ARTiculAction Art Review // Special Issue // 2016 Edition by ARTiculAction Art Review

Anniversary Edition

Special Issue

Untitled (Ex-Formaition), Installation by Adi Dulza 400X105X105 cm, video: 1 min. aluminum, spray, fluorescent lamps, projector.

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SUMMARY

C o n t e m p o r a r y

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Chen C. Bachar

Erik Sigerud

Meltem Arikan

Susanne Wawra

Anna Pinkas

Anna Berry

Israel

France

United Kingdom

Germany

USA

United Kingdom

My paintings represent spatial features that are built up of several layers of various visual languages.With my processes, I examine how the combination of vague power structures, distinct models of explanation, life energies, media images and private commitments may create different perceptions of reality.What interests me is the volatile in the definitions of society and of life, and my work is about exploring what defines an identity, a culture, politics and a society, as well as how these definitions are interacting with each other. The essence of this quest is the encounter in itself as a major creative force in the conceptualization of hypotheses.

Meltem Arikan has always focused on woman’s existence, woman’s place in society, how woman is perceived and how woman perceives herself. Arikan has always been interested in woman's selfdestruction of her own femininity as a result of the perpetual oppression she has to face. In each of her novels she tries to break these preconceptions, relate directly to the reader and disturb them. She plays with the usual, accepted meanings of words and de-constructs them; thus subverting the routine thought patterns of the reader, using an agitative language based on real facts. She creates a form where she appeals to the five senses of the reader.

"Save the last dance for

I use technology to analyze and collect mundane details of our urban, media-driven lives.

Anna creates sitespecific installation pieces, often with paper, as well as working with photography.

I believe that nature around us, that was my playground when I was a little child, fills us with creativity, wisdom and passion of the universe.

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me" is an intimate piece of interchanging mouths of a man and a woman that speak the chorus of a Drifters' song. The film evokes a relationship between male and female speaker as the mouth words of love to each other. This series of videos looks at placing short song lyrics into a real life context. The chorusses of popular songs are spoken and the focus is on the mouth of the

The meticulous alteration and resequencing of these elements is at the center of my process. The tension between analog and digital at play in my work is a reflection of our daily experience of being torn between our screenbased, data-filled reality and our tangible one.

My work often involves a painstaking series of viewer to read the translations – from reenacted song lyrics screen to paper, from closely or differently. The video to hand drawn animation, or from 3D use of the mouth makes it close and personal, at times object to flat surface – that blur the line very intimate and adds a between absurdity and personalised interpretation whimsy. speaker. It invites the

of the spoken word.

Anna’s work tends to be concerned with the way our cognition shapes reality, and hence how the nature of reality differs from what we perceive. The nature of her disability means she quite literally inhabits a parallel world to the rest of humanity; hence she likes to draw attention to how our minds impose categories upon a chaos and create the world as we know it.

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Anna Berry

lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Adi Dulza lives and works in Tel Aviv and Berlin

Esther Domb Edelman 46 lives and works in Rehovot, Israel

Susanne Wawra

lives and works in Dublin, Ireland

Anna Pinkas

lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Patricia Abramovich Patricia Abramovich

Adi Dulza

Esther Domb Edelman

Israel

Aart for me is the freedom to create with no boundaries, to express the diversity of color from which the human soul is composed. Spreading color across a canvas is a means of meditation; I connect with my inner self. My hands just move with rhythm using the painter knife to mix the colors directly on the blank canvas. I choose the colors and let my soul conduct me, handling the knife as a brush . The colors merge on the canvas on their own. I then use a spatula to paint over them in oil. When working in water color "aquarelle", I allow the colors to merge with the water in whatever direction they choose.

In my work, I seek to investigate the evolution of ideas and knowledge and how they recreate and engineer the reality to which we are subjected. I examine the information (“memes”) that is transmitted and preserved through humans and various systems of technology. I pursue methods to examine virtual systems, within which we are situated. Through positioning based on digital media, I seek to both cast doubt on our patterns of thinking that are entrenched through media culture and expose how each medium functions as a “message” under the auspices of “the truth” and efficiency.

The Sculpture is suggesting a different and sensitive point of view on memory, longing and our consumed life. The Sculptures is a monument for the space we leave after we die. The Sculpture is like an archeology evidence of a touching moment in the past. The consumed paper covers the objects like the process of creating fossils: the real moment has gone leaving a lot of fingerprints of movement and Emotion which are engraved in the paper Sculptures.

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lives and works in Netanya, Israel

Meltem Arikan

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lives and works in Cardiff, United Kingdom

Erik Sigerud

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lives and works in Paris, France

Chen C. Bachar

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lives and works in Rishon le-Zion, Tel Aviv, Israell On the cover Untitled, Installation by Adi Dulza

Special thanks to Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar, Joshua White, Nicolas Vionnet, Genevieve Favre Petroff, Sandra Hunter, MyLoan Dinh, John Moran, Marya Vyrra, Gemma Pepper, Michael Nelson, Hannah Hiaseen, Scarlett Bowman, Yelena York Tonoyan, Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar and Robyn Ellenbogen.

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Dalia Smayze

A nna Berry Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

An artist's statement

nna creates site-specific installation pieces, often with paper, as well as working with photography. She has exhibited at galleries such as The Royal West of England Academy and The Strand Gallery, London. In 2013, she was shortlisted for ‘Open Cube’ at White Cube in London, and has recently completed residencies in Brush Creek, Wyoming and Fljotstunga, Iceland. Anna’s work tends to be concerned with the way our cognition shapes reality, and hence how the nature of reality differs from what we perceive. The nature of her disability means she quite literally inhabits a parallel world to the rest of humanity; hence she likes to draw attention to how our

minds impose categories upon a chaos and create the world as we know it. As well as undermining the fabric of reality, she is also often toying with arbitrary cultural notions like gender, race, nationality, and religion. She works in many media, but recently often with paper interventions. They are fragile and ephemeral, and rely on photographic recording. The practice of making them verges on the performative because of the often-absurd difficulty of placing the paper in the environment given the conditions, and because of the very repetitive nature of the making. Anna has a background in commercial photography. She exists in Milton Keynes."

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Anna Berry An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Highly stimulating and moving in its communicative concreteness, Spooky Action at Proximity is a compelling work by artist Anna Berry. While walking the viewers through an unconventional exploration of how the nature of reality differs from what we perceive, she accomplishes the difficult task of challenging the viewers' perceptual parameters, walking them through the liminal area in which the ambivalence between presence and identity solves itself into an unexpected point of convergence. What mostly impressed of Berry's work is the way her investigation about the phenomena of human perception provokes reflection about contemporary age unveiling unsuspected but ubiquitous connections between art producing and the audience. We are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Anna and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, we would like to pose you a question about your background. Are there any experiences that have influenced the way you currently conceive and produce your works? In particular, how does your background in commercial photography and your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello – and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk a little about my work!

I would say that the main thing about my background that affects my work is my disabilities. I don’t tend to give away my ‘labels’, but being intrinsically different, particularly in terms of my brain, very much defines who I am, which in turn defines the work I produce. Having a brain that works substantially differently to others’ is a little like being of another species – my experience of the world is totally different to that of other humans. I don’t mean culturally – in terms of people treating me differently – I mean very literally in terms of my perceptual apprehension of the world around me. For me, on a personal level, that’s lead to great psychological difficulties – such as bizarre neuroses that I don’t fully exist or that I’m not a real person. Anyway – the very personal experience of a disability of my type leads me to profound questions in my day-to-day life about the nature of things, and the nature of our knowledge about things, the extent to which our brain is creating our reality, and even more substantially the nature of existence itself. These questions that are very abstract for some are actually very tangible for me simply because of my experience of being myself. With regards to my background in photography, I conceived of a seminal piece in my artistic evolution, which led on to my subsequent work with paper and segue into fine art. The photography collective I was part of at the time was asked to respond to a Gerard Byrne exhibition (about the intersection of myth and reality) with

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respect to a piece of written text, called ‘True Story’. It being a photography exhibition everybody duly produced photos. I decided to use scanning as my photographic medium – scanning the text again and again until it was unreadable, and then constructing a paper sculpture out of the printed version. My point was really that any category or definition, such as ‘photography’ has fuzzy boundaries, and by pushing that envelope we show that the bedrock of our reality is really shifting and intangible. At once my paper sculpture was in fact a photo, whilst at the same time the text had been transformed from information-bearing semiotics to corporeal object, without any material transformation occurring. I don’t think my background in photography really shapes my attitude to art. I’ve always been someone who is primarily interested in ideas, so I’ve always been drawn to deeply conceptual things. Most of the time that makes me a fish out of water around commercial photographers. Like them, I’m a real technician when it comes to my photography, but I find most of what’s produced in that area pretty dull and conceptually bankrupt. I would say that my projects tend to combine high-concept with some sort of experiential element. I’m quite traditional in some ways in what I produce, in that I like it to have some sort of aesthetic or experiential impact. I don’t at all feel that way about others’ art that I appreciate – but it does tend to be the way I want to produce things – something cerebral manifested as something visceral. I do have quite a few cross-over projects – or fine-art projects that involve the use of my photography, for example, my long-running series ‘Masks’. In processing digital pictures, an image is often built up using a number of layers in software such as Photoshop. The masks are a Photoshop layer which ordinarily would not be the top layer; In my pieces, this different (but equally integral) component of the final image is allowed to be the surface. The extraction and

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foregrounding of a different aspect of an object fundamentally changes the nature of the object. They are ‘found’ unaltered by-products reclaimed from my fine-art portraits, and commercial work. From each ‘classical’ portrait I take, I pluck one or several masks, almost like hidden dark sides, in parallel to the portraits. I have literally thousands of them. Actually the main way I think my background in photography helps is purely in practical terms – I can really do justice to my work when recording it. Given that a lot of my work is highly ephemeral intervention, that’s important! I will even confess that there are times when I think the actual installation hasn’t worked brilliantly, and I’ve been able to make it look a lot better in my photographs than it did in reality, through skilled lighting! You are a versatile artist and your approach encapsulates several techniques and media, revealing a stimulating search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.annaberry.co.uk in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

Well I guess my first response to that is that I’m definitely not what you would call a process-led artist. All power to that kind of artist, but I would just get really bored doing the same thing day-in day-out! Plus it wouldn’t really serve the goals I’m trying to achieve. I would say I’m more concept-led – I find an idea that interests me, or perhaps something political that angers me, and then I’m just looking for the process that will best render the point I want to explore. It’s definitely making a rod for my own back in that almost with every new project I have to learn an

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entirely different skillset! When I’m right in the middle of maximum stress in producing a project, I sometimes wish I were a painter instead! Having said that, I do come back again and again to very repetitive making with paper. I think there’s an element of self-comforting in that – from throwing myself out of my comfortzone into cognitive discomfort, and then back to finding refuge in a simple and repetitive process. It’s unfortunate, but I think the fact that I explore so many diverse ideas, in so many diverse media, makes me quite inaccessible to the art world. I’m not what they expect. They can’t quite categorise me so they don’t know what to do with me! (Almost none of what I do has any involvement at all with galleries or curators; I kind of exist somehow outside of, and in parallel to, The Art World.) There’s also this implicit criticism that my varied output reflects some sort of butterfly-mind inability to focus; that my work is fragmented and hence must lack depth. I find that really hurtful, to be honest, because not only is it a mistaken interpretation, but it’s a direct criticism of the nature of my mind, of my disabilities, and of what I am as a person. I am non-neurotypical, and that seems to mean that both myself and my art occupy a space that others are not quite comfortable with, and find difficult to understand. I am the very definition of an outsider! It makes me really angry that the advice I keep receiving from the art world is to make myself less than I am, in order that others can understand and categorise me. I won’t do it. For this special issue of ARTiculAction we have selected Spooky Action at Proximity, a stimulating project about the phenomenon of Quantum Entaglement, that our readers have already stared to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of this work is the way your inquiry into how our cognition

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influences the reality we perceive creates an harmonic mix between a vivid, performative approach to the evokative reminders conveyed by the materials you combine together: when walking our readers through the genesis of Spooky Action at Proximity, would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

