Response Birgit II
Hi Birgit,
Of all the different ‘actions’ you talk about, I am most
intrigued by the ‘map’ element of your emotions during the day.
I would like to see that also visually . I am actually thinking
of a real map you could create of all the different areas where you are during
the day : home, studio, on the way /commute, work etc etc , so to create/draw/
or take a photo from google maps and then write down your different emotions.
I listened to your three recordings of your voice and also
to the vimeo piece in the studio where you sing. Do you record that every day?
I listened to your tracks and I agree to what you say about
your voice: it is beautiful. Is there a way you could bring in all those
emotions during your day into those recordings? The recordings sound very happy
to me…..(and there is nothing wrong with that!!!!). How would you perform these
in front of an audience? Would we hear the voice from the off or would you
perform in front of an audience?
I think actually, or at least that is my impression that
your work is about your daily life and all the things you do again and again ……and
again, emotions that come and go. In a way I am more biased to listen to your
voice recording what is happening during those days or looking at a visual map
that talks about that daily experience. That is probably a stronger experience
than a performance, at least for me. As long it is recordings of your emotions
of your daily life.
However, in your piece ‘there is someone else going to do it
better’, I think this one would be so
much stronger if you performed it live. Unfortunately, your recordings are not
loud at all and I had a hard time understanding even I had the volume up.
As far as sound is
concerned, I love the website Derek just posted and listened to Max Ernst and
Satre, David Lynch, joseph Beuys and Bertold Brecht. It is so interesting. Some
of them were describing emotions like in an interview setting, explaining the
context. I feel I need to be a bit connected more to understand more the
context of what emotions you are talking about.
I am not quite sure if I understand the word misdirected
labour correctly. Are the photos you show of your workplace? Also I have one
more questions as to your use of the word perform, does it mean do something,
like sing or do you mean perform in the presence of people, like at the store.
Do you sing to yourself when you are at the store? Another way you could record
your emotions instead of a map could be a time line . So you write down the
time and the emotion at that moment and then later you can create a visual
statistics with it, so you could transform your emotions into a visual
abstracted image.
Cheers and see you soon
Ira
Hi Derek,
yes, that's it!
ok, ok , I could not wait till the
weekend and had some hours today and looked at your work.
OhMyGoodness, this is absolutely
brilliant! I really really mean that and I don't think I ever said that in a
critique during the past 5 years before. Maybe the piece speaks so much to me
because I wonder so much about that 'creating of space' in my maps as well?
Anyways......lets go into detail:
I am happy that you now speak the text,
your voice is brilliant
much better than it was before, when the
written text was over the images.
I like that the breaks between the
pieces are shorter, you images are very strong. The filming is excellent and
the images work very very well with the text.
I listened to it and watched several
parts several times and there are some little things I would like to mention :
just as possible ideas:
the piece might be even more interesting
if there were two voices , two opinions, two ideas, more than one provenance of
that knowledge.....what if there is - from time to time a whispering voice that
says sentences like : the sky is a cylinder to the moon, the earth is falling
into a well, art leaks and spills art, etc, etc the aim is to create space etc
not loud, just a whispering female
voice.
It would add another layer of possible
meanings to the piece and make it even stronger......
My favourite piece is hollow earth. We
look into that hole and the reflection of the sky, the rain, the leaves. That
is very strong work visual work and the spoken text goes so well with it,
Derek!!!
If anyone tells you it is too long, do
not listen please, I do not think it is one second too long.
your poem and text is just absolutely
overwhelming and exquisit. I could listen to it for hours!
You obviously have looked at Pipilotti
Rist ! I am glad you did, I find her works fits really really well to your
imagery.
Some more little things:
at 15:35 all of a sudden the background
noise disappears, which is a sudden interruption from that calming atmosphere.
I would ask you to continue the background noise while you speak this sequence
to the end. Even if you make the background noise less loud, but it needs to be
continued, I think.
especially when you say : sounds of
rushing water....it would be great if I could hear that sound at the same time.
I just listened to it again, yes at about 15:35 the sound should be
fixed.
Then at 16:45 you start with Coda and
you start to speak but again there is not background noise as in the other
pieces. i would recommend you add an outside sound here as well. I know a
little bit further you have sound again, but I strongly think it would be great
to have a slight notion of a background sound at the beginning of Coda as
well.
When we look at the tree (approx. 18:20)
I would like to know how it would sound if you used your outside voice for this
piece. In the areas before I did not mind your inside voice at all but here I
have a strong longing to hear either your voice when you record it outside or
you add outside noises like wind etc. Just very slightly, but I feel the
looking up into the tree and your inside voice need to be a bit more
connected.
