Dear Reader, Over the last few weeks, I have been moderating a workshop on art (and) writing – a subject as broad and vague as it sounds. In the end, there are as many approaches to it as there are artists (and) writers. The workshop was addressing the first-year Master’s students at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design. When we started off, I noticed words painted in black on the studio door, reading “expectation and reality”. Every time the workshop was about to start, these words reminded me that the space between us, participants, and between our words is holed with many ‘expectation-reality gaps’ that we were going to try to ‘jump’ in the next few hours. Yesterday, I learnt that someone painted the door white. In the beginning, the participants were asked to deliver a text about their own artistic practice. The idea was to then exchange the texts and respond to one another’s writing (by editing, rewriting, commenting). During each session, we gathered to observe and discuss the changes in attitudes, the shifting of registers and positions: from formal to informal, from quasi-objective to, at times, outright personal (or at least appearing so). In other words, we were trying to access the treacherous format of an ‘artist’s statement’ in order to ‘explode it’ from within. One of the goals of the workshop was to identify and re-imagine potential relationships between artist’s text and artistic practice (from ‘marriage of convenience’, to correspondence, to even synthesis; the repertoire goes way beyond ‘interpretation’). At the same time, the workshop aimed to help participants develop critical, analytical, and writing skills that might come useful in their future endeavours, within and outside of the academy. Those two ambitions – let’s call them ‘reflective-experimental’ and ‘pragmatic’ – often interfered with one another, creating productive tensions. What started as a question of writing about (one’s own) work has, in some cases, turned into the question of writing as work.
The aim of this publication can best be summarised in the words of Josef Strau when he said “I am attempting the difficult task of describing the change of an attitude and its consequences.” The publication, put together in just one week, features contributions by the workshop participants – the students of the Master Artistic Matters, including three profiles: Art-Polis, Design-Jewellery, and Media-Intercultural Media and Innovation. I think when viewing it, in many instances, you won’t be able to tell their works and words apart, which testifies to the remarkable interdisciplinarity or rather hybridity of some of the practices. Through the format and content of the publication, we want to emphasise the open-ended character of the project and grant the reader an insight into the process. The publication contains not only the texts developed during the workshop and images of works, but also the documentation of work-in-progress and snippets of different materials generated in the messy process of editing and rewriting.
Alicja Melzacka
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What does social fear look like?
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HENRIKE ALTES
As a jewellery designer, I am often telling something about myself through my work. I believe that personal emotions and thoughts can be relevant for others; maybe we share the same feelings and ask ourselves the same questions. I work in a very intuitive way, collecting images, songs, texts, and conversations that trigger certain associations and evoke emotions in me. My work can be seen as a response to the demand for ever-increasing performance, for self-optimisation and quantifiable output, and to the insatiable craving for ‘bigger, better, faster, more’. I keep questioning myself: why do I feel pressure when everything seems to be possible? Is this freedom? Through this personal reflection, I want to connect to other people who experience the same fears and hopes, who feel the same longing for relaxation, less need for perfection, and more ‘being good enough’. Translating these thoughts and feelings into material is a healing process for me. I choose jewellery as the medium for sharing my stories because of this intimate connection, not only to the human body but also the mind.
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CHARLOTTE CAROUX
After four years immersed in the paper medium, I decided to invite people to enter my surface. Drawing seemed solitary to me, I needed to work more closely with the reality of everyday life, and especially with its residents. Because for me, art should transcribe what surrounds it. I create interventions by placing a ‘modifier’ – which can be any ‘reactive’ material, such as a piece of paper, a sheet of aluminium or glass – in a public or private space. I place them on the ground, where people walk, move, interact with the space. Those simple installations, or set-ups for a situation, enable or sometimes provoke the reactions of the passers-by and instantly record them. People relate to spaces in an often habitual way, for example, when commuting. Depending on the social, spatial, or even atmospheric conditions in which my work exists, at times it goes unnoticed, but sometimes it can affect a change in human behaviour (Should I be stepping on this? Is it valuable? Does it belong to someone? Does it belong to me?). It is this change, this interference in the routine, that particularly interests me. The modification of the ordinary allows some peculiarities of behaviors to surface and exposes the position chosen by the individual. Art then becomes a tool that captures the traces of people’s interactions with space, an archive, a proof of something that had happened. The materials I use to record those traces can be considered my support, life and its hazards – my tools, and individuals and their paths – my colours. Somehow, I am still drawing, but now I am no longer alone in front of my sheet. 19
in search of whiteness - in praise of shadows serpent’s embrace follows its venom, life and legend, shedding skin into oasis’ night sky, shining bright in equilibrium, to jaguar’s patches dancing in the dark, wings uncoil.