Well, in this case, I became suddenly very interested in quantum physics as soon as I learned something about it, because it became clear that its central principles resonated strongly with my artistic concerns. The idea that we force something to be determinate by the very act of measuring it dovetails very beautifully with the concern in my art practise (and my life) that we create reality by the act of apprehending it. I guess that parallel is a kind of metaphor. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about the evocative nature of the materials I use – for that aspect of things I rely very much on my gut instinct and don’t poke too deeply into it with enquiry. I think perhaps that may be why the pieces land up being so evocative and experiential – because corporeally they come from a very primitive and instinctive place. For example, a lot of people find there to be organic resonances – resonances of ‘body’ – in my work, which wasn’t expressly intentional on my part. However, upon reflection I realize that it is, in some way, subconsciously intentional. Again it comes down to me always trying to marry a very cerebral concept, with a very experiential rendering. The compelling ambience that pervades Spooky Action at Proximity invites the viewers to a multilayered experience and the way you explore the ambivalent relation between the intrinsically ephemeral nature of paper and the sense of permanence accomplishes the difficult task of constructing a concrete aesthetic from experience, working on both subconscious and conscious level. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is absolutely

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indispensable as part of the creative process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

That’s a really interesting question. I would answer definitely no! In fact I tend to believe that the only thing a piece of art can ever tell you for certain is something about the artist, which is quite a radical viewpoint, I suspect. Even if you were creating a piece about something outwith your experience and are imagining everything, in fact all you are bringing to bear is everything that you are, and everything your experience in life has made you. That’s where your beliefs and thoughts and desires come from. You could not disconnect what you create from your experience, unless you had the ability to become another person. I really like, as you phrase it in the question, the ephemeral nature of my installations, becoming a ‘concrete’ experience – I hadn’t quite thought of it like that before. Spooky Action at Proximity provides the viewers with an intense, immersive experience: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience and how much importance has improvisation in your process?

I find most public art to be really boring, to be honest. There’s lots of monolithic stones or bronze blokes on horses. I don’t know that I have a strong opinion on how public art should relate to the public exactly. I’m probably the wrong artist to ask, in that I consider myself to be a very selfish artist. I make only what I please, and only for myself. There’s definitely an uncomfortable ethical dimension to that, in that if I’m placing these works, uncommissioned, into public space, then surely I have some sort of duty to please the public. I’m afraid I spend little or no time considering that. I’m just absorbed in doing what I do, and then

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when a piece is in place I’m vaguely surprised and gratified if people like it, but not destroyed if they don’t. Having said that a lot of my public pieces are somewhat socially engaged and often involve the public in the process. For example, you mention Breathing Room in the next question – that was actually a very political project involving the reclamation of commercial public space for the community, and it was pivotal to the concept that the public took part both in donating their paper and helping build the finished piece. I’m a big fan of the statue in Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow that always has a traffic cone on its head. I love how the people have claimed this rather austere and bland piece of public art, interacted with it, and made it their own. I love how the public of Glasgow have arrived at a collective consciousness in this endeavor. I definitely think once you’ve released a piece into the world you can no longer control what it is – it will be as many different things as consciousnesses that encounter it, and trying to counter that is futile. So – yes – I sort of expect my art to evolve and be organic once it is placed in the environment. Also, inevitably at the point of installation things don’t go how you thought you they would in your head beforehand. Some improvisation is inevitable. Personally, because of the nature of my disabilities, I find that really difficult. In fact I find the whole process of experimentation, which is integral to every part of my process (because I’m always using a different skillset!), deeply uncomfortable. It seems, for me, that being deeply psychologically uncomfortable is sort of integral to my art production! Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which

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we would like to spend some words is entitled Breathing Room: what has mostly impressed of this work is the way it forces the viewers' perceptual parameters in order to question the ambiguous dichotomy between the elusive notions of presence and absence. How did you come up with the main idea?

I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, exactly. The idea was in response to the theme of Fringe MK (who commissioned me) of ownership of public space. I decided to reclaim some of the shopping centre commercial space for the community using donated paper from civic organizations, individuals, charities etc. This then created an organic ‘living and breathing’ colonization in the space. For me, of course, the piece also shared the deeper questions explored by my other similar works – that by changing the function of the paper, whilst not its structure, from information- bearing thing to physical building block, you fundamentally change it’s nature. The public response way exceeded anything I had anticipated, which was so lovely. The experience was immersive and other-worldly, yet calming and meditative. Many thought it was like being inside a lung. I was so happy to have created a living organic space. The ambience created by Breathing Room reminds us of the concept of non lieu elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé: conveying both metaphoric and descriptive research, this work constructs of a concrete aesthetic that works on both subconscious and conscious level. As the late Franz West did in his installations, this work shows unconventional features in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

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I hadn’t come across the notion of ‘Non Lieu’ before, but having just read up on it, it’s definitely an interesting idea in relation to my work. Particularly my street interventions, I think, which are usually in underpasses. I find those places of intersections of paths, and ways that go ‘under’ other ways, particularly fascinating, although I’m not sure why. It is something to do with collective carving of direction; but yes, the idea of borrowing the space, whilst rejecting ownership of it, is very intriguing. In terms of the role of the artist, I definitely think part of our job description is to provoke! I think if you have made the viewer reflect upon something or experience something, then that is a good thing. But at the same time I don’t think that should define whether or not you’re succeeding as an artist. I’m not sure what the criterion for that would be, but it can’t be defined by what is reflected back at the art work from the viewer. Your approach accomplishes an effective investigation about how our minds impose categories upon a chaos. 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 do you conceive the narrative and especially the visual unity for your works?

I suppose my interpretation of that would be that we live in a post-modern era, so it is naïve or disingenuous to just ignore what that means. However, I’m not sure I agree that that is the artist’s problem. I conceive of this quite diagrammatically in my head, like a bunch of concentric circles. In the centre there is no questioning. In the next one out, there is self-awareness of media, and

narrative. And you can keep taking one step further back, into a further circle of ‘meta’ and narrative, and keep being cleverer and cleverer! And it’s probably important that people do that – but those people are theorists and critical thinkers. I think the artist retains the right to inhabit whatever level circle they want, and other’s can impose what narratives and meta-narratives they want. Having said that, obviously my work is hyperaware of these plural perspectives – it’s precisely the thing that I’m often exploring! Your works often induce the viewers to abandon themselves to free associations: when artists leaves their works open to interpretation, it is like giving the viewer permission to see anything in your works without anyone ever being wrong. Has that ever proven to be a problem?

As I mentioned above, I think that is an inevitability – once created you can pretend you still own the work and can dictate it’s meaning, but it’s not true! It can mean what it means to you, and it will mean what it means to others, whether you like it or not. Even if it was so unambiguous that everybody in the world roughly agreed on what the work was about (just as a thought experiment), it will still be experienced differently in every consciousness. However, I definitely experience and sympathise with the frustration of this as an artist. I often watch review shows and get quite angry with critics. They often criticise a work for not being something that it was never trying to be in the first place. I think being an active viewer, and certainly being critic, should involve an act of good faith – and that is first trying to meet the work on it’s own terms. Whilst accepting the caveats above (that inevitably meaning is shifting, organic, and different for everyone) you also

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owe it to the work to first try to appreciate what it’s trying to be. Decide if it succeeds or fails on those terms, first. So often there’s no effort to do that at all, and reviewers seem to proliferate spurious criticisms about what the piece should have been about, which is mostly irrelevant – that is really more about how they, as critics, see the world, rather than about the piece they’re criticising. I think there’s a real contradiction with respect to this in my work and my psychology, in that I’m clearly, vocationally, creating work because I’m desperate to be understood and to share my different world with normal, neurotypical people. But at the same time I completely appreciate the utter futility of that, and end up just producing for myself. Over these years you works have been internationally exhibited in several occasions, including your recent solo Spooky Action at Proximity. One of the hallmarks of your works is the capability to establish direct relation with the audience, deleting any conventional barrier between the idea you explore and who receipt and cosequently elaborate them. So before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

I think I’ve probably mostly answered this above – no, selfishly, I neither consider my audience nor tailor my language to them. Although, perversely, I agree that, despite that, I am mostly working directly with an audience, because most of what I do bypasses gallerists and curators, who might be regarded as middle-men or interpretors. However, that’s not a deliberate strategy on my part; it’s a combination of doing what I feel I need to in terms of process, which is

often environmental intervention, and the fact that I am an outsider artist with no network or connections in the art world, so I think curators and gallerists are largely unaware of my existence! Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Anna: would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I’ve been doing a lot of political work lately, for example I recently showed my feminist piece ‘Berger’ in London, and my piece ‘The Political Is Personal’ is currently being shown in Conway Hall. I have two photo-based projects that I’m slowly forwarding, one about inequality called ‘Capitalism Shrugged’ and one about natural hair. I’d also like to do more physics projects, and have in mind a sound piece about entropy amongst other things. I have several more guerrilla paper interventions in the offing over the next couple of months – both quite political about my local area. The main way I’d like to expand my practise is digitally, and would like to collaborate with a coder. I want to make installations that interact even more directly with the environment by being able to respond to it. I also want to be able to expand the definition of ‘environment’ to sometimes be a digital environment. Whatever direction my work takes, inevitably there will always be strands relating to outsiderness, disability, and the nature of reality in my work.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

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A di Dulza Lives and works in Tel Aviv and Berlin

n my work, I seek to investigate the evolution of ideas and knowledge and how they recreate and engineer the reality to which we are subjected. I examine the information (“memes”) that is transmitted and preserved through humans and various systems of technology. I pursue methods to examine virtual systems, within which we are situated (physically, organically, politically, economically, etc.). Through positioning based on digital media, I seek to both cast doubt on our patterns of thinking that are entrenched through media culture and expose how each medium functions as a “message” under the auspices of “the truth” and efficiency. I attempt to produce a dialectical fusion that operates as a system of symbols that have literal and conceptual meaning. Some of the symbols are manifested overtly through advertisements and the news while others are covert and therefore nearly impossible to expose and trace. I examine how, subconscious messages that stimulate our most basic social tendencies are transmitted through light and sound. There are messages that are not situated in these terms, for example, like experience that is intended exclusively for our body and which is elicited through effects like pace, duration, time, flickering, continuity, structure, sound, volume, emotions, movement, etc. These experiences can deconstruct consciousness, thereby creating a situation that facilitates the differentiation and examination of the system of symbols just as we were taught to identify.

I regard each position as a formative event, as a system of meanings and occurrences that are reduced to one possibility. Through the combination of light and sound as raw material, the positioning transpires in time and works from the possibility of being submerged within them. I seek to create an experience of observing reality as ”nature”; not as inanimate nature but as a living object that evolves almost naturally. This involves decelerating time, in some instances to create a meditative experience and at others to create heightened expectation. This is meant to create observation anchored in time and place, in the sense of the political space; observation that is intended to react to, think about, and criticize mechanisms of control, supervision, and concealment. I strive to create a meta-structure: positioning that creates systems of exchange between information and ideas and objects, each of which contains introspective reasoning of a different order. The goal is through the use of sound, light and form, to produce a conversion between: the language of simple machine code to high-level programming, language of humans to language of animals, language of the past to language of the future, language of commerce to universal language of our nature. This entails objects based on the architecture of hardware software (consciousness – body) that we are built from and which constitutes the boundary that cannot be crossed. Adi Dulza

"Cube" (In-Formation), installation, 300X240X700 cm, Video and sound: 00:29 sec. Projection and sound of a fluorescent cube lighting on a rear screen sewn to a black felt (300X240 cm). photo: Liron Sandman

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Adi Dulza An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Tel Aviv based multidisciplinary artist Adi Dulza's work explores a variety of issues that affects our unstable contemporary age, centering his investigation on the evolution of ideas and knowledge: his multidisciplinary installations urge the viewers to rethink about notions of language, perception and the conflictual relationship between conceptual and literal meanings. In his recent work entitled I Have a Dream he brings to a new level of significance the elusive relationship between the language of machine code and the language of humans, to unveil the consequences of our technology driven era. One of the most convincing aspect of Dulza's approach is the way it accomplishes an insightful inquiry into the evolution of ideas and how they engineer the reality to which we are subjected: we are really pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production. Hello Adi and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after your studies in the fields of Interdisciplinary Fine Arts and Architecture, you nurtured your education with a M.F.A that you received from the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Tel Aviv: how do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your

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(Ex-Formation) Photo: Ziv Cohen

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cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to artmaking and to the aesthetic problem in general?

