workshop with Richard Wentworth
For this workshop I invited artists who could relate to the practice of Richard Wentworth. Richard makes photographs and works for years on an ongoing series of images ' Making Do and Getting By' besides these images of found situations mainly in the public domain, he makes sculptures, installations and interventions. The participating artists all work with ongoing archival practices besides their intervention practice. During a one day workshop we discussed similarities and differences in each others practices. The day was an active brainstorm session to reflect on our own and each others practice and became very fruitfull for further forms of exchange. In April 2008 the workshop continued with new participants added in a second workshop and the exhibitionproject Localisms at Museum de Paviljoens.
In order of presentation:
Marjolijn Dijkman
Paul Huf
Jaqueline Schoemaker
Frank Koolen
Savage
Melle Smets
Eric Van Hove
Richard Wentworth
Rachel Koolen (hallway)
Gilles Aubry (performance)
Participants:
Ines Leichleitner
Katja Gretzinger
Nina Stottrup Larsen
Maarten Vanden Eynde
Raphael Cuomo
Maria Iorio
Eva Moulaert
Jens Schildt
Sabine Hillen
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Richard Wentworth
"Richard Wentworth was born in 1947 in Samoa. He attended Hornsey College of Art from 1965 and worked with Henry Moore as an assistant in 1967. He was awarded an MA in 1970 from the Royal College of Art and went on to become one of the most influential teachers in British art over past two decades at Goldsmith's College, University of London, where he taught from 1971 to 1987. He was appointed by the prestigious German Academic Exchange Programme (DAAD) to work in Berlin from 1993 to 1994, and in 2002 was made Master of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University.
Wentworth emerged as a major British sculptor in the early 1980s. His work centres on the idea of transformation, of subtly altering and juxtaposing everyday objects which, in turn, fundamentally changes the way we perceive the world around us. His palette is one of ladders and lightbulbs, buckets and tins, tables and chairs, sometimes with legs partly sawn off and counterbalanced by a weight as if to defy gravity. In his ongoing series, Making Do and Getting By, Wentworth also uses photography as a means of documenting what might be called 'the sculpture of the everyday': a cigarette packet jammed under a wonky table leg; a makeshift construction to reserve parking space; a bucket jammed on to the side of a dented car so that the headlight can still operate. 'I live in a ready-made landscape', he remarked early in his career, 'and I want to put it to use'.
He was one of the selected artists in the London section of the 2002 São Paulo Biennial and in 1999 curated 'Thinking Aloud', one of the most creative contemporary exhibition projects staged in the past five years and which was seen in Cambridge, London and Manchester."
written by Cass Sculpture foundation
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Eric van Hove (presentation)
Tokyo mind's eye - MJPG nonlinear digital installation on Tokyo experimenting with cinema as an apparatus of memory:
Description :
In the writings of Yanagita Kunio, appears the figure of a palimpsistic imaginary where the earlier and essential layers of national life -- in the form of custom, practice, and belief -- were still able to filter through the modern overlays and provide a map for the present. Yanagita appealed the trope of a nonlinear history of custom by employing the vivid imagery of a stalactitic formation that grows unobserved into the shape of a large icicle. This brings to mind Freud's text entitled "Civilization and Its Discontents," and the dual archaeological model of Rome as the visible city of ruins and Pompeii as the lost city, buried whole. Similar to philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro's conception of history (Jusosei), I conceive Tokyo as a pixelled city, a stratigraphic entity whom I envision as a spatial stockpiling of strategic moments in the itinerary of the spirit, each laying on top of each other yet somehow transparent. Perhaps as the Freudian concept of screen memory, or Benjamin's concept of auratic memory drawn from Proust's memoire involontaire: Tokyo is a metropolis wrapped in measurelessness where yesterday isn't bound to tomorrow, and the snapshots taken from cell phones shortcut all dimensions. Following Deleuze's concept of image-temps, "l'action flotte dans la situation, plus qu'elle ne l'acheve ou ne la resserre".
