Stigmart10 Videofocus February 2014 by Stigmart Artpress

From experimental cinema to fashion videography, ten artists breaking the boundaries Since its foundation, Stigmart10 has encouraged a conception of art based on a dynamic dialogue between artists and audience, reflecting the interactive nature of the creative act itself. A winning formula, according to the doubled number of submissions - more than 990 applicants have sumitted their video works and CV in 2013 - and the increasing popularity of our project. We are glad to present this year's edition of Videofocus, our special Stigmart10 review focused on experimental cinema, original fashion videography and corageous documentary. Stigmart10 Team

Alona Rodeh

The video features a series of automated actions which all seem selfpropelled, as if performed from start o finish by the space itself.

Andre Cote'

Much of my work deals with the way we as living beings how through life and death we alter these environments constantly.

Shreepad Joglekar

silence is very crucial for me, as it strictly limits the video to the surface of the wall, as if locked behind a sound-proof glass

Timothy Grover

My work is primarily rooted in the exploration of history, with a specific focus on examining the way that “past” and “present” interact.

Anna Greer

In my video work i explore the tension between alluring-glamour and audience-alienation

Eliza Swann

The video takes viewers through an auditory initiation with witches who, through the use of their magic, aim to create a just and sustainable world

Peter Barnard

Through video the powder, as it moved due to the vibrations, would begin to resemble natural phenomena such as dust or smoke

Grant Petrey

Because all art and temporality embodies mediation, there is always a slippage

Chen Carmi

like the idea that the project has no real physical presence, that it is all data, or memory

Orly Aviv

The right device goes through the confusion and chaos to a new beginning, allows a newhope, a new future

Melissa Gallaga

The video Evening Bricolage speaks of the existence of a strange subculture in Monterrey place of residence

Sasha Waters Freyer

Outsiders, flops and dark horses fascinate me: poets and children, artists and activists, dead and dying analog media

Evangeline Cachinero

It is my belief that through constant contact with digital technology, we are quickly becoming fluent in the digital aesthetic

Ben Balcom The performance lies between absence and presence, and fact and essence

Butcher Rules

Rainbows End, Video Installation

A still from Barking Dogs Don't Bite, Video Installation (photo by Tal Nisim)

Alona Rodeh Alona Rodenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s video Barking Dogs Don't Bite was originally created in 2012 for Province, a collective show and research project on notions of the urban public domain (curated by Leah Abir). The work follows a chain of events unfolding at a commercial gallery situated downtown, at a notoriously seedy area rife with drug dealing and prostitution. The video features a series of automated actions which all seem self-propelled, as if performed from start to finish by the space itself.

lift up the camera angle switches to an interior view, now showing the street through the gallery windows. When the grille has stopped the focus changes abruptly. A moment of utter silence â&#x20AC;&#x201C; after which a cloud of smoke suddenly hits floor: a column of smoke descending on the gallery from above as if delivered by some divine hand, its indignation slowly dispersing throughout the empty gallery space. This unexpected occurrence unleashes a chain of self-protective measures automatically 'performed' by the gallery. Its blunt detection mechanism mistakes the smoke for a fire, setting on the alarm: a harrowing, continuous blare like

The video opens with an exterior view of the gallery in long-shot, its windows shut behind the automated security grille. As the grille starts to

a distressed call for help accompanied by jets of water shot from sprinklers above, until the fire that never was has finally been extinguished.

outside environment: it alone commands the frame, a scope that is narrowed and delimited. It should be noted that Rodeh does not often work in video; so far she has made only two videos in the course of her developing career. Barking Dogs Don't Bite, the latter, was preceded by a work titled Fire, Work, which she made as part of an art project for Kav 16, a community gallery operating in a working-class neighborhood in south-east Tel Aviv. Rodeh collaborated with children of the area, teaching them how to make smoke bombs. Flames – but mostly smoke – is a recurrent theme in her work since its beginning. It features prominently two of her works, On Fire? and House of Fire, both of which are based on mock-guerilla actions that render the illusion of a fire. But as the smoke clears it reveals itself to be only the synthetic and saccharine variant that it is. Rodeh obviously considers disasters in their fascinating aspect, as tribal fires able to attract and hypnotize large publics. All it takes is a bit of smoke.

The smoke is cleared, water fills the floor and the silence is restored. An elderly woman is seen walking down the street, uninterested. The security shutters now go down as if nothing at all has happened. The street is irritatingly silent. The same chain of events is played out once more at nighttime, but instead of the elderly woman we see a dark-skinned man crossing the street, probably a work immigrant residing nearby; and as a comical epilogue we see the assistant of Rodeh's, who arrives on the scene to wipe the floor and 'eliminate' the evidences, while at the background we hear a segment of a song by The Doors, a modern take on a bluesy, chain-gang chant. This whole self-defense operation would seem quite pointless, considering that the gallery was empty to begin with and no art whatsoever was hanging on the walls. But it is precisely this emptiness that makes us rethink for whom, and against whom, this protective system is intended. Is it meant to safeguard the art on display, or maybe to vouch for the gallery in case of an insurance claim? Or yet is it the space itself that autonomously performs acts of self-preservation, involving the walls, ceiling, windows and floor, the overall architecture and infrastructure, the void between walls? The space has remained intact, as shown in the video's concluding moments, especially that there was no real physical danger in the first place, only the enacted semblance of a disaster, the adrenalin of it. But whose adrenalin would that be?

Although it would be hard to cast Rodeh's works under the heading of a socially engaged artistic practice, they clearly seek to agitate and arouse in some way, pointing at the volatility of a state of affairs about to burst. In this respect, the smoke motif undeniably represents an essence that is both physical and symbolic. It simmers without fire, generating only the effect of it. Smoke stands as a metaphor not for a disaster but for the fascination of the public with it, representing the disaster in fantasized form rather than the thing itself, which – as we see in Barking Dogs Don't Bite – is anyway absent. It lends itself, therefore, to the fantasized image of a gallery's destruction – a fantasy that, while indeed remaining immaterialzed, surely attests to the crisis the gallery space currently finds itself in.

Throughout the video the camera angle continuously switches between in and out, between the drama and mechanized choreography taking place within and the indifference against which it is played outside, where life seems to continue as usual. We are led to believe that had such a fracas taken place uptown, crowds would have gathered outside the windows – but here, at this overwrought part of town, nobody seems to mind the sound of a fire alarm, people simply walk on. The simulated drama within can hardly compete with the bustling exterior. The gallery is clearly disconnected from its

Text credit: Hila Cohen Schneiderman Translation from Hebrew: Hemda Rosenbaum

An interview with

Alona Rodeh We have selected for this Stigmart10 edition artists giving a contribute to video language from the "outside". Alona Rodeh is one of them. it should be too easy to call her a videoartist, since her artistic practise is not only focused on video: she have collaborated with children from south-east Tel Aviv for her previous "Fire, Work", however she cannot be classified as "socially engaged artist", since the "political" effort present in her work refers more to Buster Keaton sense of grotesque and absurd than to "moralistic" intent. Alona, what caused you to be an artist? The education in the house I grew up in was to do what you were good at. I was recognized with a talent for drawing at young age (12 or so), and that's how my romance with art started. Obviously, by now, I lost that particular skill, since the education at the art academy was to dump your "crafty" skill in favour of conceptual ideas, which for some reason seemed more important.

Alona Rodeh

We have been impressed by the balance you achieve in your film between a rare keatonian taste and a deep political analysis. Could you introduce our readers to Barking Dogs Don't Bite?

and outside seems blurred. Could you explain this aspect of your film? It belongs to a conceive about the nature of time and space? The idea for the shots as well as the editing, was to keep only architectural compositions - there are no close ups or medium shots, and the cameras are fixed on standard eye height.

Originally thought of as a documented performance, Barking Dogs donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Bite is a video piece composed of two parts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; day and night. Both sections show a vacant storefront of a commercial gallery in Tel Aviv. The video features a series caused by a sudden burst of smoke.

So it's very straightforward: from inside out, from outside in, and 90 degrees in between the two - it's as if the space is watching itself, or as if you are standing instead of the camera.

The reaction of the space seems automated and self-propelled, as if performed from start to finish by the space itself. There are no intruders or trespassers, only passers-by who do not notice the action. Instead, the viewer remains the sole witness to this drama in its entirety.

Since the camera is so passive, the presence of time is in front - and all the actions are punctuated into the timeline, leaving not one second too much (hopefully...). Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

It's really interesting the way you use editing in your work: the camera angle continuosly switches, the concept of inside

I'm usually triggered by an image I see, some

A still from Barking Dogs Don't Bite, Video Installation (photo by Tal Nisim)

music I hear or an experience I find myself in. It's mostly very small or esoteric subcultural behaviours or performances that grab my attention and get me working.

difference between exhibiting and working, for example, in Germany or in Tel Aviv? It's an extremely different experience. In Israel, my works need little introduction - the context is clear, simply because we share more or less the same background; On top of that, I exhibited there intensely in the last few years, so most chances are that whomever will come to see an exhibition of mine now, probably saw some others before.

After that happens, I start researching, following the footsteps of whatever/whomever it may be, to get more visual information on the subject etc. Then, the ideas start to shape. It's always heavily related to where I am. I work from the outside inside, and back again.

These two things, makes exhibiting there extremely intense. So inevitably, exhibiting elsewhere is far less personal, and many times seen through a political filter of what is imagined to be an "Israeli Artist".

How has your personal history influenced your art practise? My practice is strongly reflective towards the current time and place I am in, and in retrospect to former times as well. But in no means it is autobiographical.

But at this point in time, it's the thing to do, and it's very challenging, on all levels.

What experiences have you had exhibiting in different countries? What is the

A still from Unison, Video Butcher Rules

Andre Cote' Much of my work deals with the way we as living beings not only spend our lives in certain environments, but how through life and death we alter these environments constantly. For a long time I only dealt in the medium of film and used the human body to explore the theme of altered surroundings. It was only until recently that I dove into using computer graphics mixed with video in order to further explore where my work was taking me.

and environments are altered by time, life and death, reality and fantasy. Unison is meant to be a meditative piece that gives the viewer an alternate look into a kinetic representation of many environments that are either forgotten or used daily as a transitional space. It guides the viewer through different forms of industry and nature while representing the area with physical and abstract forms. The overall narrative of the piece is structured around the question â&#x20AC;&#x153;How are industry and nature affected by life and death in a spatial sense?â&#x20AC;?

In early 2013 I made a series of short films that were produced as separate investigative experimentations, but still would be thematically tied together. These dealt with abandoned spaces, time and space affecting the human body, and reality. To me, Unison is my first complete realization into the idea of how spaces

In the early stages of this work I did a lot of exploring and freed myself of any specific timelines or structure. I focused on finding

A still from Unison, Video

spaces that I felt were not only affected by time but also stuck in a sort of environmental limbo.

iPad with a number of synthesizer apps and emulators for the music and audio.

When it came to creating the 3d objects that would reside in the spaces I would take inspiration from characteristics of the space and let that influence the objects look and animation. Near the ending stages of production I produced a series of ambient audio tracks and music that I let guide me to push along the narrative structure of the piece.

I never feel that my equipment puts me at a disadvantage, it just forces me to be more aware of precautions to take to lessen the amount of problems in post-production.

On a technical level this whole piece was patched together with a very â&#x20AC;&#x153;use what you haveâ&#x20AC;? aspect that I end up working with for most of my work. As far as equipment and hardware I used an entry level Canon DSLR, a stabilizing rig I build out of PVC pipe, and an

An interview with

Andre Cote' How did you come up with the idea for Unison? Before production began I knew I wanted to explore the idea of what it meant for a space to have a life or spirit of its own. It has been a common theme that I have explored with my previous work, but more so in a very condensed and shortened realization. I had done some test shots of parking deck interiors to get a feel for how I wanted this project to look and to figure out how I was going to achieve this technically. I had found a look I wanted out of it and knew a certain length overall, but I couldn’t really pinpoint exactly what the final piece was going to even be. That’s when I decided to go ahead and start production on the piece and let my experiences working on the film influence the actual end product itself.

Andre Cote'

was a collection of music videos from directors such as Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry. I am always fascinated how the music video format makes such a strong emotional connection between audio and video. The idea that always fascinated me was that even though a music video usually has a story and a specific set of imagery and events that unfold, I feel that the arrangement of visuals and order of events follows the audio almost like sheet music for our eyes.

The first month of production, without much preparation or storyboarding, I went to many different places and areas that were unfamiliar to me and allowed myself to wander without structure. Being able to just walk around a new environment and explore is what really allowed me to build up the overall idea of Unison. I still didn’t have a solid plan or storyboard of what Unison would be, but I had the puzzle pieces all slowly coming together, I just needed to play around with them to finish the puzzle. So in a way, the idea for Unison was built upon not having a set idea, but allowing experiences to chart out the path I would take.

For Unison, I wanted to create these soundscapes and songs with the intention that it would not only be the audio component of my work, but it would be my storyboard as well. I would also let the audio I created influence the animation of the objects as well as the overall color tone of the work. Is it a common method in your works? Only recently it has become routine for me. Usually I would start work on the audio portion of a piece once the work is nearly completed, so I can tailor the audio exactly to what is shown on screen.

We have been impressed by the fact that during the ending stages of production you have realized soundtracks "forcing" yourself to push along the narrative structure of the piece. We are stricken by this ability to create a temporal-shift "resonance" between these different phases of your work. Could you better explain that?

I have recently been trying to work with less structure and more lenient guidelines, so a big part of my work flow changing is letting go of normal process and leaving it up to the audio I create to guide my work. Normally when I create music I try to do as little editing as possi-

Music plays a big part in my life and in my work. What really got me pursuing art at a young age

A still from Unison Video

The third and main part of my creative process for a new project is getting out of the studio and going to a new place to explore. I draw a lot of inspiration from nature walks and historical sites, really anywhere that has some sort of history to the space.

ble. I compose and loop sections and samples and trigger them while playing an instrument. Mainly I use an iPad running various emulated synthesizers, but I also use a couple of Korg live effectors. I enjoy using the touchscreen of the iPad because I am able to use gestures and motion to create notes instead of single keys, which matches my workflow of being more lenient in production.

You have used entry level tools, like Canon DSLR, a PVC- stabilizing rig ,and an iPad running synthesizer apps. In your opinion, the world wide spread of cheap and flexible tools like the ones you have used has yet changed the way an the conception of making art today?

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? There’s three main things I do to get a project realized and started. The first is listening to music. I have a few select albums that I listen through before starting a project to get me motivated and inspired. My main two albums are Vespertine by Bjork and Kid A by Radiohead.

I feel the biggest impact that cheap and flexible technology has had on artists is limiting excuses on what one person can do. It was already a big surprise for me when I had gotten my Canon T2i and realized that it could shoot video at 1080p. It wasn’t even the thought of high resolution video that excited me, it was the fact that at that moment I had no excuses about being unable to make the art I wanted to make. The iPhone is another device that I still think has a lot of untapped potential. You’ve got a device that can shoot, edit, and post video online all by itself. A quick look at statistics online shows that as of November 2013 there have been approximately 421 million iPhones sold around the world. That means there are hundreds of millions of people around the world that have the capability to create video art right in their pocket, right now.

