Women Cinemakers Washed’. However, this ‘sharpening’ does not close the conceptual space, as the question remains whether, after the washing, the presence of ‘The Washed’ reference remains in the viewer’s mind, resulting in a heightened notion of dominance as a reference in the portrait. My ‘nom d’artiste’, Poppet Portraits, is methaphorical, adding emphasis to the art I create and the questions I pose on the way in which I create it. How does an artist create portraits? Am I merely a puppet dancing to others’ reactions to me? I’m not interested in producing allegorial portraits in that I have no intent to use portraits to deliver statements on politics, religion, ecomomics, utopia, distopia or whatever else the human condition is currently processing or has processed. I discuss nothing so significant as the human condition. My only intent is to show myself and others in a metamorphosed abstract:conceptual form and to discuss the art of doing so. My view on art is that it is a mere frivolity, often a mere hilarity! That said, my art is non-didactic and open to interpretation. Should someone wish to interpret and express their own view that my art is allegorical, well, whatever! As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you portray portraits that show the reactions of others to you and then metamorphose this reaction into abstract: how do you consider the relationship between reality and abstraction? Moreover, how does eveeryday life's experience fuel your creative process? I work with real people and with their real reactions. I metamorphose this, or, if you like, my reality, that is, the reality of my view, into art. I define my art as the result of the metamophoses of a person’s reaction via abstraction and conceptuality into an art image and/or art narrative. Given the possibility of losing the reality by turning the person’s reaction into abstract:conceptual form, the references used to portray the portraits often have art historical significance or are common references from everyday life in order to provide the image/prose with definition, with signifiers that any viewer can identify and consider in any way they wish. I have lived a fairly long time as an artist of sorts and so I have a wealth of people’s reactions to portray. I have come to consider
Women Cinemakers the common usage of the three stages of any artist’s life. They are often referenced with regard only to women but I interpret them as applicable to artists in general. That is, the Virgin, the Mother, the Old Hag. In my view, people’s reactions to the artist change according to which of these stages the artist is at. I think being able to portray portraits objectively provides an opportunity to attempt to dislocate the artist from the ‘other’. I think that the point at which an artist can become objective is when the artist has experienced these stages and moved past them. I am now at the stage where I can say I’ve experienced the Old Hag stage and can now portray others’ reactions as objectively as I’m ever likely to do. But, that doesn’t mean I’m over as an artist, rather, I can concentrate on other aspects of making portraits. Another aspect of making portraits from everyday life is deciding how ‘everyday’ to make the portrait look. I think that during the metamophosis into abstract:conceptualism it is my preference to emphasise the abstraction and the conceptualism and take the image away from realism. However, this is not always necessary, such as, when the juxtapositions of the ‘realist’ references of the image are so dominant as to make even the most ostensibly realist image abstract:conceptual. Using these devices, I can open up potential dialogue so the viewer isn’t forced into what I may consider to be a claustrophobic definitive interpretation of a realist looking portrait. Your practice seems to respond to German photographer Andreas Gursky when he stated that . What are you hoping will trigger in the spectatorship? In particular, how important is for you to address the viewer's imagination in order to elaborate ? As I view Andreas Gursky’s art, I respond, on looking at his images, to the impact of the certainty of the static and uncertainty of the movement they create. Whilst I use conceptual static and movement as references in my portraits, that may or may not stimulate the viewer’s imagination, I don’t attach conceptual certainty and uncertainty in order to do so, as Andreas Gurskey appears to do, in my view. I think journalism tops art in terms of addressing viewer’s imaginations. Perhaps I am wrong to distinguish the two by defining journalism as taking on the front and art as taking on, I suppose this is what Andreas Gursky has defined as ‘what’s
A still from
Women Cinemakers behind’, and what I define as abstract:conceptualism, which, in my view is an undefined space. My aim as a portrait artist is to produce something that really is nothing! Something that can be passed by with ease and not thought about at all. That is not so say if some people want to think about it that they shouldn’t. Therefore, whilst it is not important to me that the portraits stimulate viewer’s brain cells like a Frankenstinian electric shock into the realm of my art and their perceived personal associations with it, I accept the possibility that it is not impossible that something along those lines might happen. Featuring well orchestrated camera work, has drawn heavily from to reflect the entaglement between the concept of place and memories. We have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful between environment and the ideas that you explore: how did you select the location and how did it affect the performing and shooting process? The location is my garden. I like to work with what I’ve got in my immediate environment using my things and turning them into references in my portraits. In ‘Wash Out’ I use the stone wall to set the scene. It is a canvas with irregular texture and pattern. It is lit in bright yellow sunlight and is similar in colour to my sunlit hair. On the wall there is a plant which has green finger-like shaped leaves on long stems, trailing over the stones. I show my hands and arms in the film with my long fingers, ‘green fingers’. I use my grey shoes to merge ‘The Washer’ to the stone ground. The sounds of the wind and ‘The Others’ merge too. My coat echoes the clouds in the sky. I use two tools, the paint brush and the garden hose. The blue paint echoes the water. The rectangular glass sheet and the two glass jugs juxtapose in shape. The walking back and forth echoes the painting of the name ’Poppet’. Using this small set area with the relevant environmental conditions meant that filming could be very basically done. I didn’t need to do anything regarding moving the camera. I didn’t need a separate microphone for the sound and I didn’t need any artificial lighting. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "
