would you tell us something about your usual process and set up?

RUBY came to life 2015. A drop from outer space, or a drop of outer space, it levitates 50 cm above the

ground suspended by a number of tiny ropes. Its semitransparent surface radiates red light. A Dolby surround system transmits a rhythmic heart beat creating a meditative atmosphere, which explodes each half an hour in a short intensive female scream.

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

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

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

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

“Art is boring” or “I don’t understand art” people can complain at the museum/ the gallery/the white cube, where the four walls very often are a barrier between life itself and art. By working in the urban environment, by exposing the idea to a direct confrontation with the public and by inviting the public to become part of the creating of the art work, I aim at art which is part of life or at life as art. In MY DARLING each visitor created and participated in a performance of the great human saga – the life as a wandering in search for love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With BINDU, 2014 it was different. After a month in Kathmandu the idea appeared with all its power. I was trying to postpone and waited till the last day of my stay, but there was no way not to do it. Without announcing in advance and without any permission from the city authorities, I just stepped at the spot on Durbar Square in front of the Parliament and did it.

The most amazing thing was that after the first hour the audience wanted to be part of the artwork too, one by one people entered the round surface made of red hot chili powder and stood in its center.

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

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

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

As you have remarked once, your works are always in relation to a certain room, physical or mental, and to those who take part in it by looking, moving around, listening, feeling, speaking. In other words, your practice seems to move from experience to produce an augmented experience: so we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

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

Our experience of the world is complex. Our sense of time is open and abstract, we allow reversals and curves and movements of time across sequences and spatial segments beyond our immediate experience.

And then we have the memory from an experience, and memory is changeable, it can be revised and reshaped at any time. Exactly as history is being rethought and rewritten on regular basis.

The body of works MIGRATIONS, 2010, 2011, 2012 was partly born from my personal experience. First MIGRATIONS, 2010 – a site-specific installation at Palazio Mosquera, Spain in collaboration with Anna Spasova. 200 shoes made of different types of white paper and cotton thread stepping on the surface of crashed transparent glass. The following year 2011 the very same shoes made a dangerous journey on the river Manzanares el Real – only a few managed to survive, most of them drowned on the way. Finally in 2012 the documentary film material from the performance was edited and the short film titled MIGRATIONS became an independent art work: https://youtu.be/89Tmi6zOPP4 To be a refugee is to achieve the absolute zero point in one’s existence. The vulnerability and the dependence on help from others in such a moment can be only compared with being a newborn baby but left without parents and loving care. I was spared the barbarism and cruelty migrants often face as as they seek sanctuary, still my experience was very difficult on emotional level, even the lightest steps could cause bleeding in the heart.

LIPSTICK CRUCIFIXION, 2007, a short performance in front of the film camera, my love for lipstick and red colour, the beauty show turning into a performance

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of a clown, then a gesture belonging to the Orthodox Church – all these personal experience, though not only my own but of countless number of women from many many generations: https://youtu.be/GPhM-WJa04I LYK [LUC] – ONION, 2014 is a series of 10 photo images where I give an interpretation of existential phenomenas using onion. Lyk, pronounced Luc, is the Bulgarian word for Onion. In 2014 while in Nepal I met the South Korean artist JUJU and both of us, being stressed by life conditions in Kathmandu, created a short poem consisting of 10 words – 10 existential issues, an attempt to refocus on what was important in the midst of the chaos we were experiencing. Then we interpreted the poem’s ten words each of us in her own way using onion.

Culinary use, medical properties, an image for the multiple layers of universe – Onion everywhere. The simplicity of the material combined with the weight of the ten words and the personal experience at the concrete moment was very attractive to me.

Reminding us of Jean Tinguely's generative works, the multimedia installation Bright Shiny Me shows an intimate symbiosis between Art and Technology, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Sculpture as well as of the interactive nature offered by Technology. 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. We are sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and seemingly Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your opinion about this?

We cannot perceive what we don’t know or more exactly: what art hasn’t expressed yet. Art is a succession of ideas, and then there is the succession of attempts to bring the ideas to another level of existence, which Technology and Science are the instruments for. Art and Technology, but even Science are going to assimilate each other – what else is Science if not a child of Art which has to obey certain extremely rigid rules and norms dictated by the present paradigm.

