My art investigates diverse cultures and relationships between manmade and natural environments. Fascinated by flight or disorientation and its patterns, I merge together disparate events and experiences to create new narratives. Fall documents the movement of Yosemite Falls. The sounds are from a Native American Art auction in San Francisco. The audio features the sale of an Apache tray and Plateau beaded bags that mimic the patterns of Yosemite’s environment. I question the commercialization and speculative appreciation of objects from America’s original residents. With the recent centennial of The Organic Act of 1916 and as remnants become bid and sold on, the National Park enjoyment and protection debate must include its original history. Lives and works in Richmond, California Jenny E.Balisle
FALL is a captivating project by multidisciplinary artist Jenny E. Balisle that initiates the audience into an unconventional and heightened visual experience through the exploration of diverse cultures and relationships between manmade and natural environments. One of the most captivating aspects of Balisle's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of identifying how patterns and symbols of influence impact perception: we are pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Jenny and welcome to : you have a solid formal training and after having earned your B.A. in Art and Communication, you nurtured your education with a M.F.A. from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. How did these experiences along with your current work as a curator and M.F.A. instructor influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? meets An interview by Francis Quettier and Dora Tennant Jenny E. Balisle Education is an opportunity not to be taken for granted. It is a gift that allows for the time to study concepts, engage with new perspectives, and develop an artistic framework to vet ideas. Academia provides a safe space to experiment within a structured setting. During my undergraduate studies, I worked full-time to help cover expenses. From the beginning, education became a refugee of guidance and precious commodity. Graduate school fostered creative ideas while preparing for art world realities. As an instructor, it is my responsibility to share these life lessons with a new generation. An artist can accept or reject all ideas produced and conceived via education. Information allows one to critically think within their practice by questioning personal, institutional, and cultural bias. It can be a challenge for schooling to fit the needs of every student. As a result, research and investigation must fill the gaps. An artist’s responsibility is to highlight narratives by questioning the structures within society. The profession demands honest exploration. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit in order to get a synoptic view of your work: while walking us through your process, would you like to tell to our readers Lives and works in Richmond, California
something about the evolution of your style? In particular, do you think that there is that connects all your works? “Style” can be a term used by the art world to place artists into categories for the purpose of commodification. My style or concept grows with new information, research, and experience. It is truly symbolic of life. The world and technology continues to evolve throughout history. My art is sensitive to changing natural and manmade environments. The central idea is to explore how patterns and symbols of influence impact perception. In addition, inevitable time produces evolution. The constant moving variable can’t be stopped or altered. Therefore, I create in the present by eliminating the constraints of one medium or style often prescribed in academic settings. My art records a current moment by utilizing medium choice and freedom. It is honored and welcomed in my art practice. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting video installation tthat can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your insightful documentation of the movement of Yosemite Falls is the way you have provided the results of your analysis with coherent combination between and . While walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you developed the initial idea? In 2015, I was the artist in residence at the Choctaw and Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge in Brooksville, Mississippi. My grandfather’s mother, Nora Mae Nash, was born in Gillham,
Film still from A Line through the Periphery, 2014. Digitally transferred and edited Super 8 film by Dawn Nilo
Film still from A Line through the Periphery, 2014. Digitally transferred and edited Super 8 film by Dawn Nilo
interviewArkansas and her mother was Choctaw. During the residency, I visited a sacred Choctaw site and was given three arrowheads. Upon returning to San Francisco, I attended a Native American art auction and recorded its sounds. It was disturbing the blatant commercialization and speculative appreciation of objects from America’s original residents. For this reason, I traveled to Yosemite Falls to witness and highlight its fragile beauty standing firm against the winds of greed. FALL documents the movement of Yosemite Falls by mimicking the slow and deliberate erosion of its protections. The auction audio features the sale of an Apache tray and Plateau beaded bag that mimics the patterns of the environment. The idea derived from my family background, residency experience, and the need to safeguard the legacy of the natural world from obnoxious profiteering. provides the viewers with an immersive experience and brings the notion of landscape to a new level of significance, evoking an atmosphere that reminds us of the idea of elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé. How would you describe in your work? Environment is everything. It sets the tone, creates mood, and provides a context for a concept. The static shot of Yosemite Falls asks the viewer to commit to being present. The changing light, movement of water, and time of day start as subtle details but are vitally important to the work’s narrative. The goal is to participate with an environment’s history instead of passive engagement.