Women Cinemakers ": as a multidisciplinary artist deeply involved in dance, how do you consider the relation between of the concepts you explore in your artistic research and of your practice? In my view the physical act, whatever form that takes, be it the act of seeing, the act of painting, the act of positioning the body, can be made to be irrelevant, or at least, using abstract:conceptual devices, can be made to appear to be the least dominant reference in a portrait. For me, it is all about the relative dominance of the references used. There is work and there is play. I prefer to minimalise the work and emphasise the play. The work being the use of the body in the physical production and the play being the abstract:conceptualism in the product. Women are finding their voices in art: since Artemisia Gentileschi's times to our contemporary scene it has been a long process and it will be a long process but we have already seen lots of original awareness among women artists. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in the contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something ' ', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on in this field? I think that there is an inclination for women in the arts to come from multidisciplinary artistic backgrounds and to evoke their personal experiences from across the arts in the art they produce. I’d like to see more of this as a narrower focus on methods and production in one particular art form is’nt always so interesting, it lacks this interesting diversity of approach. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving I’m about to film another film portrait and I’m also doing more portraits in paint. At some point I’d like to do some very large scale portraits referencing the notion of the ‘looming presence’. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Hello Valerie and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would invite our readers to visit in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview we would ask you a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and after having An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] earned your BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Camberwell College of Art, London, you nurtured your education with an MA in Photography, that you received from the prestigious Central Saint Martins, in London: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an interdisciplinary artist? And how does you cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Yes, I was very fortunate to have had wonderful experiences at college. I was always interested in Valerie Driscoll Women Cinemakers meets 'Smile' is a durational performance in which the performer’s head floats on a black background, alternating between smiling and frowning. The length of the video is determined by the performer's ability to sustain these mechanical, emotional transitions. Often contemplating sex, death and the banal, Driscoll works with repetition, provocation and the exemplification of process. Rethinking the body as machine and reflecting Hochchild's notion of 'emotional work', in this piece Driscoll inverts cybernetic philosophy, juxtaposing biological fatigue with mechanical malfunction.
Women Cinemakers photography but was determined not to study editorial or documentary photography, I wanted to study art. At both Camberwell and St. Martins, I met fantastic people and my tutors particularly, greatly influenced the development of my practice. In an art context, the sky is the limit and I was actively encouraged to broaden my practice and study other disciplines. I studied sculpture, photography and film. In particular, I found contemporary philosophy, which became my new love. On the first day of my two-year MA Photography course at St. Martins, the course leader Dr. Daniel Rubinstein said, “If you don’t want to touch a camera for two years, then so be it.” This was music to my ears, it was very freeing. It is difficult to say, or at least to pin down how my cultural substratum directs the trajectory of my artistic research? I would say, of course, that it does and deeply but exactly how, I’m not sure. Everything we do, see, experience and read influences the research, and ultimately the practice. Sometimes the idea forms the basis of the research, sometimes the idea is obliterated by the research and/or the making. Usually the track the work takes is somewhere in between. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Smile, an extremely interesting durational performance that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers our attention of your exploration of the relationship between biological fatigue and mechanical malfunction, is the way it provides the viewers with a multilayered visual experience: when walking our readers through the genesis of Smile, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? ‘Smile’ is a culmination of explorations into the endurance capabilities of the human body and our ‘desire’ to be machines. I was thinking about mobile phone culture and how our bodies interact with them. Through micro-movements of the fingers, hands, arms, eyes, ears, hearts and brains move over these information machines offering feedback, which is then reciprocated. This cybernetic feedback loop is something that interests me a great deal. We behave as though we want to absorb them into our beings, lick them, smell them, swallow them, become them. I examined the history of information machines and looked specifically at the idea of ‘technological determinism’, which posits that technology determines human and sociological progress. This didn’t sit easy with me and I looked at the antithesis and loved the idea that they are useless without us human beings instructing them and interacting with them; thus far, that is! Looking too at the body as a machine or as Deleuze and Guattari illustrate, many machines within a machine, and how that machine functions; for example, how it needs energy, fuel, lubrication, direction, interview