Our satellites, airplanes, Internet – these means didn’t exist for people years ago, only as ideas in art, literature, myths. Take the idea of flying. Since the beginning of time art was full with winged creatures, angels and gods

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

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

– all of them could take off like birds. Then Daedalus and Icarus came and then Bladud, the king of Britons, and others followed – they all made a pair of wings and flew. Wax, feathers, metal, kerosene, solar power – Technology and Science bring ideas embedded in art to a different level of physical materialization. Soon we will have Centaurs and Medusas and the like running around. Once having existence in art and myth, they will be reborn as children of future Biotechnology and Bioscience.

BRIGHT SHINY ME at University of Virginia, USA 2013 an interactive surface consisting of 4500 elements, an oversized and always alive impressionistic painting – the 4500 mirrors, elevated 30 cm above the ground, are in a continuous motion caused by wind and by the low frequencies of the sound composition. Thus the image of the sky is replicated 4500 times by these segments as they move independently of each other.

To this is to add the continuous changes in the appearance of the sky itself – the clouds passing by are under constant evolvment and disolvement, the

airplanes with their different paths, the birds flying in unknown directions, the stars – both fixed and falling – are moving too.

Multiple layers of changes and speed create an unpredictable and very dynamic outcome, yet the work has a meditative serene character. The Mexican composer Luis Hilario Arevalo collaborated with me on the sound piece here.

When creating a a dream-like atmosphere, The Golden Braid, a site-specific urban installation for the South tower of Lund Cathedral, also inquires into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a contamination the inner and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

Art gives birth to ideas much before ideas become expressed by rational mind and language and thus serves us in a fundamental way by permitting

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tion for the sound composition with Luis Hillario Arevalo

construction of unthinkable parts. Art is the place of creating consciousness and conscience, the engine of change, the program for the future. It is the Utopiamaking, an expression of extremes in human thought and paradoxes of feeling. Still few have access to art as it has been kept inside, sheltered in an ivory tower, confined to the private sphere, the white cube, the specialist.

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

THE GOLDEN BRAID, 2015 deals also with contradictions. The braid 27 m long hangs from the South Tower of Lund Cathedral Sweden, almost reaching the ground. The golden colour vibrates with

life against the grey stone wall, a feast for eyes and soul on the austere facade.

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

Rapunzel invites for a heroic action. Who is the witch?

And who is willing to climb the long and risky way up to the top of the tower “only for love?”

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

Over your long career you have exhibited in several occasions, including your participation at the prestigious Venice Biennial and you recent performance Calling Your Name, at the Djerassi Foundation, in California. One of the hallmarks of

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

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

I feel connected with the audience before we have met, it is always present. Already from the very first moment when an idea appears I can sense the presence of the future viewer-participator-co-creator.

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

I always look for a fresh way to give form to the idea in both complex and simple way, in outspoken visual terms. Though I feel connected with the audience, it is impossible to predict in advance its reaction. Positive or negative, “like it” or “hate it,” actually this is unimportant. The artwork can be very vulnerable when exposed in public urban space and I find there is an incredible strength within this vulnerability. But the audience participation usually is a crucial component of the creative process, of the birth of the work itself. The worst could be if the audience reacts with “I don’t care” and “I don’t want to do it.” This has never happened to me and if it ever happens it would be an indicator that I have done a serious mistake.

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

Minimizing my power as the artist, I give the authority to the participants. Thus I create a kind of raw material, which can be experienced, thought of and recombined in many different ways. TODAY is a sound installation based on multiple voices and random dates from past, present and future. Several channels of non-linear time fragmented to presumably exact entities, slowly create a volume of information, finally to dissolve into an absence of time. The short film CALLING YOUR NAME

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

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QUESTION MARK, 2007 Photographer: Hakan Lindblad Site-specific urban installation – on the roof of The Royal Academy of Fine Art in Stockholm; inflatable with sizes 6 x 1 x 10 m, synthetic canvas, air aggregate, electric power.

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Maja Spasova

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was shot during several séances with the fellows of Djerassi as actors. On 24 July during Djerassi Open Studios I realized the performance CALLING YOUR NAME where the visitors were invited to take part.