These albums are very nostalgic to me mainly because I discovered both artists through the music videos I watched when I was young and inspired me to pursue art in general. While I listen to these albums, the second thing I do is experiment within Cinema 4d. I love creating new ways of deforming and deconstructing objects in a 3d space. I continue to build upon these experimentations until I have some solid ideas to group together into a project and let the rest form around it.

A still from Unison, Video Butcher Rules

We have to remember that revolution in videomaking, and even in your art breaking the boundaries between performance, sound and video, are related also to to the media envolved, just think of Godard and his "flexible" Arri who let him to adopt a new "barbaric" style… do you share this view, or in your opinion there is no much difference between performative art of the 70's, for example, and contemporary art?

So in a sense, I think that the big difference is most revolutions in video making now are derived from improvements in technology, rather than in the past having a whole new medium discovered and utilized. What technical aspects do you mainly focus on in your work? The main thing I have to focus on technically in my work is getting accurate motion tracks. Since most of my filming is spontaneous and without preparation, I rely on physical landmarks to 3d motion track in post-production.

I feel that within any type of medium there are always going to be boundaries being broken and simultaneously established. Personally, between performative art of the 70’s and contemporary art I feel that there are a wide range of differences that have been slowly established as time has gone by. With new technology comes new standards in quality of work and quality of image.

Much of the footage I shoot ends up being discarded due to the video not having the right credentials for an accurate motion track. Also another big part of my workflow is adding elements and layers to make the 3d element really stick to the scene so the viewer doesn’t question reality.

I feel that after the original revolution of video art coming as new media, I personally feel that contemporary art now can’t help but be inspired and derived from the past and influenced from the past.

I try to cover up my tracks in post processing enough so that once you are absorbed in the piece you don’t try to see how the strings are being pulled.

A still from Unison, Video

How has your history influenced the way you produce art?

explore, learn, and draw inspiration. With Unison I knew that I was going to be making a final piece of my college career, so I went into it with that preset notion that something had to be created.

My beginnings in art have stemmed from a love of music videos. I have always been fascinated how the medium can take performance, audio, and video to bring the viewer into an immersive space in such a short timeframe.

Right now I am allowing myself the space and freedom to go out and just spontaneously create and shoot without any set rules or timelines.

I have always been fascinated by music videos by Michel Gondry and how he takes a very do-it-yourself aspect to the whole production. I tend to follow that same pathway with the way I produce art, and I try to be as resourceful as possible.

From the different experiments and experiences I have, I will then be able to have the foundations for my next work.

I find that I am constantly learning as I make artwork; whenever I come across a problem that is out of my skillset, I force myself to figure it out or learn new skills in order to retain that same do-it-yourself style of shooting. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s next for Andrew Cote'? Are there any new projects on the horizon? I am currently in the process of teaching myself a number of new programs and utilizing higher end hardware. I have been making frequent outings with all of my gear in order to freely

Butcher Rules

A still from How Are You–I Am Alright, Video Installation

Shreepad Joglekar other, and are silent. This silence is very crucial for me, as it strictly limits the video to the surface of the wall, as if locked behind a soundproof glass.

‘How Are You–I Am Alright’ is an installation that investigates the generic questions and responses that happen on a regular basis between acquaintances or even strangers. These exchanges are causal and almost involuntary. I wonder if they are protocols rooted in our basic curiosity about life–especially as lived by others, or may be, they are verbal constructs that create, what Architecture theory calls as, a ‘defensible space’ between ourselves. The project constructs a simple exchange between two individuals in which one asks a question that the other answers. The two images sequences are projected in the gallery space across from each

The parallel projections provide an opportunity for viewers to be in the middle of this incessant, yet futile, silent dialogue. In the absence of sound the verbal becomes gestural, akin to sign language, and the viewer finds herself decoding the cryptic lip-movements. The viewer’s experience is also transient, as depending upon which side the viewer is facing, her role in the binary dialog switches.

A still from Family Fortunes, Video

A still from How Are You–I Am Alright, Video Installation

Each of the video pieces in this installation is created using approximately 4000 still images ordered on a timeline. Photographic fragmentation is inherent to this way of creating the movement illusion. This is also a process of literally constructing movements (using fractions of seconds as raw material) rather than only sequencing them–as in case of digital video capture and editing. In its formation, the still image sequence partially assumes the temporal excess of film and yet preserves the contemplative stillness of photography. On the cusp of these media, a sequence flickers in its own creative space. Also through fragmentation and indefinite looping of this dialogue one can experience the emotional fragility of the human condition that we are often oblivious to in real life.

repetition. He mentions: “Already Nietzsche has stated that the only possibility for imagining the infinite after the death of God, after the end of transcendence, is to be found in the eternal return of the same. And George Bataille thematized the repetitive excess of time, the unproductive waste of time, as the only possibility of escape from the modern ideology of progress.”1 I perceive my video

The conceptual foundation for my video loops is located in Boris Groys’ analysis of the

1. Boris Groys, Going Public, (Berlin: Sternberg Grant Petrey Press, 2010), 93, 94.

works to be attempts to subvert the modernist rejection of the contemplative engagement with the artwork, and also contest the dynamic character associated with the moving image. More of my video work can be found at: www.aabhaa.com

Notes:

An interview with

Shreepad Joglekar The power of listening, even when it is aimed to a casual series of conversations, is evident in How Are You, I am Alright. The aim of you personal research seems to go beyond the simple deconstruction of common dialogues. could you introduce our readers to this video installation? Retrospectively I locate the initial impetus of this installation in the experience of leaving my roots in Mumbai India, for graduate studies in the US. This was my first time I traveled abroad, leaving everything I knew on the other side of the globe. The self inflicted suspension of identity, in the foreign land initially assumes no history, it denies any burden of memory, and radiates the “lightness of being,” that Kundera rightly calls “unbearable.” For a stranger in the strange land, another stranger is the most plausible friend. Sensitivity to language is heightened in such conditions. Conversation between strangers (or even the possibility of such as dialog), for me, is the definitive aspect of civilization. The installation investigates nature of one such conversation. Its is not only a commonplace dialog, but it is specifically a dialog between strangers. It is also a dialog that produces momentary strangers, even out of lifelong friends.

Shreepad Joglekar

and then executed; often the process takes precedence and is guided by intuition. The goals are gradually shaped with the help of poetic interpretation of the initial results.

Where do you get the ideas for your work?

The two images sequences are silent. Could you better explain this choice?

All of my work comes from diverse experiences. I value visual, literary, and philosophical influences equally, and attempt to fluidly incorporate in my work. Recently I have become attracted to the role language plays in our daily experience, and how it delineates our thoughts.

To continue the train of thought from earlier question, the dialog suggested in the installation is utterly ineffective– in what language is generally expected to do: transfer information. No new information is shared in this conversation. It is not the uttered words, but the need that the strangers serve in uttering them forms the real message of this conversation.

For example: My mother-tongue is Marathi, but all my learning of contemporary art theories has been in English. So, even when I am speaking with another Marathi-speaking person, the moment I start talking about my work, I often unconsciously switch to English. I also get ideas through work. This is where aesthetic engagement differs from other methods. In the creative process, the goals may not be first defined

Thus the sound of such a conversation is merely an auditory excess. By removing the sound from the sequences, I present the pure vulnerable need. This silence also redefines the performati-

A still from How Are You–I Am Alright, Video Installation

ve space. It restores the metaphoric ‘fourth wall,’ once again separating the moving image from the viewer - as if with a soundproof glass. The silence is also a formal choice here. It allows me to undermine the otherwise dynamic nature of the audiovisual media. In this way the video returns to the realm of visuals, while staying faithful to its temporal space.

eternity is the true nature of all space. The space between the two projections is critical for the viewer. Only when the sequences are projected on opposite walls, that the viewer can truly enter this eternal space. Between the two projections, the viewer finds herself truly inside the artwork; subjected to making a choice– between a question and the answer.

What is the role of the space between the opposite projection screen? It is only a convention or in your opinion it reveals a hidden concept of a tactile space between different people trying to communicate?

Your installation shows a refined taste, a clean estetique. What technical aspects do you mainly focus on in your work? One of my prime goals is to question the nature of the medium itself, and to reveal it when I can. The sequences are constructed with series of still images, embodying small interruptions in time, resulting in a flicker instead of believable illusion of motion. The silence serves as another interruption. I prefer such interruptions over any attempt towards seamlessness. Technically

In the absence of sound, time gains more weight. The space between the two projections is filled with this unsynchronized time (the two projections loops are of different lengths). Through endless looping, each of the sequence becomes eternal. I believe, such commitment to

Butcher Rules

A still from How Are Youâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;I Am Alright, Video Installation

I like to keep my work very simple. The sequences can be assembled in any timelinebased software. My initial experiments with images sequences were using MS Powerpoint slides with specific time transitions. For the actual installation of the two projections I require the room be painted in black with black screens used for projections as well. This helps dissolve any trace of the wall surface. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s next for Shreepad? Are there any new projects on the horizon? I am currently working in two thematic directions. One series is of performative videos that will address issues of suspended identity, and cultural stereotype. In the other, more experimental direction, I explore the subject of time itself, and the paradoxical relation between the ephemeral and the eternal. Subtle natural phenomenon such as drizzle, breeze, or evaporation is my subject matter in this regard.

A still from Family Fortunes, Video

A still from How Are You窶的 Am Alright, Video Installation

Grant Petrey A still from How Are You窶的 Am Alright, Video Installation

Butcher Rules

A still from Peephole

Timothy Grover My work is primarily rooted in the exploration of history, with a specific focus on examining the way that “past” and “present” interact. I’m interested in looking at how our recollections of the past influence our present conditions and how our present conditions influence our views of the past, creating a feedback loop between memory and experience that is in constant transformation.

idea, for once we recognize it as present, it has already become past. This is ultimately where my interest lies, in exploring the disconnect between time, experience and expression. THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE is my most personal investigation of these ideas. I see this piece as a study in auto-ethnography. As a researcher, I took on myself as a subject to be examined. Through distancing and otherizing the “self,” I was attempting to not only speak about the self as an identity, but also to speak about the conditions that produce that self. This piece ties back into the idea of the feedback loop, where images of my current situation (a young, single adult living alone in a big city) intersect with recorded audio from the past (ripped from personal home video footage).

In looking at this, time becomes the focal point of existence. Our experiences are expressed according to lived time, mythic time, historical time, durational time, all of which “cinema” has the opportunity to indulge. We attempt to dictate these expressions in solidified terms, but in the end time has a much more ephemeral and transitory quality. The “present” is merely an

A still from Peephole film is literally shot through a peephole. For me, the peephole represents the perfect balance between public and private, between secure and vulnerable. The perception is that with the wide-angle view of the peephole we are able to see more than the human eye and thus we can access a broader view of the world. But in widening the view, we are also pushing the world farther away, actually making things harder and harder to access. The peephole speaks perfectly to ideas I was attempted to express within the film, as each one of us sees the world through our own subjective lens.

The film is constructed as a journey, a continual search to gain access to this notion of “self.” I begin in my newly adopted domestic space; a space that attempts to simulate the feeling of home but never actually achieves it. I then move out into a fragmented experience of the city, a frenetic, disconnected series of blips. Finally, I venture out into the suburbs, specifically to the house where my father grew up. I have very select memories of this place, and ultimately I will never have access to all of the memories embedded within its walls. I can never experience the full extent of this history, but there is a strange indefinable quality that surrounds it, an uncanny feeling of a home forgotten.

In the end, this film is less about somehow finding “myself” and more about the acknowledgement of my situation, my own subjectivity, and realizing that there are parts of my past that have shaped who I am and will always cling to me. It is also about the journey itself, a continual search and endless feedback loop of memory and experience. The film provides a space of meditation, a chance for personal reflection in which past and present collide. Ultimately, we see our world, our history, and ourselves, but only through the peephole.

Throughout this journey, there are two transitional aspects occurring. Visually, the peephole view starts off very distanced and gradually zooms in until it completely fills the screen. Aurally, the “past” audio soundtrack starts off clear and becomes more and more muddied and distanced until it eventually disappears. Using these two elements further highlights the rift between past and present, the closer we get to one the farther away the other moves. Along with this, the feeling of disconnect and estrangement can be seen by the fact that the

Timothy Grover

An interview with

Timothy Grover chaotic view of the city, and eventually end up in Skokie, the suburb where my father grew up. It was important for me to transition through these three spaces, as each holds weight in defining my notions of identity. To contrast these images, the audio overlay is sourced from old VHS home-video footage my parents took of me when I was growing up, a point in time that has been captured and etched into memory. Throughout the film, this sourced audio becomes gradually more distant until it disappears altogether. In the same way the peephole footage gradually zooms in until it completely takes over the frame. When both sound and image come together, their juxtaposition creates an extremely skewed view of present reality.

Timothy Grover's Peephole reveals a an effort to break to boundaries between perception and memory, and at the same time is a powerful reflection upon the nature itself of cinema. "The film is constructed as a journey, a continual search to gain access to this notion of self". A research a"Lacanian conception of the "self", we daresay. Could you introduce our readers to Peephole? Through the Peephole is assembled as a meditation on estrangement, traveling through a realm of remembered past and disconnected present. It speaks to the struggle to define “self” when the context of home is removed but the idea of home still lingers. This opposition between what we are and what we remember is ultimately what I wanted to explore. To highlight this sense of disconnection, I wanted to create an asynchronous relationship between sound and image. The video is comprised of footage I shot with a peephole attached to the lens of a small camera. I start out in my new domestic space, an unadorned studio apartment in Chicago. I then move through a fragmented,

How did you come up with the idea for this video?

I wanted to create a piece that emulated my experience of living alone in a big city, but in a subjective and almost surreal way. At first, I was experimenting with what type of effects I could get by attaching a peephole to the lens of a low-grade Flip video camera. Aesthetically, I

A still from Baba Yaga, 4 mins 55 sec, HD Video, 2013

A still from Peephole

liked the look of filming through the peephole with its harsh lighting and warped perspective. But even more than its formal qualities, I thought the peephole was a great metaphor for the ideas of detachment, isolation, and memory that I was exploring with this piece. A peephole is this device that acts as a buffer between us and the world. We look out from an assumed place of safety through the extra wide angle of the lens and we have this notion that somehow the peephole gives us a broader understanding of what lies outside the door. But when we take that lens out of its context and put it into the real world we realize that the peephole actually warps our perception, pushing everything away and making it almost impossible to experience what actually exists in reality. I thought this spoke perfectly to the sort of coming-of-age early adulthood experience that I was representing, when we have to decide who we are, how we want to live, which parts of our past we want to defy and which parts we want to define us. The focus was on this dichotomy between past and present self when we’re removed from the context of home but still try to hold onto its influence.