Your work questions the commercialization and speculative appreciation of objects from America’s original residents: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, " ". Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered , do you think that could be considered a political work? Moreover, what could be in your opinion the role of artists in our unstable contemporary age? Yes, FALL can be defined as a political work. At inception, the intention was to share the commercialization of objects from America’s original residents. It’s difficult for me to separate how this could be controversial or partisan. History continues to be rewritten and contorted into alternative realities. Artists must share their unique perspectives in an attempt to preserve truth. An unstable contemporary age with economic and political obstacles can be challenge. However, art is the conscious of society. What is necessary and meaningful results in nominal monetary return. Artists must continue to push forward in an effort to shape a utopia that celebrates diversity and freedom of expression. Creativity draws societal change. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your main goal is to identify how patterns and symbols of influence impact perception: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular, how would you consider in your work? Artists must forge their path to research and discovery. So, I wouldn’t rule out symbolic strategies to assess meaning to the world we live in. In an art practice, creation can include unique behavior patterns such as manifestos, rituals, and rules that influence output. There must be infinite options to investigate psychological and narrative elements. In essence, everything could be considered a medium. In addition, “everything” has the possibility of symbol interpretation regardless of an artist’s intention. Symbols and patterns are part of a human’s DNA and experience. They are inherent subconsciously and consciously. Artworks will frequently illicit symbol labeling in order to make sense of a concept. Symbols are taught in numerous forms such as language, cultural, social, and religious practices. Identifying Western bias is key to understanding the symbols in my work. In art history, the male gaze objectified women as an object. As a female artist, I objectify patterns, perception, and power. The sound of spoken words plays a crucial role in according to media theorist Marshall McLuhan there is a 'sense bias' that affects Western societies favoring visual logic, a shift that occurred with the advent of the alphabet as the eye became more essential than ear. How do you see the relationship between sound and images? In FALL, the audio is from a Native American auction in San Francisco. It is a critical conceptual component by mimicking an art exhibit audio guide. If Yosemite and its original residents could talk, what history would be told? The FALL image appears static while the audio records action. The relationship between sound and image switches roles creating a sense of disorientation. The visual and audio are equally important in order to capture and create a new environment or narrative. You are a versatile and your practice ranges from drawings, sculpture and site-specific installations to objects, video and audio: what draws you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? Moreover, you
Film still from A Line through the Periphery, 2014. Digitally transferred and edited Super 8 film by Dawn Nilo
stated once that : when do you recognize that a technique or a medium has exhausted to self? Inspiration dictates the final form of an artwork. In my art practice, the goal is to match the best medium to an idea. The multidisciplinary approach vets inspiration through identifying, capturing, recording, research, and implementing concepts (ICRRI). Experience shifts this malleable template of creativity. When implementing an idea with a technique or medium, I access if my skill set matches, investigate various mediums, and seek outside assistance. The inspiration may change by accepting a new outcome. That is part of the process. Finding the correct match to a concept requires flexibility. In the end, exhausting an idea becomes a new one. Over the years your works have been showcased in several occasions, including your recent participation to The Nor’Easter: 47th Annual Juried Members Exhibition, at the New Britain Museum of America: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create with the viewers, who are provided with of the opportunity to become active participants and are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context? Yes and no. It’s a challenge to predict audience reception accurately. As a result, I create without any perceived judgments. It can take time to discover the appropriate venue for an artwork. One part of the world will connect to a concept while another rejects. History, location, society, and politics affect audience reception. The goal is to create the best work possible and eventually it will find a home. Differences in language can dramatically alter intention and output. For example, my art video PRAY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLPrY9MLy5c) documented the “blood moon” in California and how light scatters off of air molecules creating its intense color. The sounds were from the Lingyin Buddhist temple in Hangzhou, China. Visitors tossed coins on top a small prayer structure for good luck outside of the Hall of Master Ji Gong. The unique Chinese dialect was translated numerous times to English. The transcendent memory became altered and Western bias exposed due to language misinterpretation. Despite cultural and linguistic differences, art is a universal language that can penetrate barriers. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Jenny. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Advocacy is a very important part of my art practice. Locally, I serve on the Public Art Advisory Committee and as a Richmond Arts & Culture Commissioner in California. Recently, the Richmond City Council adopted a One-Percent for Public Art on Private Projects Program Ordinance. The vetting of the program encountered resistance from conservative/libertarian groups opposed to public art. Therefore, I will be helping my community to organize and protect this positive program. Because of new political realities in the United States, future artistic projects include repurposed objects along with video and laser installations reflective of alternative facts. Politicians interested in power by any means has eroded the basic principles of democracy. My future work will focus on the consequences of corrosive policies while highlighting the importance of universal human rights. Past and current events continue to influence my art practice.
meets Human memory starts developing within the first two or three years of a child’s life. When Rachel was only one year old a life-changing event occurred. She doesn’t remember. In order to deal with this void, Rachel collects, organizes and reinvents memories, even if it means constructing new ones to fill the emptiness. In her work, Rachel chooses to transcend the limitations of working with one medium, instead opting for a cross-over between photography, film, installation and role playing. The most recent completed body of work covers the artist’s attempts to get to know her mother, to create her own memories, to have an answer to the question: “what was your mother like?”. It’s belated motherdaughter bonding. Currently Gruijters is making her short film ‘Fake It Till You Make It’ (working title). The film revolves around the fact that all sorts of things in life are constructed: from who we seem to be to the homes we inhabit; and from our memories to Classical Hollywood. Rachel Gruijters Rachel Gruijters
Hello Rachel and welcome to this special edition of Women Cinemakers: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you hold a Master of Multimedia Design that you received from the KASK School of Arts, Ghent. How did this experience influence the way you currently conceive your works? Studying Multimedia Design (later renamed to ‘Autonomous Design’) probably influenced me greatly; it is a department that generally houses students that don’t fit into any other department. This is usually because they don’t work with one set medium, or because they value concept over technique. Concept, and developing a personal artistic vision/philosophy, was also the main focus of the department while I was studying there. This is still how I go about conceiving new works; it starts with an idea, a concept that fascinates me. Then I take my time to research this concept; I read, watch films, browse the internet, listen to interviews, talk to meets An interview by Bonnie Curtis and Jennifer Rozt Druhn Rachel Gruijters people, sometimes write about it, etc. This researching-phase can take quite a while, probably because I so enjoy doing it. During and after the research (that usually never really stops), I make notes of all possible ideas of how to turn this concept into a work. So, it’s only in the second or third “phase” that I start thinking about what medium to use. You are a versatile artist, capable of crossing from a medium to another: how do you select the medium to express the idea that you explore? In particular, when do you recognize that one of the mediums has exhausted its expressive potential to self and why did you move to filmmaking? First of all thank you for thinking I’m capable of crossing mediums, since it is something that doesn’t always feel like an obvious thing to do. It wasn’t a very conscious choice to move to filmmaking, I’m actually still rather awkward when I’m referred to as a filmmaker, because I feel I haven’t any right to be called that, since I didn’t have any training in the field, nor have I already have a lot of experience. I go about making films (or filmic work) as I would with any other work I create; I have a concept that — turns out— I think would work best as a film. Or it gradually evolves into a film, taking me by surprise.