After a short presentation of the idea and just a few words of instruction, the participants were free to create their own interpretations of CALLING YOUR NAME. Logically the choreography was unpredictable and the outcome – a complete surprise. Flow, multitude and mobility became the characteristics of this new work.

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

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

The result, though based on documentary material, is a mixture of fiction and document, myth and reality. It has been a very difficult work, emotionally and artisticly.

The project ATTENTION! YOU ARE LEAVING THE HUMAN ZONE will take place in different cities during the coming couple of years. And to mention as well – two major trilogies are on the way: 3 x RED DOT is a series of performances in urban environment staged around the globe. Red Dot comes from the vocabulary of contemporary warfare, but it can be found also as a concept in ancient Hindu and Buddhist thought. DROPS IN THE OCEAN / IN THE VOID / NEW MOON – three ambitious projects which I have been carrying in my mind since a few years.

An interview by and

, curator , curator

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Ayelet Cohen Lives and works in Israel

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

In 2012, I have founded MakesounD Music & Dance Projects, a troupe that focuses on connection between music and dance, turning them into one united language. I work in collaboration with composers, creating a combined form of art as dance and music merge into each other.

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

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

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

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

Ayelet Cohen

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LandEscape meets

Ayelet Cohen An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator landescape@europe.com

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

The major beginning of my journey was essentially my academic studies in the . It was there that I was exposed to composition classes for the first time, and there that I had my first opportunity as a professional dancer to experience works by the country’s leading choreographers. My foundations, both in music and performance, are classical. Until the age of 17, I studied classical ballet only and dreamed of becoming a professional ballet teacher. Only after I experienced modern dance and encountered the field of choreography in college did I understand the extent that it enables me to express myself and how important the “world of the stage” is to me. Suddenly, I discovered myself in a totally different light; it was then that I understood that this is my place.

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

The choice to also perform as a dancer in the pieces that I create stems from my desire to build maximum trust in the creative process and to be

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Ayelet Cohen

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genuine in my movement language by bringing my true self into the entire process. I can feel, using my body, what is right for me, via all of the senses and not just visually.

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

I am sure that my classical roots play a central role in the aesthetic considerations in my work. I believe in hard work and proper technique, and I encourage myself and my students to strive for these goals.

There are those who define my style as conservative in terms of my perception of the body. Indeed, I try to present classical elements in my works, out of a desire to reconnect to those elements, to different figurations and ideas. I would like to believe that these same aesthetics can be used to serve the theme that each of my pieces explores.

In Israel, I live a religious lifestyle, which means that there are subjects, for example sexuality, that do not correspond with my beliefs and that I will not broach. This would seem to pose limitations on my freedom of expression (as a result of my own choices), yet I feel that this is what pushes me to explore deeper and search for innovation and even rebellion from a simpler and more conventional place. The cultural conservatism that I grew up with has definitely shaped me into becoming who I am today as an artist, and I try to find my modernism within that conservatism, both ideologically and visually. Instead of running away from that conservatism and structure, I place it on a new background with a specific concept, so that the aesthetics and technique serve the idea that the piece seeks to explore. I find myself making analogies from many areas of my life in my choreography, especially musical analogies that lead me throughout this entire process.

Ayelet Cohen

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Ayelet Cohen

Ayelet Cohen

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

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

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

Following this stage, which ends pretty quickly in the studio, there isn’t much more improvisation involved, except for perhaps in the content that each dancer adds, in terms of their character and the figuration of their body. The involvement of emotion in the works stems from the sincerity of all of the elements involved in the piece. I do not deal with a specific narrative or with dictating specific types of relationships for the dancers; rather, they emerge

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from the involvement with the movement alone, and from the inspiration of the music. we have For this special edition of selected , an interesting project that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your captivating investigation about is the way you provided the visual results of your analysis with : while walking our readers through of , would you shed light to your main sources of inspiration?

The solo piece “The Map” is a piece that is especially dear to me and whose creation challenged me perhaps more than anything else I’ve ever done to date. I never thought that I would create a solo for myself; rather, I was interested in always involving several dancers on the stage.

Despite the fact that I was part of them, I tried to leave myself available in order to see things from the outside. (This was one of the reasons, for example, that in “Windmill,” I chose to enter only at the end of the piece.)