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GABRIEL GUEVARA
Forces we cannot understand permeate our universe. What we call ‘reality’ is but the projection of their shadows upon the screen available to our senses. We try to understand it through language, but some things cannot be reduced to mere words. We all try to comprehend and codify the principles governing the universe. The only distinction between us is the manner of articulation. And that is what poetry, drawing, jewellery are all about. I believe that certain materials can connect with and transmit those primordial energies, through their physical, energetic, or spiritual properties. Take gold, for example, whose current esteem is based on the belief in the relative nobility of metals. At the same time, gold possesses other underappreciated qualities, such as frequency and conductivity, which show the promise for the future development of computation, intelligence, and consciousness. In a world oversaturated with trash and brainwashed with consumerism, I propose an interpretation of jewellery that goes beyond the glamour, towards a more holistic approach. I find inspiration in other fields of inquiry, ranging from cosmology and physics to psychology and alchemy. I also seek patterns in my surroundings and translate them into compositions and textures in my jewellery, but also in my drawings. Some of my recent projects explore the three-dimensionality of drawing, in a way connecting those two different ways of working. This constant movement of scaling up or down gives rhythm to my practice and allows me to draw connections between different dimensions of reality.
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LARS DEN HERTOG
I am interested in what drives people to dark actions. Many of us commit atrocities ‘in the name of love’. But to me, love often becomes too dispassionate or even outright boring, to be fatal. To that end, if you ask me, there is a clear difference between ‘love’ and ‘amorousness’. Amorousness, or falling in love, is a feeling you can lose yourself in, something completely overpowering. You can’t do anything about it. The most exciting thing is the tension, the feeling of insecurity experienced when falling in love. It might be triggered just by saying a word. After that, the floodgates open; does she think about me as well? Will I see her today? Will she touch me? All these kinds of things. But there is also a destructive side to it, which can be easily triggered by rejection. Being desperately in love with someone who does not love you back can drive you mad. This feeling is so extreme that it can become addictive. And addicted people can act wickedly. Also sex, for me, has nothing to do with love, except when you want to make children. Otherwise, it comes from an urge to have sex. There is something mysterious about people you briefly encounter and feel attracted to. Have you never pictured yourself having sex with someone you just met? Sex is this tension taken to its ultimate conclusion, which can go either way. Sometimes, it is a beautiful experience, at other times, I go back home feeling used and empty. In my works, attraction and fear, anticipation and anxiety always go hand in hand. The drawing In the streets she lost her mind captures this apprehension; it reminds me of Balthus’s painting The Street. The buildings feel somehow cumbersome and oppressive; the faceless woman frightens me but I can’t take my eyes off of her. 23
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KALKIDAN HOEX
Defari arrives at school and sees his friends waiting, leaning casually against the fencing.
THE NEW TRIBE With his headphones on, listening to Kid Ink’s Money and the Power on high volume, and with his fresh Jordans 1 Rebel XX OG’s on, he feels like the king of the world. 15-yearold Defari has a part-time job at a convenience store near his home. He got this job in the first place because his momma wanted to keep him out of trouble after school. At first, he hated it, but after a while, he realised that with the money he made, he could get himself something nice. As he walks to school, Defari is already imagining how his friends are going to react. With his new shoes, he decided to wear his favourite denim jacket with the motif embroidered on the back by his mom. The motif is based on one of his own drawings but executed in the style characteristic of the Ethiopian Orthodox cross. The converging lines create an interlaced pattern that stands for eternal life. Defari and his parents left Ethiopia when he was still a baby, and he hasn’t gone back ever since. He doesn’t have any memories of Ethiopia, but his parents keep their heritage alive within the family. That’s what they have in common with other members of their own and other expat communities.
