switch 2019
SWITCH SWITCH CONTEMPORARY CONTEMPORARYVIDEO VIDEOART ART
JO B QVCMJD DPOUFYU JO B QVCMJD DPOUFYU edited editedby byTriona TrionaRyan, Ryan,Harald HaraldTurek Turek
Switch - Heimat
T
he castle has been standing over the crossroads town for eight centuries, while the people and the businesses, the streets and the houses spring up and fade away like flowers at the foot of a great tree. The castle has a timeline, as the life of the town below flickers by. Down in the streets, just after Samhain, when the barriers between worlds break down, a switch is thrown, and visions take up their places in the shop windows. As you drive by you see the shifting shapes. The car stops and you turn your head to see a glimpse of a film where you had expected to see Autumn fashions. It may stay with you until the next traffic light or for ever. The films disappear in the daylight and return in the dark, living from dawn to dusk like ghosts or dreams . Switch illuminates the art of our town .We see anew the creations of the shopkeepers who dressed the windows for the seasons, of the craftworkers who sculpted the cornices and of the artists who painted the signs. The shop windows are born again as cinemas and the shops without a film are stark. We watch the films and are shown different ,original ways of seeing our worlds . We see a toy showing the endless trials of creating balance between all the tasks and elements in our daily life. A hero searches for a house, or maybe a home. A dog goes for a walk, or is it a plastic bag? Found objects become toys, or maybe toys are found . One window introduces us to Heimat; the memories and sensations of our youths, a word and a film for something we always knew existed but could not describe. The windows evoke sensations in us. A lot of these sensations are based on continuity, on the awareness that time goes on. One remembers that a period of one’s life has an irrecoverable past in one window. In another a gale from the West makes us think of time passing and the timeline of natural things. Our town is urban, rural, old and new. What is it? Every street has two or three different names, and McDonagh street is the Dublin Road and also Spout road in memory of a Revolutionary, a destination and a well. The main street is, of course Castle Street, and a few other things and the square is a diamond named for a pagan Goddess. The Castle knows. It stands, like a giant sandcastle, while time washes past it. Maybe it dreams of the future; the summer, when swifts will return to their nests in its walls and the Castle field will host a music festival on its birthday, or the past, beyond all human memory. We can touch the past, maybe, with a piece of intricate lace filmed in a shop window.
This is a Market town, a Fair town, a crossroads meeting town. It is magical in the twilight. Is a wave a field of corn, or a place to swim? A cheeky unicorn in a swimming pool looks up. It knows all about castles, their lore and magic. Everything changes. Are the people at the market cross really there, lit by the streetlights, or are they the ghosts of cornerboys? Is a toy a lost object or was it a toy all along? We walk the streets just after Samhain, watching the films of Switch in the half light, the streetlights, the window lights. Before the Christmas lights are lit we have the windows and the flickering shadows, the visons and the half-light. We have Switch. Pat Harrold
Pat Harrold is from Nenagh Co Tipperary. He writes columns for the Irish Times and The Medical Independent.He runs a Family Medical Practice in Nenagh and is a Lecturer in UL Medical School.
Rania Atef (born in 1988) is an Egyptian multidisciplinary visual artist whose work explores the notions of play and craft across a wide range of mediums including: painting, sculpture, installation and video. She obtained her BA in Product design from the faculty of Applied Arts (2011), now she is enrolled in MASS Alexandria 2018/2019 program for Contemporary Art, and she was selected to receive a grant from gender bender 2019 program. Her practice has started with the experimentation of three dimensional forms and installations through examining and combining different materials and spanned recently to include video as a medium. Her work mainly focuses on the infrastructure of the social and political implications which affects human behavior and attitude. Rania has participated in a number of local/international exhibitions and festivals in Egypt, The Netherlands, India, Jordan and South Africa.
Rania Atef While being an Octopus
A video series titled “While being an Octopus”, consists of 3 videos where the artist is playing with a balance toy replacing different objects every time as metaphors for real life responsibilities. The project is looking for the position of women in the Arab region by addressing the concept of “balance” required by women in general and Mothers in particular. The project comes as an extension of Rania’s research on the experience of maternity especially from a social point of view of the situation of women, in the context of being a mother and the relation to home and household responsibilities. “While Being an Octopus” aims to represent the endless trials of creating balance between all the tasks and elements in our daily life..
Rania Atef is based in Cairo, Egypt.
Алексей Ермошкин: “I’m 25. I’m from Moscow, Russia – although I was born far from our capital in the village of Светлый Путь “Light Path” – in Russian it sounds very beautiful. I was born to a creative family and have been writing music since childhood. I Graduating from the Moscow Art Theatre Studio and played in the theatre “July Ensemble“, with which I went on tour in Russia & the World. In parallel, I conduct my musical project.