Composer Oded Zehavi contacted me with an especially challenging offer to create a solo that I would perform to a flute repertory that he composed. It took me a long time to internalize his music, understand how I want to approach it and how to build a dialogue with it that was right for me. Only then did I head for the studio. For me, the inspiration came entirely from the music itself.

After I started physically working on the choreography, Oded added two additional parts to the repertory and things changed accordingly.

What guided me the entire time were the feelings that were evoked within me from the music itself.

I think that this commitment to the music is what the audience connects to in these performances.

Perhaps they can feel that they are part of a secret dialogue between me and the music, without defining the piece as such outright. I would like to

hope that since it is very clear that the choice of movement on stage is based on a statement, and there is a reason for everything happening on stage, a sense of trust is created on the physical level as well.

Perhaps it is possible to say that the relationship created with the audience is reflective. This is very linear work, but it is also extremely charged and emotional, allowing each viewer to connect to one of the emotions that are raised in the piece and identify with it. The sense of closeness created between me and the music enables contemplation of the subject in the most simple, and therefore most complete, way. In addition to the music, I am constantly searching for interesting structures as a form of inspiration, in natural situations such as rows of ants on the ground, the flight of birds in the sky, or various landscapes. Architecture captivates me, even the simplest kinds; in general, I find inspiration in noticing the small elements. I try to search for specific situations, enlarge them with a magnifying glass and announce them aloud.

There are so many wonderful choreographers and artists around the world who I hold in esteem that if I attempt to name all of my sources of inspiration from the dance world, I don’t think I’ll ever finish the interview…I will mention that, not related to choreographers themselves, I enjoy drawing inspiration for emotion through movement from performance dancers who take physical elements and transform them into one big emotion. A major example of this, in my opinion, is the former prima ballerina Aurelie Dupont, who, despite this classical genre that poses as superhuman, expresses something so human and so authentic. provides the viewers with an immersive experience capable of challenging their perceptual parameters. How do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?

Ayelet Cohen

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As a choreographer, I believe that taking the viewer’s experience into consideration is an inseparable part of the creative process.

I believe that the moment that the audience is no longer considered as a factor in the art itself, this immediately causes disconnection and the audience feels unwanted. I once heard an acquaintance who has barely any exposure to the world of dance commenting that he doesn’t attend dance performances because the few times that he has watched shows, he felt that he wasn’t smart enough to understand what he was seeing on stage. So he simply doesn’t try anymore, and he is in fact a very intelligent person. I think consequences such as this are a shame. In the same vein, the most moving feedback I ever received was after one of my first shows, performing “Between Four Bows”,the first piece that I ever performed independently. An elderly woman approached me after the performance with a wide smile and shining face and said, “Yours I understood. Not the others, but yours I understood. Thank you.” (I was part of a show with three other choreographers who presented their work.)

When I created “The Map,” for example, the challenge I faced was in finding that channel that would allow other eyes and ears to be part of my conversation with the music. This channel exists, in my opinion, by virtue of the fact that every small detail that I have chosen has a defined reason, so there is a clear structure and very genuine exposure that allows other people to enter.

The connection to the music is perhaps the most intrinsic element of my works. Pursuant to the previous question, one of the first questions that I always ask myself is, “What is that magical

element that enables music to connect so easily with people?” After all, it is the art that has the most “fans;” something about music must be touching upon the senses and emotions in such an active, facilitating way.

There are so many things that can be learned from the world of music. For example, just as playing a certain note produces a specific sound, it is also possible to apply the same use of precision to a physical activity – to know exactly which note you would like to play. In addition, several bodies moving together create harmony – just as entirely different musical instruments produce a joint harmony when played simultaneously.

The improvisation in my creative process only takes place at the practical stage, when I come to the studio. As I mentioned, I first design and shape the idea and the structure that I will use, and only then do I come to the studio and begin to explore different motifs of movement. Perhaps the fact that the idea is defined from the very beginning is what creates the linear sensation and the well defined spatial order.

When I begin to search for lines of movement, I will first define the start and end points that I would like to reach while on stage. Only afterward do I try to actually move to that point.

The spatial-geographic direction is what leads my movement.