I like the airplane sound at 8:50, and
there at another point there is a siren or noise of a car, that is great, it
pulls us out of those deep thoughts and reminds us of human existence and the
horror of everyday life......but then we are allowed back into this reflection
of life.
You are a poet , you are a storyteller.
this piece puts me in a state of meditation and deep thinking.
You are like a prophet you will explain
the apocalypse to us. Very very well done Derek, this is a masterpiece.
it is amazing to see how your work has
evolved from the beginning of September. It has become a whole now. You have
pulled it so well together! (and set that bar very very high again!!!, it is
great how that goes).
I won't share that on your blog yet, but
will do that on Monday, once everyone else has responded.
Well done Derek!
Best wishes from the stormy North West
Coast
Ira
PS
Hi Derek,
The idea I had this morning, if you ever
wanted to commemorate those poets, that you might want to do a little
side project, by creating a mind map with the provenance of all those writers
and then you could write their quote into the map. I have looked up some
examples for you. Those artists to look at are
Adolf Wölfli
Paula Scher and
Oyvind Fahlstrom
Happy Thanksgiving
Ira
Dear Kayoko,
Let me start at the end: I listened to your Berlin
recording, yes the wind and background noises sound interesting and take me
back to that memory and I would encourage you to record something similar in a
park or the area where you live in New York. In your environment. Especially if
you present your piece at the winter residency it would make sense to have
those wind and street noises from the place where you life and work. I will
come to your Klein bottle sculpture at the end…..
I am glad you saw the Josef Albers exhibition. His color
theory is very interesting. During my art studies I studied Albers for two
semesters and find it extremely fascinating in that a color is never the same,
it lives up and depends on its surroundings and the context. It can never be
seen by itself individually.
Your thoughts around Klein Bottle and your connection to
nature are very interesting and I would like to hear more about it. Also are there
other ways than to put a four dimensional space into two dimensions? I
understand your thoughts about convenient, about portability,
and instantaneous accessibility that dominate over the quality of things.
However, since you were working with the shape, is it not almost better
to let those shapes be the work instead of representing them in a different way
and forcing them down to 2 dimensions?
The photos you are taking are exquisite. Is there a way you
could take some of those photos without us seeing the wire? I think this wire
or fishing line distracts from the images a bit which are very powerful
otherwise. You want to inactivate the senses and a physical interaction for the
viewer, ’shifting the construct of reality’, I think, it would be better if
there was no distraction in the visual. Could you maybe, for example take some
of those images with the shape lying on the ground ? Then it is only about that
shape and what it means and nothing else.
To get your idea of internal space more across when you take
the photos of the Klein bottle could you get closer in the image and have the
entire photo full of that material. So you would have images of the whole piece
but others with only fragments?
Your idea with trying to get the viewers back in touch with
surroundings and the physical respect of the space works very very well in this
context. This is what happens and in my view you reach that goal. Would you, if
you ever showed the clay sculptures consider showing the photos of the Klein
bottle simultaneously? I would recommend it or write about it or record your
voice with you thoughts around this piece at the same time.
What I miss with all your thoughts and all the visual is a
further layer, a further connection between the two. Sound? Or if you showed
only the clay sculptures would you give the viewer a hint about where you want
to lead him with a title of the work? The Chicken wire, btw was very familiar
to me growing up in Germany , my grandmother had rabbits in the garden, we used
it for fencing them off and we used it to do sculptures.
I find your skin sculptures extremely interesting and
understand where your sense of shelter and protection and cosiness is coming
from in connection to the cotton and the connection to the buko zukin. Could
you create more of these cotton sculptures to have a series of ideas of
possible ways to put those cotton balls together? I find the second image the
most appealing and ambiguous .
Great that you will present your sculpture at the winder
residency, I understand the problem you have with the headsets but I also think
it is best to put them into the sculpture instead of listening to the sound as
a room voice.
And one last thing to continue our conversation about how we
deal with things that happen around us: please let me have your thoughts on
this!!