maintenance. I wanted to play with the idea that the body, like a machine, will malfunction or glitch. These are some of the ideas I was exploring as I carried out my research. There would of course also be a personal element in the work and a socio/political one; for me there are many things at play here. Smile communicates a sense of freedom and at the same time reflects a conscious shift regarding performative gestures: how would you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of a performance and the need of spontaneity? What importance does improvisation play within your practice? The length of the performance was determined by the performer’s ability to sustain these repeated, relentless movements. Moving from smile to not exactly frown, but more like non-smile, the performer methodically switches emotions. For this work, I was determined that the performer’s body would drive the outcome. With minimal direction, e.g. try to keep the timing of the movements consistent and try to smile, as in Hochild’s research of airline stewardesses who were first told to smile and were then told to ‘really smile’. It can sometimes be difficult to detach yourself as director and allow the events to unfold. This is not a tactic that I usually rely on in my role as a film maker, which might reflect my developing confidence in this area. But for this work, it felt absolutely right to take a step back. My work often has a performative element and many of my sculptures are interactive. I’ve asked participants to dress up, for example in ‘Flat 48’ where they became part of the installation. In this kind of work you have no choice but to take a step back and let the viewer do as they will. In the work ‘Giving Head’ for example, viewers were free to interact in a hands on way. This was frightening to watch! This work was a light box and on closer inspection you find images of a person’s head from the corresponding perspective, through each lens, i.e. it looks as though the head in inside the sculpture. I might lay a trail and perhaps even proffer a reward but ultimately, I like to hand over the power to the viewer. I like to have an element of lightness and spontaneity in my practice generally but this can be difficult to achieve and often requires a lot of thought and effort! We can recognize a subtle socio political criticism in your insightful inquiry into the notion of Emotional labor elaborated by American sociologist Arlie Hochschild. Not to
Women Cinemakers mention that almost everything, from Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen to Marta Minujín's 'Reading the News', could be considered political, do you think Smile could be considered a political work of art, in a certain sense? In particular, how do you consider the role of humour in your practice? I’m very glad you felt that and yes, I do think this work could be considered political. We humans are political beings and artists are no different. Although I would never set out to make a political work specifically, it would certainly be my hope that as a deeply political person, some of that seeps through. As in the cultural substratum you mentioned before, it underlies everything we do. I was already in the throes of considering this work and often in the early stages of a work particularly, it can be difficult to pin down where a work is coming from or what it’s about. That can sometimes take months or even years to figure out. In the course of my research, I came across Arlie Hochschild’s research in to ‘emotional labour’. In her book, (1983), she asserts that employees, who have to interact with the public and particularly those in the service industry (who are also interestingly, predominantly women), have their emotions commoditized by their employers. That is to say, they are expected and trained to repress their own emotions in order to capitalize on the consumer experience. This rang all the right bells for me and could be seen as a sort of mechanization of human emotions. Interestingly, Hochschild also found that this commodification process can have a very negative impact on the emotional health of the employee, e.g. they can become detached from their own emotions and can also suffer from emotional exhaustion or ‘burnout’. This bodily manifestation of changes in emotion is something I wanted the work to explore. Humour is important in my work, but only in retrospect. I would never set out to make a work that is ‘funny’, it embarrasses me to even say it that way. People often comment on the humour in my work, which always brings a smile to my face as it’s an element of my character that has instinctively, perhaps even unintentionally, seeped through. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under": as an artist particularly interested in the conceptual overlapping of human body and machine, how do you consider the role of artists in our globalised and media driven contemporary age? In particular, does your artistic research respond
Interactive installation 'Flat 48' Bedroom (2012)
Interactive installation 'Falt 48' Kitchen (2012)
Women Cinemakers to a particular cultural moment? Artists have a responsibility to themselves and their own work first. They must say what they need to say and if the work is successful, hopefully, this will come across. Artists are living creatures, acutely aware of the society in which they live, the positives and the negatives. I suppose if I had to be pinned down about whether my work responds to a particular cultural moment, I would have to say ‘post-internet’ but I wouldn’t be altogether happy about that. My practice is concerned with information machines and the body and how they interact or overlap, this is where my current interests lie. There is a vast and diverse history of the body in art. There is also a rich history of machines in art. I like to think that my work not only references other era in art history but also brings that history with it. The body has inspired and moved artists for millennia and I certainly feel those affiliations and connections to other era. I am aware that those interests are borne out of the culture or political system in which I live. Orozco is correct and I have no doubt that if I was living in a different political system, for example, my work could not help but be influenced by that. I make work that is about or related to information machines so obviously, I am tuned in to the global media driven contemporary age. It is something that I get a lot of pleasure from. We are often encouraged by the media to be in awe of technology; to believe it’s doing things behind our backs that we mere mortals could never understand. I don’t buy in to that way of thinking. I see information technology and by association the global contemporary age as tools at my disposal. I milk it, use it and leave it behind when a piece of work requires that. Austrian-British historian E. Gombrich, writing in Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, talked about the importance of providing a space for the viewer to project onto, so that they can participate in the illusion: how much important is for you to trigger the viewer's perceptual parameters in order to address them to elaborate personal associations? Yes, that’s important but I try not to obsess over it. You try to reach a viewer but not to pander to them. Maybe the viewer should be helped to participate in the illusion but maybe they can also participate in their own illusion! When I go to a