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Ayelet Cohen

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, establishing with the viewers: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "

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

To me, Thomas Deman’s declaration is thought provoking, because it contains a great amount of symbolism that enables individuality and free interpretation. However, I agree that since today, everything has already been seen on stage and it’s almost impossible to perform something new, especially in symbolism, there must be deeper content alongside it. Perhaps it is correct that it’s not enough to suffice with it as is. In dance, when the dancers are the object present before the viewer, the question is whether the very fact that they are each different people, or the fact that the dancer himself is different than the viewer, is enough to introduce a different aspect into the symbolism?

In my opinion, there must be some connecting theme that is deeper and creates a sense of closeness between the circle of dancers and viewer. I do not like to define the concept of the narrative in my works; rather, the structure itself is what is ultimately important to me. However, I do insist that the structure serve the objective – the content. In everything that we do, there is an element of exploring the psychological element, so as long as it is clear what subject is being explored, this level will be evoked and the interpretation will follow.

For example, in my last work, “One of TwoThirds,” I addressed the musical term “chord,” which is seemingly very formative and perhaps even symbolic in its structure. But in fact, at an advanced stage of the creative process, I realized that the entire piece was actually my interpretation of relationships. By exploring the space and the formative influence, an entire

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Ayelet Cohen

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narrative emerged without my having defined it from the start. That narrative that develops as the creation advances and not as its foundation point is in my opinion very critical and essential at the final stage, and it is what determines the final “color� of the piece. I think that if I would have tried to work in the opposite order, I would have received a result that was not at all authentic.

Therefore, I wait for the narrative to simply appear out of all of the other elements chosen, instead of dictating the course of events.

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

Essentially, it takes an element from a very complete area and connects it to something else from a different area that is also complete in its own right. When the connection between them is productive, something new is created, that does not simply stand on one familiar base.

The mutual productivity that takes place when working together creates a process that could not have ever been achieved through solo work. This is a process that demands thinking outside the box. As I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, my choice to connect to a composer stemmed from my desire to decipher the secret of the emotional accessibility in music, and the analogy that can be made regarding group dynamics between musical instruments and dancers.

I learn a great deal from watching the stages of the work process of composition and recording. With Oded Zehavi,

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for example, this is my third year that we are working together, and I feel that he understands my way of thinking better than various dance professionals, precisely because both of us are connected to the same emotional elements that we aim for in our work.

This way of thinking of “seeing the bigger picture” in composing music, as the “leader” responsible for several instruments, pushes me to take a step back all the time to see the overall image. It is clear that ultimately, this is a dance performance, at least according to the visual meaning of the field, but I have no doubt that what defines dance for me is the music that accompanies the movement. Not necessarily the performance itself, but the genuine movement itself.

The knowledge that an audience will be watching the performance has a strong influence upon me. This does not mean that I create for the audience, or approach the creative process with the intent of supplying something to the audience. I think that I am able to remain true to myself and to what I would like to convey in each performance, without taking various public opinions into account. However, there is definitely something in the creative process that is very aware of the presence of the audience who will inevitably be there. I am sure that if a situation arises in which I have finished a show and the audience didn’t connect in any way and didn’t find the opening where I intended for them to enter my body and my emotions, then I have failed as a choreographer.

Perhaps this is the reason that I pay so much attention in my works to “subject and variation.” I desire to repeatedly develop the statement that I seek to convey in a few different ways. Like in education, there is the student who will understand one method of

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Ayelet Cohen

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explanation, and the student who will understand the idea if you present it differently. As a teacher, you repeat yourself and seek to show all of the different ways that exist to explain the same idea. I aim for the emotional channel which, as I claimed in my answers to the previous questions, is very accessible in the musical world. The formative perspective, the angles of the body, and of one body next to another, as well as the broad perspective of how to situate the images on the stage serve as a door into the world of emotion.

I believe that because the structure is clear (even if the viewer doesn’t necessarily understand it, for it is definitely present), the emotion and logic facilitate the dialogue with the audience. The moment I hear from an audience that they remember entire images from a performance, I know that I have met my objective.

Oded and I are currently working on a new duet (a solo performance alongside a harpist). The premiere is scheduled for the end of February 2017 in Israel.