This questions throws me back a few years. Already as a child, I used to look at buildings and bridges and think: these structures are as concrete as the cement they are made of, they imitate forms and structures from nature, but at the same time, they also mirror a concept, something that is only in our minds; I hoped that if I’ll be perceptive enough, I’ll be able to penetrate into the realm where abstract ideas are transformed into representations—like a bridge, like a building. This led me to think deeply about the mother of abstractions, mathematics, and the infinity and it was both thrilling and frustrating to try illustrate my thoughts on math in colors and objects. When I decided it’s time for me to start university, architecture was my first choice. The thought of visualizing a four-dimensional living space and learning the practice of how to turn these complex visions it into being excited me. However, something has happened to me during my years in school and I understood that what initially kindled my imagination and desire to study architecture was to learn the tools, both the practical and the intellectual tools of the profession. Upon graduation, it became clear to me that I’m not primarily interested in making living spaces any longer. Instead, I wanted to turn my ideas and thoughts into something else and further explore what my mind can create. The fine art school of Beit Berl welcomed me with open arms. I toyed with textile, sculpturing and painting. I had good fun playing with different materials and I learned a great deal of techniques, but I kept thinking about how to give my vision of abstract similarities and mathematics shape and form and of how to take things that are sometimes

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Untitled (In-Formation), Installation view, Florescent lamps and Calcareous rock photo: Liron Sandman

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Florescent cube (In-Formation), detail photo: Liron Sandman

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too difficult to comprehend, and make a physical exemplification that tells a story, that conveys through color, shape, structure, time, and symbols a greater truth about the nature of people and concepts. I was, however, still struggling to unshackle from the strict education I received in architecture school. I felt like they are chaining me to an ideal that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mine, blocking me from realizing my own voice. I ran away as far as I could. However, I also noticed that my experience gives me an upper hand in compression to other art students who were untrained in the methods I previously studied, methods that required high level of accuracy and an eye for detail. It took me years to find my voice again. It was an interesting process. I had a lot to play with: my own aesthetic inclination and spirit, the discipline I learned in architecture school and the new skills I learned in art school. To this very day, these are forces kicking in my stomach like a threesome in a pregnant womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s belly. Your approach coherently encapsulates several disciplines and reveals an incessant search of an organic investigation about psycho-physiological importance of contemplation in nature, and the results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of harmony and unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.adidulza.com/ in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process and set up, we would like to ask you how did you developed your style and how do you conceive your works.

In the five years interval between art school and graduate school, I locked myself

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in a studio. I needed to know what burns inside of me. What happens if I follow my instincts and experiments, this time, with outsiders’ guidance and reflection only per my request, only when I was certain I want or need it. I wanted to explore, experience and dig deeper. I flirted with different materials, techniques, scales, bodies of work—you name it. I learned my limits and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an idea that is impossible to implement, it’s only a matter of finding the road that goes there. It was there that something just synced in my mind about the relationship between my intellectual, scientific, philosophic and political inclination and my artwork. In many ways, my work is the process of marrying thoughts with doing. An idea, a theory, or a concept would occupy my mind for days or weeks at a time; it’s sometimes dark, other times it fills me with joy and curiosity. Then I try to think of how I can convey the turmoil and thought process in my head and make it an experience, then I ask myself if I can recreate this experience for another person by using materials, projections, sound and objects. The birth of a new project is almost always a mix of fears and excitements, because I’m trying to give a face and name to something that exists only as a concept, and since this task isn’t simple, I never know if this time it will work, or worse, that time will run out before my project is ripe. Sometimes I’m afraid: perhaps my initial vision was too ambitious or unspecific enough. But then again, when I’m able to invoke in someone a novel idea, a sense of knowledge he never had thought of or encountered, all through an installation— that’s the high level of communication I’m striving for. There is something metaphysical about taking something that is absent from the physical reality such as a subjectiveindividual experience and being able to invoked it anew in the viewers mind, making

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Imagine" (In-Formation), 116x190x250 cm, video: 02:18 min. Silkscreen print on 15 carton boxes, Wood construction, IPad screen. photo: Liron Sandman

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I Have a Dream, detail. Photo: Youval Hai

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him think about something that was never before a solid idea their thoughts in that way. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected I Have a Dream, an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of this work is the way it brings to a new level of significance the elusive relationship between the language of machine code and the language of humans, urging us to rethink and sometimes even subvert the way we relate ourselves to such ubiquitous concepts: while walking our readers through the genesis of this project, would you shed light on the way your main source of inspirations?

On the very basic level, this work is the fruit of few topics I looked into. I thought of the terms: synchronic and diachronic, that form the parallel terms – thinking and being, but are more part of structural way of thinking—let me unpack this. I tried to figure out what’s behind being able to fathom meaning. Is it an exclusively human talent? Is it more primal than that? How does the ability to conceive changes in different realms? All of these questions lead to the fatal one: does “meaning” mean, or could mean, anything to a computer? The diachronic allows us to conceive time passing with our own memory; it compares what happened in the past against the “now”; the synchronic is the order that includes the flow of everything. It is the complete group of all the things that exist and organized inside of it, that is moving without explainable causal order. It exist beyond explanation. Between the different orders there is a link, a meeting that allows direct or indirect effect on each other. This way of thinking, that exists only in the

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diachronic order, interprets that synchronic and gives it meaning. In the project I tried to ask myself: What is the nature of the moment of change and transition from synchronic order to the diachronic? I wanted to create an architectural form that is a skeleton of changes and dispositions of meanings, like in the architecture of hardware to software. Initially I wanted to build and installation that fits human scale, which a person can move through: from one side you move inside of it and pass between erected panels, where each panel represents a moment in time and the experience is of a diachronic progress. On the other hand, I wanted to look between the panels, and reveal the synchronic that is exemplified in the dissolvent of the complete image, cut by the panels. This is a point of view that doesn’t allow an understanding of conclusion or image of what is reflected through the panels. - That the computer is at, that doesn’t have autonomous diachronic point of view. After I built a model, I decided that the model itself is what I want to work with, and from that it evolved to its scale in relation to the space. In fact, I reversed the roles: now we look at the object from outside, not from within. I fused into this object the meaning of translation between machine language and that of men, of nature, using light as particles through a tube or a cable, a binary language of black and white lines, the sound of machine beat from the black wall, and screening Dr. King’s speech with it’s human aspiration for justice and equality. In this project I translated this speech—a speech that is a momentous and everlasting instant in history—into a

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I Have a Dream, 260X92X60 cm, Animation: 05:18 min. Iron construction, kraft chipboard sheets, aluminum poles, 2 projectors, 2 speakers. Photo: Youval Hai

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Night Lamp (Ex-Formaition), readymade, fluorescent lamp, Silkscreen print on Plexiglas. Photo: Ziv Cohen

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binary-aesthetic language. You can see the way that the machine takes this speech, takes this moment, take the significance of the words and translates it to abstract. What is left of the primal meaning of it? What is lost? The way that information goes through the machine and translates it into light, to a binary code, and at the end it becomes just one flickering dot. The machine is basically doing something very democratic; because for the machine it does not matter which information passes through it, nor the significance of it. It keeps all the information without any difference of caste, gender or category. At the end it is all dissolves into numbers, or letters, or lighting, or whatever the machine does to read it, or makes for us to read it. There is something in the way that this machine operates which allowing us to see the democratic way about, by the way that everybody and very thing is equal, but there is also something sad about that operation because the machine does not have the ability to make any decisions, just out of anything. So in the same time it is democratic - it is meaningless in that political sense. So maybe it is telling us something about the efficiency of democracy. It is meaningless when it is actually working, as in the case of the machine, otherwise it is humanized â&#x20AC;&#x201C; paradoxically as it may sound. I Have a Dream also questions impact of cutting edge techniques in our unstable and ever changing contemporary age. The impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the concept of Art: in a certain sense, we are forced to rethink about the intimate aspect of the materiality of an artwork itself, since just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. We are sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art

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and technology and we will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

Our attraction to machines, like to many other things, has many layers: on the one hand we are fascinated by machines and the way they operate, move and configure information, and on the other hand we are also intimidated, even fear of the machines. I ask myself, whether there will be a time where machines wouldn’t need us anymore, that our thoughts could live independently as electrical manuscripts of our minds hosted on a hard drive. One of the things that we see, is that technology minimized the physicality of machines—a computer the size of a cellphone today can storage so much more information than a room-size computing machine in the 1980’s. The most interesting paradox behind this question, as I see it is the fear we have of the machines. In this work I apply a mechanism that can tell us about the fear of the machine. Of course: art deals with contemporary time in its contemporary ways. But today we are concerned that the machines would not need us anymore, even find us stepping on their toes; when our knowledge abundantly stored outside the human minds in technological archives, far from reach, to the point that humans memes would become technological memes – technology apparatus would be liberated from being subject to humans. I try to re-create the machine as something new that allows people to realize and understand both how technology functions, and the vision of technology. “I have a dream" does this through the speech of Luther king that embodied by passing

"untitled" (Ex-Formaition), 120X70X60 cm, aluminum a Photo: Ziv Cohen

through the structure of the machine which giving it a form. I use technology in a way that allows me to investigate technology itself, in the deepest and radical meaning of it. Despite what I said before, I don’t think we should fear technology but we need to be wise about it, think not only about performance, or how to elevate its market price in a

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nd wood poles, plexiglass, spray, clay and led light.

capital driven economy, but also think hard about what it does to us, what it can offer us, what we should want from it. The next step with this train of thoughts should be, how to use technology as a society, how to use technology in favor of society. I think that in this process or realization, art should take an important role, because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s often ahead of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time in expressing

things that would only be intellectually understood later on. In other words, the symbiotic relationship between art and technology interests me sometimes as a thinker, other times as an artists, and oftentimes as both. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv Cohen

entitled Sea Tranquillity, which is a part of the In-Formation project. Drawing from highly symbolic and evokative elements from contemporary imagery, this installation provokes direct relations in the viewers and accomplishes the difficult task of going beyond the surface of communication. We find this aspect particularly interesting since it is probabily the only way to accomplish the

vital restoration you pursued in this work, concerning both the individuals and thier place in our ever changing societies: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, what kind of reactions did you expect to provoke in the viewers?