The peephole is not a metaphor, it becomes in Timothy's hands a tool to expose in cinematographic terms complex theories. Could you introduce our readers to the concept of auto-etnography?

In documentary film, whether it’s experimental or otherwise, there is this attempt to somehow represent or shed light on a certain notion of “truth.” However this is obviously highly problematic when we’re confronted with the fact that it’s impossible to represent the world with any sort of objectivity, and “truth” isn’t ours to define. In light of this, it is then the ethical obligation of the documentarist to confront and acknowledge their own subjectivity and use tactics that invoke skepticism in the viewer rather than propagate some self-defined “truth”. One such device is the use of autoethnography. Ethnography in general has essentially been the study of the “other.” Examining a subject and defining it in relation to what we know as familiar to somehow provide an understanding of it. With autoethnography, the artist is basically saying “I have no authority to speak about anyone else's

else’s experience, so I will instead look at myself as a subject to hopefully speak to some broader idea.” This is the tactic I chose in Through the Peephole. It was my attempt to step back and examine myself from a distance, to look at how and why I behave the way I do, and assess what is the core of my being. How do I define self? How do I reconcile my past experiences with my present condition? These were the types of questions I was asking in researching this piece. In the end the auto-ethnographic device provided not only a means of creative expression, but also a means of personal reflection that has been extremely beneficial. We have been impressed with your postBergsonian concept of time, past and present. Could you better explain this aspect of your art? When thinking about the concept of time, there’s only so much that Science can explain about human experience, or any experience for that matter. Humanity has structured a linear, quantifiable system of time that is meant to act autonomously, operating outside of our own experience. But that’s only one way of looking at how time and duration can be described. I think of time more as a feedback loop between past and “present” experience, where our present situation affects our notions of the past, which in turn affect our notions of the present, and on and on into infinity. Once you take this feedback loop far enough, the lines between past and present, memory and perception begin to blur. This intersection, whether harmonious or confrontational is what I have been exploring in my work most recently. I’m interested in creating these types of muddled, almost collagelike representations of time. Apart from photography, your videomaking reminds us of Robbe Grillet's stunning works and theories. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and philosophy and how they have affected your work?

A still from Peephole

Deleuze’s writings speak more specifically to time within film constructs with his concept of the “crystal-image” which is a representation of splitting past and present, virtual and real. He writes, “Cinema does not just present images, it inspiration in making this piece, specifically in Akerman’s treatment of the relationship between sound and image and how they corre-late to memory and lived experience. Bruce Connor’s treatment of time and memory has also been an inspiration, especially with his short film Report. This was a piece I saw early

As a media artist interested in time and history, Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze have been major influences on me in regards to recontextualizing notions of time and experience specifically in the way that they are represented through images. Benjamin writes in On the Concept of History, “History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of now.” This succinct understanding ties into my notions of time, both lived in the now and in memory.

on in my practice that really got me thinking about representing memory and experience in a whole new way. Outside of film, I also draw ideas and inspiration from both literature and non-fiction writing with writers like Don DeLillo and James Gleick.

receiving my BFA in the spring. Recently I’ve been straying a bit away from my video practice and have been gravitating toward new media art. I’m currently working on a project that looks at our perception of identity and personal history as seen through our archived virtual interactions on the web, essentially looking at social media as a documented historical record.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Timothy. What are you going to be working on next? I’m about to finish my time of study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and will be

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Anna Greer "In my video work i explore the tension between alluring-glamour and audience-alienation. I am curious about the essential elusiveness of glamour as it conjures a specific sensation of longing, inspiring collective consumer imaginations to dream through cinema and aspire through purchase.

A still from Lliorar, Video

The audio repeats in short, indistinguishable clips at irregular intervals, alluding to the figure as its source, while never resounding from the figure. The gradual failure of the image parallels the erasure of the character, who's identity -once mysterious- becomes obsolete as the video itself becomes the subject in place of the woman. The audience no longer has a relationship with a character; There is no character, there is no plot, there is no dream, all that is left is the residue of something that was once familiar.

Llorar is a montage informed by canonical imagery of hollywood starlet, in which female characters are isolated in a moment of sparkling suspension. The scene depicts a woman singing alone in darkness, illuminated by a spotlight, however the familiar scene is corrupted as the sound is fractured, and the images degrade over the length of the video. The figure swaying in space is reduced to an abstract blur mimicking the motions of the former ubiquitous character.

I shot this footage as part of a series of videos depicting myself cinematically weeping, as different vague female characters, isolated from a plot line, acting out an emotion with the expectation of being viewed. This work explores

A still from Lliorar, Video

my own personal longing for glamour, as an individual captivated and betrayed by imagery of fame and fortune; Held by the magic imagery and acutely alienated from the articulated perfection of the cinematic moment. This practice also reflects my own participation in a generational longing to self-image as a contemporary (anti)method of self-actualization and self creation. My work explores this slippage of value through the systematic magic of cinematic perfection as it permeates the collective imagination, and the failure of such glamour to ever satiate the desires it arouses" Anne Greer

An interview with

Anna Greer In your video "Llorar", the "starlet" is constantly spot lit on a dark stage. The darkness of the scene is more than a simple scenario: it seems to refer to a kind of cosmic alienation to at the same time to the misery behind the scene of a TV-studio. Could you explain this aspect of this work? Ha! I like that “cosmic alienation”. I was definitely thinking along those lines, as in a movie or play when a character sings a song to themselves and time stands still within the plot. I am attracted to that cinematic depiction of a private mental scape. For “Llorar” I looked at soap- opera montages and photo collages from the mid to late 1980’s, along with perfume commercials and advertising that used the same dramatic black space and soft focus.? I wanted to have the figure in the scene be the only consumable information in the image isolated in space and suspended in time as the video repeats itself. That figure then loses its shape and is not longer consumed or viewed/enjoyed as it almost was a first.

Anna Greer

Anne Greer

I also like this black space as it refers directly to the sensation of being in a spot light, unable to see the audience or the space around you that falls outside of the beam of light, however you become exceedingly aware of the parts of your own visibility; You can see your eye lashes, the tops of your cheeks and and the translucence of your eyelids when closed, you become your own immediate foreground. There is an interesting intimacy in this illusionary isolation.

secondary in importance to the interrupted relationship between the audience and the video, by the degradation over time and disjoined sound. My work intends to explore a cultural relationship to imagery evolving in stride with contemporary image over-saturation.

This isolation, while articulating a subjective mental scape, also frames the figure in a way that objectifies them, takes them out of the context of humanness, and eradicates all substance save for the aesthetic, making the figure a disposable visual commodity within an inflated economy of imagery.

Using simple filters which produces blurred images and weeping yourself different roles you are able to break the perfection and we daresay the fictional nature of the "pure" cinematic moment on the screen. It reminds us of Carmelo Bene's film "Capricci", the loose adaptation of the Elizabethan play Arden of Feversham (the Italian filmmaker too used to play different roles in his experimental and iconoclastic works) How did you develop your style?

While i choose specific cinematic cliches and cannons that i am personally attracted to in constructing Llorar, the content in the scene is

I think style at its very best is the expression of an individual’s unique rhythmic understanding of tension, whether that is easing tension or

A still from Lliorar Video

arousing it. Bene’s use of sound is so perfectly idiosyncratic, and i think it is the most penetrating aspect of Capricci; I think perhaps i am too close to my own work to even distinguish my “style” from the way that i perceive reality. However, I always try to make what i want to see or to be.

but i would encounter them spliced between commercials for Mountain Dew and action figures, so i think the way that i absorbed these “Pure” cinematic moments was influenced by the rhythm of commercial television, and the 90’s flirtation with the abject and failure. My style is a reflection of my belief and longing for these “pure” cinematic moments, syncopated by the failure of these moments to manifest in reality.

My current work uses Imagery that draws upon early cinema/the regurgitation of early cinema, and strategic editing that breaks up the relationship between this kind of imagery and the viewer. I like to use at least two different dissonant patterns within a piece (in Llorar the image and sound follow different patterns), and i try to allude to an absence. These are the basic elements that i use to navigate through my own work, however I always do exactly what i want, so these are not rules.

In your statement about Lliorar, you say This work explores my own personal longing for glamour. Could you comment this sentence? I have this sensation that i have not figured out how best to describe, it is a very specific long for something else, some other way of experiencing reality. Growing up i wanted to be famous, because the way i understood fame through pictures and movies and commercials (all very

I grew up in the 90’s, and was really attracted to film adaptations of musicals from the 1960’s,

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A still from Lliorar, Video

carefully constructed moments) made it seem like an alternate reality of perfection, as if famous people perceived time and space through the same lens of perfection that depicted them. I wished to see reality as if it were a film, plus i wanted all of that glorious attention.

sound alludes to the singing-figure as its source, but at the same time it seems not to resound from it. We find a "Baconian" aspect of your work, how did you achieve this effect? Could you please explain this aspect of your videomaking to our readers? When considering sound in my video work i first consider what i want to hear, what would be beautiful or satisfying, then i proceed to add audio with that self-awareness. For Llorar i wrote and recorded a whole song, then used a single two-second clip on repeat.

Glamour is defined as a Magic Spell and illusory romantic attractiveness. I think, despite my best efforts, i still find my self often leaning into some glamorous idea of the future. At this point in my work i am trying to break this spell (on myself/whoever elseâ&#x20AC;Ś) and expose the failure of this magic.

It is important that the same clip is repeated throughout the video, like a clue, however the rest of the ballad is hidden or withheld. The clip itself is meaningless, there are no clearly spoken

Sound is not secondarily in your video: a stunning aspect of Lliorar is the fact that

A still from Lliorar, Video

words or distinguishing sounds, rather, it is the repetition that suggests some importance, until it is repeated enough that it becomes rhythmic, familiar noise to the viewer, at which point the value becomes atmospheric.

Llorar belongs to a cycle of videos depicting yourself weeping as different characters. You use yourself as the subject for a lot of your work. Why is that ?

I had intended for the video and sound to suggest that one could have come from another, but i wanted to disrupt the logic of the echo. The sound very obviously inhabits a recorded space as the cuts give way to dead air rather dramatically, while the image articulates one fixed but ambiguous space.

To avoid being pedantic. The cultural issues that i am most drawn to address are also the ones that i contribute to, my own desires are a part of these tensions, I want to implicate myself in the critique of capitalist image oversaturation and the contemporary ego because i am still trying to see clearly through my longing for fame, glamour and wealth.

This juxtaposition still disturbs me, I am unable to say if i love it or i hate it, but this uneasy tension between love and hate is where i want my work to reside right now.

Additionally, I have a caustic sense of humor, and use my self in order to avoid exploiting someone else in these disposable roles. Making these videos would be much easier and the

videos much more beautiful if i simply used a bunch of my leggy girl friends as the figures in the videos, but i would wonder what would then separate my figures from the female object/fi-gures in music videos? By playing the characters i am implicating my self in the work, holding my self accountable as a part of the problem and avoiding the exploitation of my hot-friends. Artists are often asked about the inspiration for their work... where do you get the ideas for this series of videos? I have a constant stream of specific media influencing me; I watch a lot of romantic comedies and really terrible television (Bad Girls Club), 1960’s musicals, John Waters, Hitchcock, Fashion photography, old greg, Female body builders, this Canadian TV show for kids about a sock that has haunted me for some time…a lot of other things. There is a beautiful scene in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive of a woman singing in a theater, it is spectacular, i don't know how humans can make such beautiful things, but that scene is stuck in my head. The Name “Llorar”, is based on the name of the poem the woman is singing in the film titled, “Llarando” ( meaning To Cry/ Crying in spanish). At the time I made this series i was looking at a lot of imagery of beauty pageants, Miss America Pageants mostly, and started collecting images of these women crying as winners and losers, i found the images sort of disgustingly endearing, this national broadcast of such articulated vulnerability. What’s next for Anna Greer? Are there any new projects on the horizon? I have a number of smaller projects taking over my mental and physical spaces, including attempting to write and subsequently shoot a short film, which will undoubtedly end me. My next project is moving from Portland, Oregon to Amsterdam in March, so my most important current project is trying to devise a mobile practice that doesn't require a studio.

A still from Not the tunnel of love

Thus far this project has only evolved into me carrying all of my things everywhere with me in a very large bag.

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A still from Baba Yaga, 4 mins 55 sec, HD Video, 2013

Eliza Swann My most recent video work, "Baba Yaga", splices together archival recordings of women discussing their initiations into nature based religions with found and new footage. The video takes viewers through an auditory initiation with witches who, through the use of their magic, aim to create a just and sustainable world. Witches as feminine agents of metamorphosis and the regenerative serpent can positively change the world by restoring balance. I approached the making of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Baba Yagaâ&#x20AC;? like a piece of automatic writing as I struggled to come to terms with the idea that I am a part of a society that is having a virulent impact on the Earth. My contention is that the degradation of nature is partially a result of the subjugation of women and

The notion that the earth is not an endless supply of raw materials has contributed to recent developments in sustainability, which take into account symbiosis and the Magician's conscientious handling of energy and material. My art and life engage the mediums of painting, performance, and video interchangeably to invoke primal elements and energies to examine the forces of nature and the irrational as channelled through the sensory experience of the living body. Anthroposophy and the integration of spiritual aspects of the natural sciences as well as the expansion of these insights into philosophy can be experienced in the holistic and openly experimental approach to chosen mediums and collaborations.

A still from Baba Yaga, 4 mins 55 sec, HD Video, 2013

earth-based spiritual systems - the collapse of humanity's sustainable relationship with the earth is due to the rise of patriarchal religions that suggest the destiny of humanity to be "a paradise elsewhere" rather than right here. This video is part of a larger study of performance as a means to address ecological catastrophes that have resulted from our unbalanced patriarchal and empirical science dominated lifestyle. Can we use ecstatic states to transform our horror at the world's ills, invite the sublime in by inviting absurdity, and transmute nausea into a solution?

the poetic, the psychic, the ineffable, the irrational, and the ecstatic. Before scripture and history were re-written in HIS IMAGE there existed ancient cosmologies that embraced the magical synergy of natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fundamental principles and in this way leaned toward a balanced, cocreative, ethical world view. Let's thrive! Let's balance! Mysterium Coniunctionis.

Eliza Swann

Ultimately I am interested in awakening as a constant moving state and the limitless potential of being. The over-arching theme that weaves â&#x20AC;?Baba Yagaâ&#x20AC;? together is an investigation into the vastness of consciousness. In using hypnosis, trance, and dance I am tapping into ancient systems for problem solving through these feminized and marginalized channels of the symbolic,

An interview with

Eliza Swann encourages the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world that is accessible to direct experience through inner development. His aims point toward a balance between faculties of imagination and intuition in harmony, rather than conflict, with rationality. The spiritual world can be balanced with the precision and clarity attained by the natural sciences in their investigations of the physical world. This points toward multiplicity in both philosophy and practice. Ultimately, I am interested in triangulating between art, science, and spirit with equal attention.