“MAN, WHAT ARE THOSE !”, Don welcomes him with a grin. “Wow… sick man!” shout out the other boys. Defari laughs, “Yeah, yeah, I got them, alright! All fresh and new!” “Damn,” Don sighs, “I should get a job...” “Dude, you wouldn’t be able to keep a job for longer than a day!” “Whatever...” Defari and the rest of the boys laugh; this is exactly how he imagined their reaction. Maybe his mom doesn’t see what he sees in his friends... These boys may get him in trouble sometimes, but when Defari looks at them, he can see his own reflection. These boys are different from their parents who often grew up in Africa and left as adults – most of them were raised in Europe. Even though their backgrounds and stories vary, they share one thing in common – they all have two cultures they live by. Defari reaches to an Africa-shaped pendant on a paperclip chain, hanging right next to a silver Nike logo. He and the boys all have one. He feels the letters carved in the back of the pendant and traces with his finger the initials TNT, The New Tribe.
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SAM JANSSEN
Through my work, I am constantly exploring the poinst of convergence between graphic design and visual arts. I often sense that I am forced to choose between the two ‘opposing camps’ of applied- and autonomous arts. I try to break away from this binary perspective and develop ‘graphic art’ as a hybrid practice within the contemporary art field. One of the driving forces behind my work is my selfdiagnosed apophenia. I have a tendency to perceive patterns in my surroundings – in landscapes, words, or other people’s behaviour, to name but a few examples. The starting point for my work is often an association between elements with no connection other than their perceptual synchronicity. This phenomenon – that Hito Steyerl calls ‘pattern (mis-)recognition’ – can, in fact, be very productive. As Hito explains, “by ‘recognizing’ things and patterns that were not given, inceptionist neural networks eventually end up effectively identifying a new totality of aesthetic and social relations.” There is an evident tension between manual work and digital reproduction in my works. Playing with this tension is for me another way of addressing the ‘artist-designer problem’. I often think about how to solve a problem without relying exclusively on digital technology. This approach requires from me a certain degree of discomfort or rather a rejection of comfort. In my recent projects, I have focused on the ‘translation’ between analogue and digital media – from photography and drawing to digital art and back again. This methodological loop, based on the repeated acts of photographing, drawing, digitising, and printing, allows me to constantly find new patterns within my own works and transform them further.
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MARTIJN OERLEMANS
When I was a little child, my mother used to spread out a blanket in the grass so I could play outside. I would never venture off the blanket because I was told not to. Besides, I didn’t feel the need to; I loved playing in my own world, with my familiar toys. Turns out, about 30 years later, it still takes me some time to let go off the limitations I create for myself and take a step out of my comfort zone. I treat these limitations, be it material or conceptual, as something potentially productive; they stimulate me to keep searching for always new solutions. Usually, I don’t invent my works ‘from scratch’ but take found objects and existing techniques as a starting point. I explore the latent potential within the material at hand and transform it into something new, through the process of trial and error. If an error occurs, I often try to embrace it or even replicate it. I don’t necessarily profile myself as a jewellerydesigner. This is because a lot of my work is processual and open-ended, meaning that there is room for experimentation without a definite goal. I experiment with combining different, often unexpected materials and techniques, coming also from outside of the field of metalwork. I am interested in re-assigning functions to defunct objects; I sometimes try to incorporate different devices or elements of equipment into my process and ‘make them work’. This approach illustrates a particular relationship between form and (mal) function present in my works.