The interesting part about this work is that I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to use the actual T.V.; the

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TV: consumerist messages turned into imagery. Both literarily, figuratively and metaphorically this installation shows that the shell reflects the shallowness of it’ substance. I’m showing you that watching the empty boxes is no different than watching the T.V. In some ways, it requires the viewer even to think harder than if he was looking at a screen. By using an overwhelming amount of boxes in different sizes but similar shapes, I wanted to recreate the urban sphere in which we are flooded with information, more than just one TV, or flicking screens from every corner that bombards us with conceptions of music, art, sexuality and taste.

packing box was enough. I didn’t need to put the viewer inform of a flicking screen, seeing the commercials on the cardboard box alone expresses the falsity of its content. That is because the image is still the image – the image of a TV on the TV box reflects the same thing as the screen of the actual

Sea of tranquility also investigates about the theme of free choice and the role of the media in the process of consciousness change: while lots of artists from the contemporary scene, as Ai WeiWei or more recently Jennifer Linton, use to convey open socio-political criticism in their works, you seem more interested to hint the direction, inviting the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead to subvert a variety of usual, almost stereotyped cultural categories. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in a certain sense or did you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

Artists play various roles in society. Sometime we are clowns, other times judges. In Sea of Tranquility, and in other works, I ask the viewers to think, and let their minds work while their eyes scrutinize the work. I want the viewer to be a judge of

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Ex-Formaition, installation view. Photo: Ziv Cohen

the work, and as a result become a judge of his own thinking and of the world. In my work Imagine I further developed this idea. On one side of my installation was a sculpture of a telescopic construction made of a cardboard of a fictitious company, “Imagine – Good Life.” The boxes are cut so they become progressively smaller, moving toward a vanishing point where there is a moving image: an excerpt from a video documentation of the phone call between U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Apollo 11 astronauts who landed on the moon. "Sea of tranquility" deals with these issues in the macro sense, but I would like to amplify

these questions specifically through the work "Imagine.” "Imagine" is about a very specific moment, which is quite abstract, since we still don’t really know if the landing on the moon actually happened or was it staged. Some believe Stanly Kubrick directed the clip on the top of a secret U.S military zone named Erea 51, which its surface is very similar to the moon. In the work "imagine", the way that the information is transmitted to the viewer is by a documentation of the telephone conversation between President Nixon and the astronauts on the moon. It is delivered through a tunnel shape of cut T.V boxes, which in its tag end focuses only a fragment of a big screen on Nixon leaps moving, in between the image of Alex eyes

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), 170X130X140 cm, video: 1 min. aluminum poles, spray, metal wire, projection. Photo: Ziv Cohen

on the cardboard box, the iconic image of Stanly Kubrick's Clock Work Orange protagonist. This event is all about politics, about how information comes to us, about the secrets of the democratic systems, of the use of technology and the mass media; we are not really free because there is always already something bigger that makes these decisions for us, which makes us think that we are free to choose. And even if you go to our most individual micro decisions you would see that even these decisions are not ours, and freedom is been already taken from us. Also our most ideological thoughts are not actually ours; they are already 'ready-made' in the history of thoughts. So it deals about how information creates our imaginary

consciousness which conclusions reality by utilizing of media. I have tried defining this motif in which mass production constitute ideology; and to point to the occurrence moment in which myth is being created. Art should make us see things anew, make us notice that what we might first think is simple or common is in fact hiding secretes undersurface. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s making the dull relatable and obvious truths be rethought of. It could also be the ultimate expression of the mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s freedom, of exploration that is both internal and has an external outcome. Your successful attempt to produce a dialectical fusion that operates as a system of symbols creates a compelling non linear

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Night Lamp (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv Cohen

narrative that, walking the thin line between conceptual and literal meanings, establishes direct relations with the viewers. 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 do you conceive the narrative for your works?

Narrative is our way to relate to the world and to each other. We perpetually engineer and imagine our individual relation and reasoning of reality. Speculative realist philosopher Quentin Meillassoux' said in his

first book After Finitude that "the absence of reason in everything as a limit that thought encounters in its search for the ultimate reason. We must understand that this absence of reason is, and can only be the ultimate property of the entity". Our thoughts are constantly searching for ways to explain the ultimate reason of being, of why we are here. There is always an unclosed gap of nothingness, a vacuum of sorts, of void. I try to relate this absences in the work. I use narratives as broken fragments to state conflicts by their attachment with other parts of the complete structure, of the whole

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv Cohen

mechanism of objects and space, and the subjective experiences of the viewer. Its a nonlinear narrative that implies bigger causes that confronts bigger paradoxes. Maybe, that there is no ultimate reasoning at all - and reshapes the struggle that one can never consolidate to a linguistic comprehension, free from any paradox. In other words, maybe there isn’t a reason to things. Maybe it’s all coincidental. The universe is a coincident, we are here by a random turn of events and in 20 billion years we will have no memory or remain, there will be other universes perhaps. That’s what I’m trying to convey in my works. The feeling that there is no guiding hand, that everything

is just a paradox upon a paradox that are impossible to unravel and then form in a human language. Perhaps human language cannot avoid the paradoxes of the universe. At the same time, I am moving forward by continuing to think about abstract concepts and of ways to give them tangible manifestations. I try to fuse within my works narratives that operate by representation and symbolisms, which are both organized by language. The latter constitutes our public consciousness, our ideology, formulating a faithful and obedient subject, a believer or even a skeptic subject; the former is capturing and activating us to function as components of a machine - by time based

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv2Cohen 8

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experiences such as sound and light, which directed exclusively at our body, I try to establish an underline stream which catches sub-consciousness perceptions, which orienting and organizing us in the rhythm of traffic. My current project, named "Ex-formation" now runs at Gabirol gallery in Tel-Aviv: it has been supported by the Tel Aviv Municipality with the Yehoshua Rabinowitz Foundation for Arts, Tel Aviv. In this installation I investigated the term ex-formation, coined by Danish science writer Tor NĂ¸rretranders in his book "The User Illusion" published in 1998, which means explicitly discarded information. He said that, "Effective communication depends on a shared body of knowledge between the persons communicating. In using words, sounds, and gestures, the speaker has deliberately thrown away a huge body of information, though it remains implied. This shared context is called exformation." - Wikipedia. I tried to combine this concept with the "System Approach" theory, through primary abstract structures and elements that differ in scale, shape and function. All of those structures imply latent knowledge that is out of reach. Through formations of light that are obscure and disturbing or by use of color as coatings, or even by braking structures to their immanent fragments, projecting forms of light as a self-reflation image - back to the structure itself. Eventually, this is the most non-narrative project which I have done in a long time. Although it also seems to me that it has a non-confronted narrative or even a more concealed narrative which is hidden between the structures. Your works could be considered multisensorial biographies that unveil the aesthetic consequences of a combination between tactile, concrete reality and the abstract concept of symbol, exploring

unexpected aspects of the functionality of language on the aesthetic level: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

In one way, it is crucial for art to be free and independent of boundaries, including liberation from our conception of art itself. This is a precondition for innovativeness. At the same time, art needs to communicate with the world, concretely, in order to be able to say something at all, even if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abstract. For this reason I think that the role of art in our day and age is to allow people to see what they cannot see alone or merely through the public sphere. The function of art is to make the invisible visible, and expose what is hidden behind the aesthetic and reveal what is laying beneath the surface; to unveil the hidden meanings that exist everywhere. Maybe through that we can try to better understand out surroundings and the power-dynamics surrounding us, which is trying to manipulate our way of thinking. Over these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including your recent solo In-Formation at the Al HaTzuk Gallery curated by Maya Kashevitz. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create direct involvement with the viewers, who 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?

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Prior to language, I think of space. Entering the exhibition spaces changes my plans. I could decide on doing one thing, then when I study the space I realize I need to something else entirely.

Rembrandt painting can react by pointing out to the detailed smoothness of the style. My works demand the viewer to look, inquire, and then return his glance to himself, and ask, what does this does to me.

In any particular site I strive to create as a meta-structure: considering the movements in the space as a system of exchange between objects, ideas and living things. I regard this wholeness as a formative event, which formulates all my precursory assumptions back to the start by positing the viewer as an unstudied part of it.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Adi. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects?

The most crucial moment for me comes after installing the exhibition, when I get see how my work meets the audience. By doing my works I constantly think about this meeting: Would they be able to understand? What will they understand? What will they get from the exhibition? Sometimes my work is a manifestation of a thing that I even cannot give a name, but needs to expressed. Will they see it as I do? Perhaps they can see something that I cannot. Learning from my viewers is an integral part of my artmaking. My thoughts on concepts and aesthetics exist in my mind in forms and images ten times more richly than in my exhibitions; but only through those exhibition, I can reveal them to others. In some ways, being an artist is creating a unique language with your audience—they need to get it. And when I listen to their reaction, I can fine-tune my instruments of communication. Since the reactions are so diverse, I also learn a great deal on human nature. I give them a taste of myself, a little glance of what goes inside my head, and from the way it affects them, I know what they like, what impresses them, what touches them, what bothered or encouraged them. Sometimes the conceptual nature of some of my workings invokes conceptual reactions. A person who looks at a

First off, thanks for this interview. I don’t do it much, but I like stringing words into sentences. It’s a good way to reflect on my own work and think about my art deeply. How do you see your work evolving?

It’s hard to know. My work and I are part of the same, and my thoughts rapidly take me to different places. What I do know is that I’m not done dealing with some of the questions I invoked in my previous works, especially on how conceptual meanings can wear different shapes and forms. I’m currently working on an exciting project with two close friends, an artist and a curator that inspire me. We look to do something that will challenge various ways of artmaking, exhibition spaces and their functionality—keep an eye for it, it’ll be cool. On a more earthly note, I’m soon leaving Tel Aviv. I’m still deliberating the options for relocation, but my aim is to find a home where I can challenge myself, both intellectually and from the perspective of artmaking, to get to know new artistic communities, and continue to live in the void of nothingness.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Untitled (Ex-Formaition), 400X105X105 cm, video: 1 min. uluminum, spray, fluorescent lamps, projector. Photo: Ziv Cohen

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Dalia Smayze

E sther Domb Edelman Lives and works in Rehovot, Israel

An artist's statement

he Sculpture is suggesting a different and sensitive point of view on memory, longing and our consumed life. The Sculptures is a monument for the space we leave after we die.

The Sculpture is like an archeology evidence of a touching moment in the past. The consumed paper covers the objects like the process of creating fossils: the real moment has gone leaving a lot of fingerprints of movement and Emotion which are engraved in the paper Sculptures. The hollow object gives us elusion of the reality but the objects are empty, holding nothing inside. They are shroud for a memory, longing to the past. Stone Sculptures glorifies the

human being while my paper Sculptures gives the power of softness and sensitivity of us and our memory as well . I believe that my unique technique creates delicate sculptures that touch people soul and have great impact on them. The consumed wrapper paper wraps the Immortal soul. The hand is the essence of the human soul. Many Sculptures includes hands As a memory of my parents Longing to my parents stroking hands since I was born, until my last stroke of their hand when they died.

Esther Domb Edelman

Embroidering your dreams mom, detail 95x70x25

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Esther Domb Edelman An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Artist Esther Domb Edelman explores the multifaceted nature of the notions of memory and consumption, drawing the viewers into a multilayered experience. Her approach encapsulates both traditional heritage and unconventional sensitiveness and allows her to produce pieces marked out with a strong reference to contemporary. One of the most impressive aspects of Domb Edelman 's work is the way it provides the apparent staticity of an image with an autonomous life and aesthetics: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Esther and welcome to ARTiculAction: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about rich and multifaceted background. You have a solid training and you studied at the Midrasha Art College in Ramat Hasharo, moroever you hold a BSC of Mathematics & Computer science and you worked for many years of Software development for Hi-Tech. How do these experiences influence te way you conceive and produce your

works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

All my life I find myself between the logical analytical thinking and the emotional thinking. Like a scientist I research the art subject, but in creating the artwork the emotional part is very dominant. Many years ago I traveled to East Asia and I was deeply touched and influenced by the very narrow format of the artworks, special composition and calligraphy drawing. But while the Chinese and Japanese art was dictated by very strict rules, I feel creative freedom and write the landscape by my temperament and emotions. The same way, In my sculptures I wrinkle the paper in a very emotional and expressive way and not in a stiff geometric way like Origami. I use many symbols, universal, local and from my Jewish heritage. The figurative language you convey in your paintings and sculpturesis the result of a constant evolution of your searching for new means to express the ideas you explore in your works: your inquiry into the

Esther Domb Edelman photo by Vardit Alon Korpel

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expressive potential of embrodery combines together figurative as subtle abstract feature into a coherent balance. We we would suggest to our readers to visit http://aa-twins.wix.com/esther-dombedelman in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile,

would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, would you tell our readers something about the evolution of your style?