Since I, technically, don’t know all that much about film, I like to surround myself with a team that does. Although, that wasn’t very much the case for Do Not Forget. Do Not Forget was actually the first real film I ever made, and I did it without a team (but not without help, mind you). It is just the result of what happened after a lot of playing around with the material I had collected. As for recognizing when a material has exhausted itself: I don’t think any material will ever exhaust itself. It might not be the right material for a particular work I want to make, but then I just shelve it for a little while, until another work comes along that would fit perfectly with that particular material, and off the shelve it comes. For this special edition of Women Cinemakers we have selected Do Not Forget, an interesting film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your inquiry into the notion of memory is the way you provided its results with autonomous aesthetics. When walking us through the genesis of this stimulating film would you tell us something about your process and set up? As it usually goes, in the beginning there was the idea (I feel like I repeat this in every answer I give, but I can’t really go around it). I had had the idea for a while, but never came across teachers that I trusted enough to be my tutor, until my last year of my bachelor’s degree, when I met (or got to know better) two women who could hold their own, that I felt I could trust. It can take some time for me to trust a person enough to share my thoughts and doubts with, and as I didn’t have that much time, it was important for me there was already some trust. So, I had a safety net to develop Do Not Forget, and take the time for it.
In the film I try to construct a memory of my mother, who died when I was 1½ years old, leaving me without memories of her that I’m aware of. Once again; at this point I had no clue I was making a film. I started to simultaneously research my mother as a person, as well as the mother as a concept, theories about memory, Snow White and “hidden mothers” (a phenomenon in Victorian photography). This list of seemingly random topics came together in my thesis. To research my mother I looked at photographs and talked to people I was close to, that were also close to my mother, asking them what they remembered of her. The voices you hear in the film are actually my “kind-ofmothers”; people that collectively did a swell job at raising me instead of my mother. The word quickly spread, and more and more people got involved. People I had never even met before, sending me emails saying they had found photos of my mother, but also within my own family. Aunts and uncles started looking again for things that were hidden away in the attic. That’s how we found a few small home video fragments. So, in my early 20s, I saw my mother move for the first time (disregarding the 1½ years that I can’t remember). After acquiring all of this material, the moment came to ask myself: “Now what do I do with all of this?” So I laid everything out and discussed it with my tutors. I had collected photos, home videos, audio recordings, objects, handwritten letters/notes and anecdotes. Film seemed the most appropriate medium to merge all the paraphernalia into one thing. interview
Then the playing started. I got myself Final Cut Pro, and started teaching myself. Do Not Forget really is the outcome of a lot of trial and error. But I think for this film it actually worked to my advantage that I was such a rookie, for it made that I wasn’t too focused on, and taken aback by technicalities. The studio with most of the acquired material spread out. Do Not Forget is rich with archival images pervaded with symbolic references: how much importance have symbols in your practice? My first reaction was to say that I don’t use symbols that often, but come to think of it, I do. So, thank you for the revelation. I think I use symbols because they are a common good. We can all read them. We have appreciated the way you have combined moving images, statics and written words into coherent unity: did you pursue such result instinctively or did you methodically structure the process? In particular, do you like spontaneity? First of all: I do like spontaneity, but I like structure too. This results in me usually trying to structure or methodize my instincts, but I will always put a gut feeling before a rational thought, even though I value ratio greatly. For Do Not Forget, for example, there was this chaos of all these different collected things and not knowing where it was leading to or where it would end. It was like The Great Unknown, or like falling down the rabbit hole, whatever you want to call it. To cope with those uncertainties I tried to order whatever I could. I would categorize my external hard disk in this web of folders, or I would divide the collected snapshots in categories (i.e. “me & mother”, “dressing up”, etc.), wrap them in silk paper and label them with post its, and then put those little packages in the “snapshot box”. People have more than once made fun of me because of this —