Looking ahead, I see myself working on launching a full length show (until now, I have created performances that were approximately 20 minutes long). My aspirations are to continue to create in conjunction with first rate composers and to create a performance for a large number of dancers, in a way that will allow me to freely use spatial formation. I also dream of appearing on various stages around the world with my works. My biggest dream is to create a performance for a large ensemble accompanied by a live orchestra. In the meantime, I am deeply grateful for what I have achieved during these four years, and to everyone who I have had the privilege of meeting and involving in this process on the way. I anticipate the next four years and promise that I will work hard.

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

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Svetlin Velchev Lives and works in The Hague, USA

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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.

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Svetlin Velchev

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

LandEscape meets

Svetlin Velchev An interview by and

, curator , curator

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.

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

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Svetlin Velchev

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.

Monologues / Dialogues is a spectacular show in two parts with a bunch of incredible artists participating a result of the initiative ‘The Boiler Room’ 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 ‘Aluminium’ in December 2014, which was the greatest accomplishment for this creation so far.

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.

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Svetlin Velchev

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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.

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 can’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.

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 2017.

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Spyros Kouvaras Lives and works in Athens (GR) and in Paris (FR)

An artist's statement

S

ynthesis 748 Company was established in May 2008 in Paris (FR), by the choreographer and performer Spyros Kouvaras. Powered by the National Dance Center of France and the French Ministry of Culture, the company has an international course over the years. Spyros Kouvaras’ works have been exhibited and performed in theaters, galleries, museums and festivals in various countries in- cluding France, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Argentina and Colombia. The Company has received warm reviews and has been referenced in international contemporary art publications. Since 2015, Synthesis 748 is also based in Athens (GR). « My choreographic research consists on a mechanistic approach of movement using at the same time the body as a canvas, as an abstract surface, so that the movement can be in the image and the movement can vibrates the image.

I practice a research that focuses on the relation between body, sound and image and I am interest- ing on the sculpture tangibility of the bodies, the prolonged

duration of the movement and the aesthetic precision.

It is about a study of abstraction where its strength consists on the intensity between human subject and visual object, between time and space, movement and sound. An important area of creation is the approach of art and philosophy as well as art and science.

The kinetic vocabulary of the company focuses on the development of a personal choreographic language which deviates from the recognizable forms of contemporary dance and usually takes a hybrid form.

My performances do not tell a story. The scenic installations that always make up the starting point of the global composition are characterized by the creation of timeless spaces, by the creation of situations and fields which are interpreted more by the unconscious and less by the logic. The company’s works, often like choreographic installations in movement, approaches the scenic space like an exhibition room, the performance itself like an exhibited object and propose to the audience the role of the visitor ».

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LandEscape meets

Spyros Kouvaras An interview by Katherine Williams, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Choreographer and performer Spyros Kouvaras' focuses his research on the sculpture tangibility of the bodies, the prolonged duration of the movement and the aesthetic precision to consider the vital relationship between direct experience and visual interpretation. In his OPUS I # temporality that we'll be discussing in the following pages he trigger the viewers' perceptual parameters to draw them through a multilayered, unconventional experience. One of the most impressive aspects of Kouvaras' work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating timeless spaces, by the creation of situations and fields which are interpreted more by the unconscious and less by the logic: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

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

You studied Graphic Arts in Athens, contemporary dance and choreography-performance in France and you also graduated from European Academy of Physical Theatre in Paris: how did these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum due to the relationship between your Greek roots and your current life in France inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem in general?

When I started to study Graphic Design, I soon realized that it interested me more as an artistic background and less as a professional practice.

At the same time I was always interested in movement, so I turned my orientation to contemporary dance because I found in it a huge horizon of an artistic freedom. My studies and personal research in Graphic Design, Fine Arts and History of Art, were for me a very important knowledge which I used and I am still using in my choreographic work. I believe that my 10 years of living, searching and creating in Paris will always characterize my artistic work in the future, even now that I have moved to Athens. I mean that living and working in Paris for a long period as an artist is something which marks you forever. My Greek roots also exist in my works but more in a subconscious way. I used to look always forward in my life but of course memory and past are welcomed and necessary elements for the artistic creation.