The Sculptures are made of paper (white, brown wrapper paper or

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newspaper). The paper is wrinkled, crumpled and folded as one full sheet of paper (without cutting the paper and without using glue) until creating hollow objects. The series of paper wrinkling were created with the experience to change my drawings

from 2D to 3D. I began to wrinkle the paintings and added sticking out lines. When I saw that even though I didn't use glue, they were long kept, I tried more complex shapes like trees, hands and improve technique. The consumed paper covers the objects like the process of creating fossils: the real moment has gone leaving a lot of fingerprints of movement and emotion which are engraved in the paper sculptures. I really like to use brown wrapping paper because before I touch the paper, it comes with its own narrative history, you can see the journey of life on the paper. Through paper features of expendable materials, consumed ,scarcity, airiness and the fragility I create an exciting scene of memory. The paper also provide conceptual and aesthetic

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side and it was left exposed between the painting and the wrinkly shapes. The paper is equally important as the color I painted on it. On paper were written 2000 years of human culture and my personal story is written on it as well. The artworks are figurative, but they are created from abstract expressive lines and wrinkles, leaving a lot of fingerprints of the creation process. I don't paint the landscape but I write it. I would like the observed scene not to be seen as a realistic picture taken by a camera but as a reflection of my soul & temperament. Iron and stone statues glorify the human being, as opposed to consumable paper that express vulnerability and humanity of human being, memory and longing. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Embroidering your dreams mom an extremely interesting works 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 work is its dynamic and autonomous aesthetics: in particular, it seems to communicate a successful attempt to transform tension to harmony, and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the usual genesis of Embroidering your dreams mom, would you shed light on your usual process and your sources of inspiration?

In "Embroidering your dream mom" I use a needle, thread, Notifications of death in newspaper, wrinkled brown

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wrapper paper, creating hollow objects. My mother embroidered dreams to my good future. I am embroidering her Notifications of death in the newspaper in order to save and decorate my memories of her from the past and trying to repair the pain and sorrow. No name is written on the notifications of death, just "your mother", all mothers, Mothers who have dedicated their lives to raising their children, that like embroidering was a gender workshop with a low value. motherhood also related to family traditions of embroidery which passed from mother to daughter. The Sculptures is a monument not just for my mother's death but for the death of tradition motherhood in the modern life. unfortunately, the monument is made of newspaper that will not be relevant tomorrow. The warm relationship with my mother was disconnected with her death at an early age, lead me to deal with motherhood, family relationship and friendship, longing and elusive memory. Sources of inspiration: history, family history, Jewish and universal symbols. Many Sculptures include hands as the essence of the human soul. The hands are as a memory of my parents Longing to my parents stroking hands from the moment I was born, until my last stroke of their hand when they died. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, sculpture is like an

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archeology evidence of a touching moment in the past: we have been particularly imprssed with the way your hybrid approach accomplishes the difficult task of transferring into a liberated expressive realm the imagery you refer to. When developing a multilayered language, you capture non-sharpness and bring to a new level of significance the elusive still ubiquitous relationship between experience and memory. What is the role of memory in your process?

Memory is an important part of Jewish culture, many holidays and events are related to memory and the obligation not to forget (not to forget the Holocaust, the soldiers that sacrificed their lives etc). "If you don't remember your past you will not have future" said Napoleon Bonaparte. Art wants to preserve a realistic moment from the past, but memory plays tricks on and influenced by time, turbulent stormy emotions etc. In my work there is contrast between the desire to keep the experience and the memory retention in recycled paper, ephemera, temporary memory. The Sculptures are suggesting a different and sensitive point of view on memory, longing and our consumed life. The Sculptures are monuments for the space we leave after we die. In " childhood " the paper keeps the memory from my childhood : little footsteps jumping near father's big footsteps. Nostalgic utopian memory just throw flip-flops sandals. Wrapping paper usually keeps inside something

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Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

very important or a surprise. The hollow object in the scene gives us an illusion of the reality but the objects are empty, holding nothing inside. They are shroud for a memory, longing to the past. The dialogue established by shapes is a crucial part of your style: in particular, the effective combination between both delicate and thoughtful nuances of tones sums up the mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture?

I paint in oil, pastel oil and graphite pencil on brown wrapper paper. I use the traditional oil paint but versatile contemporary: from thick and opaque paint stains until spots full of steeped color with turpentine with transparency of Aquarelle. I start without any sketch and unexpectedly upon finishing I'm drawing with pencil to emphasize the sense of handwriting. The colors I use are pure colors from the tube, almost without mixing. I mix them on the painting itself with the colors near and below them. Usually the color of the paper itself remain between the splash of color. This creates a state of equilibrium between the paper and the colors , balance between art and the substrate on which it operates. I paint on the entire page (not sections), so that at any moment the whole painting receives the same level of treatment. because of that, it is critical, finding the moment before the texture loses its freshness, to stop painting. Most of my paintings are in a very long and narrow format. This format creates a crowded confluence of colors, light and air, in special compositions. " Longing " Longing to a touching moment in the past. Two people sharing the moment and the same plate. symbolize relationship. The memory concentrated on the hand. The hand represents the soul and spirit of people like the hands of

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actors that engraved in Hollywood Blvd. Strictly speaking, it would be not possible for language to replace the visual and tactile, but your works, as the interesting Mother tea party seems to go beyond such dichotomy to trigger the viewers' primordial parameters concerning our relation with physicality: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

I believe that art has many layers and one of them is to raise an idea, narrative or feeling. Another layer is the base of Art: line, splash of color, composition and esthetics. Additional layer focuses on the artist's feelings in the creative process. Transfer of experience, longing and insights of human existence. Another layer uses symbols and metaphors. I set up a monument to motherhood in " Embroidering your dream mom " , and to family in "Mother's tea party". Understanding the conceptual language causes a feeling of intellectual elation. Saving the clues of the creating process, allows the audience to follow and to be part of the creative process itself (without drawing a single line, just observing). so, while tracking after my splash of colors, the viewer moves from visual evidence to the sense of touch.

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In "Caressing"- Hands of two persons a moment before touching and caressing. A sensitive memory in the past we miss. Can we put our hand inside to revive the feeling? In "Mother's tea party" The art installation is like a 3D camera saving the memory of a touching moment when the family was sitting arrowed the table in my mother's tea party. The table represents home and family. Even

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though the table is full of dishes and hands, you can feel the emptiness. The hands and the objects are gone, no colors, no food, because it is just a memory. The installation expresses contrasting situations: life and death, reality and illusion, past and present. The theme of landscape is very recurrent in your imagery and it never plays the role of a mere

background: you rather seem to address to viewers to extract a narrative behind the images you select, to establish direct relations with the spectatorship: this is a quite recurrent aspect of your works and you encapsulate evokative elements from Traditional imagery, as you did in Hanukkah lamp. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays

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art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". How would you describe the function of the evokative places you select from urban landscapes?

In the landscapes painting almost always you can find urban views. There is an equilibrium between urban landscape and the nature around. There is also a struggle: does man

conquer nature? Or that nature is the dominant one, gives us the uniqueness of the place. Can we maintain the balance or are we in front of a disaster? In " Hanukkah lamp" Lighting the lamp was a miracle. A tradition that is maintained on biodegradable paper changes over the generations. Many of the works express contrast between the desire to preserve and the confused memory. The packing

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paper gives a touch of something old ,as an archaeological discovery of the menorah from the temple (an incident that never happened) like Imagined memory. The equilibrium concerning the composition of your works gives them a permanence to the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the notion of sight. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely

indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

The creative process stems from the personality of the artist. I'm very emotional and sentimental and hence my creation cannot be detached from direct experience. The exterior of the artwork reveals the inner essence. When creating I'm going through internal psychological and emotional

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process, while I think about the aspects of esthetics, composition, expression. I found ,enigmatically, that as much as I express my inner truth and reach a very personal experience, more audience identify themselves with my work. In my works I really want that my personal experience will pass transformation and connect to a personal experience of the Viewer. Over these years you have exhibited your works in several occasions, including your recent participation at the Pulp and Fiction International paper art Biennale: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who 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 decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

I'm captivated by the way the audience, respond to my art. I'm thrilled to follow their journey of discovering the various layers of the artwork. Firstly, viewers are smiling as when they realize that the crumpled paper creates objects and scene, they seem surprised to reveal more and more objects. They smile again when they find an empty wrapper paper not the objects themselves. Then comes

the moment of thought, experience, narrative, that connects them to their personal memory, longing and emotional experience. As the observer follow the lines of the wrinkled paper, which are the fingerprints of the process, he gets a sense of involvement as if he was painting or creating it himself. The hollow hand in the tea party are like gloves, inviting ,conceptually, to get in and be part of the family in the tea party that took place years ago. At the end of the creative process I think about the way the audience sees the scene and I try to lead them Through all layers of understanding my artwork. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Esther. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

These days I try to expand my art language. I try different options to integrate paper textures and colors, especially combined with folded newspaper pages. I'm excited to find interesting connections of works that combine different mediums: painting, drawing and my wrinkled objects. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Photos by Maayan Blech

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S usanne Wawra Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland

An artist's statement

his series of videos looks at placing short song lyrics into a real life context. The chorusses of popular songs are spoken and the focus is on the mouth of the speaker. It invites the viewer to read the reenacted song lyrics closely or differently. The use of the mouth makes it close and personal, at times very intimate and adds a personalised interpretation of the spoken word.

The lyrics of German artist Marius Müller Westernhagen's “Sexy" are raunchy and suggestive. This is heightened by using mouths of mature women, challenging the perceptions of sexuality and age.

“Out Of My Head” shows two male mouths reciting the chorus to Kylie Minogue’s song. It changes the popular song directed at a “boy” by a woman to a same sex context. "Save the last dance for me" is an intimate piece of interchanging mouths of a man and a woman that speak the chorus of a Drifters' song. The film evokes a relationship between male and female speaker as the mouth words of love to each other.

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Susanne Wawra An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator articulaction@post.com

Dublin based German artist Susanne Wawra accomplishes the difficult task of triggering the viewers' perceptual parameter to invite them to question the relationship between their cultural substratum and the limbic sphere. In her recent series of video that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she explores the interpretation of the spoken word drawing us into a stimulating journey on the thin lines that divide perceptual processes from experience. Acting as as tourist in her own life, Wawra creates works that reject any conventional classification and condenses into consistent memories the elusive notion of experience: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Susanne, and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction. We would start this interview posing you some questions about your background: you have a solid formal training and after having earned a M.A. Magistra Artium English and Communication & Media, you nurtured your education in Painting at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. How have these experiences influenced your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your German roots inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

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Life as an artist was not a straightforward route for me. Even though drawing was my best friend as a kid and favourite activity as a teen, I had no confidence to pursue art school. I took a decade-long detour trying to play the career game: a Masters with Distinction, international internships and an ambitious advertising role in a big player company. One element that was always in the back of my mind since my teenage years was wanting to live in an English-speaking country. I always felt so intrigued by the language and had a massive love for the culture of the British isles. So after my degree in Leipzig, Germany, I moved to Dublin, Ireland. Even after nearly 10 years here, my German roots are deeper and more prominent than I expected. Living in a different country and not fully belonging to that place or culture, leads you to the characteristics that make you different. In making art, I often look to or into myself. And being German is a major part of myself. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in rural East Germany, a circumstance that I was just old enough to realise when the wall came down in 1989/90. My childhood is an important aspect in some of my recent work around my home village, my grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house and my immediate family. The art education at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) is really contemporary and open, without subscribing to a national approach or style. Next to artists from all over the world, I was always particularly interested in artists from my country of origin. Examples are Gerhard Richter and his atlas of personal and collected images

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as sources for his work, Neo Rauch’s pseudo-narrative teutonic worlds that surpass time and Hannah Höch’s collages as statements about the Germany of her day. While there might be a content related Germanness in my work, in aesthetic concerns I feel I am detached from it.