I can very much relate to those images you posted of the
public art and the response to the election of Donald Trump as the new US
American president. It has hit us extremely hard as well. I find your mission to invite people to pause, to think, to reflect about everything very
clear and important. You mention that love and peace is mightier than hate and
war. I couldn’t agree more. I was
actually in a state similar like mourning for several days. I need to walk
through the forest to breath and to reconnect with essential things in order to
get out of that state. I needed to gain some strength to think about what I
could possibly do to help. When you critiqued my work recently you said something
that surprised me a lot, but maybe that is because I am German. I find it
important to mention this in our conversation about what happened in the US and
our reaction to that election. You said you find it painful that I criticize my
own German people even though I am German. I want to explain why I do this. I
stand up and protest, especially because I am a mother, especially
because I was born after WWII in Germany, because I am the grand daughter of a
Nazi, especially because I have seen what CAN possibly happen. Now, in the
regards to the US election, I feel the need to stand up in solidarity with
Muslims, Latinos, Black people and the many many other minority groups under
attack by the newly elected US government, often elected by people who think
they are better than others. I do not want history to repeat itself. The US of
America should be a safe place for people to live. It cannot be that there are
countries in the Western industrial World where people have to fear for their
lives. I actually plan to attend the march of the million women with my
daughter Lara in Seattle on January 21. I tell you this to start a conversation
with you, because you might think the way I am approaching the theme of right
wing extremism in Germany is aggressive, but there have to be people in my
country who stand up and say this is not ok. I understand your approach as very
soothing and peaceful and wonderful and I am happy that you have decided on
that very important mission of yours. I hope you understand where I am coming
from. I am not aggressive or anything, I just come from a place where people
were hurt and I want to help to avoid that anything like that could ever happen
again. I agree, I could need some of the positive energy you have in you. This
is very refreshing, inspiring and encouraging work you do. You remind me that
healing is possible when we look at the positive things!
Dear Gabrielle,
I find it a good idea that you collect all the different
themes you found and put them on index cards, however, I agree, these should
not be a list from a dictionary but rather a list of words you come up yourself
through your own reflection. Like this , what you will collect will make much
more sense to you. It is not about a list of words its about the meaning. (What
did you think of my recent idea to work around themes to describe these
invisible things? To create rooms dedicated to a theme? I still think this
would be a good way to go…..). I would recommend you start and address one of
the themes on your list of 1000 things and create art and work around that.
Under the current political circumstances the idea regarding
invisibility of illegal immigrants, I think, this is a very very powerful and
important theme. Discuss and contemplate possible artistic work you could
create around this one single theme, invisibility of illegal immigrant workers
in your country.
An idea I would have for you around that theme is that you
go and find people in that situation of wanting to be invisible and you do
interviews with them. So the viewer/ visitor only hears their voices and their
story but the people are invisible. I think at this point you might want to
push yourself to not only reflect on what is happening but to approach this
theme not only from a research point of view but to transform the theme into an
individual art piece. I would encourage you to talk to your neighbor and do an
interview, talk to that black boy in the school and spread the word that you
are interested in talking to those people who want to be invisible or even have
to be invisible in order to survive. You can empower those people and give them
a voice with that piece, and they can stay anonymous.
The walk unafraid Website is an amazing project and I am
glad to see that you have revamped this project after the election. You are
already very well prepared for our residency in NY and for what you will
present. Good for you. Unfortunately I cannot bring my paintings and will only
be able to show 3 min of my video…..so I will talk about my process but it is
great to see how many different things you will be bringing or talking about.
I am excited about all your different posts and all the research
work you are doing. Aby Warburg’s Atlas is very interesting but I also enjoyed
going through all the other blogs you are posting. It’s a great idea to spread
out as you do and to investigate into all kinds of different directions. The
more I read about you and the more I learn about you, I feel that you feel
really confident in the area of community work and community engagement and I
would recommend you to direct your work there.
As far as your video is concerned it is very interesting.
For me the only possible sound is actually your voice speaking a poem or text.
Music or no sound at all do not work so well I think! Can you speak about
invisibility? How about you read from the text by Saint Exupery? Record your
voice on garageband reading a poem or text (you collected already on your other
blogs) and read them. Then you can put that together with your film on imovie.
Your painting is beautiful. I like the composition and the
rendering. It is important that you cherish that part when you say it is your
way to think about peace, love, health, healing etc. As Dostoyevsky said:
Beauty will save the world. I think it is true that we need that positive part,
the things that make us strong to be ready to face the world.
Let me know please Gabrielle what you think about my
comments and if I can help with anything else.
Have a wonderful week and see you in 5 weeks in NYC!!!
Ira xxx
Hello Malvina,
I hope you are well. For two days it has been pouring here in
Victoria and I am sitting inside with my cat on my lap and a blanket and
looking at your art.
First of all, I find the new images in part II extremely
powerful. The bird in the oil tells a whole story of the sea. In the context of
archive it would probably be a good idea to collect memory or information about
those disasters and the environment.
Also the film you made, yes, it’s a cemetery of material
that has spent many years on all the oceans of this world. Each ship would have
a very interesting story to tell. What could the story of this ship be? And
then the sheer amount of ships in the graveyard. This is Gadani Beach in
Pakistan is that correct? Do you intent to provide any information with the
video? In a way the images say it all…it might be interesting though to hear a
poem or thoughts on the ephemerality of things.