interviewI’d almost call it a fetish— for order, but it helped me get a grip on things and stay somewhat sane. You can see this need for structure in the film; you see the silk paper-wrapped snapshots, you see me zooming in to- and analyzing small details. I think you can see me wonder. Trying to find out if it’s true that our teeth look the same, comparing our faces for similarities, for the first time making an effort to find out for myself whether we looked alike, something that more and more people had begun to tell me. The final structure of the film happened quite intuitively. The order things are in just felt right to me, as if a story was slowly unfolding and more and more input was slowly building up to a point of being oversaturated. I guess I instinctively followed the road I travelled while making the film. Sound plays an important role in Do Not Forget: according to media theorist Marshall McLuhan there is a 'sense bias' that affects Western societies favoring visual logic, a shift that occurred with the advent of the alphabet as the eye became more essential than ear: how do you see the relationship between sound and images? In all honesty I can hardly say I know anything about sound, but I do find it incredibly important. I can not put sound into words, meaning I do not know how to use words to express what kind of sounds I think should go with the images. I can say when it doesn’t sound right to me, which can make it pretty difficult to work with me, I suppose. Sound can really create a world of its own. That world can either fit into the visual world, or it can be
contrasting worlds, which can also result in something very interesting. Best-case scenario a film will still be compelling with your eyes shut. I’m always quite intrigued by, and in awe of, visually impaired people: all of the information they can filter out of sounds that most of us who can see usually don’t even pay attention to. Sometimes I try to just sit somewhere for a little while, closing my eyes and becoming aware of the sounds. I guess it’s a way of training myself to become better at understanding sound. As you have remarked once memories aren’t the truth. They are just one person’s truth, as is your film: how do you view the concepts of the real and the imagined playing out within your works? In particular, do you think that there's a dichotomy between these notions or there could even be a liminal area in which constructed memory and reality find an unexpected point of convergence? I love playing with the real and the imaginary. It makes me chuckle a great deal of the time. As a kid I was mesmerized by Peter Pan; the book and pretty much all of the film adaptations I could get my hand on. As a teenager, I was still mesmerized by this magical world of not growing up and what it actually meant to grow up. Even now, I still have a soft spot for Peter Pan, for all of the reasons mentioned and because of it acknowledging that imagination and belief are such powerful forces. Something becomes real (at least for one person) the moment that someone believes it to be real, doesn’t matter how constructed it is. You can be sure that reality
is a whole lot more fictionalized than you’d think. Our brain can play funny tricks with us. It must be a terribly fine line between fiction and non-fiction, if such a line exists at all. The theme of memory is quite recurrent in history and theory of cinema. Do Not Forget reveals this root, which were both practical and theoretical. A particular aspect of your cinema we would like to focus on is the way you explore the boundaries between personal and collective memory. Do you think that there is a point of convergence between these apparently separate spheres? I think all personal memory is more collective than we think or than we would like to think. I mean; collective memory is made up of a lot of personal memories. Even though we don’t share the exact same memories, we can usually relate to other people’s memories in a way. That goes for Do Not Forget too. For people who have known me and my mother, they are looking at Rachel and Sandra and thinking about their own memories of us. But I’ve found out others find a way to relate to the film as well. Some of us are mothers; some of us are mothers of daughters. Some of us are daughters and we all have mothers, one way or another. So I think you can very easily substitute “Sandra and Rachel” for “mother and daughter” or “mother and child”, and everyone will understand. There’s a reason “mother and child” are such an iconic symbol in Christianity, and with that in Western cultures. That is what I mean when I say that we can all relate to other people’s personal memories, because it can always be brought back to very basic, or early, concepts. We want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from getting behind the camera, however in the last decades
there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on the future of women in cinema? In particular, do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value? It’s a complex thing, this gender issue, and I often avoid talking about it, since I don’t think I can eloquently put into words what I think about it, usually making me sound way harsher than I intend to. A lot of women I surround myself with are somewhere between a feminist-activist and somewhat post-feministactivist stage, and so am I. In theory, I think gender shouldn’t matter and whatever a man can do, a woman can do, and there’s no need to stress this fact, for it’s obvious. Or so I think. And so it should be, I think. Unfortunately, there are moments when I’m confronted with the fact that this is not how everyone thinks. Or that, apparently, it isn’t as obvious as I thought it was. As a result, I have found myself using Instagram hashtags like #femaleartist, to give you a very banal example. So, even though I think we should have passed this by now, I realize more and more that we have not, and that it might be getting worse. Not necessarily in the art- or film industry (although we haven’t reached equity yet), but in life in general. I’d like to think that me being me provides my artistic research with some special value. Of course, my identity is colored by my gender, but by so much more than that. There are millions of women in this world that I do not look like. There are probably also millions of men in this world that I have more in common with than with some women.