You are a versatile artist and the results of you choreographic research conveys together a coherent sense of unity that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://vimeo.com/synthesis748 in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such approach is

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Spyros Kouvaras

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the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

I think yes. Personally, I couldn't exist just as a choreographer and performer. I first feel like an artist in a holistic way and secondarily like a choreographer and dancer. In my choreographic research I focus on the relationship between human subject and visual object, between body and image using at the same time the music as a link point between them. I am also interested in the connection between art, science and philosophy, so all these influences lead me to create hybrid dance performances. When I teach or give a workshop, I ask my students: Are you a dancer?

Ok, you have to visit contemporary art exhibitions. Are you a visual artist? Ok, then you have to see contemporary dance performances.

And of course, you must listen to music and study History of Art and philosophy in a personal way. I mean, becoming an artist is a component of many things and influences. The «richer» your background is, the «richer» is your work.

For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected OPUS I # temporality, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your effective inquiry into the notion of physicality is the way you have been capable of creating a concrete aesthetics from direct experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of OPUS I # temporality would you tell us something about your usual process and set up?

When I was in Athens in October 2014, I visited the third part of the visual project «MetroLogos» at Owl Art Space Gallery. The project examined the relationship between art and science and I was impressed of the art works of the exhibition and the artists who

participated. So, I started to talk with Alexandra Nasioula, visual artist and curator of the project, about my participation in the project. Our common desire to explore the idea of a choreographic exhibition led me to work on «OPUS I # temporality» and I started to work on a solo «in partnering» with the 15 visual works which were exhibited in the gallery. I also asked the composer Giorgos Kouvaras to compose a live musical environment for my performance, so thus to create a sound vibration to the whole project.

OPUS I # temporality is centered on the idea of time as movement with the sense of change and being: we have highly appreciated the way your approach goes beyond a merely interpretative aspect of the contexts you refer to. As Janet Cardiff and Olafur Eliasson do in their works, «OPUS I # temporality» shows unconventional aesthetics in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

What I do mostly is choreographic installations, « performances which dance » than dance performances. I use to approach the body as an exhibited object and the object as a choreographed subject. I think there is a clear metaphor on this process, in a way that I like to change the stereotypes, the roles of the things, to give them an allegorical dimension. When I perform in a theatrical context, I want the viewer to have a sense of being a visitor in an exhibition room and when I perform in a gallery or in a museum, I want the visitor to have a sense of a theatrical viewer.

3 mountains not to climb inquiries into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a

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contamination the inner and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

«3 Mountains not to Climb», is a performance which examines the inner and the outside, the presence and the absence and is asking us to see what exists behind the phenomenon. Producing an art work in public space, already changes the way that we see this space and urges us to have a different, shared, cultural experience. But it is not that simple; Personally, I don't believe in art as a «happening». The thing is not just to get out and perform; the thing is to focus on the emotional response and perception of particular socio-spatial context in which an art work in public could be placed. And also, I believe that public art projects will be most effective when they will be part of a larger, holistic, multidisciplinary approach to enlivening a city or neighborhood. Only in this way, public art can contribute both to community life and to the service and vitality of public spaces.

As you have remarked once, your approach consists on a mechanistic approach of movement using at the same time the body as a canvas, as an abstract surface, so that the movement can be in the image and the movement can vibrates the image: how would you define the notion of body in your practice? In particular, do you think that personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process? Could a creative process be disconnected from direct experience?

I believe that there are autobiographical elements in most of my works even if sometimes that happens subconsciously. They are just elements, we are our experiences of course, but that doesn't mean that a personal experience makes you create a work. When a creative process starts, it is already an experience of the present. When I work on a project, my mental connection with the materials that I use (bodies, sound, objects) already creates a new

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Spyros Kouvaras

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experience condition. I never start to create with an idea with a specific experience, I prefer to start pure, just using my main material which is the body, or the bodies of the dancers and the scenic space and its installation. In my collaboration with art@CMS - program of the CMS Experiment at CERN - when I created «10^ -22 sec», there was not a direct experience during the creation process at all. I mean what experiences could we have on Higgs boson? When I created «L’Isolement dans un Space Infini», the experience was more direct than in my other works, it could happen, but even in this performance, the personal experience wasn't the starting point of the creation, it came after the pure experimentation of the form between body, movement and the costume material that I used.