What I would find
interesting in that context if you could tell the story of material in an
artistic way. The material (what and how much), how it is produced and
collected, transported and put together in one place to build a ship and then,
here in Pakistan, people need to take out what is still usable and the ships
are just rotting away and contaminate the oceans, the water the people. That
would be a good project to work on, an archive, a lot of information and
knowledge collected. These ships and their story are an excellent example for
sea and archive.
Boltanski in the
context of archive is the best possible connection. He stands for me as someone
who would reseach and gather all the information. The way it is presented is
extraordinary and often draws the viewers’ thoughts to the Holocaust.
I remember there was
an exhibition some years ago in NYC called archive fever exhibiting
contemporary art. It was a huge exhibition including many contemporary artists
and they interrogated the idea of the archive. Unfortunately, I had not seen
the show but we discussed it at art school. Here is a link: https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/archive-fever-uses-of-the-document-in-contemporary-art
I can recommend to
you to look at a Swiss artist, called Thomas Hirschhorn, he works with
archives and I am sure his work could be helpful. Here is a link to his work: http://www.stephenfriedman.com/artists/thomas-hirschhorn/
but this is just one gallery and
he has shown in museums internationally, so I am sure there is a lot of information
about his work out there. Harun Farocki, yes he is an excellent example….
I like that you
include all kind of possible connotations to the sea and that you, for example
describe and mention Poseidon. So you are collecting and archiving different stories
and information. What ways could there possibly be to archive all these stories
about the sea in a better way than to write them all down?
So coming back to
your wheels. I am happy that you eliminated the HOW (watercolor, photo etc) . I
found it too limiting. It is better if you start with the idea, the medium, how
you tell the story in art comes with working around the idea.
I am still reluctant
with the two weeks. I find it limits you in the work you could do around one
theme. I would recommend you rather work with one subject until you think it is
finished. Alone your first theme sea/archive is so vast, you could probably
work on it for a very long time.
As far as the choice
of words is concerned now: I find this list much better now. The verbs too much
implied on how you should create the artwork and directed you too much to the
process. Now, this list is more about the idea, the conceptual part of the work
and It indeed opens completely different doors of the mind. I don’t find the
list too long though, you do only one project at a time and that gives you the
possibility work in all kinds of directions and to challenge yourself.
Also, I think it is a
good idea to not only collect images and text on computer (film, images etc)
but that in addition to your collection of images and the film you present the
watercolor paintings. I find them delicate and exquisite, so light and
beautifully rendered. The more abstracted cut outs are even more intriguing.
Great work my dear
Malvina. Can’t wait to see you and more of your work in 7 weeks in NYC. Please
take your time to heal though, your work is solid and profound. I love the film
images with the sound of the sea. How about you speak over those images in your
beautiful (of course Portuguese) voice?
Hugs and all the best
abraços e beijos
Ira xxx
Hi Derek,
I watched your film several times.
First of all, I love the visual, it is very very good. The
close-up is very strong, also that we are sometimes not very sure what exactly
we are seeing.
Ambiguity in art is very important. If we say and explain
everything the viewer cannot engage with the work.
I also love the background sound. I think it works very
well.
I also read the text to your piece, the one in which you
explained how and why you made the piece and then the post of Oct 31 with the
detailed description and texts for all individual pieces. I agree IMovie gives
us some limitations and for my next film I will definitely want to try
Premiere, which was highly recommended to me.
Instead of writing and writing long passages now, I want to
ask you some questions:
-
First of all, since English is not my first
language, could you please explain to me the exact meaning of invocation. When
I go in the dictionary there are several different possibilities for a meaning.
Does it have a religious reference or is or more like an appeal. Thesaurus also
suggests words like spell or prayer, that is why I want to make sure. What is
the reference of this word to the work? Thank you for explaining that to me,
this might only be necessary for ESL people who would see you work and might
ask the same question.
-
Do you need quotation marks? To be honest I
think, (since you are using them for every single quote) it would make no
difference if you left them out, the meaning that this is a quote would still
come across.
-
First I watched the film and the first thing I
wrote down was: Derek needs to speak the text!
Then I read your text, so yes, ok I know now that you
are planning to read some pieces of it or other passages that will come later.
The reason why I would have recommended that you record your voice is that the
text on top of the images does not work so well (that is why I decided against
putting the translation of the Celan poem on top of the images of the destroyed
city of Homs).
-
If you want to stay with text on the images
could it be smaller and maybe move (from the right to the left) over the image?
I find the static text on top of your images takes away from the really really
strong images.