What I’m trying to say is; I hope we reach the point of equity soon, or of focusing on everyone as individuals, not trying to divide everyone in groups labeled by gender, and generalizing those groups. Until we do, I’ll try to play the game. Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Rachel. We wish you all the best with your filmmaker career! What's next for you? Well, thank you very much for your questions, and moreover for your interest. Currently I am making a second film, something I, after completing Do Not Forget, said I “most likely wouldn’t do”. Oh, the curveballs life can throw at us! We, this time I am surrounded by a great team, have just finished shooting the picture beginning of July and now I have slowly started editing and thinking about the audio. To get back to your question about audio; it plays a big role in this film as well. In short, the film will be about constructions. Construction of homes, construction of memories and that linked to the construction of the domestic in Classical Hollywood and the Hollywood System in general, and the malleability of all of this. So, the film is highly constructed itself. The images are highly stylized, and the audio will in its entirety be created afterwards, hopefully creating that audial world I was talking about. So, I’m currently writing a script for the audio, which makes me laugh at myself, because it seems like a rather silly thing to do. Especially for someone who cannot put sounds into word. The title we currently use to refer to the film is Fake It Till You Make It, which probably says it all. The plan is to have the film finished by mid-October, and then we’ll go from there.
Hello Kathi and welcome to this special edition of Women Cinemakers: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background? Please tell us about your trajectory as a video maker: what did inspire you to express yourself in this medium? As long as I can remember I was always painting and writing. When I started studying and got more serious about making art I quickly noticed that both of these mediums had certain boundaries. Even when I tried to push it to the very limit I was unable overcome these lines. There were certain things that I could not to express by purely painting or writing. I was not able articulate myself fully. Before I even managed to figure out what kept me from doing so I started filming. I felt this strong urge to capture a moving image. The possibility to entrap the smallest motion for ever seemed so tempting, it was impossible to resist. meets An interview by Francis Quettier and Dora Tennant Kathi Schulz Filming was a new way of communicating for me. I immediately knew that it was giving my work a profoundness which I was not able to reach beforehand. It also helped me to see and understand what I was interested in and what my work was all about. Sometimes I feel the same way about filming, there is a restriction to this medium for me, too. So I switch back to painting. Mostly both is happening simultaneously. I tend to choose the medium intuitively depending on what I want to express or communicate, even though a lot of times I am not able to exactly define it when I start. Moreover I don’t consider it as necessary. I do not see my paintings and my films separately from each other as one strongly influences the other. Seemingly this correlation is really important for my work. For this special edition of Women Cinemakers we have selected Sequence One, an interesting video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your inquiry into the impossibility to express
your inner self is the way you provided its results with with autonomous aesthetics. When walking us through the genesis of this stimulating project would you tell us something about your process and set up? In particular, how did you develope the initial idea? The basis for all my movies is a text. Sometimes I have to interrupt what I am doing and write everything down that comes to my mind. Mostly it happens when I find myself in a very particular state of mind. Afterwards when I feel settled again, I start working with it. At this point it is purely about language, filming is not relevant yet. Everything is very vague. I try to create a flow, change words around and play with their meanings. This time I recorded my voice beforehand because I wanted to create a stronger relationship between the moving image and the spoken word. I filmed Sequence One in my bedroom because I felt that I needed as much intimacy between the camera and myself as possible. Usually I have a rough concept I start off with, this time the idea was to do a close-up of my skin. I was interested in the frail structure of it, which seems almost abstract. Our skin depicts a membrane which stands between our insides, our thoughts and the outside world. It is so impermeable and at the same time thin and fragile like you could just poke through it without any effort and get to the very core. I listened to my own recorded voice and played around with the camera but as soon as I turned it on it became very intuitive and organic. The original idea which was more a sketch than an elaborated concept changed. There was a really strange intimacy in the room and the presence of the interview