Tokyo's mind's eye is a MJPG nonlinear movie/documentary on contemporary Tokyo shot through a handy digital camera and experimenting with cinema as an apparatus of memory. It is composed of short sequences - 10 seconds up to 2 minutes - played randomly, creating links among fragments of its narrative wondering, in a way comparable to hypertext on the World Wide Web. Furthermore it could be said that Freud described hypertext in 1895 in Studies on Hysteria in his description of the organization of memory. The piece, while reflecting on modern digital possibilities, echoes some other films' attempt to envision a city's soul, as "A propos de Nice" of Jean Vigo or "Berlin, symphony of a great city" of Walther Ruttmann, ...
(stills from the rushes of Tokyo mind's eye)
The presentation in the ANNEX was about an exptention of that experiment but world wide, in a piece called Ecumenopolis. The piece would then gather thousands of videos from about 100 cities world wide shot during the last four years. Else, Off the record was introduced : http://www.transcri.be/projects
Eric Van Hove - www.transcri.be - +81(0)90 3512 2617
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Marjolijn Dijkman (presentation)
Interpretations
Taking inspiration from Ortelius’ Theatrum orbis Terrarum’ (Theatre of the World), the first modern atlas, it is my aim to gain an insight into the way in which the world is organised. Not by means of abstract maps and purely geographical data, but by arranging photographic registrations of the world according to personal criteria. At the moment, the archive is made up of three ordering systems, viz. ‘Gestures’, ‘References’ and ‘Speculations’.
‘Gestures’ contains images that show traces and effects of human interventions. The images can be taken anywhere; they all emphasise that people, regardless of their geographical location, have similar ways of organising and designing their daily environment.
The ‘References’ archive makes us understand how (garden) architecture, business and private interiors, institutes such as the museum and recreation parks express their respective views of less than familiar locations and cultures. This part of the archive generates an atlas of the representation of geographical and cultural elements in new surroundings ∞ Las Vegas in Moscow, Malibu in Oostvoorne, Japanese gardens in Hoogezand, Kinshasa shoe shop in Maastricht, etcetera. The images are put at the location they represent.
‘Speculations’ is made up of images of spaces that represent a specific era, be it in the past or in the future. These systems are in a constant state of development and are extensively brought up to date on a weekly basis when new images and categories have been obtained. One image can be included in different categories and systems and, in consequence of this, trigger opposite meanings. By now the archive consists of more than 4000 unique photographs. In close collaboration with designer Julie Peeters I made a series of independent publications and published contributions in magazines and catalogues. Apart from these publications, I am developing an online presentation that makes all images and systems permanently available.
Interventions
The archive is a footing for site-specific interventions as well as a reflection of the many travels I undertake to realise interventions. By making temporary structural alterations, by reorganising objects and spatial characteristics I query the meaning and stratification of space. By recording the traces of other people’s actions, or by making a confronting gesture vis-à-vis the actual organisation of the space, these works reinforce the existent characteristics. Often these interventions query the effects of spatial organisation and make the tensions materialise that a specific order unconsciously arouses. Unlike the continuous archive, I realise 4 to 5 interventions per year at the most. Preceding these interventions, I conduct extensive research into the location and involve the users of the place. As a consequence, winding up the reactions and completing the work proves a huge operation. The interventions are done either individually or in close collaboration with other artists. Given the scale of the works assistance or cooperation – in every which form – is nearly always required to realise the productions.
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Melle Smets (presentation)
The art of Melle Smets generates ideas and concepts for the use and function of public space. His search in the contemporary landscape for signs witch reflect the essence of modern life, are the starting point of his work. Every work is investigating the relation between man and the enviroment. Smets working methode is comparible with a curator. The research results are reflected in publications, artworks, guided tours and lectures. Since 2000 he collaborates in an art collective called G.A.N.G.