Your practices include painting, performance, and video interchangeably - however you don't like the formal label of "multidisciplinary artist": versatility is not a matter of skills in your opinion, but a peculiar approach to art, a vision strongly influenced by Anthroposophy, indeed. Could you introduce our readers to this concept? I don't mind the label “multidisciplinary artist” or “interdisciplinary artist”. A multiplicity of practice, a desire to connect, and a deep wish to contribute to planetary healing drives my art forward completely. All boundaries between my life and my art are disappearing. For example, I earn a living as a tarot healer – tarot reading is performance art – there isn't a difference. My art and life engage the mediums of painting, performance, video, tarot, and teaching interchangeably to invoke primal elements and energies in an effort to examine Anthroposophy and the expansion of spiritual insights into the living body. The word “Anthroposophy” refers to a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner that en-

“Baba Yaga” is a complex work where layered and multiple interpretations are possible. How did you come up with the idea for this video? “Baba Yaga” was initially created in response to having been called a witch my entire life. At Central St. Martins I was called “The Art Witch”. The systems that ensure the subjugation of the feminine and the degradation of spiritual women (often called “witches” in a pejorative sense) are the same systems that have divorced

A still from Baba Yaga, 4 mins 55 sec, HD Video, 2013

people from identifying with nature and our planet. The sky worshipping patriarchal spiritual systems that insist that paradise is elsewhere have made us terribly irresponsible toward Earth. Before scripture and history were re-written in HIS image there existed ancient cosmologies that embraced the magical synergy of nature’s fundamental principles and in this way leaned toward a balanced and co-creative worldview.

"Witches as feminine agents of metamorphosis and the regenerative serpent can positively change the world by restoring balance." Could you better explain these fundamental aspect of your video? In many ancient cultures snakes symbolized the umbilical chord, joining all humans to Mother Earth. The Great Goddess is often depicted with snakes as her familiars - sometimes twining around her sacred staff or arms as in Ancient Crete. Snakes were worshiped as guardians of Her mysteries of birth and regeneration. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, creativity, immortality, and healing.

To create “Baba Yaga” I took recordings of women describing their initiations into nature worshipping religions and spliced them together with found and new footage. I wanted to visually push through the fear of the dark, the irrational, and the ineffable out into the ecstasy of nature, into the rapture of connectedness. The video functions like a spectrum or a Shamanic journey – fear, unknowing, death, and dismemberment arcing into ecstasy, growth, and wholeness. I wanted to entrance viewers in to a mental space that connects them to the planet and asks that they take responsibility. This is what Baba Yaga, the famous mythological witch, does to innocent children who wander into the forest. She threatens to eat them if they don't grow up, face their fear, and ultimately take accountability for their actions.

The Ourobouros is a symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life. The serpent, when forming a ring with its tail in its mouth, is a clear and widespread symbol of the "All-in-All", the totality of existence, infinity, and the cyclic nature of the cosmos. As agents of the Goddess and rebirth the snake was vilified by the patriarchal religions that have taken over, most notably perhaps in the Old Testament where the snake and Eve bring about the “Fall of Man”. So – let us reclaim the snake in it's positive aspect and with it an expansive and regenerative world view.

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A still from Baba Yaga, 4 mins 55 sec, HD Video, 2013

Mysteries! The found footage is taken from Russian children's films from the 1970s that depict Baba Yaga in her clownish aspect. The video needed that comic relief! I also found it peculiar that she is played by men in these films.

How did you select the fragments of your found-footage? What criteria have you used? Composing video is the same as composing a piece of music. The found footage elements had to work with the rythym of the soundtrack. The title “Baba Yaga” was chosen because this particular mythological witch is so fierce and multidimensional! Baba Yaga appears in Slavic folklore as a ferocious elderly woman, or three sisters of varying ages with the same name. She dwells deep in the forest, in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs with a fence around it made of human skulls. Folklore researchers variably interpret her as the moon, death, winter, snake, bird, earth goddess, totemic matriarchal ancestress, female initiator, or villain.

Baba Yaga is part of a larger study of performance. Could you introduce our readers to this project as a whole? “Baba Yaga” was conceived of as the first part of a trilogy, as many initiations occur in three stages. Also, the Goddess is represented as a triplicity in many traditions. Rudolph Steiner explains initiation as three stages: preparation, enlightenment, initiation. Shamanic initiation happens in three stages: separation, transition, and reincorporation. This trined study of performance is in the process of becoming – I cannot yet identify the two films that will succeed “Baba Yaga”. In a more macrocosmic sense I can say that “Baba Yaga” fits in with many of my ultimate concerns as a video maker and performer...how can we as artists push the Earth in a new direction with our bodies and energies and voices?

Baba Yaga may help or hinder those that encounter or seek her out, depending on the courage they display in the face of her demands. She threatens to roast and eat children until they prove their mettle by performing impossible tasks, after which they are rewarded. She is a fantastic and unforgettable initiator into the

A still from Baba Yaga, 4 mins 55 sec, HD Video, 2013

How has your history influenced the way you produce art?

What’s next for Eliza Swann? Are there any new projects on the horizon?

Certainly growing up in New York City with an artist father who took me to rock concerts and art openings and every Whitney Biennial from infancy (and watched every episode of Twin Peaks with me when I was eight) allowed me to see being an artist as a viable path and taught me to embrace immersive abundant creativity. I was always inclined toward mystical expe-rience - I had joined a coven and a meditation group by age 12! Since then my Spirit quest has lead me to India, Guatemala, Mexico, Greece, France, and Switzerland to study with various teachers – this has opened my creative channels extraordinarily and has lead me to incorporate learned techniques in hypnosis, music, meditation, magic, and healing into my art practice. These travels, this familial support, and this multiplicity of interests has allowed me to be more collaborative, flexible, free, and studio-less as an artist. At this moment I have a beautiful studio and I am enjoying stillness, painting, editing, and not jumping on an airplane for at least another month!

I am currently working on a choreographed dance work for video based on Ursula LeGuin's “The Left Hand of Darkness”, a 1969 science fiction novel considered by many to be one of the first major feminist works in the genre. It is slated for release in late 2014. I am also hard at work organizing a performing arts school called The Golden Dome. The Golden Dome is an experimental nomadic school dedicated to investigating intentional living and art making as it relates to cultivating ideas for sustaining and optimizing life on Earth. The Golden Dome seeks to provide its community with expansive vocabularies and methodologies for reconci-ling our selves and our work to each other and to our world. How can art contribute to cultural and psychic hygiene for the benefit of our planet? How can environment be investigated through the practice of art making in such a way that these questions cannot only be asked, but be lived as well? I am also working on a book entitled “Through Rose Colored Glasses” about artists who engage with mysticism in their work. Many projects!

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Sound in Motion II. Still from Video

Peter Barnard can play a part in defining the status of an object. However reviewing the video - I was immediately struck by how the movement of the material was reproduced via digital technology. Through video the powder, as it moved due to the vibrations, would begin to resemble natural phenomena such as dust or smoke. I took this further by having the camera directly focused on the canvas. Further experimentations included variations on how the powder would be laid out, sometimes arranged to reassemble rudimentary forms or patterns which would disintegrate as the canvas vibrated.

As an artist I am interested in how the use of sound, both live and sampled, play a role in the formation of how we might perceive certain objects or spaces relating to aesthetic experience. This interest in sound also extends to video â&#x20AC;&#x201C; starting with a small series of works in video that I made while I was studying at art school. Originally it began as documentation of a piece consisting of a canvas with graphite powder placed on top of a speaker playing an audio piece that I made using low-end bass frequencies. At the time I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t so much interested in making video art as I was more engaged with playing around with how sound

Inspired by the use of compositional methods

Sound in Motion (2011).Still from Video

art and rock music in its most extreme and subversive form, both of which share an emphasis on chance operations in the form of real time situations that involve the viewing audience.

derived from the application of indeterminacy made famous by the works of avant-garde composers such as John Cage the material shifts and spreads across the white background in a care-free manner, leaving marks in its wake - conjuring allusions to abstract painting to the point it begins to resemble the scientific imagery found within the studies of microscopic cells; suggesting a 'depersonalization' of the artists role in the use of technology within the creative process. This â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;depersonalizingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; effect also hints a subtle subversion of indexicality and authorship within the predetermined limitations of the framed image. Further emphasizing the distant nature of the framed image can be found in the droning textures of the soundtrack itself. While maintaining a level of synchronization between the image and sound, the sound punctuates the temporal and immediate aesthetic of the image - echoing the violent and often confrontational nature of performance

Peter Barnard

An interview with

Peter Barnard We have been impressed with the painterly qualities of your videomaking: "Sound in Motion" reveals a materic approach and at the same an effort to catch the ethereal kinetic forces in nature. How did you develop your style, Peter? It's hard to me to pinpoint exactly where during my life I developed my 'style' or 'technique' since I work with a broad range of different mediums. I guess it all began when I started drawing at a really young age and doing this almost every day. Growing up I was taken to a lot of galleries and country houses that were situated rural parts of England and that got me interested in art at an early stage. Being taken to Florence during a family holiday to Tuscany, Italy and seeing all the historical paintings from the Renaissance period displayed at the Uffizi Gallery left a lasting impression on me. Experiencing that prompted me to try teaching myself to draw properly. I taught myself through books that demonstrated all the techniques and skills in drawing before choosing to study art as a vocational course. However, I didn't really start thinking seriously as an artist until I finished college. By then I made this gradual shift from creating representational imagery to a highly stylised practice of drawing, just at the tipping point of being abstract. That led as a starting point for me to experiment with other disciplines outside of the traditional paradigm of art.

Peter Barnard

I wanted to try and expand on that aspect of physicality so I quickly put together this assemblage that consisted of putting on a small pile of graphite power onto this plain white canvas placed on top of the speaker of this old tape machine. I then used the tape machine to play this pre-recorded audio piece that was made up of low bass frequencies causing the sub-woofer to vibrate almost violently.

How did you come up with the idea for this video series? The idea originated from this earlier video I made that showed myself drawing on this canvas which had a handmade piezo contact microphone attached to the back and was plugged into an small amplifier. By amplifying the surface of the canvas this brought more attention to the actual physical process of making art and in a way I made it as a response to Box with the Sound of Its Own Making (1961) by Robert Morris except it referenced the practice of painting rather than sculpture.

As I was using a camera to document this experiment I couldn't help but notice how much the action of the graphite power moving, as it was reproduced through technology, bared this uncanny resemblance to natural phenomena. Witnessing this drew parallels to Baudrillard's concept of simulation and simulacra within the domain of art and technology where the distinction between what is original and copied or made as a representation are blurred.

Sound in Motion III. Still from Video

Conceiving it as a series gave me the space to play around with different adjustments from changing how the graphite power is laid out on the canvas to switching from black and white by using different shades of colour. The sound itself more or less stayed the same as I wanted each piece in the series to retain this element of immediacy punctured by the sound and a sense of detachment or distance.

"visual" approach to sound? Coming from a visual art background it seemed natural to work with video. The way I work with sound and video mostly derives from this desire to make sense of or call into question how sound plays a part in our encounter with visual culture and our surroundings. Sounds ranging from the functional "muzak" of spaces privatised by corporate companies, radio broadcasts to the ringtones of mobile phones leave their mark on our day to day experience.

What I found particular interesting was that in each video the graphite power moved in different directions and left unique markings. Expanding on that allowed a greater deal of indeterminacy and chance mechanisms in the process.

My work in video tries to explore these considerations by focusing on the relationship between the performative aspects of sound and the framed image.

As the title itself suggest, the use of sound in your work is peculiar: could you introduce our reader to your extremely rare

"Sound in motion" reveals the heritage of abstract painters and "abstract expression

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Sound in Motion IV (2011) Still From Video

ism", however, it would be unfair to not recognize the extraordinary effort to connect sound analysis (just think of Karlheinze Stockhausen's essays on "kinetic stimuli" in contemporary music) to visual art: often visual artists consider music only as "soundtrack" for their work. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and music and how they have affected your work?

tered Paul Pfeiffer's sound/video installation The Saints that was exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof. Seeing that work had a tremendous effect on my practice and made me consider how sound could be used to alter the status of a location. It also made me think about the conditions for listening - going beyond how we usually consume sounds whether it would be just listening through headphones plugged into an MP3 player or seeing a live performance with musicians. One of the first audio works I made when

I tend to draw a lot of inspiration from listening to experimental music that share sensibilities with popular music like Ambient, No-wave, Krautrock and Industrial music as well as Electroacoustic music and Noise which have closer relationship to contemporary classical music. These genres in turn are also influenced by the radical art of the twentieth century from the Futurists to Dada, Fluxus, musique concrete, avant-garde European music and Cage.

I was at art school was this recorded piece with high-pitched frequencies that were generated from this rather crude, cheaply-made Theremin put through various effects. This was played through a very simple set up consisting of a CD player and set of speakers which was then hidden away out of sight, leaving people who were in the space to contemplate these sounds in relation that space the work was exhibited in. It certainly didn't make a pleasant listening expe

What drew me to sound art and making soundbased work was during a trip to Berlin I encoun-

Sound in Motion (2011).Still from Video

rience and had an almost dystopian feel to it in its use of processed sounds. Later on in my degree I took this further by creating installations that attempted to engage the viewer on physiological level by tapping directly into their perception of sound.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Peter. What are you going to be working on next? Right now I am busy with making collaborative work with Chris Wright (an artist who I exhibited with at a show in Denton, Texas last year in October) where we are exchanging field recordings of locations made at different times and locations and using this process of playing the recording back into a new space and rerecording it.

How long does it usually take to finish a piece? It usually depends on the medium I am working with. Most of the time, my approach as an artist tends to be this ongoing process of trial and error and going with my instincts on what I feel works. Unfortunately the lack of a studio space tends to slow the production of new work down so I'm usually forced to try and make the best of whatever I have available.

This other project in the pipeline is going to be a participatory performance piece that will focus on the concept behind gift economy in the context of art, something that can be downloaded free of charge with minimal distribution costs, mirroring the business practice of internet giants like Google and Facebook who offer a free service in exchange for information that the user chooses to give that serve as data for targeted advertising.

This is can be a positive thing though, especially in the way it challenges you the way you work as an artist and motivate you to try out new mediums or processes that may be out of your comfort zone.

A still from Family Fortunes , Video Butcher Rules

Grant Petrey Transduction Grant Petrey “Transduction” was made by recording a working drawing at 30 frames per second. This is a fairly ridiculous process to produce an animated sequence that could have been created with a small fraction of that outlay of labour.

come together. As a process, it inevitably explores the temporal through the physical making, and the translation of the found source material that is usually digital in origin, but is chosen so that it deliberately involves some form of interference or noise from whatever it’s original form was. Because all art and temporality embodies mediation, there is always a slippage.