Алексей Ермошкин / Alexey Ermoshkin Синий Цвет - Ex voto
The walls of the house collapsed. He became “more”: the house exists in images & feelings of the hero. This video piece was made in response to music which I composed. At some point I realized that music alone is not enough to make a full statement. I was inspired by the theme of leaving the city, in order to find myself. But leaving where? what is the city? Where are we now ? Where is Home? Alexey works in the JulyEnsemble theater in Moscow. The starting point of this video work was the Swiss text “ Vow “ by playwright Dominic Bush. Ksenia Nazarkina: “We were looking for a House, each his own. Where all began, and where our thoughts are still bringing us all the time. While the images were forming and coming to life, the House became common for us, it became the starting point, the support that accompanies our hero, helps to make a choice, to break the rhythm that has become a habit.”
Алексей Ермошкин is based in Город Москва / Moscow, Russia.
Silas Neumann (1982) was born in Germany and is based in the Netherlands. He works as a maker, performer, companion and dramaturge in the field of theatre and performance. Neumann followed the bachelor of Theatre and Education and the Master of Theatre Practice at ArtEZ School of Arts in Zwolle and Arnhem. His research interests are based on conceptual and documentary performance art. Neumann is exploring artistic ways of researching and creative ways of documentation. In his practice Neumann is working with the personal as an approach to inquire into bigger subjects. During this masters he investigated into the concept of ‘Heimat’. The forms he used to give the research outcome varied between audio-tour, audio-installation, participative performance, lecture performance and visual work such as video.
Silas Neumann Heimat (3,06)
Heimat (3,06) is a recording of 23 photographic slides projected by two slide projectors and merged into 23 images, changing about every 8 seconds. The German notion of Heimat is often related to memories and sensations of one’s youth. A lot of these sensations are based on continuity, on the awareness that time goes on. One remembers that a period of one’s life has an irrecoverable past. I understood the desire for a place called Heimat as the desire for a place that is excluded by the passing of time. A place that stays the same. A Garden of Eden. In this work I tried to capture this surreal nostalgic desire for a non-place. The projection of the slides out of a window (switch 2019) where someone could live, offers a tension between private and public. Memories of the inhabitant are shared in order to find recognition in a feeling that could be universally understood.
Silas Neumann is based in Zwolle, Netherlands.
Kuesti Fraun, *1976, is an independent German filmmaker and author of multiple award-winning short-format stories in text, motion picture and sounds, present worldwide at festivals, on radio as well as exhibition-, art- and filmpresentations since 1999 - e.g. Louvre Museum Paris, FILE Electronic Language International Festival, Marler Video Art Award, Museum of the Moving Image New York, EMAF European Media Art Festival, Poetry Film Festival Vienna, Multimedia Museum Moscow, NASA, Deutschlandradio Kultur and many more.
Kuesti Fraun Little Baggy
When I was young I always wanted to have a dog, but we couldn’t afford it. So you know what, I just bought me a bag, that’s quite the same. It’s a little bit cheaper, but you know, I love my little bag, so come on little baggy, let’s go for a walk.
Kuesti Fraun is based in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Rachel Peachey & Paul Mosig are a collaborative partnership who live and work in the Blue Mountains, Australia. Their overarching interest is human / environment relationships, which they explore from a range of perspectives. They use a variety of mediums including video, sound, photography, textiles and found objects. Their ongoing series of short video works document a deliberate exploration of various landscapes using the body, occasional found objects and play as a process. For their purposes, play is an activity that has no particular outcome in mind, adheres to no singular movement framework and can be undertaken at any age. Depending on the particular environment and the mood of the subject the outcome varies immensely even though the approach remains the same.
Peachey & Mosig Rules of the game
This work was filmed at an abandoned Soviet military camp in Wßnsdorf – located around 40km from Berlin. It was once home to as many as 75,000 Soviet men, women and children and was the high command for Soviet forces in Germany from 1945 – 1994. It is now completely abandoned. While the history of the place has a certain heaviness, the act of exploration provoked a frivolous reaction that was perhaps incongruent to the space. Using found objects we made a temporary play environment and used that environment to work through ongoing thoughts about rule making and the way that games include social norms deeply embedded in institutional structures. This work was developed in the context of a residency at the Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin where we undertook research with our children in urban park landscapes exploring different cultural approaches to risk taking.
Rachel Peachey & Paul Mosig are based in the Blue Mountains, Australia.
Rachel Peachey & Paul Mosig are a collaborative partnership who live and work in the Blue Mountains, Australia. Their overarching interest is human / environment relationships, which they explore from a range of perspectives. They use a variety of mediums including video, sound, photography, textiles and found objects. Their ongoing series of short video works document a deliberate exploration of various landscapes using the body, occasional found objects and play as a process. For their purposes, play is an activity that has no particular outcome in mind, adheres to no singular movement framework and can be undertaken at any age. Depending on the particular environment and the mood of the subject the outcome varies immensely even though the approach remains the same.