-
In between your sequences you put a long black.
First I thought it is too long, but actually I think it works, only I would let
the sound flow into the black and the next sound come out of the black a bit.
Not that the sound would be overlaid, but maybe be dimmed down and then the new
sounds starts very quietly in the black shortly after, to avoid that the black
comes and there is a break in the sound.
-
If you don’t want to speak over it the whole
time, would a second voice maybe be a good solution?
-
I know, I know here I come again with a possible
presentation of the piece. What if you hear the background noises as a loud (I
mean open) sound in the gallery and you hear the sound of your voice over the
headsets.
An artist to study for you is definitely Pipilotti Rist, that goes exactly in that direction now. You would probably love her huge visual installations. She is a Swiss artist and exhibits internationally. I have seen her work in London and in Somerset @Hauser&Wirth. Great work and sound as well. I think to watch her films would be really inspirational and helpful.
Your piece sounds solid and well thought through. I am very
much looking forward to your presentation. You have so much text and
information to support your visual, that makes it really strong.
Thanks for putting pressure on me too now!!! (after what you
said two weeks ago about that bar….).
Good good work Derek, really. Thank you also for your
detailed and feedback to my video piece.
Also good for you that you were able to work this past week.
I was only paralyzed!! Maybe it was a good timing or necessary to be by myself
with the (Trump) flu. Again, an excellent way for you to react to all the
things happening around you.
Have a good weekend
Ira
Hello Birgit,
thank you for your post. It would be easier to critique your work if we could see or listen to what you have been doing. I think the crit group would be a perfect setting to show us what exactly you did and then we could respond to it more easily. Also it is a safe way to present the work to a small community. We could then give you feedback and you could do adequate changes if you like (that is what I am hoping for in response to my video piece).
I am saying this, coming from a totally different background and working with a completely different theme. But to make it clearer, for example I told Andrew when I talked to him last week that I would like to add 'structure' to my painting. He cannot really critique that idea unless he sees the result and sees what I have come up with exactly to work on in my painting work.
I find your idea very interesting, sound is definitely one of the best choices to create a body of work around your theme. But I would encourage you to support it also by text, photography and film.
How are you planing to present the piece in January?
My first reaction to the piece was that I think you need to read Freud and Jung. You are approaching two different lifes (live styles) from a psychological point of view. Is there a way you could analyze all of this in a kind of comparison you are creating? Could you set up the piece as seen from a psychological analyst? In which other ways than recording your voice could you compare the two lives? I think it is not so much about a list of what you did then and what you do now, but I mean an analyzation of your emotions. How do you feel differently and why? What do those emotions really mean, what causes them and can you manipulate them?
How about an installation? two different rooms in which you try and reflect on and express those different emotions? How do they translate into mediums, colour etc.
We are used to be exposed to emotions by thought or voice, so to make it visual might be very powerful. which elements of social psychology do you want to address?
At the moment the work seems closed and very private. Do you intend to open it and to expose this? Or if you want to keep it private then the work needs to be about that private belonging and privacy.
I would encourage you to put the work out, at least to us, so that we can have a clearer image of what exactly you are perusing. I would recommend that you put the work together as if you were presenting it in a public setting. Then it might be easier for you to decide what would need to be included, added and taken out.
Although sound is certainly the strongest part though to express emotions, visual fragments in that presentation, video, photo, even little papers with private note, photos with a note on the back might be very helpful. Just imagine you are inviting a friend to come into your room and see lots of little notes and images.
Please read Rebecca Solnit, I am just reading Faraway nearby, she has a way to see the little obvious things that we forget in our daily life and discuss her emotions and memories on a very interesting and intrigueing level.
So I guess I am asking more questions and give only some answers, but I hope that these questions might lead you in a direction to a possible manifestation of the work.
All the best
IraDear Gabrielle,
Sorry for the slight delay, I am currently sitting in a
coffee in Indio and have been thinking about your work for the past days. (The first thing that comes to my mind here
thinking about invisible things is heat!!! J)
First question for you: How do you think you will present
the work? There are so many invisible things, but as we discussed in Berlin, if
it was my project I would probably focus/ bring the viewers attention to things
that are important to be discussed and many people might not be aware of, such
as the virus that was brought to indigenous people of North America.
The photos, to be honest, do not help me make a connection
to the invisible things. Your project idea is fabulous!!! But for this project
a lot of writing or information needs to be provided to the viewer, any ways to
explain invisible things to the viewer. I think I would rather collect items
that help tell the story. In the case of the virus I would exhibit a blanket
and then write about the fact that blankets carrying the small pox virus were
given to the different tribes and then write about the impact and how many
people were killed etc.