Women Cinemakers gallery, I sometimes try to avoid reading about the works but let myself instead just experience or feel them. Sometimes on the way out, I might pick up the supporting material and sometimes I’m disappointed by what I read as I might have enjoyed the work in a different way. You make what you need to make, what you need to say first but the work should also make available the possibility of different readings and experiences. That should be ok. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes: how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the ideas you aim to communicate and the physical act of creating your artworks? This is a great question, as it represents exactly where my concerns are; I am constantly wrestling with this. Manifesting something from an idea using the body brings its challenges but also its rewards. The body is infinitely inspiring as an art object. It is also a tool and a machine, capable of exponential growth. The body is also capable of malfunction and glitch. Overlapping the body with information machines in this way allows the abstract to take shape. I try not to think of them as polarized entities. Instead they merge and support each other, fight and bounce off of each other, much like a relationship. In the sculptural work ‘Icarus’ for example, I looked at a tripod,
Interactive sculptural installation 'Giving Head' (2013)
A still from Sculpture 'Icarus' (2015)
Women Cinemakers the epitome of all that is erect and solid in photography and wanted to imbue it with attributes of the human body, e.g. wobble, bulge and mess. I made this giant tripod out of bubble wrap, wire and tape. ‘Icarus’ is photography that is wobbling, failing and cocky, flying too close to the sun. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in the contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades women are finding their voices in art: how would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? It would be difficult to find an artist who hasn’t struggled with this. The time has come for women artists to say ‘back the fuck up and give me room’! Our global culture and network affords women artists the opportunity to spread out, where possible they should take it. I don’t feel however that women artists have a responsibility to make feminist work or to fight for the feminist cause, unless they want to of course. The ultimate goal is that women artists are free to make the kind of work that they want to make and that the work is taken seriously by the art establishment, that is perhaps the greatest challenge. Women artists have to continue to be brave. Change is happening all around us and we must not lose the momentum. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Valerie. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I am currently developing interactive sculptural work around intransigent, sulky machines. I am also about to embark on a month-long residency in Buenos Aires, which I am really looking forward to. This time will allow me to immerse myself in research and making to realize a new project about the body and online environments. I am looking forward to working with performers and actors in this new environment. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Hello Romy and welcome to : we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and after having attended Interior Architecture at Holon Institute of Technology in Israel, you received your BA in Architectural Design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. How did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Romy Yedidia Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands Coming from the visual arts background as well as architecture and design, I have been continuously investigating how the language of aesthetics is appropriated within the realm of gender-representation. Understanding the polarized dimensions of contemporary gender-politics and its impact in shaping socio-cultural environment, my artistic focus is directed towards examinations of power-plays of intimate and collective gender performativity and social construct around it. To understand what is oppressive, imposed, sanctioned or in some cases regressive within the gestures of the gender roles, one must first investigate intimate domains of identification, question personal convictions and reconcile individual discrepancies. Within my artistic practice, I explore the relations between architectural elements and the female body; questioning archetypes and symbols of material-bodily presence. Topics related to gender and cultural normative, social control and body representation, are intrinsic part of my conceptual artistic exploration. My observations on these matters are translated later into specific techniques and materials that are represented through architectural forms. As a methodology, I use my own body as material. I work with casts and moulds, in particular concrete and similar constructive materials, with an attempt to preserve shapes, states and positions of my body. The process of my work is a crucial part of the concept. Although, I work predominantly with rudimental materials such as concrete and metal, my work has a strong performative aspect, demanding direct personal engagement. I choose to endure bodily rites of passage through my work, in order to transform an abstract pain into a physical one. The pain as a sensation plays a crucial role in my artistic process. The pain that I can control or even enjoy, since I know that one is temporary in contrast to the former. Materialising this pain through the creative and performative process, the rites become a form of a protest and resistance. It is my way of exposing the rigid mould I allowed to be constructed around me, the rules that I bound myself to, and the standards that I was taught to respect. I continuously challenge these paradigms through my art practice, looking at space as a potential dialogue to defy gravity of social constructs.