The time taken to continually re-render a drawing and create a sequence is important for me because it helps me mediate the multifarious starting points for a project and distill them in order to make sense and create a piece of work. The drawings used in “Transduction” are part of an ongoing project and larger film, however it also stands alone as a work in its own right. The process of arriving at this point takes me a lot of time, which allows the personal, experiential and intellectual to converge, and the work

The mediation of concepts and experiences, within the engagement of making and translating this slippage, creates an interesting space for contemplation and transformation over time, so there are many shifts that occur. There are shifts in intention, in the drawing process in learning, in the formal choices and in the eventual resolution of the work via language.

A still from Family Fortunes, Video

This is a speculative process through the editing of the footage and considering the use of sound that is triangulated through the final titling of the work. This stage is the most surprising and rewarding of the process, all be it a lengthy one. I am seduced by the charcoal used to make the work and by the blackness of the drawing’s surface and how these tones shift in the animation.

the dark”, not knowing if the outcome will be successful; however, it is ultimately more rewarding. This process requires endurance and for me this acknowledges and plays with Lacan’s idea of “objet petit a” via the repetitive methodology and then the negation of the image. Since I began producing moving image work entropy has always been an important element to the work.

Utilising the process of erasure to produce moving image work re-quires a destructive act that has an honesty that is self-effacing and also liberating. To engage with and be consumed with the drawing process can be rewarding because it gives the satisfaction of a material process. To erase the drawing by working over it can be arduous, as you “work in

In the final outcome, it is of course important that there is a sense of reflexivity in the process and that the surface and materiality of the drawing, along with the illusory quality of producing the moving image, is laid bare. Grant Petrey

An interview with

Grant Petrey Your works range from videoart pieces like "Family Fortunes", that reminds us of Boltanski's early period, to animation video, like "Transduction" that we have selected for our VIDEOFOCUS Issue. “Transduction” is a stunning black and white animation realizing a sort of "neuronal process", since the frame rate used (30fps) is higher than common animated work, a rare technique, which could be compared to Guy Maddin's crazy editing process (Brand upon the Brain!, 2006). How did your early work differ from what you're doing now? Artists and filmmakers have always explored frame rate and the potential of technology and temporality with what they capture, how they capture, edit and present their work, and this is ongoing. Guy Madden’s great film is engaged much more directly with narrative and historical cinematic tropes than my work is, as well as having everything and the kitchen sink in it. Process has always been important in my work and accepting the shifts and changes that occur between the pre conceptualization of the work to the final output is vital, as well as being honest and self effacing that your work, is, what it is, and not trying to be something else, avoiding pretention.

Grant Petrey

The work of Boltanski was very prominent when I was a student and I remember the archaic filmic quality and tone to his installations, but it was not something I engaged with. It was the work of Abramovic & Ulay, Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman that helped me find historical context for what I was doing with video. Although I’m not a fan of his later work, I also remember seeing Bill Viola’s “The Messenger” at Durham Cathedral and this was also hugely important because of it’s simplicity and beauty. Around the time I made “Family Fortunes” the work of Tacita Dean, Gillian Wearing and Douglas Gordon, as well as the Dogme 95 film movement were on my radar and opened up questions about the role of subjectivity. At the time making this work was a risk, and risk is important. The main risk was not paying my rent so I could buy a video camera, even though

Originally I trained in drawing, painting and printmaking. As a painter I was a very bad one, all naïve introspection and earnest angst, hahaha! Dreadful! Being a fairly intense young person I wanted to say something profound and of course failed, but it takes time to develop an approach and a language, so failure is very important. The narrative tensions I wanted to explore could not be achieved through the language or process of painting, not that I have anything against painting. Negating the art object became important for practical reasons, as well as being influenced by Lacan, and so I started making large temporary wall drawings. From this I explored the potential of sound and making video works and creating performative scenarios for this work. The intimacy of the work and the process of making is something that still carries through from the early work.

A still from Unison Video

A still from Family Fortunes, Video

I had no idea what I was doing. Now I could just use my mobile phone.

was very literal in that it was an MRI of the physical brain, the site of temporality. This footage came from the Internet and was filmed from a screen by a phone camera and then this was put online, where I found it.

Being embroiled in important education work in London, there was a break in my practice and then I started making commercially orientated animation work that was completely digital and production based. I was fairly miserable doing this work, and wanted to return to my practice and something that was very material and relatively low tech, so I returned to the immediacy of drawing. The video work was reflexive and subjective, and if it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t produced in one take then the repetition of the process was revealed and exploited. This process based approach and reflexivity is still there in the present animation work.

The very poor image quality and degradation in the footage appealed to me, and the processes of mediation involved was intriguing given my initial aims. At the time this process of entropy was significant and related to earlier video work. I could have used the found footage directly to make work with and continue to exploit digitally, but I wanted to draw and it seemed appropriate to take it through another mediation and temporal process via animation, which is essentially concerned with the illusion of movement and time. When I started to consider what I was producing, other things opened up such as the aesthetic potential of working with surface and illusion, as well as other themes that where significant.

How did you get the idea for Transduction? I wanted to make a film about temporality and perception, and use a process that explored and involved mediation. The found footage I used

A still from Transduction

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light and dark, consciousness and unconsciousness, revealing and covering, adding and taking away, destroying and creating, loss and gain. It was about looking, seeing, transformation and interpretation via the digital to the analogue and back, and the subjective experience of making the work and what this raises, and what unfolds. You have to take a risk making work and so much of the development is “in the dark” because you don’t really know how it is going to develop, aesthetically, technical and conceptually.

In your works colour assumes an important role, not only aesthetic. It is not by chance that Transduction is realized in B/W: the blackness of the surface represent a precise method, as you say, you "work in the dark". Could you introduce our readers to this aspect of the making of Transduction? It’s always easier to get a handle on what you have done after the event, which is why the durational aspect of how I work now is beneficial for making sense of what I’m doing. Certainly, the nuances of colour and light from painting carried over into the video work. At the time the cinematography of “DeKalog” by Kieslowski and “The Mirror” by Tarkovski where on my mind, and learning from them and others, led to conscious decisions about lighting and colour.

With the particular erasure method I use, there is no going back to correct a frame, because it is one working drawing surface. This approach was popularised by Kentridge, but it was the work of Amy Kravitz that turned me on to this. As a deliberate choice I work intuitively and I don’t use any of the programs or tools that animators can now use to guide their in camera work either. This process means there is always something lost in the translation and intention, and this is an interesting part of the process, because you have to learn to let go a lot and accept what you have.

With “Transduction” using and utilising the materiality of charcoal, to build up the surface and push the grain of the material around was enjoyable. The repetitive process of drawing using erasure seemed to be poignant when depicting the site of memory. The blackness of carbon was significant when making work about memory and loss too. It allows a play between

This process goes against what animators spend along time trying to perfect and the ways in which they try to reduce the labour in their production process.

how we see, and so it is therefore culturally and personally subjective and ultimately dependent on the structures of language as we interpret internally and try to find “insight”. The quote you have used talks about the risk involved in trusting “in the dark”, and also the pleasure gained in the pursuit of the unknown of that which is invisible. He speaks of how our interpretation is supplemented so that we can make sense of what we are doing or seeing. Derrida goes on to talk about the temporality and cognitive process involved in drawing itself, and regarding drawings. The bitter sweet tension between the abstract and concrete and how this is alluring because of what is revealed, but also of what is illusive and the ultimate failure of drawing or of gain-ing insight, or as he describes “the ruin”.

A still from Transduction

This idea of the “ruin” is the pursuit of the unobtainable from drawing, as mediated experiences that are dependent on the memory of something that has passed at the very point where we try to capture sight or make sense of something, that this is forever illusive. The pursuit of the unobtainable and the “ruin” links to Lacan’s ideas of “Object petit a” for me, however, Derrida talks of accepting the process as a failure or being blind as an “ennoble infirmity or an impotence without fear or self-deception”. With the drawing process deployed making “Transduction” each surface is cancelled by the preceding drawing so there is no preciousness with the drawing as an object. This is something that I deploy with all my drawing, often covering a drawing I have worked on for hours and starting again. There is something liberating and ‘electric’ in the anticipation of destroying something in order to create something else.

In your statement you say "There are shifts in intention, in the drawing process, in learning, in the formal choices and in the eventual resolution of the work via language". This is very similar to the concept exposed in Jacques Derrida's marvelous essay Memoirs of the Blind: "What happens when one writes without seeing? A hand of the blind ventures forth alone or disconnected, in a poorly delimited space; it feels its way, it gropes, it caresses as much as it inscribes, trusting in the memory of signs and supplementing sight." Could you comment this sentence? I wasn’t consciously referencing this essay, but I am aware of it and of course this writing is loaded, Derrida is so important. In this Derrida essentially talks about us all being blind as we go through life. We are blind and trying to work out, who we are, what we are and where we are.

Letting go of the value attached to the labour involved in producing something, as well as negating responsibility for the art object with what is a decisive act. The animation becomes a record of the material and temporal process in response to interpreting found footage and make moving image. There is a triangulation at work that relates to Derrida. The intention and expectation of the work, the experience of making and labouring over the work, and then the ongoing reflection and

For Derrida everything is about the constant creation and deferral of meaning via signs in language and of course, memory is central to this process of how we formulate meaning “in the dark”. We scope out the new with what is familiar and the tools that we have available. Knowledge is not just about what we see, but

editing process throughout all of this, coupled with the final output that has sound and a selected title. There is flux throughout all of this process and meaning is configured between all these points of input and experience. This involves accepting the unknown and the unexpected, and working with the “invisible”, where some things are lost and other things gained. What is the influence of the French philo-sopher Lacan on your work and artistic thinking? I think Lacan’s key concepts of how the Sym-bolic and Imaginary orders relate to each other and impact on how we formulate meaning and how we understand our position in the world, are important. The concepts of “object petit a” as an imaginary cover or fetish for lack, and the “death drive” principle in relation to this have resonance for my work, and this is what I take from him. We engage with activities to gain pleasure and loose ourselves in them, and we are constantly deceiving ourselves. I suppose being conscious of this allows for a reflexivity that can be personal, and also be applied to how we make work, and how we would like it to function, as well as open up a vast array of relationships and issues. I think it relates to the creative impulse too. To want to make is to have an unexplainable “itch”, to create something, do something or be some-thing and be satisfied by the pursuit of this, then to return again and again to it, it becomes who we are. Using repetition as a significant creative process and acknowledging this is important for me, as well and being aware of the trace of what is left over from this process. The drawings used in “Transduction” are part of a larger film in progress. Could you anticipate something of your next project to our readers? I have lots of animated footage for the film, that I am using to produce several stand a lone pieces. I have just completed another short work entitled “Dark Flow” with a frame rate that is lower at 12fps. I initially started this at the same time as making the footage that became “Transduction”. It is a less frenetic piece of work, but they complement each other. What has occurred to me is that the scope of these individual films is not to just configure the footage that makes them as a single channel piece, as originally intended, but to see how they work together as an multi screen instal-lation, so this is what I will be exploring next. I also have a video work in progress from footage I shot in August 2013 in Spain that I’m also slowly editing. Since June 2013 I have also been working on another separate animated piece that explores drawing and movement that I’m about a third of the way through producing the raw footage for. It was meant to be a quick project! Of course, so many people roll their eyes at the idea of how long all of this takes, and I’ll admit it can be exasperating. I have lots of ideas for works, but the most important stick around.

A still from Transduction

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A still from Lai

Chen Carmi This project, a film made of short video clips, is a continuation of my observation of the urban birds of L.A County: pigeons, seagulls, and herons. There are two other sides that complete the triangle my work relies on: the Hispanic community, which is indirectly present in this document, and me, the outsider/wanderer. This triangle captures an essence of strangeness and uninvited existence that I find in this town, but can be found anywhere else.

Lai Little birds often remind me of photographs of immigrant women, especially those that were taken at Ellis Island by Lewis Hine and others—tiny creatures, covered with shawls; in their eyes we see completion. In those pictures the background always seems to ‘wear’ them like a new garment. I saw this trio of zebra doves (originally from Southern Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Sumatra and the Philippines but considered to be an invasive species elsewhere) hopping around on a concrete floor next to a building's entrance in Honolulu. They recalled for me the lower left portion of the painting, The Fight between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Bruegel. Look at the small figures of a man holding a stick with two candles and the woman next to

I chose the format of the projected film because of its “lack of weight.” I like the idea that the project has no real physical presence, that it is all data, or memory. Edward Limonov wrote that back in Russia, he had many books, but immigrants do not have books and now he has only three. I feel much the same about art objects and I find it appropriate that once I leave, carrying a compact disc in its case with me, I will leave no traces behind.

A still from Lai A still from Lai

So, there you have it: a short video I shot in Los Angeles.

him, wearing a shawl. Notice the birdlike position of their bodies.

Sunny day

My parents had this painting hanging above the television. As a child, I loved the birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye point of view, high above insect-like humans in their everyday unawareness. It is amazing how clearly we see things from a distance.

pigeons droppings English, Spanish and shooting

When I took the photographs of the doves, they looked so much like those morbid Netherlanders, yet, they do not seem nearly as cruel or as foolish. Unlike Bruegel, I have the compassion that comes with secularity. I know that some of my perplexed viewers hope my art has an allegorical intention, yet there is only so much I can steal from othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sorrow.

Chen Carmi

An interview with

Chen Carmi In your work "Lai" you develop a sort of "estethical thinking" which goes beyond the concept of metaphor: each remind to birds, from immigrant women to Bruegel's paintings, is not aimed to simply show a possible interpretation. In a sense, we dare say that your art destroys any allegorical intent, investigating the inner and secret nature of the images. How did you develop this so personal vision?

reality and it is rarely interesting to us, the listeners in any case. Why than, this small dreamed event left such an impact? Created a memory? When we sleep we experience the world in less controlled way: our ability to lineup events and occurrences are limited and our mind often drifted to strange and abandon places, back and forth in time and memory. I think this is when we see things in their fully existence and we noticed with awe: how rich is the smell of wet ground, how barbered is the yellow color..

I enjoy experiencing the world in non linear way, when different lines of happenings keep crossing and bumping into each other. People often troubled or fascinated with their dreams; we meet a hypothetical encounter and he share his dream with us, something like: â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had a dream and you were in it.. the ground was wet and you were wearing your yellow coat..â&#x20AC;?. This occurrence would probably never catch the attention of the speaker, had it taken place in

When I take photographs, I put myself in a similar in-trance mode. I walk in the streets in a very specific pace which is a bit faster than my usual walk. I cary my camera under my left arm. If I see something interesting I stop for a moment, I snap a short or capture a short movie, and than I move ahead. (It is amazing, people treat me very differently when I do my photo-

A still from Lai

wandering walks, they simply ignore me, and I really feel like a little pigeon myself.) When I return home, I barely look at the images I captured. In the first few weeks, they all seem dull and unappealing. I just put them aside, and keep shooting and reading and living. With time, clicks and links are begin to arise: memories, works of art, music; some part of my brain â&#x20AC;&#x153;dreamâ&#x20AC;? them all together, letting the images find there on echoes in my mind.