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ELLI OTT
Where is the difference between an object that I may only look at passively, that I may analyze and that may tell me something; and a thing that moves me, that inspires me to thoughts and actions. That perhaps lives, because it exchanges itself with its environment and thus also with me by leaking out of many tiny holes. I don‘t have a firm idea that I then implement. The thing does not come into being in my head. I think with my hands. They touch the material, feel how it behaves and make mistakes in its transformation. It is these mistakes, these holes in the pipe, that make me assuming and first guessing about what might be possible. I need something to refer to, to find ways to get away from it. A chair is the design object par excellence. A consolidated concept that I can treat carelessly: copy, destroy, transform, whatever. And that afterwards only speaks blurred in the background about sitting. Everything moves and changes its purpose. Insert sleeves can no longer just file documents, they can also be welded together. The laser cutter can no longer only cut with high precision, but can also cut out inaccurate, amorphous shapes. Nothing remains, everything is in constant movement. The sleeves become the mold. The mold becomes a pile of dirt, becomes a chair again... I use tools to correspond with things in the process of making. It is through the spray can that I not only interact with the paper and the tape, but correspond. But I don’t just use the term tool in the classical sense of a hammer or plane. I use it in a broader sense and my tools include the material, my conversations with others, what I have read, my skills,... All these things leave their (tool specific) imprints. Who did this work, though? The cutter, the tape, the concrete, the gravity, the third, the fourth chair, me, my environment, Tim Ingold, Deleuze and Guatarri? I think the concepts that allow such intertextual correspondence best for me are, for example, improvisation, coincidence, productive abuse, assemblage..
You need a table for eight people that can be folded out, built from sustainable materials and yet is representative? You need a toaster that gives you the exact browning level of the bread on an LCD screen? You need a wall that keeps migrants from taking your job away? I won’t design solutions for that! I am escaping this design term that tries to plug the holes in the system and I’m looking for a design practice that helps me drill (or shoot) holes, instead. Somehow, I still don’t know, why exactly i want to make objects of utility. There are numerous answers in my head, but none seems to fit. However, the most convincing one to me is the fact, that I don’t want the things to get bored. I want them to have active impact on realities. I heard Joseph Vogl talking about the secret knowledge of craftsmen, which is a knowledge of beginnings. I create tiny trickles for myself to open up paths for me to challenge the/my (?) rigid ways/goals of making, designing... My desire is to transfer this working method to objects (of utility) so that the use itself circumvents, questions, destroys, ... deadlocked impossibilities. So what may I do now with the fact, that I don’t want to solve anybody’s problems and still am eager to design and to create. Maybe the question for me is: what would things look like, that do not see themselves as a solution, but as something that is within a process? Things that do not prescribe their use and their meaning, but that only receive their real context through their respective use. Just like I perceive my working process. In that case the final, solutions etc. may become something which is not general, but situative and individual. That would be worth a try. 31
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EYLEM POLAT
It is essential for me, as an artist, to exploit all potential sources I have, meaning that I work with multiple media, such as photography, film or digital and analogue technologies. I can say that I have an affection for working with ‘femininity’, since it enables me to transmit my personal impressions, experiences, and observations. I am keen on sharing my ideas and concepts with the public, in order to provide a gaze into the female perspective. By providing substantial background information, I enable the viewers to understand the concepts I show to them through the created channels. I think thoroughly before implementing certain elements in my work and I am especially selfcritical when it comes to the elaboration and publication of it. Furthermore, I tend to translate textual into visual language, using metaphorical and literal interpretations. I translate my texts, poems, etc. visually ‘in my own words’, triggering certain feelings and emotions. My current topic is concerned with showing the female perspective on the anxiety and beauty of the transition from youth to adulthood, with all its challenges and resistance, through poetry. By emphasising the fear of this transition within the poems, I am creating a dreamy bubble I am currently in. The poems are instruments that express my feelings towards the indirect anxiety and concerns of that time period. They are also meant to show how I stage the dreamy imagination contained within them. The poetry reflects the interpretation of being young and adolescent, especially the emotional connections to not being able to let loose of my youth. Using poetic elements enables me to work on a personal basis, so that the poetry represents letters to myself that can even be interpreted as a monologue.
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LUISA SUGAIPOV
THE ILLIAZ In a world wherein the scientist is seeking the truth, it is the artist who reflects on how we feel about it. I consider art to be documentation of emotions; for that reason, it does not necessarily reflect the reality so much as it reflects our reactions to it. Questioning the established truths lies in my nature. That does not mean, however, that us artists should be regarded as problem solvers or convergent thinkers, but rather as those who incarnate abstract ideas and alternative realities. Those who create contemporary mythologies.