G.A.N.G. runs an travel agency, an exhibitionhall in the Arnhem citycenter, makes artworks for public space and does consultancy jobs for govenmental institutions in the area of public space. The G.A.N.G. foundation is supported by the Mondriaan foundation, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, several local governmental fundings and has a incidental project based funding of diverse sponsorships.
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Frank Koolen (presentation)
My work can be described as an ongoing search for the ideal combination between the beauty of discovery and the happiness of recognition. A moment in which the everyday and the magical seem to collide, creating unexpected logic. Maybe this logic is an equivalent to my notion of ‘beauty’ but at the same time I’m looking for possibilities to reactivate the meaning of an (sometimes generally known) image or idea by changing or rearranging its context.
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Savage (presentation)
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Jacqueline Schoemaker (presentation)
The research project Traces of autism intends to draw up an inventory of public space in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine, based on journeys made through the area and following a number of strict parameters. Public space can be defined as non-privatised space, the space that escapes control, the space that is not well-kept, the space of transgression, the space of the needy. For the researchers the inner borders of the Euregion function as a reference line and a kind of reading axis. Gypsies, refugees, migrants and drug addicts can function as indicators, although other indi-cators may become manifest. The emphasis will be on maps: existing maps will be collected and new maps will be drawn.
During the entire research period, the French pedagogue Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) will be considered a supporter; he will accompany the researchers at every step. For thirty years Deligny followed autistic patients and merely registered their acts, without intervening; he only registered, without the desire to ‘learn’ anything. ‘The pedagogue following the footsteps of autistic patients’: it is an allegory that expresses the current position of the artist or intellectual. Deligny did not provide a method, merely a position: “Je ne voudrais pas qu’on s’y trompe. J’ai bien écrit en 1944, un petit livre qui parle de ce métier-là (educateur). Ce n’est pas le mien.”
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Paul Huf (presentation)
Images of every day life
Wherever I go, I always have at least one camera, my sketchbook and a notebook along. These three things are the basic equipment for my artwork. I call the bag with these items (ironically) my “Büro”, my office. With my office every walk becomes a journey, be it the way to the next supermarket or an overnight bus ride in Mexico, whatever. Everything can be interesting; it depends on the way you look at it and even the shortest walk can be a voyage. I use the camera, the sketchbook and the notebook as recording instruments for my surrounding, and every tool has its specific recording quality: If we consider the reality around us as a 3 D body consisting of multiple image layers, the drawings have the ability to cut out vertical layers by suppressing all information that is not needed and deliver a transparent, filtered image. The texts relate points of interest within this reality body. They are able to evoke pictures in the viewers head. The photographic image isolates a multi-layered piece from reality by capturing colour and light in a specific spatial depth. When I come home, I have photos, text fragments and drawings. With these parts I continue working in the studio.
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Rachel Koolen (corridor presentation)
I started to gain interest in the dutch welfare services. Currently, I am exploring in detail the fascination for the environment constructed around the control and administration of social securities. This thematic, associated with the marginal, enables me to relate to a number of artistic strategies. The crux of the matter is that most artistic projects do not wish to be associated with the control regime they are criticizing. Yet, any form of reproduction, representation and simulation, inherent in artistic practice contrasts with the invisible, uncontrollable nature of marginal places or groups; not willing to fit in any given framework. The same paradox of visibility occurs in the rise of centers for work and income in the Netherlands. These so called 'Werkpleinen' are the manifestation of a larger governmental project that integrates welfare and recruitment agencies provided with guidance to create opportunities in the job market. The design is largely derived from corporate business culture, for instance the attention paid to transparency and publicity to bring out the orientation towards the client or public. Nevertheless, the social security recipient, the pivot of this policy, submits to an intervening counseling, implicating a withdrawal from his active role (in society), which amounts to social invisibility. When I take photos I activate the environment by constructing it, however the moment that the shutter is released the apparatus takes over. Via this temporal withdrawal the critical status of the artist is brought into question. I employ my consciously chosen, yet insuperable vantage-point of an outsider, as an objective to set against, thus to challenge my artistic vocabulary and production.