You are a versatile artist and your approach encapsulates several techniques, revealing an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our

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readers to visit http://www.susannewawra.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

Marc Chagall used to say â&#x20AC;&#x153;I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.â&#x20AC;? I see myself as an artist, a creative first and foremost, which then diversifies into painter, collagist, designer, filmmaker, photographer and poet. As mentioned before, even though I studied Fine Art Painting, the artistic field at NCAD is kept very free, you can work

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in 2D, 3D, film or performance, with whichever media you want. I love to explore the different avenues and keep myself open and excited about making. A lot of my approaches are related to German-American philosopher Erich Fromm’s quote “We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.” A couple of years ago, I created a series called “Antilife Manics” which is an anagram of "Financial Times" and reflects on the struggle of the individual in contemporary society The characteristic salmon pink newspaper serves both as background and foreground text. The collages and paintings tell stories of anxiety, mental turmoil and suffering and can be understood as a comment on today’s pressures in society. As a whole this body of work represents “Weltschmerz” the realisation that one’s own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness of the world. I tend to approach material from different angles, so last year, I started coming back to the Financial Times and experimented with what Austin Kleon calls Newspaper Blackout. To create blackout poetry, you take a marker to black out words from articles to construct poetry with your chosen words that remain legible. I recorded this play with words in short videos in which I recite the poems. As you can see, my work does not start from nothing, not a blank canvas, but pulls things from the world. My recent series of paintings “Memento”starts on ground that is already full of information, history and visual. Like before with using

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the newspaper as background, I am working on patterned consumer fabrics like curtains or bed linen. I employ a mix of different media, processes and layers to create a collaged composition. These paintings marry printing and painting. My multidisciplinary approach shows when looking at the breadth of my production as a whole but also when considering each individual work. For this special issue of ARTiculAction we have selected your recent series of videos Out Of My Head, Sexy and Save the Last Dance, that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of this body of works is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating an harmonic mix between a figurative, realistic approach to the evocative reminders conveyed by the reminders to popular songs: when walking our readers through the genesis of this series would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

Those three videos are parables of love and desire presented as selected snippets of popular songs songs. The tradition of the love song goes back centuries, soundtracks our lives and will still be relevant in the efficiency of the cyber future. I am with Nick Cave when he says â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point.â&#x20AC;?I like to explore emotion and I am interested in this intimacy that the videos create between the speakers but also extending it to the audience. Depending on how the videos are shown, on a smaller screen in a group show or on a film screen in a film festival or a wall projection in an

exhibition, the close up mouths can have a major impact. The viewer only sees the lips and teeth of the person, reading all information off this zoom frame. But it is incredible how much it can tell about a person from that little information.

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Personally, I find using actors with a little more history in their face really intriguing. Being bombarded with perfect people with perfect young lips and perfect teeth, it is refreshing to see some realness.

The â&#x20AC;&#x2039;Songlines" â&#x20AC;&#x2039;series of videos looks at placing short song lyrics into a real life context. The choruses of popular songs are spoken and the focus is on the mouth of the speaker. It invites the viewer to

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read the reenacted song lyrics closely or differently. The use of the mouth makes it close and personal, at times very intimate and adds a personalised

interpretation of the spoken word. For example, "Save the last dance for me" is an intimate piece of interchanging mouths of a man and a woman that

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videos are metaphorical for the human search for love and affection, someone to lose yourself in. As a poet, I am in love with metaphors and they find their way into my artwork, too. Even into the titles, i.e. two of the works I’ve only recently completed are Käsetreppe (Cheese Stairs) and Wursthimmel (Sausage Sky). They are both reflections of memories, summarizing my experiences and observations in visual form. Furthermore, they present lots of room for interpretation from their visual clues. The forms that are prevalent in Käsetreppe and Wursthimmel are a springboard to meanings that happen in the dialogue between the painting and the viewer. Your inquiry into the intimate sphere and the interpretation of the spoken word reflects an harmonic balance between the external and internal world: we have found particularly stimulating the way your approach goes beyond a merely interpretative aspect of the contexts you refer to: although you draw inspiration from outside reality, your works could be considered as tactile biographies and the fruible set of elements you draw from universal imagery trigger the viewer's primordial parameters: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

speak the chorus of the song by the Drifters. The film evokes a relationship between male and female speaker as the mouth words of love to each other. The

The famous photographer Henri CartierBresson said that “In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames.”The frame in my work is my own experience, as stated before, acting as a tourist in my own life, a historicist of my being in this world. I think art certainly has the

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potential of transporting a message or achieving a desired effect but first and foremost, I am creating for myself. I feel this urgency to create, to show myself I have been as well as to solidify my memories and experiences. My autobiographical piece Mental Asylum that has been shown in several film festivals is a modern take on confession, it opens up a secret, something that is far too often kept to oneself. "Mental Asylum" explores personal identity in a very vulnerable place, a person's mind in the depths of mental illness. It is a recording from my admission into a psychiatric hospital with clinical depression. The piece provides access to the struggle of the self and the very core of identity when everything seems lost. This was initially a very private recording that was not intended to be seen by anyone, while knowing that film by its very nature implies an audience. It taps into the emotional potential of real life and explores showing the real, without any cut or filter. It allows for an intimate analysis of confidential experiences and emotions. Here, video is used as a device extending the boundaries of interior dialogue to include the audience. I do have a keen interest in language, I explore this in poetry and in video works. The spoken word presents a record of thought processes and emotions, it is a translation of the internal into external means. It certainly has its limits and no direct code exists for letting others see, read or hear what you experience. Indeed, I am using language and art objects as a vehicle to communicate a message. Sometimes, this message is pretty straight forward as in the Antilife

Manics series or Mental Asylum, other times it is more open to interpretation. Thinking about the functional aspect of art is not at the forefront for me, primarily its function for me is to express myself, envelop myself and elate myself. On the one hand it sounds like a very selfish enterprise but on the other I think that if there is something real in the piece, it can convey something to the viewer. As you have remarked once, your work does not start from nothing: as the late Franz West did in his installations, your work shows unconventional aesthetics in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

Yes, indeed, my work does not start from nothing: I do not begin at a blank canvas. Instead, my practice initiates from found and everyday materials such as patterned fabric or newspaper. So the surface I am working on is already alive, hence there is no beginning or birth to the picture, instead it is all an additive process. The imagery I am working with are my own and found photographs relating to my memories. These images are combined into a compositional form on the fabric. The work is mostly intuitive and process driven, I approach the canvas without a plan of what comprises the collage and where images are placed.

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The intention is to keep the work open and alive by allowing spontaneity, momentum and chance. Maybe this allows me to go beneath the surface, to show aspects that reveal themselves to me in the process. I am living for those moments in my practice when things happen that surprise me, when your work excites you and shows itself to you as something unexpected. This is not intended to sound esoteric, it is more a free association that I takes place, like automatic writing. There is always something underneath, something behind the facade we encounter: exterior and interior, public and private, body and mind. I’m intrigued by these layers and facets. With my work, I am aiming to portray more than the exterior, penetrate the surface and invite to view into more complex structures. This aspect also surfaces in my blackout poetry and. For example, my piece “Out Of Tune”talks about the tensions of reality/life. The words in the Financial Times and my reciting of the poem transport a Weltschmerz sensibility. Working with the Financial Times and this experimentation with words relates to my practice of starting from material that already exists in the world instead of a blank canvas. I have always been intrigued by the depth poetry offers on both ends, as a reader interpreting and decoding as well as a writer condensing and encoding the layers of meaning. There is only so much you can plan, and I like to avoid having an exact idea of what the next painting will be. Instead, I am allowing for the unexpected to happen. Gesture and affect are aspects I am

giving as much room as possible. Reading Merleau-Ponty’s essay “Eye and Mind”from the 1960s was a significant starting point for investigation and exploration of what happens between the hand and mind. How does a gesture translate from an origin in the mind to a mark or composition? How does the internal become external, how does a painter transfer vision into visual? Merleau-Ponty attests the role of the painter to project what is making itself seen with himself/herself. I was in a jazz club some time ago and the improvisations felt like the musicians were thinking in music; I want to reach those moments where I am thinking in paint. An improvisational tone is reflected in my handling of paint. I enter into a collaborative relationship with the material, it is a back and forth between us. This is a visceral process, a sort of visual stream of consciousness, in which I interpret and respond to the piece at every stage of its progression. This constant dialogue allows for the creation of something that hovers between real and imagined; a memory. Your work convey both metaphoric and descriptive research that works on both subconscious and conscious level: the compelling narrative that pervades these videos invites the viewers to a multilayered experience and allows you to construct a concrete aesthetic from experience and memories and symbols. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion, personal experience is absolutely indispensable as part of the creative process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

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It is an interesting observation that most of my work relates to personal experience. I always seemed to veer towards it so I am now fully embracing the personal approach. There are numerous reasons to explore my individual experiences, on both personal and professional level. Personally, it can be in

touch with emotions and memories that range from painful to glorious. So the delving into a personal subject can be insightful, at points cathartic and help me to grow. My work draws from life itself, I gather and generate photographic images from my own experience. The imagery is

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informed by my perception, interests and viewpoints: places I've been, things I've seen, people I've met; things I remember and things I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. The photographs offer snapshots of my subjective experience, my memories. In my multilayered mixed media paintings Anker and Luxanamed, I worked with

imagery from my rural home village in the middle of Germany, such as the typical timber-frame houses, old photos of my mother and the radio my grandmother listened to religiously every single day. Next to exteriors, I have selected shots of interior spaces that remind of Francesca Woodmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photographs. With their black

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and white aesthetic, they have an eeriness to them, they have a psychological potential and a vulnerability. I agree with Rothko when he says that painting is an experience itself. To me, painting is personal; such as the time I spend with the piece in its creation or the gestural marks that are traces of the act of my production. German painter Neo Rauch has many intriguing things to say about the act of painting. He sees it as a natural process, driven by instinct, wherein things pass through the painter. So not surprisingly, I find it impossible to separate my work from my experience. It does not always have to be direct experience or observation, I can tackle things that are unfamiliar and look at them from my standpoint by which I make them personal. In the same vein, my videos tap into my individual interpretation and perception of the world inside and around me. Working with actors offers a surface of projection, they are further away from myself, but still, it is me who writes the script, sets the frame and edits the video. Everything I do, everything I bring into existence moves into my experiential sphere. While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your works seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your collages... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a certain sense representative of the conflictual relationship between content and form: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

Susanne Wawra

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Susanne Wawra

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My psychological make-up certainly plays a role in the act. My own photography is a major aspect in this series and I am experimenting with both greyscale and colour prints to transport different aesthetic and psychological potential. In most recent series Memento, I create mixed-media paintings as notes toward a (re)collection of my personal life history. The ability to remember and recall what is past is of major significance for the self, in particular the sense of self and identity. John Locke based identity and selfhood on the extension of consciousness backward in time, in memory. Personally, I am concerned about my very individual capacity to recall past experiences. In order to expand on my innate ability to store these events, I have set out to paint my memories. I aim to create a permanent physical record, a fabricated form of my internal psychology, externalised and mythologized on found primers. What has changed in my practice over time is the use of colour and a freedom and confidence in making marks. My work is process driven yet intuitive, since I approach the canvas without a plan of what comprises the collage and where images are placed. The intention is to keep the work open and alive by allowing spontaneity, momentum and chance. This improvisational tone is also reflected in my handling of paint. To me, painting is an experience itself and is personal, physical and instinctive. Gestural marks are traces of a moment in my life in the act of production driven by instinct and tapping into my individual perception and interpretation of the world inside and

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around me. A free association takes place, quite like automatic writing. I enter into a collaborative relationship with the material, it is a back and forth between us. This is a visceral process in which I interpret and respond to the piece at every stage of its progression. This constant dialogue allows for the creation of something that hovers between the real and the imagined; a memory. Over these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including your solo Face it, 10 Days in Dublin, at the

Avenue Road Gallery. One of the hallmarks of your projects is strictly connected to the chance of establishing a direct involvement with the viewers, who are called to evolve from a mere spectatorship to conscious participants on an intellectual level, so before leaving this conversation I 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?

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A sense of place has surfaced in most of my paintings, be it my home village or places that left an impact on me like Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Particular details I associate with a place have taken over, multiplied and occupied space on the canvas. There are Gouda cheeses, steep staircases, tropical fruit, characteristic architectures; things that strike me as â&#x20AC;&#x153;differentâ&#x20AC;?and belonging to a location or culture. I am planning to go back to places from my life to inform new work, retrace my steps and let them grow into art pieces.