Romy Yedidia photo by Frédérique Albert-Bordenave
Women Cinemakers Moreover, does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Hello and thank you for inviting me for this interview, I am honoured to be a part of this special edition of Women Cinemakers. At its early stages my practice was focused on architectural theories, material exploration and production of architectural sculptures. I was always attracted to rough, rudimental materials; the many hours I spent in different workshops, helped me explore the properties of various materials and through that (start to) understand the reasons of my fascination with them. At this point, the conceptualisation was the leading part of my projects from beginning to end, while in my former course of studies, functionality naturally played a major role and consequently could often compromise the expression of a concept. After two years, I decided to move to Amsterdam to study in the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. The experience at the Rietveld academy confronted me with the themes I was dealing with unconsciously. I started to use architecture as a tool to manifest my perception on body appropriation within western society and the systems of control around it. The choice to focus on such themes is not random and also originates from my cultural background. Although I live in Amsterdam for only 4 years, the visits to my home town Tel Aviv, shed a light on the clear differences between the two cities regarding the concept of femininity and how one should behave and appear as a woman in society. Having said that, I believe that these pressures are present even when they are less visible. Many women around me in my current place deny being a subject to these forces, but in my eyes, the pressure from the media towards women is so inherent, that it exists even if one is unaware of it. You are an eclectic artist and your versatile practice ranges from performance and film to sculpture and installation, revealing the ability of crossing from a media to another: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://www.romyyedidia.com in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production: would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select a medium in order to explore a particular theme? The initial aspect of choosing the appropriate medium and form for a project depends on the relevance and implications of the conceptual framework. My practice responds and relies on various different factors; cultural settings and conceptual interests which the medium follows. A recurring subject I explore in my work is the social surveillance systems applied onto women in the western society. The exploration of this topic started in 2016 with the artistic research publication ‘The Beauty Machine’. I was and still am curious to understand the evolution of the collective monitoring mechanisms that lead women to monitor themselves and the cause of these effects that are manifested throughout society. English art critic and writer John Berger said “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.” The longing to fit in as well as the constant pressure to please the encircling collective gaze is the reason why it was a natural consequence to include performance with the sculpting process. The way this dialogue within mediums occurs in my practice could be understood through the works ‘Preserve x 186’ and ‘Objectify’. ‘Preserve x 186’ is a performative sculpture series in which I react to the objectification of the female body in public spheres. The expectation of women to be beautiful, preserve their bodies, all awhile making it appear effortless, led me to the idea to be casted in plaster (therefore “preserved”) in front
of my everyday public surrounding. The final result is a series consisting of 186 of my body parts in plaster, clay, silicone and concrete. Dismembered, floating objects with no context (nor gravity), no face, no personality, just as they appear in so many commercials that are plastered on billboards in public urban spaces. After completing the series I extracted its sculpting process into a public live performance called ‘Objectify’. My purpose is to show the pain women undergo to reach that “final result”. The physical pain, but more importantly, the mental burden of meeting an endless, conflicting list of expectations. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting experimental performance video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/176035881. What has at once captured our attention of your insightful inquiry into the thin line between self-acceptance and self-hate is the way it addresses the viewers to such unconventional and multilayered experience.While walking our readers through the genesis of Belly Love, would you tell us how do you usually select the themes that you explore in your artworks? Initially, I would say that I don't choose the themes, but rather they choose me. The topic of gender performativity and pressures projected onto women are inherent subject matters from my childhood. I grew up in a family that stressed the importance of female beauty, that was the prominent value I Women Cinemakers Romy Yedidia, Belly Love (performance for video, 9 minutes), 2016, photos by Arno Nollen
was taught to sustain. Moreover, my choice of reacting to this topic through heavy, bare, architectural forms and materials corresponds with the mental burden of meeting these expectations. As part of my artistic process I explore themes through visual and literal research in combination with material experimentations. The intuitive nature of the latter tells much about unconscious thoughts if one chooses to listen and observe attentively. The process of ‘Belly Love’ started with exploring water as a material. As the many trials to tame the material showed, I realised that it is all about my constant wish to control. At that moment I was in a cross roads, either I could continue to hide behind chemical material properties, or face the public with the truth. I chose to address the real aspect in my life I try to control the most; the preservation of my body to fit in society’s standards. From that point the concept and its translation to a form fell into place: “I’m a circle that is trapped inside a square”. The corset carries literal weight of a concrete block. It is equally painful and arousing to be in such state. How perverse is the wish to belong! Creating Belly Love was a crucial moment in my artistic development. Being vulnerable through that work and communicating my deepest anxiety motivated me to dive in the themes that are now central in my practice. We have deeply appreciated the way features such captivating inquiry into the grammar of body to create a kind of involvement with the viewers that touches not only the emotional sphere, but also and especially the intellectual one. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the issues that you explore and the physical act of creating your artworks? The correspondence between a concept of a work and the physical act of its production is an essential aspect in the creative process. This relation is implemented in my practice through a dialogue between literal research, visual collages, associative writings and material experimentations. The combination of these various research techniques reinforces each other to reach a concrete, yet personal interpretation of the topic in question. The notions I address through my artistic practice are gender performativity, collective/intimate monitoring systems and female body appropriation within a social context. The relation between these conceptions and the creation process is through a reflection on stereotypical expectations that often projected onto women. Sayings I heard throughout my childhood such as “one must suffer to be beautiful” and “be pretty and stay quiet” were initially expressed through the passivity of sculpture. The further I go with my research, the more I combine interactive, performative aspects with the medium of sculpture. This evolution reflects my exhaustion regarding the expectation of women to behave as statues; meet impossible, contradicting standards all awhile make it appear effortless and remain quiet about it. In this way, the medium as a concept plays an intrinsic role in my artistic identity. We have deeply appreciated the way inquiries into the theme of society’s expectationsin our globalized still patriarchal and male-oriented age. Not to mention that these days almost everything, from Maurizio Cattelan's ' ' to Marta Minujín's ' ', could be considered political, do you think that Belly Love could be considered political, in a certain sense? In particular, do you think that your being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value? My work reflects on gender-societal issues that are indeed resulting from political agendas. I react to the image of femininity communicated in contemporary media and how that escalated into forms of violence: sadistic aspects from the male perspective, and masochistic from the female one. The objectification of women in the media leads to the perception of females as statues, an object with merely a decorative function. It is been communicated to us that we would be loved only if we are beautiful, and since suffering equals beauty, the association between pain and acceptance arises. This conditioning results in men linking femininity with submissivity and causes women to abide that expectation in order to be loved. In ‘Belly Love’, my choice to be filmed by a man (cinematographer: Arno Nollen) was in order to experiment with and question to what extent women go to please the male gaze, what starts this cycle and what is women’s role in it. To carry this social corset is my obedience in this system of control. The pursuit of pleasing the dominant male gaze is also a factor which consumerism is based on. As long as the media will nourish women’s self-hate by promoting a celebrated image of femininity that does not really exist, women will be an easy market, one that will always serve as a clientele. In her book ‘The Beauty Myth’ Naomi Wolf wrote: “The advertisers who make women’s mass culture possible depend on making women feel bad enough about their faces and bodies to spend more money on worthless or pain-inducing products than they would if they felt innately beautiful.” Yes, the beautiful women that are plastered on magazine covers do exist (regardless of the censoring photoshopping these images undergo) but behind the beauty of these women sometimes are also hidden much
Women Cinemakers obsession and struggle in order to maintain something that one might think is her only virtue. The media is causing women to believe that our only function is to be decorative objects, and if one does not answer that definition she might not feel adequate for love. Thus starts the cycle of painbeauty-love. An interesting aspect of your practice is the fact that you are concerned in making the viewers aware of your process: we find this decision particularly interesting since it seems to reveal that you do not want to limit yourself to trigger the audience perceptual parameters, but that you aim to address the viewers to evolve from a condition of mere spectatoship. Are you particularly interested in structuring your work in order to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations? In particular, How open would you like your works to be understood? Through performative aspects I address societal systems of control that are being operated on women. By being vulnerable in the eyes of the audience, I address the perception of the female body as a visual commodity in public spheres, as well as the responsibilities of both spectator and participant in this cycle of monitoring. My aim is to make the public contemplate on the relation between pain and spectatorship. What kinds of feelings arise when witnessing someone else’s suffering; empathy or joy? Through this confrontation I aspire to make them actively reflect on their role as spectators and how that contributes to the creation of a painful portrayal of femininity. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under": as an artist particularly interested in the problems of indoctrination within propaganda, how do you consider the role of artists in our unstable and ever changing contemporary age? In particular, does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? In recent years, the social surveillance mechanisms took a severe step further with the absorbance of social media in our lives. The (mass) cultural female heroes nowadays are women like Kim Kardashian, those who teach little girls that they will be loved and embraced only through the means of selfobjectification, provocation and severe body modification. This phenomenon creates a distorted image of femininity that produces a masochistic behaviour amongst the female population. It tempers with our self-perception to the point that we do not experience ourselves through intimate, authentic perspective but through a collective one. We have appreciated the way you explore the expressive potential of a wide variety of materials as concrete, metal and plaster to expose monumentality and permanence concerning the topics: we dare say that this way you subvert the narrative process in order to create a completely new one: German art critic and historian Michael Fried once stated that 'materials do not represent, signify, or allude to anything; they are what they are and nothing more.' What are the the properties that you search for in the materials that you include in your works? In my practice, materiality is a crucial layer in communicating the concept of a work. In other words, it is the complete opposite of how Micheal Fried is referring to materials. Whether one likes it or not, materials carry associations with them. By working with this I give the audience a chance to reflect and connect the dots between the visibility of a work and its texture. Over the years your works have been internationally