A new format of integrating the employment office and welfare administration
in one location. 'Werkplein Enschede', inaugurated: June 2007
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Maarten Vanden Eynde (participant)
Genetologic Research
In my work I stop the clock and try to unravel the process and consequence of time. Between the future and the past lays the present; an elusive point but always present. Like the gardener on his way to Ispahaan, the present is on his way to an unavoidable destiny: the past. There is no escape.
In the Genetologic Research I try to capture these timeless dilemmas of life. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Carpe Diem! Genetology (The Science of First Things) is a self invented science, creating an opposition for the existing Eschatology (The Science of Last Things). How will we look back to the past in the future? What will be left over from the present?
My work is situated exactly on the borderline between the past and the future. Sometimes looking forward to the future of yesterday, sometimes looking back to the history of tomorrow. This brings me as close to science as well as art, like 'The origin of Life Remake' of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, where they tried to recreate life with the same basic ingredients present 3,5 billion years ago, or the discovery of the 'Interplanetary Super Highway', fluctuating energy lanes, during the recent 'Genesis' mission making it possible to travel much faster through space without additional fuel or external impulse. The cosmological stepmother of the black holes. The sheep on formadehyde solution of Damien Hirst ('Away from the Flock'), the modern archaeology of Mark Dion ('New England Digs'), the peeled of trees of Guiseppe Penone ('Tree Door') or 'I Like America And America Likes Me', the performance of Joseph Beuys of 1974 in which he lived in a cage for five days in the Rene Black Galley in New York together with a wild coyote: one by one works that feel the pulse of time and balance between the temporary and the timeless.
The Genetologic Research functions as an online sketchbook on which I put my own work in the context of other artworks, events in history, scientific discoveries, intellectual discourse and philosophical explorations. Slowly I'm trying to define and understand Genetology. In the future this research might evolve in an exhibition with a matching catalogue. www.maartenvandeneynde.com
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Jens Schildt (participant)
Jens Schildt (1977) is a graphic designer who lives and works in Amsterdam. He started to work after graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2006. At the moment he is doing a research at the Jan van Eyck Academie on the subject of publishing and book design. Jens is focusing his attention on music, art, fashion and design. He also works with magazines and develops identities for people in the social and cultural sector. Now and then he contributes with drawings and music.
So what does the future hold for Schildt? “Well, I hope I can find nice people to work with in the future and that all the nice people I already know will still be nice and that everybody can be respectful and considerate of other people, all together in Our Polite Society.”
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Ines Lechleitner (participant)
During the last years I have produced a body of work related to nonverbal systems of communication, which are either visual or acoustic (i.e. human sign language and whale communication). As a visual artist I have been transposing one codified language with another, using the interplay between the two mediums of communication as means of analysis and exploration of their difference and investigating the relations between sound, photography and text. The aim to develop the formal aspects of the sound book Pièce de Cinéma* lead me to a new investigation in the area of installation incorporating sound and image/object.
I would like to mention two recent projects:
An interactive sound installation – Hörbühne für drei Souffleurkästen (Listening-Stage for three Prompter’s Boxes) - conceived for an outdoor exhibition at the Künstlerverein Malkasten, Düsseldorf. I attempted to draw the visitor's attention to the act of listening by designating an area within the park as listening stage with three prompter's boxes, each with its own sound. The prompter's boxes were placed in relation to certain elements in the park and projected a sound loop triggered by the visitor's movements.
The other piece – Franchir un Seuil (to Cross a Threshold) – is an installation which includes four photographic prints and four sound pieces. The project reflects the work done with a young deaf girl in Paris between 2004 and 2006 following her as she is learning to acquire speech. Exploiting the difficulty of synchronizing time based sound and still images and showing them side-by-side does open a certain space of experience for the viewer. Questioning and using this space between an image and a sound is an important aspect my research is centered around at the moment.
* for information see : http://janvaneyck.nl/0_4_3_publications_info/lechleitner.html