You have remarked the importance of abstraction where its strength consists on the intensity between human subject and visual object: while exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your process seems to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to invite the viewer to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your pieces. How do representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?

My performances do not tell a story, I defined realism in art many years ago. The scenic installations that always make up the starting point of the global composition are characterized by the creation of timeless spaces, by the creation of situations and fields which are interpreted more by the unconscious and less by the logic. I am more interested in searching an organic point of meeting between the performers-dancers and the audience. For example, in my work, «OPUS I # temporality», the choreography with its slowness and its gradual development, suggests to the viewers a situation of

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«waiting», where the form is captured easily.

As the images change, the relation between space, duration and movement grow strongly and the viewers are able to get to it in their own way. As Olafur Eliasson said, we have to trust the abstraction…

Your performances have on the surface, a seductive beauty: at the same time, playing with the dichotomy between logic and emotion, they challenge the viewers' perceptual parametersestablishing a channel of communication between the conscious level and the subconscious sphere: 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? In particular, do you think that your works could induce a process of self-reflection in the viewers?

Synthesis is the most important element in my work: composition, structure, rhythm, and atmosphere. It is a co-existence in space and time through movement, image, sound and energy. Assuming that the energy of the visual work comes from the inner entity and diffuses outward, while we focus at the same time our attention on the moving bodies which are also pushed by an inner vibration outwards, we realize that these two energy lines pulsate.

This fusion is realized in the «empty space» which is created between them and I think this «empty space» induces a process of selfreflection to each viewer…

One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in

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

What is more important to me is the orchestration of the space, the venue, where the choreography and the performance will be presented. This is important and affects the establishment of the project. It is quite different to work on a project for an exhibition room than for a theatrical context, although there is a clear line in my work no matter what the presentation framework is (theater, public space, museum or gallery). There are always common elements, for example, most of my works tend to be relatively ÂŤquietÂť, the sculpture naturalness of the body is always present, as well as the immobility that we acquire as performers-dancers, and the paradox of this choreographic immobility. What changes each time is the approach to the viewer, the duration of the project and the general idea if there is a clear start and end of the performance.

It's no doubt that collaborations as the one that you have established over these years for the Synthesis 748 Company, established in May 2008 in Paris, are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of several practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

I truly believe in artistic synergies but in quite closed circles. It sounds paradox, but what I mean is that I seek to work and collaborate with people with whom I share common, human and artistic visions and aesthetics. There are not too many,

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Spyros Kouvaras

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you know. The composer Giorgos Kouvaras and the performer Korina Kotsiri work with my company since 2010. Their artistic contribution in many of my works has been vital and fundamental for the realization of these projects. There are also other artists who have collaborated with the Synthesis 748 Company depending on the project each time. What I like in collaborations is the possibility to work with someone in more than one project, to evolve our practices together. This is really interesting because I see how easily the quality of each artist is adapted each time in my concepts.

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

Right now, I work on the development of my workshop «Choreographic Installations», which is addressed to professional dancers, performers and visual artists and I also spend time with the Company to promote my last creation, «3 Mountains not to Climb». In my new performance for 2017 which is still in research and progress, I would like to work the choreography and the whole installation with at least six bodies-dancers and just one object-material in a large volume.

Usually, until now, I preferred to work with many objects and no more than three bodies and I think it is time to change this «protocol». Actually, it is always a question of changing things…

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

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Ram Samocha Lives and works in Brighton, United Kingdom

I

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.

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(in collaboration with John Wenskovitch and Heather Brand)

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LandEscape meets

Ram Samocha Draw to Perform

An interview by and

, curator , curator

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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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.

I always find myself balancing between different disciplines; it is in my nature. This amalgamation in some strange way balances me. I don’t have black or white, floor or wall,

Ram Samocha

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(in collaboration with John Wenskovitch and Heather Brand)

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Ram Samocha

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.

I do believe that all you experience in life, your personal and general struggles are reflected in an individual’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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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.

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.

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

Ram Samocha

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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 children’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.

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

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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 large- scale pieces and to develop my practice as a live drawing performer.

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.

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 and

, curator , curator