Women Cinemakers exhibited in venues such as ISOamsterdam (NL), Josilda da Conceição Gallery (NL), Van Eesteren Museum (NL) and Brakke Grond (NL), so before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in the contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades women are finding their voices in art: how would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? Working within a predominately male artistic context could often result in feelings of segregation and seclusion. Often I experience that because of my gender, there is doubt regarding the quality of the work I can produce physically. As for the subject of women in the contemporary art scene, sexism still exists to a shocking level. According to a joint study held in 2017 by Artnet Analytics and Maastricht University, Joan Mitchell was found as the most expensive artist within the female sector, but came in at number 47 in the list of all best-selling artists. In other words, 46 male artists preceded Mitchell in value. That is outrageous. But sexism within the art market is only a microcosm of misogyny in western society. That is why 2017 was such a great year for women. The resisting, feminist movement #MeToo sparked a wave of consciousness and exhaustion within the female population regarding men’s abuse of power. As one of the brave women that broke their silence, curator Amanda Schmitt, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Artforum magazine’s long time publisher Knight Landesman. This was followed by a legal motion filed by the magazine’s publishers and lawyers to dismiss Schmitt’s lawsuit, referring to the harassment she and other women filed as “irrelevant”. As a response, the initiative We Are Not Surprised was created. Female artists, curators, gallerists, art historians, etc, wrote
A still from Romy Yedidia, Objectify (performance, 100 minutes), ISOamsterdam, Amsterdam, 2018 co-performer Marie Ilse Bourlanges photo by Jessie Yingying Gong
Romy Yedidia, Preserve x 186, 2017, performative sculpture series, photo by Kateryna Snizhko
Women Cinemakers an open letter in which they declared that they will not read, work with, or advertise in Artforum or its affiliates until the magazine will retract its motion from Amanda Schmitt’s lawsuit and remove Landesman completely as so-owner of the magazine. Female perspective is barely researched and acknowledged in scientific, social, and artistic sectors. I believe that through movements and initiatives such as #MeToo and WANS women are encouraged to speak their minds and combat such forms of abuse of power. Witnessing the perseverance of such groups even after they are pressured to remain quiet is inspiring and indeed the proof that women could resist these forces by joining each other and collaborating to achieve a common goal. To quote Roselee Goldberg “Sexism doesn’t stand a chance”. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Romy. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? In the end of September, the installation ‘Preserve x 186’ will be a part of a special event UY Studio is organizing as part of Berlin Art Week. In November, the publication ‘The Beauty Machine’ will be featured in The Printing Plant, an intimate art book fair Looiersgracht 60 is producing for Amsterdam Art Weekend. As for future projects, I’m developing a new performance and sculpture series inspired by the architectural element that is the cornice. In this project I will be questioning the functionality of cornices, or the lack thereof as they are used as purely decorative elements in interior spaces, in relation to the notion of femininity. Thank you dear Women Cinemakers’ team for your time and interest in my work. It was fascinating and stimulating to engage in and be a part of such elaborate and enjoyable interview. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Hello ilvs and welcome to before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://www.ilvsstrauss.com in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of questions regarding your background: are there any experiences that did particularly address you to your artistic journey? In particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your scientific studies direct the trajectory of your artistic research? An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] I get mixed reactions when people find out I have a degree in Chemistry, but mostly it falls somewhere along the lines of ‘Ah, that makes sense.’ Ha. I’m never 100% sure what they mean by that, but I accept as a compliment nonetheless. In science, there’s much emphasis on setting up how you are going to do something, and the method is always the same: start with a purpose/hypothesis, lay out the procedure, the materials used, collect data and observations, formulate a reasonable conclusion. Everything is recorded in a notebook, and results can be graphed, extrapolated and graded for accuracy. It’s all very rational, analytical, clean in a manner of speaking. I can still hear my high school science teacher telling the class, ‘Go from what you know, to what you don’t know.’ You have a known starting point and an unknown endpoint and all the stepping stones laid out to link the two - it’s a veritable warm blanket and cup of tea for my left-brain. I worked as an analytical chemist for a pharmaceutical company for a short bit after college and I was really ilvs strauss Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Vancouver, BC COULD is an introspective solo duet between a dancer and herself. Set in the stark confines of an all white room furnished with a single chair and hanging bare bulb, an unspoken dialog plays out between two selves; a subtle conversation both playful and poignant. ilvs strauss is an analytical chemist turned multi-disciplinary performance artist and theater technician living and making work in Seattle.