Myths, modern and ancient, have an inescapable presence not only in art, but also in our everyday life and language. Myths are stories with ever fluid meanings; they have been continually retold across all forms of culture and reinterpreted to reflect the present-day ideas and anxieties, a constant metamorphosis reflecting the countenance of our time. Mythology composes a major part of anybody’s heritage and constantly reminds us of who we are and where we come from. Every culture has their own legends, folktales, and myths, even the small ones like the Vainakh People – the ethnic tribes of Northern Caucasia. Being of Chechen origin myself, I am used to the fact that my heritage is often associated with the chronicles of war, genocide, and resistance. In fact, war has been so present throughout the history of the Vainakh People that it has shaped the core of the tribe’s identity. However, to understand the stigma of a warrior nation, which this small ethnic group of highlanders has earned, it takes a deeper insight into the culture and codex of the mountains. My illustration project, The Illiaz, which translates as the ‘voice of a song’, is a collection of Vainakh mythology, folk tales, and legends that are slowly falling into oblivion. My work preserves and cultivates these stories through the format of narrative illustration. It is an ode to my ancestry paired with my intercultural upbringing, which shaped me as an artist and as a person. The first chapter of this project is called The First Hero, and it is a myth about Pkharmat, the Vainakh counterpart of the ancient Greek Prometheus, a giant who stole the fire from a cruel god and gave it to the people. This brave act freed his folk from tyranny and misery, rendering fire a symbol of power and freedom. A flame that from then on burns in the hearts of all Vainakh highlanders.
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CLARA SOPHIA UERLICHS
Ordering, organising, and sorting things is one of my personal passions. Before I start to work on a new project, I organise my desk, clothes and even dishes to clear my mind. The visual emptiness that is created, is exactly where I need to begin. Ordering items fascinates me. I always liked to arrange things, because the result brings me satisfaction and provides me with a sense of achievement. A tidy place appears harmonious, and in a constantly changing and increasingly complex world, harmony is very important for us, even if we understand it in different ways. There are people who like to order their belongings, those who would like to do it but cannot or do not know how, and finally those who find order in chaos. But what is the relation of ordering to design? I strongly believe that there is a certain dependency between the two. Already during my Bachelor project, I developed a method to create harmonious products by abstracting and arranging shapes, patterns, and colours found in my environment. In my current research, leading up to my Master thesis, I investigate how such order-based methodology can be generalised and applied on different scales – from objects to spaces to even cities.
In my current research, leading up to my Master thesis, I investigate how such an order-based methodology can be generalised and applied on different scales – from objects through spaces to even cities.
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INDEX Henrike Altes
9, 16, 17, 47, 48
Charlotte Caroux
14, 18, 19, 38, 40, 52
Gabriel Guevara
4, 12, 13, 14, 20, 21
Lars Den Hertog
4, 22, 23, 39, 49, 51
Kalkidan Hoex
10, 24, 25, 44, 45
Sam Janssen
7, 9, 15, 26, 27, 51
Alicja Melzacka
4, 40
Martijn Oerlemans
28, 29, 46, 50
Elli Ott
4, 14, 30, 31, 42, 43
Eylem Polat
8, 11, 32, 33
Luisa Sugaipov
1-3, 34, 35
Clara Sophia Uerlichs
5, 6, 36, 37, 40, 41
COLOPHON
Expectation and Reality, 2019 This publication was realised in connection to the workshop on art (and) writing that took place in May-June 2019, at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design. The participants were the students of the Master Artistic Matters. The workshop was developed and moderated by Alicja Melzacka. Design Sam Janssen Many thanks to Gabriel Guevara Elli Ott. Editing Collectively edited by the participants of the workshop Edition 100 Info & Contact MAFAD | Herdenkingsplein 12 | 6211 PW | Maastricht postbus 5316200 AM Maastricht T +31 (0)43 346 66 70 T +31 (0) 6 34 38 46 82 W: www.mafad.nl