Could you comment this sentence? I grew up in an orthodox Jewish community; I was taught, mostly in school and not so much by my parents, that compassion is an outcome of faith and a part of religious practicing. It is not and in fact, it contradicts a major part of the Jewish dogma, that only those who obeyed are to be reworded. Like in the case of many photo-documentarists, my art react to horror, maybe even drawn to it, but it never fosters it, never enjoys it the way religious work of art do. I think it because religions, I am referring here to the three abrahamic faiths, indulge hell, as it is such a pillar in their essence.

This is why it bothers me when people look at my work as allegories, as fables, because fables are attempts to force linear/human interpretation on those who are free from it. We are fascinated by the balance between tradition and innovation you achieve in your art.

In your video "Lai" static and common shots remind to different sources. Behind an "uniform" style, is hidden a great variety of references. Where do your materials co-

In your statement "Unlike Bruegel, I have the compassion that comes with secularity."

A still from Lai

Francois Boucher: “When one writes, does one have to write everything? And when one paints, does one have to paint everything? For pity’s sake, leave something to my imagination.”

me from and how do you go about putting them together? When I work with my camera, or edit the raw materials on my computer, I try not to struggle, or pretend to be someone I am not. When I film a fragment of an occurrence, I spend only seconds determining the framing, knowing that my subject of observation is unpredictable. Later, I let my instincts determine when to stop recording (sometimes, to my regret). My goal is to offer my viewers an experience that is shaped by time, not in an analytic process, but as an emotional experience. I want my viewers to ask themselves: “What is this thing? Is she serious?” I hope they will experience some bewilderment, as I believe it will eventually lead to a higher level of understanding.

You have quoted Bruegel. Have other artists influenced your work? A fine expression of this beneficial reduction one can find in the movie Cach (Hidden), by Michael Haneke. Indeed, my movie LAI is inspired by the visual language of that movie, not only in the way it contributed to my from-adistance-heron-like observation, but also in the way I set up the stage for the occurrences to present themselves over time. For a long period of time, I have avoided identifying myself as a street photographer. This is because I found in the majority of street photographers characteristics that I do not find in myself: boldness, pushiness and usually a strong attraction to individuals, humans or objects. In general, I believe most of the street photographers see themselves merely as the

In my work, the most important thing for me is not to be clear, but to be accurate. As a result, my work becomes more “thin,” not in terms of content but in a term of visual language. I like to quote Denis Dedirot critiquing the work of

why other filmmakers use separately recorded soundtracks as a default. To somehow contradict myself: The last scene in my video shows a few pigeons gamboling next to a crossroad. I edited this scene with the song I See My Pretty Papa Standing on a Hill by Eva Parker. In that case, I followed my “dream it together” method which afore mentioned, I simply looked at the footage and heard the song in my head. I added the music to the image and felt I created something complete. Apart from your video work, Dogs are a leit-motif in your photos. Could you introduce our readers to this aspect of you art?

A still from Lai

documenting element in an occurrence rather than the experiencing/absorbing one. (It might also explain the street photographers’ obsession with “decisive moments”, a proof for their needed presence at the scene and the quality of their works).

A short while after my graduation from art School in 2005, I was offered a position as a studio photographer in Ulaan Baatar, the capital city of Mongolia. I took the job and lived there for few months. I didn't make friends there and spent many hours wondering in the city. Soon, I began taking photos.

I find Daido Moriyama to be the ultimate exception to this usual street photo-graphy approach: a real absorber, the perfect Flèur. Thus, I was greatly influenced by Mori-yama’s aesthetic and liberated concept, especially in the earlier stage of my work. Although, lately and largely because I began to work with video, I feel my work needs less exaggerated “noise” and perhaps a bit more rigid structure.

For the first time, I took photographs with no guiding and no feedbacks (photography was never a hobby of mine, I bought my first camera when I first attended art school). It was a time of great loneliness and a time of revelation; it was then when found my voice as a photographer. I saw tens of stray dogs in the streets of Ulaan Baatar and photographed them; they became the foundations of my work.

In this VIDEOFOCUS issue we have chosen a selection of artists who operate with video and photography as well. We are interested in exploring the boundaries between these worlds which at first sight seem very distant. How has your work as photographer influenced your video making?

What’s next for Chen Carmi? Are there any new projects on the horizon? I hope to visit Israel in the summer and to work on a project in a city name Bat-Yam. I have flickers of shots in my head already, but, following my 'dream it together' role, I don't let the analytic part of my brain to process it just yet.

Just as the still camera captures images differently than the human eye, without hierarchy, so does the video camera, not only with images, but with sounds as well. Both of the cameras force the observer to confront data which he/she usually does not notice. Paying attention to this normally eliminated information brings many delightful moments of revelation. One of the reasons why I admire the work of Haneke so greatly is because of his abstention from using soundtrack. The sounds of passing cars, blowing wind, and rustling leaves are so beautiful to my ears; I truly do not understand

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Orly Aviv

Rainbows End, Video Installation

meaning came out of the blue, with no warning. I have watched the Israeli blue/white flags flapping over the yellow sunshine, I have listened to the joyous music, realizing I must find shelter. It must have been the Hamas is trying to hit Tel Aviv, with missiles fired from Gaza . I have squeezed myself between the jetty boulders, gazing at the missiles line in the sky , watching the Israeli rocket intercepts the Hamas missile over the Tel Aviv Sea. A brief of pride and joviality , all fell into the Tel Aviv Sea.

"Rainbow's End", experimental video art Installation, won the Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Prize to recognize exceptional achievement, outstanding creative in video Art 2012. The reason for the selection: "Rainbow's End" related to a traumatic event in contemporary society. Aviv's video, documenting individual and collective sense of Tel Aviv (Israel) during the operation "Pillar of Defense". It has reflected a combination of winter weather in Tel Aviv and the threat perception prevailed in the Israeli society for those located in the southern part of the country to its center.

However during that scary coincidence, many sailing boats were in the same spot at the sea. On one boat, ISR555, were my three sonsâ&#x20AC;Ś

Aviv's video manages to combine personal and collective, bringing the maximum expression through the video medium." On November 16 th , 2012 I was standing on the Tel Aviv Marina pier to watch and cheer the sailing competitors of the Israel championship sailing. A sailing spectacle preceded the competition. In a scary coincidence, immediately after the spectacle has ended and before the sailing competition has begun, a noisy air raid siren sounded in the Tel Aviv Marina. The siren sound and its

Like in a slow motion movie, paralyzed with fear, I have watched the splashes of water touched the boats gently as they sailed away. A week after, a cease-fire has been announced. The sky was gray. Heavy water was pouring. I wanted to express the change, from the confusion and chaos of the falling missiles to the happiness of the falling rain into an artwork. I started to shoot the video through the window

Rainbows End, Video Installation

of a traveling car, departing Tel Aviv to the south desert of Israel.

the same materials can be edited in various ways and infuse different content depending on our decisions and expectations - the way we choose to look at the world.

Installation requirements, equipment, relation to specific location

"Rainbow's End" is played simultaneously on two devices. The left device starts with a 1 min video documenting the sailboat departing. The right device simultaneously presents an edited video illustrating the traumatic moment; the loss of hope for peace. Afterwards, the left device illustrates 4.5 edited minutes portraying the process from a traumatic event to new hope for peace. Meanwhile, the right device projects in slow motion the departure of the sailing boat ISR555.

Music lyrics and poetry - Reveled - Christine Wallace and Nir Nakav Music composed: Nir Nakav http://nirnakav.com/

"Rainbow's End" different videos are composed of the same video clips. The different editing evokes different emotions, associations and messages. One highlights the anxiety and leaves the viewer confused, while the other conveys a new beginning, allowing for new hope. The idea is to show that in art as in life,

An interview with

Orly Aviv

The open narrative present in your video works, like En Attendant Go (dot)â&#x20AC;Ś or Waiting for Go (dot)â&#x20AC;Ś show a structure similar to Robbe-Grillet's films.However, this structure in your case is not marked by a surrealistic approach to narration, which shows instead a more surreal touch. What is the main aim of your "open" narrative?

cause of the endless back and forth "mechanic marching" of the birds . I wanted to give it a "web" feeling so I wrote it like this: Go (dot). Later on I did "Lace", conveying a similar idea. I took a mud whirlpool video during a desert flood and transformed it. Here the viewer imagines speaking lips, creating the urge on the part of the spectator to interact, even though the lips are mute. Once again, the predicted scenario is broken taking the spectator into his imaginary world.

En Attendant Go (dot) is an experimental work I did in relation to "Rorschach inkblob". It goes well with my contextual framework which engages with associations. The work starts with an ordinary visual narrative to create known prediction. Later on the realistic structure changes into an imaginary "kaleidoscope" and time moves in circles. While this process engages with mysterious music, it vehicles the viewer from being an outside observer to becoming an inner one, planting a seed to free the conscious control and arouse association. I called this work after Samuel Beckett's play, be-

http://www.orlyart.com/?page_id=3005 In your video work "Jump Johnny Jump" you adopt a series of strategies which aim to break the usual mechanisms of perception of the viewer, a sort of auto-detournement, just to quote Guy Debord's practice diffused in the 60s, revisited under a "molecular" level. You are a researcher at the Gonda Brain Center, and we dare say that

Rainbows End, Video Installation

four simultaneous screens conveying different narratives. The breaking of the sequential development enables the arousal of our associations and senses. The technique is based on the assumption that what is initially viewed is real and existent followed by an irregular and unexpected "reality". http://www.orlyart.com/?page_id=2881

in your artistic path art and science reach an interesting balance. Thank You. I found it very interesting to work on the same theme from different paradigms. I do enjoy it. Can you better introduce our readers to the techniques you use in your video aiming to "undermine" common perception processes of the viewer?

Your academic background presents different disciplines, like Fine Arts, Mathematics, Political Science and Information Systems. What was the influence of different studies on your artistic practice?

"Jump Johnny Jump" was a very interesting process. It actually started in a rare remarkable video footage I took. The reflection created in the water was lucid and vivid, establishing a dialogue between the image and its reflection, and the viewer and the reflected image. This perceived reflection is broken by installing "interfering" video clips into the movement and undermining the spacial and temporal perceptions of the spectator, empowered by the use of

I find it very interesting to invent new ideas. I am always looking for new ways to think or do things I already know in a different way. For me, it's not about memorizing the details of the subject I have studied. For that I can open WIKI. What I am interested in is to embed, to sharpen different disciplines of thinking. In my artistic

Rainbows End, Video Installation

practice, I am constantly looking for ways to innovate. You can see that my artwork, whether it is photography, video, sculpture or installation, employs different visuals and varied functions, based on a range of underlying theoretical concepts.

process. I elaborated this theme in other works, and especially for my MFA thesis entitled "SeaofSeas" - a global collaborative digital video art work. http://www.orlyart.com/?page_id=161 Upon returning to Israel, I attended courses in Brain Science. At some point I developed a research study, which focuses on the relationship between associations and memory/learning.

Could you tell us when your preoccupations in Brain Science led you to face your artistic works ?

You are an artist working with different media. In these last years we have seen that the frontier between what we call "Video Art" and Cinema (not only experimental cinema) is growing more and more vague: do you think that this "frontier" will exist longer?

In 2007 I registered to MFA at the Slade University College London. I applied and was invited to the school. In the midst of preparations to leave Israel, I had an accident and underwent surgery. I asked the doctor to take a microscopic video of the surgery. "Fragility" was my first video installation at the Slade. http://www.orlyart.com/?page_id=141 The ideas that I started to promote in that work are the same ideas that interest me today. I actually understood the power of imagination, and especially association, as an empowering

We see this phenomenon almost in any contest. The impact of the www started with the "global village". Since then, society has acknowledged this concept to such an extent that even toddlers interact with each other throughout

the globe by simply pressing a key. Moreover, in the past man needed assistance in categorizing his world in order to understand it. Today, we are “accustomed” to this categorization process and are able to apply a wide range of dimensions and variability. I might say that the last frontier is the study of epigenetic, changes in gene activity which are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence. What aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? Rainbows End, Video Installation

In my art work, I do only what I want; creating work that fills me with joy and happiness. I love to create meaningful art, and I am very happy when the viewer can communicate with my creation and take it into his own world.

Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience? I think that creativity is based on something that one already knows and something that one will know…I am not sure what you mean by direct experience. If you think about Albert Einstein’s E=mc 2 ; amazing creativity; would you say it is direct experience?

How much do you draw inspiration from our reality? Each of my works starts from my reality. In fact, my approach for taking images or video is very natural, ecological. When I see something that arouses something in me, I shoot it. I don’t make any changes in the natural habitat; I never come back to the same place to shoot again because I need the magic, the inspiration, the specific moment in time and place, that trigger the artwork. However, when I am transforming the footage into artwork in my studio and bringing out what it means to me, I feel totally free to do whatever I want. I use varied sophisticated digital technology to create what I have in my imagination.

What’s next for Orly? Are there any new projects on the horizon? Well, I have a long list of art projects that I want to do. I especially enjoy making installations, like "Nervous Organ" in which I created a sensored diving place, http://www.orlyart.com/?page_id=2079 but these kind of installations are challenging, since they require a special location and duration. Regarding exhibitions, in January a documentary exhibition in New York will present ‘Rainbows End’ which won the 2012 Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sports’ prize. http://www.orlyart.com/?page_id=2883 In addition, following the 2013 Florence Shanghail video art prize for ‘Jump Johnny Jump’ and ‘Rainbows End’, an exhibition will open within the international event held at the Shanghai Pudong National Library. The most anticipated event follows an invitation to coordinate a residency program and participate in the 2014 Vancouver Biennale. This will be a very interesting experience, primarilty because the preservation of nature is embedded in the essence of the city. I aim to create a work in the public sphere under the Biennale’s theme “Open Borders Crossroads Vancouver”. For me this theme embodies the spirit of my work in which I integrate science, technology and art.

I would like to ask you if in your opinion, personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... For me – Yes, absolutely sure.