It is a huge journey and I am excited for what will surface and show itself to me. Experimenting with scale is another venture, I have created a triptych that spans over 4 meters wide and really got immersed in the piece. It is also interesting to see the effect it has on the viewer. This might develop into installation work, too, as the work evolves and changes. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Susanne. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about

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your future projects. How do you see your work evolving?

I will continue making poetry films and further have two scripts for short films around mental health that I am applying

with for funding. Also, after the publication of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Schizo-Poetry - Fragments of Mindâ&#x20AC;?with collaborator singer/composer and writer Kevin Nolan last year, we are working on a next concept based volume of poetry.

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If it is photographing, collaging, painting, film-making or writing, I continually exploring and experimenting. As a result, things happen that surprise me and my work presents itself to me as something

unexpected but brought into existence by me. Throughout the creative act, moment to moment there is a continuous reinterpretation of the self.

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A nna Pinkas Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

An artist's statement

use technology to analyze and collect mundane details of our urban, media-driven lives. The meticulous alteration and resequencing of these elements is at the center of my process.

The tension between analog and digital at play in my work is a reflection of our daily experience of being torn between our screen-based, data-filled reality and our tangible one. My work often involves a painstaking series of translations â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from screen to paper, from video to hand drawn animation, or from 3D object to flat surface â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that blur the line between absurdity and whimsy. These time-consuming and repetitive processes surface the strange, complex and/or beautiful qualities of the everyday behaviors and artifacts that are my subject matter: In a

series of smartphone-size animations, ubiquitous interactions with our mobile devices become alien choreographies. Chairs, tables and lamps for sale on eBay are transformed into dollhouse-like paper miniatures that can be printed and reconfigured by the viewers in their own home. Digital tools are essential to my practice, but they are also the very thing I attempt to escape by imbuing my work with traces of the human hand. An algorithm may be able to produce infinitely complex visual forms and automate repetitive tasks, but it cannot replicate the poignancy of human labor, thoughtfulness and dedication.

Anna Pinkas

SCREEN PORTRAITS Video/frame animation, 2015

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Anna Pinkas An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Anna Pinkas' work explores a wide variety of artifacts and themes pertaining to our media-driven lives: her work could be described as a visual record of the consequences of contemporary technology’s ubiquity, and urges the viewer to rethink the dichotomy between physical and digital realms. In her recent Screen Portraits, which we'll be discussing in the following pages, she accomplishes an insightful investigation on the nature of human gestures, bringing to light the elusive relationship between the language of machine code and human language. One of the most convincing aspects of Pinkas' approach is the way it questions and reframes our everyday reality: we are really pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production. Hello Anna and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after having earned your Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, you nurtured your education with a MPS at NYU/Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program: how did these experiences influence your

evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural background inform the way you relate to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

I grew up in Geneva, Switzerland and moved to the US about 10 years ago. As a teenager, I was fascinated by traditional animation and thought I would pursue a career in that field after high school. There are few programs in Europe that offer both a Bachelor’s degree and professional training in animation, which led me to consider different art schools in the US. I was attracted to the School of the Museum of Fine Art’s intimate setting, its flexible curriculum and its affiliation with Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. The animation program was led by a young and enthusiastic professor, Joel Frenzer. He exposed us to both classic works of narrative animation and more experimental approaches to the medium. While I completed a wide range of animation and film courses during my time at SMFA, I was also very influenced by the school’s emphasis on conceptual art and soaked in some of my peers’and teachers’interest in performance art, painting and video. I moved to New York upon completing my Bachelor’s degree and worked in the non-profit art world for a few years to support my art practice before deciding

TOIDY TOID & TOID Interactive audio-visual installation, 2011

SCREEN PORTRAITS Video/frame animation, 2015

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to go back to school. My decision to attend NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program rather than a more traditional MFA was guided by my desire to go beyond linear, singlescreen media. I still wanted to work with animation and drawing, but was eager to use new technology to investigate alternative narrative formats. I also loved ITP’s collaborative environment and the students’varied backgrounds and interests (dance, music, graphic design and architecture amongst many others). The contrast between these two experiences - the focus on conceptual/traditional art at SMFA vs. the embrace of technology at ITP - really shaped my work: I am fascinated by new tools and technology, but also try to point out their limitations. While computation can generate beautiful objects, human subjectivity is central to my process. Your approach reveals an incessant questioning of the technology pervading our media-driven lives and the way it affects contemporary society. Before starting to elaborate on your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.annapinkas.com in order to get a comprehensive view of your multifaceted practice. Could you give our readers a sense of your process? How did you develop your style and how do you conceive your works?

I like to work in series. I often think that this has something to do with my background in traditional animation and the medium’s inherent sequential nature. I still find myself attracted to the painstaking and meditative act of producing 24 drawings to recreate 1

second of motion. Seriality is also related to George Perec’s (one of my favorite authors) obsession with lists. He used them to reveal the uncanny nature of seemingly mundane experiences. My subject matter usually revolves around what he calls the “infra-ordinary”or “endotic”(as opposed to the “extraordinary”and “exotic”, and I have found the act of accumulation very effective in revealing the absurdity and beauty hiding within the everyday. I am usually working on at least two projects at the same time: one in “production”requiring a repetitive and technical workflow, and one in the “concept”stage. I usually start with an image or experience that strikes me amidst my daily routine and start digging into it by taking a lot of notes and making sketches in a somewhat diaristic fashion. Even if the final piece tends to be digital, drawings are always a part of my process - whether it be rough sketches to help me spatialize a piece, or detailed renderings of objects, people or places related to the theme I am exploring. I like the ability to switch back and forth between the technical minutia of production and the cerebral demands that refining a new idea entails. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Screen Portraits, an extremely interesting project that has already been mentioned in the introductory pages of this article. Every video in this series was shot on the New York City subway. What immediately caught our attention in regards to your depiction of passengers’ interaction with their phone, is the way you draw attention to our daily gestures, and reframe them in

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a choreographic fashion. Since the video has been edited frame-by-frame, when walking our readers through the genesis of this project, we would like to ask you what role chance plays in your process: how important is improvisation to you?

Because my process and choice of media usually require a strong attention to detail, I tend to plan my workflow extensively. I do a lot of prototypes and tests before tackling the final version of a video or image. However, I do rely on chance encounters when gathering raw material for a piece. I recorded dozens of videos of people on the subway before selecting the 10 that comprise Screen Portraits. Furthermore, these videos were all surreptitiously recorded - the movements displayed in the series were not rehearsed or “acted out” Perhaps, “chance”is a more appropriate term than “improvisation”in my case. In a sense, my approach is akin to that of a documentary filmmaker - I have a theme in mind, but am at the mercy of the people and objects I come across to bring these ideas to life. You draw a lot from your personal experience and Screen Portraits could be considered a successful attempt to create a body of work that captures the absurdity embedded in personal habits within our globalized mundanity. So we would like to take this occasion to ask you if, in your opinion, personal experience is an indispensable part of one’s creative process... Do you think that this process can be disconnected from direct experience?

I do think that, in order to be impactful and universal, a piece needs to originate from a personal place. I am not suggesting that an artist’s biography needs to be explicit in the work, but his/her subjective

SCREEN PORTRAITS Video/frame animation, 2015

take on a theme is what will make the piece unique and engage the viewer. I can’t really imagine a practice which doesn’t somehow link back to personal experience - whether it be one’s cultural background, formal training or daily life. James Turrell’s obsession with light and color is often associated with his early experiences as a pilot.

Anna Pinkas

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SCREEN PORTRAITS

Video/frame animation, 2015

Taryn Simon has alluded to the link between looking at the sky through her grandfatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s telescopes and her investigation of systems. As Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve mentioned, my early infatuation with animation probably has much to do with the repetitive and sequential nature of my methodology. I also think that being a foreigner has made me more attuned

to details that often go unnoticed. I come from a long line of immigrants both sides of my family fled Eastern Europe during WWII and ended up scattered across all five continents. Although I was born and grew up in Switzerland, neither my parents were born there and I always saw myself as a bit of an outsider. Only when I moved to

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the United States 11 years ago did my Swiss upbringing become a bigger part of my identity. My Swiss/European culture all of a sudden was put into relief: I started noticing how elements of the American landscape that seemed bewildering to me - from suburban architecture to the plethora of cereal brands at supermarkets - were completely banal to my American friends. I think these subtle cultural shifts triggered my interest in revealing how seemingly mundane experiences can be utterly strange when viewed from a slightly different angle. Your formal approach re-appropriates universal and mundane symbols to create uncanny images. 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 this? And in particular, how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

Tying together subject and medium is essential to me. The fact that there are so many formats and tools available today is thrilling, but it can make choosing the right medium for a given piece extremely difficult. I like Demand’s suggestion that the medium should be part of the narrative itself. Aesthetic considerations are obviously important, but that’s not enough. I love drawing, but I won’t use pencil and paper as a final output unless I feel that the process reflects the ideas I’m trying to invoke. Rather than conceiving a single linear narrative, I tend to deconstruct my subject into discrete pieces. Seriality allows me to gradually layer meaning and offers different paths of discovery for the viewer.

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CONDITION:USED web-based project, 2014

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CONDITION:USED web-based project, 2014

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In the Condition:Used project you investigate the interstitial space between physical and digital existence: in a certain sense, this work urges us to rethink the notion of materiality itself. The constant changes in technology have heightened the ephemeral quality of our ever-changing society. This has also dramatically revolutionized the concept of Art: just a few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. We think that new media will fill the gap between art and technology and that the two terms might even become synonymous. What is your opinion on this?

Saying that technology has become ubiquitous is an understatement: we seem to be spending more time in front of our screens than not, and our financial and political institutions largely run - for better and for worse - on bits of data. Since my thematic focus is the investigation of everyday life, it only makes sense that technology would play a prominent role in my work. I rely heavily on digital tools: digital imaging software, laser cutters and algorithms are integral to my process. Embracing new media has allowed me to create visual artifacts that would be almost impossible to produce with analog methods. However, while I am always in search of new technical and aesthetic possibilities, I also keep a skeptical eye towards new tools. One of my teachers once said “a designer’s role is to answer questions; an artist’s role is to formulate them.”Although there are plenty of designers I admire and take inspiration from, I have found this quote to be a useful way of thinking about how I want to use technology. When a new tool becomes available, the first impulse is to show off its dexterity. But no matter how complex a computationally designed image or object

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might be, it doesn’t invoke the same awe one feels in front of the meticulous brushstrokes of a Holbein painting or the fragility of a Vija Celmins drawing. The acknowledgement of the human hand, time, and expertise at play in traditional media still matters a lot to me - both as a viewer and a maker. A piece feels incomplete unless I’ve had to spend many hours crafting and thinking about it. Although I certainly believe that technology and art can work hand in hand to create exciting new forms and ideas, technology without human critical intend isn’t really art in the conceptual sense of the word. The Condition:Used project delves into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, forcing the viewer to reconsider how he/she differentiates between public and private. How do you define the public sphere and the role of art in public space?

I see the web as a public space - a global one with its own idiosyncratic interactions and social codes. Part of my interest in eBay and in developing “Condition:Used” was the strange space the platform occupies between private and public. The pieces of furniture featured in these dioramas were caught in “limbo”at the time I encountered them online: between the original owner and a hypothetical new one. Their eBay listings also featured bits of intimate spaces (the amateur photography used to sell an item often divulges part of the seller’s home). I also think that the web is, in certain cases, an ideal exhibition space. The decision to display the dioramas of “Condition: Used”on a custom website was motivated by a desire to refer back to the source images’origin, but also by the interactivity and active participation allowed

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CONDITION:USED web-based project, 2014

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MACROMEN: TRIMS, video, 2014

by a web interface: all the miniature chairs, tables, and cabinets in the piece can be downloaded as printable PDFs. The visitors are invited to create their own “paper-eBay-dioramas”thus shifting once more between the web’s public nature and another private space.