Women Cinemakers interview good at it. My left brain was running victory laps around the lab after every report turned in. Meanwhile, my right brain was huddled in the corner repeating, ‘I cannot love the HPLC Spectrometer,’ with the occasional, ‘Can we be done now?’ Needless to say, I didn’t last long at that job. I began my involvement with theater (most of my work is performance based, with the occasional dip into other mediums such as film) in high school as both an actor and theater tech. Theater is great (says Left Brain wearing a black turtleneck) because the entire spectacle is built on the foundation of the script (traditional theater, at least). You have a clear starting point: the script; you know the materials you have to work with: lights, costume, set, sound, etc; you have set rehearsals under the visionary eye of the director; and then you have performances where people come and watch and applause at the end when you take a bow. That structure was/still is very comforting for my inner scientist, and is very much the structure I based my initial artistic process on. Over the years of developing my practice, I’ve come to realize that, while there is a prescribed way of creating theater, the format is really a loose and malleable suggestion open to interpretation, not an etched in stone commandment. The first time I collaborated on a performance piece with a dancer/performance artist (Jody Kuehner), I kept pushing for us to start with a script, We need to start with a script! We need to start with a script! And she came back with a humored smile and a ‘Hmmmmm. . . No.’ Ha. My feathers were ruffled for sure - How else can we build and create if we don’t have a foundation??? Who are you to throw out the blueprints?? Through our rehearsal process (which, looking back, was quite possibly a little bit of a painful process for her) I slowly opened up to the world of fluid, organic art making: talking it out, feeling it out, experimenting with no hard structure, no rigid boundaries, no wrong answers. This nebulous, experimental format took a while for me to warm up to, but once I did, I realized what had been missing for me during my brief but illustrious chemistry career - this other sense that is oft dismissed by science due to its lack of tangibility, lack of definition, lack of discernible physical limits or form: intuition. Art became this subjective, living matter born of a streamof-consciousness procedure driven by this unseen, universal force, devoid of reason and linearity. I now approach art projects using a well balanced blend of Left Brain/Right Brain techniques (at least, that’s my intention). I’ve spent the last decade or
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers so working as a theater technician, learning lighting design, sound design, and the overall limits and possibilities of technical elements. I love figuring out how things work, playing with how the different pieces of the puzzle work with each other under a time based parameter, how tech can be utilized as a storytelling technique, and how it all affects the audience. Much of my solo live performance work relies on detailed sound score: layers of voice over and music and live text, and more recently, using video: projected text and abstract imagery. Piecing it all together is a process that harkens back to my lab days, the detail, the timing, the documentation of process, only with this, the audience reaction takes the place of telling peaks on a graph read out to indicate if the desired outcome has been achieved. You know, it’s funny, thinking back to high school chemistry class and my first years of college (I started in engineering, ended in chemistry), my interest in the periodic table and in breaking things down to their elemental particles and examining how they work together turned out to be less of a scientific interest and more of a philosophical one. Everything, everything, everything is made up of the same basic building blocks: electrons, protons, neutrons. And those can further be broken down into their essence: energy. After parting ways with my lab coat, I delved more into my lifelong interest in the spiritual. I grew up Catholic and over the years have studied Buddhism, Yoga, Shamanism, non secular spirituality and ideologies that view the human body as a complex array of energetic systems. What I’ve found is that, at heart, it’s all the same thing, a study of energy. It’s a topic that continues to hold my fascination, and the different approaches to talking about it, describing it, all it influence my art. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting dance short film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . When walking our readers through the genesis of Could, would you tell us something about your process? In particular, how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of the videos and the need of spontaneity? How much importance does play improvisation in your process? interview
The filming of this video in particular was largely spontaneous. Lindsay Martin (director) and I filmed it in a shipping container that I had been working in for about a month as part of a residency I received through CoCA (Center on Contemporary Art based in the Pacific Northwest). My main focus for that residency was a study of the color teal, both looking at the symbolic and cultural meanings of it, as well as the physiological phenomenon of ‘negative afterimage’, where your eye, after being exposed to a certain image, or saturate color in this instance, continues to react even after the original stimulus has been removed. Using lights with teal gel, I invited people to sit in the container and bathe in the saturate light, allowing their eyes to adjust to the color, then, at a certain interval, I switched to white light. The result was that the room appeared pink for several minutes, until the eyes adjusted back from the teal experience. This idea of adjusting to a new environment, of adapting to extreme stimuli, and of the body continuing to react to the initial stimuli long after it is removed, was interesting fodder as a metaphor for human adaptability and response in varying life situations. All this to say that I spent a good 3 weeks painting the interior of a shipping container solid white. The process was tedious, to say the least (corrugated walls = larger in surface area than they appear), and allowed for lots of time to think and process aloud to myself, to really take in the dimensions and angles of the space, and to map out options for lighting and set. Basically, I had three weeks of deliberate planning and decision making before the shoot happened. When it came time to film, the execution of the dance was a largely improvised score inspired by weeks of thought processing and moving my body in a particular, task oriented way, at times directly mimicking the physical actions of cleaning and painting. Planning and thinking through possible outcomes is a crucial part of my art making process. And interestingly enough, it’s through that methodical approach that spontaneity flourishes: impulses,