Rainbows End, Video Installation

Butcher Rules

A still from Photographing Richard Serra, Video

A still from Evening Bricolage

Melissa Gallaga I.- From the of cultural studiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; perspective, Bricolage is a luck mixture of various processes in its merge end up creating new identities and then operating as validators of these social changes, usually manifested as subcultures with arrangements and its own codes, in many subversive moments. The meaning of the word itself is plainly unprofessional activity; do housework improvement or repair issues as electricity, plumbing or painting. Additionally and importantly, these activities are regularly carried out in leisure time, which necessarily assigns a specific and symbolic value. And in an artistic sense its meaning is linked to the ability to create from various common materials that you have on hand. As such it is a kind of appeasement of nineteenth collage. Now implemented in a less ambitious way and as occu-

pation is related to link the gender to be considered more a craft and craftsmanship. Melissa Gallaga makes an interesting amalgam about these definitions, in her video, Evening Bricolage. That is, the video speaks of the existence of a strange subculture in Monterrey place of residence: Women in the process of being brides and then mothers, with all the values and codes already â&#x20AC;&#x2039;understood. At the same time she refers to the way we understand gender status and in turn how that circumstance assign specific tasks and activities. At the value of leisure and housework. And the requirement to respond to the social context from mimesis and aspirational. Evening Bricolage is a portrait of a time, place and circumstance, and as such becomes an important social and anthropological document.

A still from I´m an engineer

Specialization: The action of cooking and motherhood means specialization to which all of them aspire. An advanced state that even if it scares them a little, it is still the dream come true in the process of becoming ¨Respectable Ladies and of Society¨ Norms and Behaviors: the specialization however, also includes a series of acts that relate to behavior not necessarily docile, to survive the maelstrom that means being housewives and decent women, also involves learning to roll permissions and how to act in ways that is socially allowed, such as drinking, smoking, gossiping as food, etc. Approach: the group descends the stairs, just silent, but does so with obvious emotion, a bizarre choreography made her arms indicates that the girls are ready and eager to start now. Initiatory Rite: final act we see women on the back of one more, which makes the move repeatedly throwing an object at them.Trapping the field as a result of this symbolic act means that anyone who has been touched by capturing a mix of chance and fortune. It also means that you are now ready to implement all the teachings that in terms of social codes received. In a field in which social roles are so clearly established, where from the labor indicates that just over 30% of woman productive age work and where also in the middle and upper social class, an event like a wedding has become fierce competition. Evening bricolage, as the rest of Melissa Gallaga’s work, is anything but fearful and complacent.

II.- The artwork of Melissa Gallaga (Coahuila, Mexico, 1981) permanently revolves around reflections in which she reviews the role of women in a Mexican society of the early 21st century, their activities, their amusements, their problems and their dreams. Whenever it is approached from an everyday perspective and a line aesthetic of seemingly erratic and explosive colors and shapes, the speech of her work leaves us permanently at the crossroads of assuming as true certain postulates and then is that it make us take side to complete the proposed idea. In the nearly 2 minutes duration video Evening Bricolage from Melissa Gallaga metaphors much at her style the act of passing from one state chronologically young woman to a woman ¨age of merit¨. From there presentation of 6 moments narrates ¨operating mode¨ ('modus operandi') in which socially any woman should act not to be considered a social misfit. Such moments will call here: Ascent, Information, Specialization, Norms and Behaviors, Approach and finally Initiatory Rite. We briefly describe each one of them: III.- Ascent: A group of women wearing outlandishly costumes, climbing stairs in a clear allusion to his biological growth, similar dressed and act in a way that makes all expect they are friends and coevals. They go in silence and there is a kind of mass complicity. Information: thereupon we see the thematic group entertained looking through magazines (brides, weddings, fashion) and still in silence, all that is seen are thousands of WC and noise produced by the exchange of magazines. It is obvious that more than information this women are attentive to be part of the apparent act of information.

Marco Granados Independent Curator November 2013

An interview with Melissa Gallaga

Melissa Gallaga

behind the corner. Do you agree with this vision of Evening Bricolage?

In your work, you decide to focus on Monterrey Mexican society. You say "All the characters in my work are related to my life as a citizen." Your daily experience is very important for your artist practise and thinking: could you explain this aspect?

Yes of course, women in my society are always pushed into meeting this kind of statutes or expectations, I consider it as tragedy, that if we think differently than societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dogmas we are edged outside the social circles and become misfits, loners or eccentrics. To me this is completely wrong, we cannot live in a society that is ruled by superficiality or feel that women are obliged to act a certain way for an approval of the family or friends.

Yes, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right, in my hometown we live in a kind of syndrome in order to fit into society, women compete with each other; who wears the best clothes, makeup, has the best boyfriend or husband, the best son, who drives a fancy car, have a magnificent wedding spending thousands of dollars although they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the resources to do it, even getting loans to afford all those expenses and spend several years paying them.

It is not the first time you have faced concept related to standards that society dictates to women. For example, we have find really intersting "Substrate on the surface of a hymeneal": could you introduce our readers to this work? This work represents mimicry of what I have just mentioned, is variety of forms of action for these women to be accepted in their social groups. We are energetic beings and it fascinates me to see how this energy propagates with the people around us, how they act, how are they influenced by others,

It seems that all that matters is how others see us and tolerate anything to be accepted in the social circles. "Evening Bricolage" reveals not only a sense of absurd: we have the impression that in your video tragedy is always

A still from Substrate

Does your art change people's behavior?

such as imitating other human beings and their way of behaving.

I hope so, that is what it is about, creating awareness and changes in the commu-nity. In my opinion, the best way to do that is to start in your own social environment and then explore other environments.

You are a multidisciplinary artist: in what manner your work as painter influences your videomaking? In many ways, I think once you work with painting or drawing like in my case, I see the video like if they were animated picture frames with link from one frame to the other. I like paintings that cause emotions when you see them, especially the tragic or satirical paintings. I like playing with this concept in my videos, having fun frame by frame assembling them together making stories. However, I am also influenced by the music, there is not a single day I do not watch and hear music videos.

What are your next projects on the horizon? At the moment I'm studying film. I'm working on an animated city with over 48 living beings using modelling compounds. I'm also going to make another video and hope to have every-thing finished soon for an individual exhibition.

A still from Incomplete History of Pornography, video, 1979 Butcher Rules

Sasha Waters Freyer Outsiders, flops and dark horses fascinate me: poets and children, artists and activists, dead and dying analog media. Lost or forgotten souls re-animated in celluloid. A moving image artist trained in photography and film, my work occupies the intersection of intimate experience and public discourse, exploring displacement and invisibility as subject and metaphor.

film presents a counter-archive of the past that invites us to rethink how “Pornography” as a category of meaning, a visual language of desire, is neither fixed nor ahistorical, but grounded in the physical, aesthetic, and labor conditions of its creation. Pornography as an expression of late-Capitalism looks very different only thirty years ago; in this iteration, it hopefully offers a new narrative with which to consider the performance of sexuality – then and now.

The work presented here, An Incomplete History of Pornography, 1979, is one of a cycle of films, loops, and projections that use 20th century cinematic ephemera to explore the hidden social truths underlying their material production. In this Super-8mm-meets-digitalvideo-mashup, women’s bodies as erotically laboring bodies share the screen with a speculative essay on the economic context of porn since the dawn of Reagan and Thatcher. A sonically rich, very hairy and sexually explicit work, Pornography subverts the original intention of the Super 8mm porn footage to expose the historical specificity of its form. The

The overarching title for this cycle of shorts is What Has Been from Time Immemorial, borrowed from Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. Other project(ion)s include An Incomplete History of the Travelogue, 1925 (2010), An Incomplete History of Syndicated Television, 1989 (in progress) and An Incomplete History of the [Cold War] Home Movie, 1947-1991 (in progress). Benjamin writes, “It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image

A still from Incomplete History of Pornography, video, 1979

is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation.” It is this constellation, the “dream image” that the historian – in my case filmmaker – takes up for interpretation. Critical narrative collage is the discursive gesture at work.

apprehend an uncertain future,” as argued in Cultural Borrowings. There remains extensive critical potential in the (re)mobilization of the historical real towards dissident, interventionist ends that suggest alternative representations of our shared cultural memories and image vernaculars.

Bemoaned by Jameson as a “repetition of lost styles,” glorified by Bourriaud as the future of art “marked by the twin figures of the DJ and the programmer,” collage – appropriation – mashups – whatever one calls them – are sticky business. How to redirect recycled media away from tropes of nostalgia or the shallow trap of camp? Appropriation today infuses our total media landscape, from the Cineplex to the museum to Youtube. Archival media are too often exploited to generate affect as a means of reifying capital in order to extract value from it. Yet appropriation can serve as “a process of inventory and selection..[used] to provoke new critical forms of subjectivity through which to

An Incomplete History of Pornography, 1979, speaks to my artistic commitment to a cinema of opposition to the mass media; to disrupting status quo representations of conventional power relations and to the re-imagining of social histories in the spirit of engagement with an earlier age of radical-romantic imagemaking. This film, like the larger cycle of shorts, foregrounds the incompleteness and fragility of the archive to shift the viewer’s perceptual grid and produce new consciousness at the borders of what can and cannot be said. Sasha Waters Freyer

An interview with

Sasha Waters Freyer Sasha Waters Freyer phy, 1979 were shaped by reading Nina Power’s 2009 book, One Dimensional Woman, which takes its title, obviously, from Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man.

An Incomplete History of Pornography, 1979" by Sasha Waters Freyer is part of a cycle of projections titled What Has Been from Time Immemorial, inspired by Benjamin's Arcades Project. In particular, this short found-footage video reveals a strong sense of humour and at the same time a deep analysis on the inner political nature of desire, to quote Gilles Deleuze, reminding us of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilheim Reich's researches on sex, whose biography was narrated by Dusan Makavejev in his marvelous film "W.R. Mysteries of the Organism". Sasha says: Pornography as an expression of lateCapitalism looks very different only thirty years ago. And indeed it was the exact impression we got watching her work the first time. Sasha, could you introduce our readers to this concept?

Like Marcuse, Power a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, critiques the false needs created by a Capitalist system that absorbs individuals into destructive cycles of production and consumption via mass media, including pornography. There is an alluring intimacy to the super 8mm footage in Pornography, 1979, even as we understand it to be clearly staged for the camera. It embodies a moment prior to the death grip of economic Neoliberalism in the U.S. and elsewhere. Real pleasure is detectable in the cheesy performances; we see an abundance of hair; breasts and asses unacquainted with the surgeon’s knife. Hopefully, that stark contrast from the shaven, plasticine zombies of contemporary pornography and their ruthless, mecha-

The ideas that inform the essay text in Pornogra-

Now I am more actively researching certain areas of film ephemera – micro-cinematography for example, and the medical film – as well as specific years – 1955, 1938 etc. – exploring how an era matched with a distinct sub-species of film might become a DNA spiral around which to develop an essay or history, albeit very incomplete.

nized pumping opens up a space of contemplation for how porn as a genre mirrors social conditions. How did you come up with the idea for your cycle "What Has Been from Time Immemorial"? Benjamin’s Arcades Project and his writing on the “dream image” as I have mentioned, and also Foucault’s notion of a “history of the present” in which discontinuity and so-called trivial subject matter are elevated above traditional narrative and causality as a strategy of disruption. As he writes, "The game is to try to detect those things which have not yet been talked about, those things that show...the fragility of our system of thought, in our way of reflecting, in our practices."

It's not by chance that your "history" is unfinished. Could you better explain the "incomplete nature" of this work? The films in the cycle What Has Been from Time Immemorial are reflections on major themes – race, gender, war, art – in the “minor key” of ephemera. History remains unfinished business, and our narratives of the past are always “incomplete.”

The fragile yet resilient nature of celluloid is a synecdoche for 20th century ideologies. From the project’s inception, I was also quite influenced by The Lost Origins of the Essay edited by the brilliant writer and poet John D’Agata. I was reading a lot of D’Agata when I was depressed, living in Stockholm in 2011, and his work was a ladder out of the darkness that led to this project.

What is the role of words in your video? We daresay it could be considered as a detournment of the images in a Situationistic way... Absolutely, in the sense of turning culture “against itself” in an effort to thwart accepted and acceptable ways of thinking and seeing, to hijack the status quo, so to speak. Pornography, 1979 uses humor and the ‘shock value’ not of explicit sex, but of unconventional, at times bizarre, layers of images/words/voices/sounds in a manner indebted to Situationist critique, media pranks, culture jamming, etc.

How did you select the film fragments for An Incomplete History of Pornography? Have you used a specific criteria? In the beginning it was serendipity – the films found me. I have long been attracted to the archive, to amateur and minor cinemas; I buy old films in thrift and surplus shops or online without knowing what to expect, hoping to make a discovery. The Pornography super 8mm film was in a shoebox of home movies purchased at an estate sale. The reel was labeled “XRated” so naturally it was the first one I viewed.

We have previously quoted in our interview the Serbian film director Dusan Makavejev, author of "W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism", a satyrical cult movie facing the hidden connections between sex and politics in a radical way, mixing deep introspection and irriverent sarcasm against Stalinist totalitarism. Has this masterpiece of the 70's influenced in some way your vision? And, apart from Makavekev, have other artists influenced your work? I can’t say that this movie influenced me consciously, but the critical potential of satire and collage have an exciting history in painting and photography (think Heartfield, or even Schwitters who is quite subtle and romantic), in addition to the cinema. I draw on these influences, as well more contemporary, postmodern approaches to colla-

A still from Incomplete History of Pornography, 1979

ge film, such as the feverishly intelligent work of Craig Baldwin. Also, I grew up in New York City at a time when music sampling and remixing were everywhere, but not yet mainstream, extravagant yet totally low-fi in their polyphony. The underground, truly DIY nature of punk and early hip-hop definitely shape my aesthetic of excess in this film. In your statement you say "My work subverts the original intention of the Super 8mm porn footage to expose the historical specificity of its form." Could you comment this sentence? Gender and sexuality are inextricably linked with class, labor, power; pornography as a visual form reflects the dominant ideologies of its time (incompletely of course), no less so than other media. We know this truth, at the very least unconsciously… I mean, clearly French erotica between the world wars looks quite different from Polish porn in the Soviet era! And yet, culturally, we tend to speak broadly of ‘pornography’ as if it has no history, no specificity, no ideology whatsoever. In Pornography, 1979, the words and audio recontextualize the images, integrating the viewer into a tapestry comprised of economic data, feminist writing, political speeches and protests, music, Hollywood films, news reports etc. – all from the year 1979. Thanks for your time and for sharing your projects with us, Sasha. What are you going to be working on next? What Has Been from Time Immemorial is an ongoing project and I am working on a few of the “incomplete histories” simultaneously. I am also embarking on a feature documentary about the acclaimed 20th century American photographer, Garry Winogrand, whose heyday was the1970s.

A still from Incomplete History of Pornography, 1979

For more information, I try to update my website regularly, and that address is: www.pieshake.com.

A still from Family Fortunes , Video Butcher Rules

Evangeline Cachinero I am a Brisbane-based artist working primarily in the mediums of mixed media painting, photography, digital art, video, web-based projects, iPhone art, gif animation and social media platforms. I was born in Australia, spent the majority of my early childhood in Spain and my teens to university in the USA.

lects the essence of digital expression. I further explore the idea of control by using pre-existing imagery from the Internet and morphing it into my own work using 3rd party applications and smart phones, then putting the work back on social media. On the Internet you can’t control who has your image and what they’re using it for.