Also, the unsharp (sorry what’s the word for a photo that is
not sharp) photos do not convey the idea to me of something invisible). As soon
as you make something visible through a photo even if it is not sharp you still
show something.
I think, you need to
bring us to the void, the emptiness. Artists that come to my mind in that
context would be Anselm Kiefer, who would paint an empty room of a (Nazi
building) and call the painting Sulamith, thus bringing the attention to the
missing Jewry of Europe. Something similar is done by Christian Boltanski’s
“The Missing House’ in Berlin who also draws the attention to that void, the
absence and draws a strong parallel to the missing Jewish Communities in
Germany and Europe. You want to talk about the invisible, so something that is
not there but missing. As you suggest, you could also talk about feelings,
hate, faith etc that cannot be seen. But please also think about the things
that are absent and should be there. (support for dying children in Aleppo, etc).
Or, how is it talking about demagogues like Trump preaching hate and what the
consequences are? Sorry, if you feel I always draw the attention to the
horrible, but that is not the case……those were just examples that came to mind.
Love is invisible too….:-)
How is the theme: humanity??
I am currently in the process of helping a Syrian refugee family come to Canada
and that is a theme I think about a lot. Alone with this word there would be
many stories you could tell……
There is an artist who recorded the word ‘love’ in all
different kind of languages and only exhibited the digital sound image. So
sound is invisible and I would definitely recommend you to work with sound…….
I would suggest you start and write an imaginary proposal of
how you could present the piece. I don’t think it is necessary to ‘collect’
lists in folders. Yes, for now in your writing, but I would rather think of
different themes. And yes, maybe it is correct to go away from the 1000, but to
rather address several themes and then you would say maybe you dedicate 5 rooms
to 5 different main themes. From my (unreligious) perspective faith might be a
very difficult theme, you could probably fill a whole museum with that theme
and still would find people who are not satisfied and think their religion did
not get enough attention and was not represented in the correct way. I learn at
the moment about all the different Muslim movements, it is an extremely complex
theme…..
A list of 1000 invisible things is not enough. I would
suggest to start with 5 to 10 themes. As I said, imagine rooms with themes in
which you tell several stories around that theme.
Other themes that just randomly come to my mind:
fear,
angst,
depression,
loss,
mental abuse,
absence,
passion,
compassion,
pain,
longing
misery,
generosity,
struggle,
power,
survival,
kindness,
emotion,
narcissism,
egoism,
option,
dreams (only visible inside us),
affection,
forgiveness,
respect,
silence,
exile,
advice,
encouragement,
crisis,
loneliness,
suffering,
ability,
character,
childhood,
anxiety,
A story is not visible but like a dream we imagine it
visually in our minds. What I find interesting about humans is how we imagine a
story in our mind. If you think of Scheherazade and the 1001 night stories, I
think if you asked 1000 people to draw how they imagine the dream to look like
not two would look the same…..
Then again think of diseases that are invisible. I know
someone who has Alzheimer, all looks the same, you cannot see the illness…..
A piece that I would suggest: create an audio piece, do an
interview with someone who describes his feelings. You could have an assemblage
of audio pieces in which people talk about their feelings or experiences.
And then……of course……there is the amazing theme of
MUSIC……..so you could also focus the whole ‘exhibition’ about senses, the
things we do not see but hear, feel, etc.
Music is such a vast theme, but how is telling a story of
the development of music over the centuries? Very vast theme, I know.
Another great theme is: time
Artists to compare: AiWeiWei, who talks about oppression but
not in an obvious way or think of Robert Rauschenberg, his erased drawing of
DeKooning, conceptual art, talking about absence, which brings me to a fabulous
exhibition in London some years ago. Please look it up, you will find many
artists you could write about. here I have some links for you: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/may/18/hayward-gallery-invisible-show and
I think your theme is very good and there is a lot of
potential for a great exhibition. You can go very deep with this theme, the
deeper the more interesting it would be for a curator. It has to be more than a
list of invisible things, as I said I would rather suggest themes and then go
into detail around those themes. Gabrielle, please give me some feedback to
this!!!
Hi Derek,
I have looked at your work and my first feedback is: very
impressive! Your writing is amazing and wonderful, you are truly gifted. I will
try to give you my honest feedback to the visual work. Let me know if you have
any questions or issues with that.