Peachey & Mosig Weathering
This work was filmed on a distant part of the south coast of Iceland amidst gale force winds and rain. During our time in this area we had a strong sense of geological time and what an understanding of this might mean. During a relatively short period in the eighteenth century, geologists changed the basic premise of existence when they theorised that the Earth’s lifetime did not consist of some six thousand years and instead existed on timescales that are so immense they resist the imagination. This was not a new idea, many ancient traditions have always asserted that the universe is not only much larger than what we see, but also much older. Our perspective on deep time, as it came to be known, is akin to that of European scientists of the Romantic period who held that observing nature implied understanding the self and that knowledge of nature should not be obtained by force. This period was known for it’s belief in the notions of mystery and wonder, the centrality of the sense experience, the poetic relationship between science and philosophy and the meeting of the rational and the intuitive.
Rachel Peachey & Paul Mosig are based in the Blue Mountains, Australia.
Robert Quint was born in Stuttgart in 1973 . He studied painting from 1993- 1998 at ENSLAV La Cambre, Brussels, Belgium. In 1996 he had a scholarship to MICA, Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore US. In 2010-11 he took part at the residency at KĂźnstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Robert exhibits his work actively both in Belgium & internationally. He is mainly a painter, which has grown through the years into a form of expression mixing the benefits of all disciplines such as photography, drawing, sculpture, video, performance etc. In his work, Robert Quint creates a mixture of poetry, humour and critical reflection.
Robert Quint Schwimmfeld
Living in the countryside, I admire every season; the beauty of the cornfields dancing in the wind and reminding me of the movement of water. The waves create a serene rhythm, quiet and hypnotising making me wanna be a part of it. So I decided to take a dip.
Robert Quint is based in Opprebais, Belgium.
David Theobald (b. Worthing, UK) graduated with an MFA in Art practice from Goldsmiths in 2008. Technology and its impact on subjectivity lies at the heart of his practice. Consisting primarily of digital animation, his work and subject matter tends to mirror the structure of the underlying technology used in its creation and the repetitive processes that seem central to the infrastructure of contemporary society. Frequently, the intensive labour that goes into his animations is perversely used to produce images of objects and experiences that we normally go out of our way to avoid seeing and experiencing.
David Theobald Rainbow Unicorn
Two abandoned rainbow unicorn inflatables (plus two donuts and a pink flamingo) drift around a swimming pool as the party continues elsewhere. As a symbol of contemporary society, the rainbow unicorn represents the pinnacle of a unicorn culture that stretches back hundreds of years. Recalling halcyon days of childhood and turbo charged by Instagram, its power to spread happiness to all has perhaps never been as potent or as sorely needed as now. However, as this magic is applied to everything from cosmetics and backpacks to confectionery and cappuccinos, one wonders how far you can stretch a signifier before it becomes something else entirely?
David Theobald is based in London, UK.
Milan Zulic The Circle of Life
“Circle of Life” is my old grandma’s lace which I unlaced. Piece by piece, each piece of the lace was scanned digitally in a moving line making from it a new lace, but with a new technology. This is a story of my contact with my ancestors, and the circle of life of each of us..
Milan Zulic is based in Sombor, Serbia.
Milan Zulic (Sombor, 1972) is an award winning multimedia artist. He has shown his paintings, sculptures, photography, video and extended media since 1992 on 33 solo exhibitions and more then 250 collective shows including Belgrade, Novi Sad, Podgorica, Rijeka, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Napoli, Trieste, Sofia, Athens, Skopje, Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga, Marseille, Zürich, Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Shillong, Kochi, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Leon, Toluca, Coventry, Cairo, Walparaiso, Camagüey, Coimbra, Newark, Vancouver, Long Island City, Sao Luis, Rennes, Nantes, St Malo, Maubeuge, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Antwerp, Liège, Luxembourg, Moscow, Amorgos, Sikinos, Kalamata, Guadalahara, Monterrey, Mexico City, Rome, New York City and Nenagh. www.milanzulic.com
Since 2008, the switch project is a continuing investigation into place, locating art in public space in a contextually focused way. International film and video artworks are back-projected for one week onto the windows of shops and other spaces throughout the town. 2019 presents 8 international visual artists and one writer hailing from Nenagh, Co Tipperary. switch locates itself outside of the big city and applies itself to the rhythm of a smaller place. The film events initiate conversations between artists and audiences, artworks and their sites. Now in its 11th year, switch is an artist-led project funded & supported by the Tipperary Arts Office.
edited by Triona Ryan & Harald Turek, Š 2019 switch & the artists published by switch 2019, www.s-w-i-t-c-h.org the switch event is co-ordinated by Triona Ryan, Harald Turek & Carol Kennedy
switch pays a special thanks to the community of Nenagh and the local shop owners who have supported the project by loaning the premises for the duration. the switch event is funded by
If you would like to know more about the project sign up to our newsletter via our website. Volunteers & contributors are also most welcome.
hctiws 9102
3rd - 10th November 2019 www.s-w-i-t-c-h.org