It is my belief that through constant contact with digital technology, we are quickly becoming fluent in the digital aesthetic.

It becomes part of a collaborative and sometimes performative process. I have a multidisciplinary approach and zealous energy that allows me to cross over into mediums such as film, photography, digital art, Internet Art and social media art.

My latest work is influenced by this digital shift, using imagery from corrupted digital files (glitch) to create expressive paintings. There is an ethereal and sublime quality in digital when it corrupts and changes from being computational to something uncontrolled. ‘Glitch’ ref-

I employ ways of engaging the viewer through mediums such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. Through the practice of

A still from Family Fortunes, Video

relational art I aim to expand on the work by collaborating with the public, making the work more socially interactive with the ability to be community engaging, yet have a global footprint.

Memory is never a stagnant thing. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always in a state of flux, as are the portraits in my video.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Fading Into Viewâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is a representation of the act of picturing somebody from our past. When we thinking about people we used to know we might remember a small part of their face, like an eye or their hair. Rarely do we picture them perfectly and remember people as they really were.

Evangeline Cachinero

Our memories are pieces of people that we put together, turning them into collaged versions of themselves, or even of themselves as we project ourselves onto them.

Brisbane, Australia Tel: 0438 412 356 www.evangeline.com.au

An interview with

Evangeline Cachinero In your work "Fading Into view" glitch imagery are used in order to symbolize the blurry boundaries of perception and memory. You say :"When we think about people we used to know we might remember a small part of their face". Could you introduce this concept to our readers? I can't speak for everyone regarding how we remember people. Memories are like dreams, we all have our own way to dreaming and remembering. For myself, my memories are abstract. If I think about people from my past and try to visualize them, they're vague. Sometimes I can remember their eyes, or their mouth, but it's never a clear picture. Evangeline Cachinero If I were to try and make a portrait of somebody from my past it would be like a collage of memories. Glitch aesthetics are the closest I've come to a representation of this kind of memory. Your pieces are domined by a strong presence of white. Why?

the tactile nature of the medium as well as the idea of painting, but I wouldn't say that it's a strong medium conceptually. It's beauty is in living outside of the conceptual boundaries that contemporary art has set for itself. I just love to work. When you're consistently working hard at something the work flows easily from one day to the next, and ideas flow freely.

The glitched images are very busy. Many of them are stills from gif animations, which are like moving portraits. I found that it was overstimulating to include backgrounds, and detracted from the sense of memory. I wanted people to think of the pieces simply as portraits and perhaps mirror their own experience of remembering a face. White is a great tool. It's empty and decisive.

Every time I have an idea I email myself (especially in the middle of the night), so I have an immense database of ideas just waiting to be made. Sometimes the process is there before the concept, and other times the concept helps to inspire the work. I don't have a strict methodology. It's fluid, passionate, impulsive, scattered, inconsistent and messy. Like me.

You are a multidisciplinary artist, working with mixed media painting, photography, digital art, video, web-based projects, iPhone art, gif animation and social media platforms.You say you are not interested in the medium, but in the concept. Have you a particular approach in conceiving your art, whether it is a video or animated gif like your 2012 series Iphone portraits?

In your refined video "Fading Into view" we can recognize a simple yet at the same time masterly work of editing: what kind of technology have you used in producing it? Many of the pictures I use are sourced from the internet. I'm a big fan or remix culture. I've been working a lot on handheld digital devices,

I wouldn't say that I'm not interested in the medium. Painting, for example. I'm in love with

A still from Unison Video

Sequence 8

using various apps and doing app-layering. That means taking the pics across various apps that all do something different. There are about 10 apps that I use consistently for editing. I then import the pics into my computer, clean them up in Photoshop and put them together as a video in Final Cut Pro. The audio is all bit and pieces of old school digital sounds.

Unfortunately it tends to gentrify some edgy work. In my case, I was working in my studio in the bush, studying across the country via correspondence and I didn't have a lot of access to good advice.

In 2013 you earned the Master of Visual Arts from Monash University. In your opinion, how much does training influence art?

Thank you for sharing with us your thoughts, Evangeline. What are your next projects?

The MVA provided me with some great critical discourse and a handful of beautiful friends.

I'm taking some time for an introspective and creatively productive year, although projects are always popping up.

It depends on the person. Some people react well to advice/critique and their art consequently improves. It's very easy to be swayed in the direction of the University's agenda so you really have to believe in what you're making if you want to keep working that way, but it's best to go in with an open mind and a willingness to grow. Art training is very effective in teaching you to be objective about your own work.

I'm currently doing a collab with a fashion boutique, organising a solo show and as per usual, posting all of it on Facebook.

Sequence 8

Butcher Rules

A still from Deterritorialization

Ben Balcom Ben Balcom (b.1986) is currently a graduate student and instructor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He was born in Boston, MA, and raised in Evanston, IL. He works in both analog film and various digital media. He is interested in liminal states, strange materialities, and transformation. Besides teaching and making art, he is the cofounder and co-curator of a small cinema space called "icrolights". (http://microlightscinema.blogspot.com/)

An interview with

Ben Balcom Despite of Michel Foucault’s suggestion that this century would become known as “Deleuzian” very few artists like you have caught the heritage of Gilles Deleuze: we have the impression that the French philosopher left a mark in the term in the terminology used by crictics, however his effort to "deterritolization" is often underrated. While it is possible today to recognize a series of great authors, painters, filmmakers of the last decades (among then Carmelo Bene and Jan Svankmajer indeed) who can gain the label "Deleuzian", nowadays very few contemporary artist seems to continue his effort to deconstruct the XXI century thinking. In you opinion, is it a thorny heritage?

Ben Balcom

I think every heritage is thorny. We are always sneaking our way out of some entanglement of new/old ideas and we come out newly shaped, bearing the traces. I think Foucault’s quote is a bit stifling, because who would ever want to live in a century defined by a single person’s ideas? I think what Foucault is getting at is more that Deleuze was trying to (and succeeded at) re-naming the conditions of out experience of thinking. And I still see those conditions playing themselves out. Everywhere can be seen creative people are trying to create a world composed of multiplicities and lines of flight.

best sentence in a talk she was giving was one in which she demoted the importance of Deleuze & Guattari’s work, much to the amusement of her audience. However, Bennett’s book “The Enchantment of Modern Life” has one of the most lucid readings of Deleuze & Guattari’s work that I have ever read. Such is the thorniness. But there are Deleuzian tendencies everywhere. Take the prevalence of appropriation in experimental film & video: this seems perfectly resonant with Deleuze’s ideas of assemblages and rhizomes. Everything connects to everything else in an intricate machinery. Deterritorialization is tough to get. I think, in a simplified way, it mean evacuating something of meaning and then re-injecting new meaning into the thing. This concept has positive and negative ramifications, which is true of most of Deleuze’s ideas: they can’t be taken in only one direction. One way to think deterritorialization is as a reinvention of old concepts. This is what most artistic production aspires to. The appropriation of images wipes an image clean, while retaining a trace of the original, and injects new meaning into it (a recoding). Appropriation deterritorializes and re-territorializes the ima-ge.

I think of Deleuze’s practice as one of a radical re-naming. His thinking is inherently based on production and productivity, on creating creative potentialities. There are “lines of flight” connecting all sorts of ideas, realities, and practices. If you want to read things through a Deleuzian lens, there is much to glean. But it’s probably just as much part of the heritage to cast of the influence. Even Deleuze has to undergo a deterritorialization here and there! Last year, at a conference at UWM where I am a graduate student and teacher, I heard Jane Bennett claim that what might be her

But, I’m improvising here. I am nothing more than an idea thief, a forager. I look for ideas that

A still from Deterritorialization

ce on my work. I’ve been thinking about some of my recent film work as a process of building philosophical toys. Within Frampton’s epic, unfinished Magellan project he has a segment called “Noctiluca: Magellan’s Toys #1.” So I’ve been thinking a lot about what the function of small, strange media objects might be. And I particularly like the thought of films and videos functioning as toys, as not requiring any specific engagement other than play.

I find attractive and make use of them. And I don’t think there are or ever will be truly “Deleuzian” artists. There are certainly Deleuzian readings of artistic works, but that is simply away to make connections. These things remain independent of one another. Apart from Deleuze, can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? Influence itself is quite thorny! Put simply, the seminal works of American experimental cinema have had the most intense and lasting influence. Being exposed to this work in college shattered certain pre-conceived notions of what cinema could be. There is much influence to acknowledge, and some of the original influences on my work continue to agitate me. But I feel I should stick to the present. Hollis Frampton, who completely re-configured my thinking about cinema, continues to exert a deep influen-

Also the works of Eadweard Muybridge and Jules Etienne-Marey have been on my mind. I am quite interested in the ways these two artists used photography as a sort of taxonomical tool. Not only does Frampton fit this profile too, but also he has a quite lovely relationship to Muybridge, which can be seen most explicitly in his photography and writings. I draw on all sorts of influences: philosophy, psychoanalysis, poetry…but what actively influ-

A still from Deterritorialization

ences me more than any of this is the work that is made by people close to me. I am incredibly luck to be embedded in an incredibly supportive community of experimental artists. The people I practice beside probably influence and inspire me the most. Here in Milwaukee, and back home in Chicago, there are amazing people doing amazing things all the time and I am so lucky to participate with them in this ongoing thing.

influence my work now. Though I could list historical references, and they would all be important to the type of work I make now, I am most significantly inspired by people making work now, near me, making things weird.

Could you introduce our readers to your work Deterritorialization? [deterritorialization] is a small component of an ongoing project, largely based on Daniel Paul Schreber’s “Memoir’s of My Nervous Illness.” The project is composed of a number of rather short videos, each of which can be viewed independently, but together comprises a set of tests, a sort of investigation along a path of associations. It began as a technical experiment a small consumer security camera that I would attach to my head. I wanted to use this method of capturing images to create an experience of disconnection between the brain and body. I

Plus, part of the work I’m doing now is curating a small cinema in my neighborhood here in Milwaukee. I collaborate with my three good friends Josh Weissbach, Steve Wetzel, and Carl Bogner, all insanely talented people. We’ve put together a small screening space where we host visiting artists about once a month. Thus far we’ve been lucky enough to host artists like Deborah Stratman, Evan Meaney, Mike Olenick, Alexandra Cuesta, Lori Felker, and Peggy Ahwesh. These are all people that I would say

also wanted to make a work that was shaped something like a psychoanalytic case study (I continue to have a very unfashionable attraction to psychoanalytic literature). But at some point it started shaping itself. Rather than making something like a case study I decided to search through actual case studies. When I landed on Freud’s analysis of Schreber’s memoir I remembered that Schreber figured into Deleuze & Guattari’s book Anti-Oedipus, which is a perennial favorite of mine. So I started reading Schreber’s memoir while experimenting with this strange little camera in various ways. I tried to target specific instances in Schreber’s text that most accurately captured the various transformations that he experienced during his schizophrenic episodes. He records various episodes hearing voices, transforming into a woman, transforming into a corpse, interacting with the sun and a number of other “hallucina-tions.” I targeted these. So, in [deterritorialization] you are looking mostly at the sun. I am standing on a pier out on the Milwaukee lakefront with the camera attached to my head, pointed at the sun. The camera sends its signal to a little receiver. This receiver has a little knob that allows me to tweak the signal as it is recording. So what you are looking at is an image produced by pointing the camera at the sun while I stand there interrupting the signal just enough to create various glitches and distortions. The text that appears on screen is taken directly from Daniel Paul Schreber’s memoir.

Butcher Rules

Ben Balcom

What I like about this ongoing project is that associations develop over time. I had this footage of the sun that I knew worked. It was a good moment, but I didn’t know how to incorporate it into a longer piece. I had already made one piece in the series at this time, called “[phrases].” But then I found this little bit of text in the memoir that seemed to resonate. And rather than building up a much more complex work, instead I let myself build something small, something instantaneous. And that’s what I like the think the effect of the piece is. It’s a little video that produces an immediate raw sensation. It might fade away, and that’s ok. Its part of a longer process for me, so it seems there should be many small fragments along the way.

by the language. But you’re right: sometimes the thing is most significantly characterized by what is missing. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? I would love to take you through the process of creating a new project, but I’m not sure I can event do this for myself! Sometimes it feels like a different process every time. Sometimes the projects I pursue when working on 16mm film feel vastly different from the digital work I make. But I don’t think that’s exactly right. There are certainly similarities. I would say that regardless of medium, the work I make is in pursuit of some concept I have in mind. Take the film that I am working on currently. I wanted to do two things: make a very simple illustration of Lacan’s objet petit a, and to make a very sparse three image film. So the film is very simply and

I would rather think of this piece as being characterized by the hands, or by the colorpalette, or by the pixelated nature of the images, or by the strange materials that are invoked

illustration of an idea I had in mind. How-ever, I don’t think the final product will give any clues that it is about Lacan. That is more for me than it is for the viewer. As I sug-gested before, this film is intended to be more like a visual toy. For any audience, I assume it will be a strange encounter. Hope-fully people will be in the mood to play! These days most of my projects start this way. I have some idea in mind and I pursue it. Typically they evolve over time. Most of my recent digital projects have been based on a process of collection. I am interested in working with appropriated images, but I’m looking for a palette of appropriated images that suits me or that suits the ideas I’m in pursuit of. So I go looking. I capture some images here and there from the web and I store them. Eventually, having gathered a number of things that seem to resonate with one another, I will begin to see how they fit together. The newest installment in my ongoing Schreber project is constructed around these strange videos of fly larvae I found after listening to Manuel DeLanda give a lecture in which he talked about morphogenesis (it all goes back to Deleuze!).

A still from Deterritorialization have started describing that in the last question. What probably gives me the most satisfaction is searching after new associations, creating new links between ideas and creating strange little objects that are products of these linkages. My recent shift to digital production has found me moving in strange new directions in my work, and this brings me great satisfaction. I like surprising myself.

I’m not sure I can describe my process in one way. The safe thing to say is that I find and idea and I start gleaning. Either I shoot or I gather. Then I start testing. Eventually a piece gets made.

I only hope that the surprise will be someone else’s as well. What makes it all worthwhile, however, is working towards the goal of a shared experience. Making films and videos wouldn’t be worth anything were it not for the possibility of sharing. So, right now, one of the things I enjoy most is showing work. And that is why the space my friends and I have established is so important to me. I like meeting people and meeting people’s work. That is the biggest satisfaction of them all.

Now we wonder if you would like to answer to our cliché question: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction? I’m a big fan of clichés! Actually, I think I might

What are your next projects on the horizon, Ben? I’ve got a number of things on my plate right now. I’m working on a 16mm film dealing with the moon. I’m also working on another installment of my ongoing Schreber project. I’m still learning how to Schreber. And then, more distantly, I’m working towards a short essay-video about a number of strange media objects that I’ve been collecting. In a sense it is a continuation of the work done in “animal bone ash.” There’s always so much on the horizon…too much to account for.

A still from Deterritorialization