I had this in a separate mail, but am including my
recommendation for artists to look at here:
Marepe,
Phyllida Barlow, (the book: sculpture
1963-2015, look at the gallery section), this is a fantastic book I would
recommend you to get,
the piece 'suspended playtime' by
Wangechi Mutu,
Tobias rehberger,
light boxes by Rebecca Warren (if you
ever create an installation inside; it might work for your assemblage of
material) and, of course,
Tatiana Trouve,
In regards to the installation, where you say it doesn’t
really make sense without the writing. A piece of visual art should be able to
be perceived, just with what the viewer sees, without giving an explanation. I
have a similar issue in my work and I always feel the need to explain why I do
this and what it means. Through many critiques I had in my life in art school
in Canada and University in England and also the mentor program in Berlin,
where I met with three contemporary artists, I have understood and learned that
it is important to create that ambiguity
in your work. If we explain exactly what we do and why we do it, then there
is no space for the viewer to engage with the work. It took me 10 years of
working in the arts to really understand and I agree, it is wonderful to be
open when I go to an art show and just think about my own interpretation of the
work. Remember our experience in Berlin on the first day?
So your titles should not necessarily explain what we see,
but maybe ‘comprise’ (summarize/sum up?) (zusammenfassen) what you are saying
in your writings about the piece. You can also refer to another artist’s
writings or visual pieces (btw I like your piece about Walter Benjamin) with
your title and add another thought or reference to the piece.
So the question is: if this was to be installed in an art
space, would you present it differently? How would you present it? If you did
not have a chance to present it with a lot of writing, which titles would you
give to the pieces? If you had to chose one of the pieces which one do you
think is the strongest and why?
That said, you can think about a title for the different
pieces that adds an additional layer and meaning to the work. That said, I find
that the pieces are all very strong, I can engage with all of them and they make
me think.
A part in the wrinting I find very strong is where you go
into depth with :
Yet
now, at the risk of putting too much of a melodramatic spin on it, I’m
beginning to see that the State I needed to get out from under was my own
nurturing of discontent–my continued harping on being detached and disconnected
from my immediate environment and longing for somewhere else.
Is
it the vulnerability that makes the writing so strong?
Also your title : ‘1:1 map of itself’ is a very good title.
To read about your thought process and working process is
very interesting
I am happy to see you enter new terrain, you going away (not
abandoning) from your previous collages and experimenting with sculpture and
installation.
The piece that speaks most to me is Hollow Earth, yes, I
read your text after I thought about the piece. I can say, all kinds of
thoughts come up, environment and vulnerability. Not only can I engage with the
piece, I also find it ‘works’ very well visually.
I ‘understand’ your petrified forest, the thought about
loss, extinction etc. But here I agree, the piece is much stronger once I read
your text, hear your story how this is coming about. Your love for rocks, the
story of the trees in your yard etc. however I think that it could be installed
maybe differently. Pieces of the petrified wood and rocks together with one
piece of the newly cut wood might engage the viewer more…..The question is what
better title you could give the viewer, if you were not able to give us the
explanation where it is coming from. The title of a famous poem by someone who
talks about loss?
Almost the same goes for the compost piece, which I find,
however, visually more compelling. Is it because I expect the petrified pieces
more in the Natural history museum, not sure, anyways, the compost piece is
much stronger visually. It is nice to get all that background information you
are providing me with, but I do not necessarily need this to enjoy the piece.
Title Derek?
Telescope Bridge, you mentioning Home Depot takes the viewer
in a direction, I would suggest you don’t mention where it is coming from.
Anyways, it looks interesting, but can the viewer look through the telescope?
Can you provide us with a photo of what one sees. It is interesting and yes
makes me think of this reaching out to the outer world and it is a nice
contrast to the other pieces, and responds especially well to the hollow earth
piece where we look into the abyss.
Harmonial spheres : it is a bit overloaded. Visually it is a
bit too much with all the wires and cords is there a way you could install it
with transparent fishing wire? This is the piece I find the least compelling,
not because of the content, what you describe is very interesting, visually
though it is hard to get the piece, at least on a photo. Maybe if it was spread
out more or the individual pieces could be seen better…..
Erth bath: visually compelling, very interesting. Many
earths, nice that the racoons enjoy it too.
So long story short, I really enjoyed looking at your work
and going through your reading (I won’t be able to do that more in the future,
spending most of my day in the studio writing this), very complex piece, but
the installation all sums up and the pieces work well together. The strongest
for me is the first piece and I can imagine this standing alone with the
telescope, without the other pieces.