interviewcamera became really heavy. It changed from being just an object into being something I could actively work with. So the concept was more or less developed while I was filming. Also I have to mention that it was less romantic than it sounds. Of course I had to do several takes. So I was kneeling naked in front of the camera in my very small room and after the first take I had to put bin bags on the floor because everything was already covered in salvia. Besides (I think it took me three takes) after a while it became really challenging to keep drooling. What was your state of mind when you created Sequence One? Sequence One is different from the rest of my films as it also attempts to describe what urges me to make art. As I already mentioned to be able to write I need to be in a very specific state, which sometimes overcomes me. Strangely when it happens I am not able to pin down the source of it. It just sometimes happens for no apparent reason. It’s a very intense feeling of isolation. Not in the meaning of feeling excluded though. It is the realization of the fact that we are completely by ourselves and the lack of our ability to transfer and communicate this feeling to anyone. This evokes an overwhelming feeling of disconnection. Eventually it turns into a sadness that goes so deep it almost feels shallow. An all embracing emptiness or vacuum and yet everything feels so heavy that it is hard to comprehend. Experiencing the guilt for an act we did not commit and therefore cannot compensate for it.
I am sure everyone experiences this feeling once in a while. Whenever I find myself in this state – my body and mind are just lingering somewhere in space detached from what we assume to be reality - I start writing everything down that comes to my mind. Materializing my thoughts and giving them a space where they can exist visually outside of my mind and body, is a sort of redemption. It is the only way to get back to reality and feel connected to everything and everyone around me. Sequence One is rich with symbolic references: how much importance have symbols in your practice? In particular, why did you choose blue as color? I tend to see my videos more like moving paintings. So I try to work very intuitively like I do when I paint. Obviously it is a bit more complicated because filming requires more planning. In the first take I didn’t use any paint but when I watched it I knew there was something missing. And it was blue. It is no different from painting, like stepping back and looking at the canvas you just feel what you have to do next, which color or shape is missing. Sometimes this process takes a while and sometimes you despair of it. But I learned that I make the best decisions – also speaking generally about life - when I trust my instinct no matter how subtle it is. After adding the blue paint I felt much more comfortable with it. Blue (and pink) are very vulnerable colors. Blue always feels deep and unrestricted to me, in case that makes sense, also sort of repetitive in a way which might have been the reason why I subconsciously picked it. The problem I am talking about the disability to express ourselves by using language is one which constantly haunts me. It is impossible to come to peace with it as I will always feel confined by language. interview
interviewSound plays an important role in Sequence One and the subtle whispers create a consisten unity with the slow movements of the body. According to media theorist Marshall McLuhan there is a 'sense bias' that affects Western societies favoring visual logic, a shift that occurred with the advent of the alphabet as the eye became more essential than ear: how do you see the relationship between sound and moving images? I think there is an inseparable bond between both of them. They play an important role in perceiving our environment. The synergy of sound and moving image is essential for my work. Using only one of them would lead into abstraction. McLuhan classifies into hot and cool media which I think is an interesting concept. Hot media focuses on only one sense, but provides the viewer with a lot of information and details. Whereas cool media focuses on more than one sense but does not give a lot of information away, so the viewer is forced to actively engage, a greater effort has to be made in order to understand or follow the presented content. Cool media is supposed to make the viewer more self-initiative as it is multisensory whereas hot media is said to hypnotize the viewer. Both seem like very appealing qualities to me. By creating a certain rhythm between sound and the moving image and sustaining both of them with equal intensity I am trying to create a moment where you feel physically and actively engaged but also finding yourself in an almost narcotic stage. A rhythm that