As far as the writing,
the left over in ‘protected: the short version’ is concerned, it is very
strong! It really gets me thinking, it is engaging that your thoughts jump from
here to there, very vulnerable and poetic! I
would like you to read the poem, can you record it? I would like to include it in my collection
of sound recorded poems in which I included the voice of the Syrian refugee, my
voice, so far also Louis and Malvina, the voice of the Turkish lady were I had
coffee in the morning on the way to residency in Berlin. Your poem would fit in
really well……
Anyways, well done Derek, you are off to a really strong
start!!!
hugs to you and please let me know if you think this was any
helpful or not, so that I can make it better next time. Xxx
Dear Kayoko,
As you suggested I watched your video Blackout 1 first before I read your description. It is very engaging and brings up thoughts such as absence of human existence, presence and power of other energies, the universe, the human scale in all of this, endlessness,
Then I read the text about this project. Actually, I find a strong part is the fact that it is not perfect. It brings us back to ‘humanness’ in all of this vastness. Perfection would probably not work at all, but I think this piece is very powerful. It leaves it also to the viewer to engage with the piece and to create his/her own thoughts about it. How long is the piece altogether? I agree, it has to be seen as a big projection in a totally black room. The title works very well too.
It is interesting to read about the process and what you used and how you shot it, but this information is actually not necessary for the piece to work. The work can stand by itself and can speak for itself.
Is there sound with the piece? You said it is quiet. But I would actually suggest you would add sound to the piece. I am thinking for example of Ry Cooder (soundtrack of Paris Texas for example, there are some great pieces that would work with the piece) or Pink Floyd’s (shine on you crazy diamond and many others)
would add another layer of meaning to the piece (like probably 1000 other possibilities for music pieces…..there is also a Liszt piece called Solitude, that might work.
here are some other pieces : https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Anyways, I would suggest you experiment with sound, just sound not necessarily any text/singing,
Inner Memory, again the title is a very good connection to engage the viewer and explain in which direction you are leading the works. However, I wonder how you would present the piece? As photos mounted on the wall? Is sound of the performance included? Again, it is interesting to read about the process, but that would not work when you present the piece, how would you think about a writing about your feelings/emotions of your inner memory?
How do the drawings and the installation relate to the abstract photos of dancing? Please explain a bit about those pieces, also please address the image of the window, how it relates to the images of dance. Would you present them in the same piece? Here I feel I would need another layer of meaning in addition to the photos. But as you said, it is a process piece. I can imagine that you perform simultaneously while these images are projected in the room. Onto a wall? Onto your body maybe!
Space is an important element of the images, which I find are distilled to the essence and bring your thought of inner memory very well across to the viewer. I would suggest also, you record your voice and talk about your thoughts about inner memory and play it simultaneously while you perform.
I enjoyed the experimental element in your work. An artist that comes to mind is Mona Hatoum I remember have seen a video piece with her body and x-rays that kind of striped the image down to going inside the body. The issues Mona talked about I think were more involved with the idea of surveillance and observation but I think it would still be good to look at her video pieces.
Hugs from Canada, be well and looking forward to seeing you soon in NYC
Dear Malvina,
Sorry it took so long to look at your work. I only
discovered Gabrielle’s e-mail with the link a couple of days ago…..anyways…..
I find the choice of the artists you compare in your written
element very good. There is lots of written material about all of them and I
have seen their work here and there over time and of course discussed them
during my art studies at University. Anyways, great choice.
Your piece: the selection of words is detailed/complex
enough to work in many many different directions. I would suggest that you also
determine how much time you will take for one piece. 2 weeks for each piece
seems a bit too even to me. Sometimes we create the most amazing things in just
two days and then for another piece we take four weeks. I would not put any
constraints on yourself time wise. Sometimes a piece just takes 6 weeks ……
What I miss in the 1st circle is also the option
for installation or sculpture, sometimes, to work on an idea it is important to
have other means than drawing and painting and photography. I would suggest
that you also add sculpture to your piece…..or that if you have two other words
on circle 2 or 3 that you leave it open for you if you want to convey and
discuss that idea maybe with sculpture/collage/installation.
As we discussed in Berlin, I find the idea to this piece
absolutely awesome. The project is about chance and randomness and then goes
into a very specific direction. I think the choice of words is good and you
will probably see after the first 10 or so projects if you want to add or
substract some words. The only thing that I could mention is the following. You
define in the two outer circles HOW you do the work (mapping, archives, listing
etc) and WHERE (urban, outdoors, river, room etc) it would be situated. You do
not add so far any emotional connotation. Would that maybe help if it said
angst, frustration, hope, relieved etc (plus 20 others) Or words that have to do with
politics : oppression, guilt, power, etc. or would that constrain you too much
if you added this layer to the work? Just an idea…..
How will you work the wheel? Blindfolded? How do you decide
which overlays to choose? Will you like someone else to turn the wheel for you
and give you three words?
Cannot wait to see the first pieces in NYC.
Take your time now Malvina, all the best to you. Get better
soon.
Much Love
Ira xxx
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