might slow your breathing down or even change your heartbeat. Moreover it is basically impossible for the viewer to focus on sound and the moving image at the same time. This very brief moment where the focus shifts from one to another is what I am very interested in. It is like deliberately putting someone in a stage between unconsciousness and consciousness. This very fine line where you are drifting from one stage into another mostly unnoticed. A stage that is caused by the tension between being attentive and then again drifting off into a moment of abstraction. I find this very essential. It is also connected to how we perceive our surroundings and reality. I am interested in this very brief moment we experience when we wake up from a dream. Shifting back from one reality into another, disorientated and not being able to tell the “real “reality apart from your dream. I think of dreams as a very intimate personal reality. Waking up from a dream and a certain sadness or happiness is still lingering around you which is then transferred from your dream into our world demonstrates that dreaming is just a different but also equally existing reality which are not separable from each other. Just as time and space. We daresay that a crucial aspect of Sequence One is the exploration of the nature of the disconnect between the Self and the Other. Paradoxically, it seems that in our ever changing contemporary age everyone appears to be more isolated despite being more connected. How do you consider the issue of the perception of the self in relation to the augmented experience provided by new media? Do interview
you hope that your art can make people more aware of this situation and then collectively try to change it? I honestly think the disconnection between ourselves and fellow human beings has always been an issue. But in our age this has become more obvious. The media especially social networks and instant messaging and with that the constantly increasing flood of pictures we are exposed to has a huge impact on our way of communication. Images are used as a replacement of language, which is not necessary a bad thing. We are connected on a visual level which is not depending on our location. This might make us think that we should feel more connected to each other because it provides us with the possibility to communicate with anyone and anywhere. We tend to forget that language and physical closeness are very important for connecting which each other. Withdrawing yourself from this way of communicating and filling this void with what the media provides us with is very dangerous. It makes us forget that spoken words and feeling the physically presence of someone like experiencing things that we might not be aware of but are extremely important for building an understanding of each other. Things like sensing someones body heat and maybe even being able to experience the vibration of sound waves of the words they form. We constantly consume, media and also material things. We do not notice that by “enriching “ourselves interview
with random stuff we actually dematerialize our lives because we are bypassing the actual material. I am not an opponent of the new media or technology at all. It can be a very useful and inspiring tool. We just have to learn how to deal with it reflectively. Details are extremely important in your works and they emerge when viewer comes closer: this might suggest that your art urges the viewers to a deep introspection, regarding both perceptual reality and our inner selves. Do you aim to address the viewers to psychological experience capable of challenging their perceptual parameters? In particular, does it matter to you that your audience totally understand your work? Or do you rather prefer to leave your work open to personal interpretation? At first I have to say as long as someone feels touched or inspired by my work I am happy and it does not matter if they might find a different interpretation to it. But I keep asking myself the same question as my work depicts such a huge level of intimacy. Sometimes I am in doubt about if I even want to open up that much to the viewer. My style of working forces me to strip naked completely in front of the viewer if he/she embarks on it. So if someone understands my work I am completely revealed. I deliberately put myself in the most vulnerable position I could ever be in which is a very scary and at the same time exciting thought. It is exactly what I am longing for, a seamless understanding of each other that reaches beyond the capability of language, which points out its borders to us with every single word we speak. interview