Although I gather a lot of reference material online, physical public space is also a great source of inspiration. Part of the reason I live in NYC despite the high rents, lack of space and demanding schedules, is the city’s ability to jerk me out of my routine. I have become

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Dozens of human beings are packed like sardines in a subway car, yet manage to avoid any form of verbal communication. Lately, I’ve been thinking of art as a means to engage with these other lives and call attention to the fascinating and disconcerting interactions (or lack thereof) city dwellers are prone to. Your work conveys a subtle but effective criticism of the materialistically driven culture that saturates our contemporary age. But while artists from the contemporary scene, as Ai WeiWei or more recently Jennifer Linton, explicitly express socio-political criticism in their works, you seem more interested in hinting in that direction, inviting the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead them to subvert a variety of usual, stereotyped cultural categories. Do you think your works could be considered political in a certain sense or do you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? In your opinion, what role can an artist play in contemporary society?

increasingly interested in the strange dichotomy between crowds and anonymity. Living in a metropolis, one encounters thousands of strangers every day - each one with its own life, worries, daydreams etc…However, we barely acknowledge one another’s presence.

I definitely believe that art can have a socio-political impact: Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries (“The Act of Killing”(2012) and “The Look of Silence”2014)) have helped start a conversation and a call for justice around the Indonesian genocide. Paul Chan’s production of “Waiting for Godot”in New Orleans in the months following Katrina wasn’t just a performance but a long-term community rebuilding effort. Theaster Gates’socially engaged practice is tremendously inspiring too. I don’t want readers to think I am comparing myself to any of these artists. All I want to point out is that there are plenty of counterarguments to the cynical view that art cannot change minds or policies. My socio-

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political message is much more modest, but I hope that highlighting the absurdity embedded into everyday behaviors can make the viewer think differently about his/her relationship to technology and society at large. It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the ones you have established with dancer and choreographer Tess Dworman for macromen: trims are growing forces in Contemporary Art, and that exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": Would you agree with this?

Working with other artists can be very stimulating. “Macromen: trims”emerged from casual conversations Tess and I had on the art of editing. Time and time again, we found that we were essentially interested in the same concept - the discarded pieces of the creative process - but had different ways of approaching it due to our different media. I found that looking at a theme through a new lens (in this case, that of dance rather than visual arts) brought out new considerations and formal possibilities. Tess allowed me to follow her and her two performers as they were developing a new choreography called “macromen” “Macromen: trims”is a series of thematically sequenced video segments that reveal the invisible details that comprise the dance rehearsal process.

MACROMEN: TRIMS, video, 2014

As I attended more and more rehearsals, I became less interested in documenting the choreography itself than capturing peripheral elements: the different rehearsal spaces, the warm up sessions, the bouts of laughter, the use of hand

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movement to communicate etc…Once I started assembling these bits and pieces into sequences, they almost became mini-choreographies of their own. Over the years your works have been internationally showcased on several

occasions, including your recent participation at the Simultan Festival “Talking to Strangers”in Timisoara, Romania. One of the hallmarks of your practice is your ability to create a direct connection with the viewers. So before leaving this conversation we would like

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to ask a question about the nature of the relationship between your art and your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as a crucial part of your decision-making process?

Of course, I want my work to be seen. Ideally, I want to provide the viewer with a new perspective on a given subject matter. While the reasons that lead me to pick a theme is very personal and often triggered by chance encounters, the audience does come into play as soon as I start considering formal and narrative choices. I often agonize over finding the right balance between clarity and openness of interpretation. I don’t want the viewer to feel completely perplexed by what he/she is seeing, but I also don’t want the piece to feel like a “one-liner”- quickly understood, digested and forgotten. I want to entice the viewer with a unique aesthetic experience and an unexpected way of framing an idea, but then leave him/her with a series of underlying questions to ponder upon long after having seen the piece. I don’t have a specific audience in mind when conceiving new work. I don’t try to appeal to a “tech”or “contemporary art”audience. I think that my focus on the “everyday”allows a wide range of people to relate to my work. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Anna. Finally, would you like to tell our readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I have been working on an ongoing series of prints called “On Paper”for a few years. Similarly to “Condition: Used” the

piece emerged from my desire to produce tangible artifacts. Although screen-based work can certainly be beautiful and impactful, I think most of us are still irrepressibly attracted to palpable objects, whether it be because of human nature, rabid consumerism or, more likely, a combination of the two. Each print in the series is based on a single paper texture found online and commonly used to give a website a paper-like background. This file is first printed on different sheets of paper varying in grades of pulp and shades of white. These prints are then re-digitized with a scanner, sectioned, and assembled to reconstruct the original image. The resulting ‘digital collage’is printed on a large sheet of archival paper to reveal details imperceptible on the small, back-lit computer devices the texture was originally intended for. This convoluted process points to the infinite possibilities embedded within a single digital file. I am also in the early stages of researching and sketching out a new project. It is related to “Screen portraits”in that I intend to use mobile devices as a means of recording other people’s behaviors and physical language. It is too early for me to talk extensively about the exact format probably altered video or still images but, thematically, it will touch on our society’s complex relationship with women’s reproductive rights.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

ON PAPER Digital C-prints, 2013

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Dalia Smayze

Patricia Abramovich Lives and works in Netanya, Israel

An artist's statement

rt for me is the freedom to create with no boundaries, to express the diversity of color from which the human soul is composed. Spreading color across a canvas is a means of meditation; I connect with my inner self. My hands just move with rhythm using the painter knife to mix the colors directly on the blank canvas. I choose the colors and let my soul conduct me, handling the knife as a brush . The colors merge on the canvas on their own. I then use a spatula to paint over them in oil. When working in water color "aquarelle", I allow the colors to

merge with the water in whatever direction they choose. I feel when the artwork is ready and reaching a balance between the colors. I usually have no preconceived idea and am always curious to see the final results of my painting . My major influences are Monet and CĂŠzanne but I also appreciate the works of Van Gogh, Sissley, Renoir and Michelangelo. I am also fascinated with Japanese art and calligraphy and one day would love to exhibit in Tokyo.

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Patricia Abramovich An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Israeli based French artist Patricia Abramovich explores the multifaceted nature of the relationship between abstract and figurative, urging the viewers to recontextualize the notion of landscape. While pervaded with a marked abstract sensitiveness, her work communicate the rhythm of everyday live, that allows her to establish an effective channel of emotional communication with the viewers. One of the most impressive aspects of Abramovich's work is the way it goes beyond the traditional dichotomy between abstraction and figurative, providing each piece with an autonomous aesthetics: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production. Hello Patricia and welcome to ARTiculAction: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. While you have been always nurtured your passion in visual arts since you were a child, you wanted to study architecture to snatch the beauty you found in urban geography. You later worked in banking as a team manager and in 1996 you eventually began private painting lessons, falling in

love with watercolors and your major medium Oil. What did you lead to focus on these particular tecniques? And in particular, how does the relationship between your French cultural substratum and your current life in Israel inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello , firstavall I am really glad to have this interview.Thank you. It is right I lived in Paris ,France I was 15th when I moved to Israel.I learned In Paris at the Helene Boucher highschool and It was a superb batiment full of art decoration and wonderful artichecture.I draw and played piano when I lived in Paris. Always loved music and began my first portrait drawing etude then. My parents decided to move to Israel and I moved with them .It was a hard period ,I had to learn a new language and finish my education in Hebrew. I must say It took me years to get used to my new life. My piano arrived from France and I continued to play .Music was my happiness. I married and had 2 wonderful children while I began to build my career in a banking business. I learned a lot during this period and had less time for my art ,but in my heart deep inside it was there. It took

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20 years to return to art and as you mentioned I began to learn private lessons at the begining drawing and watercolor painting .Later I tried Acrylic And then I moved to Oil and it was love at first sight. I painted hours exercising every minute I had free .This is how I got my specific style . I learned the classic technique at the beginning ,a lot from books and exercising. Then I began to search my own way... I am sure we remember all our past in our soul and it is coming up when We create ,paint, write books or any art activity. We, as human are composed of layers from the past and the present. Your approach to painting could be considered as a journey into the expressive potential of the colors you allow to merge on your canvas: your works always show a consistent balance between abstract and figurative and communicate an intuitive idea of freedom. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.abramovichpatricia.com in order to get a synoptic view of your artistic production: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, how did your style evolve over the years?

As I mentioned before I began to draw first and then I learned watercolor painting Technique which is one of the harder I think. I painted in watercolor for years and really loved it. I wanted to try oil technique and I began with exercising from copying masters works

and from french artbooks I ordered from Amazon. In 2006 I decided to paint with a spatula directly on the canvas. It took me about 10 years to get a beginning of an individual style. I began to paint from my imagination and my first abstract oil paintings were created for an exhibition in Israel. My body of works called "climbing" were created in 2008 I found oil colors give me more freedom on the canvas especially using the spatula as I did mixing the colors on the canvas. I am constantly looking for new experiences in art .That is the idea behind the different body of works and styles you can find in my art. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Green and Yellow, a couple of extremely interesting works 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 these paintings is the consistent balance they reveal between abstraction and a subtle kind of figurative reference. While walking our readers through the genesis of these pieces, would you shed light on the way you capture the ideas you transfer on your canvas? In particular, what are your main sources of inspiration?

After several years in the field ,I began painting on larger canvases then I created Green And Yellow and a lot of big abstracts paintings. I really enjoy the abstract style. Even in my

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landscapes you can find abstracts areas. I named a lot of my paintings with colors names. As colors are really important and communicative in my art.

I am not sure I can explain the process in my paintings but I will try: I get a blank canvas and choose colors on my palette by feeling which colors fit my mood the same day.Yes

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I choose from the heart.and the stomach .When I begin an abstract painting.I put many amounts of different colors on the canvas and begin to spread with the spatula until I

see the color and texture I mean to get. I usually but not always choose light colors for the top of my painting like a sort of sky. That maybe why it looks figurative , like a landscape. I

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love this feeling .Only me the canvas and the colors... I usually need to be alone in my studio to paint and to be in a certain mood. As I mentioned before I created many series of paintings and the spreading technique is different in each one of them. I talked before about the climbing body of works . In them the spreading technique is always from the bottom to the top. In my Rondo group of works in circle movements. In the Psifas group (Which means Mosaic in Hebrew) in very short and egal movements. In 2013 I used special spatula to reach more special texture. See the work mamed Green Tiger to understand what I mean . The dialogue established between delicate and as the same time intense nuances of tones is an important aspect of your style:such combination speaks of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

In 2014 I painted a new body of work based on Bach Music. I mean I painted while listening to Bach music and it was a great feeling and emotional experience. The spreading movement in this serie were conducted by the music itself. The colors in these paintings are my favorites , bright and happy tones.I felt it suits the music . About my palette you will find there a

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lot of red, yellow, blue, rose, white and green .Sometimes I go for one or two colors only like you can see the work named "Blue "I really choose the colors the moment I begin to create a new painting. The most important thing for me is to get a balanced result and I feel exactly When it happens.Each canvas size in this body of works is 140x100 cm. I think in these painting I tried to break my style and to get something very different. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, spreading color across a canvas is a means of meditation; you connect with your inner self: moreover, it's important to remark that you have dedicated two of your solos to your parents. In this sense, you seem to draw a lot from personal experience: when developing a personal visual language, you accomplish the difficult task of bringing to a new level of significance the relationship between experience and memory. How would you define the roles of memory and experience in your process?

When My mother died in 2008 I coudn t stop painting. It helped me stay tuned. That was a very hard time and I found that I had to be all the time busy so I have no time for thinking about the situation .In these years I painted a lot and this was the period I began to exhibit wordwilde .In the "Missing you" exhibition I showed about 20 oil paintings ,landscapes and abstracts most of them were painted from the 2008 to 2009 years. In 2013 My father passed away and In 2014 I exhibited in two galleries

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Hamoatsa and Hahandassa in the city I live. In one gallerie I showed landscapes and the other my abstracts,about 40 paintings .My father loved the fact I am an artist and was very proud of it. I cannot say I painted

special paintings for these exhibitions but exhibited my best artworks.I miss my parents very much and having exhibited to honnor their memory was helpfull to me. I am definitely sure that the role of the memory and experience

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is a part of my creation But I feel I choose to show life and beauty in my art as I am an optimistic person. While marked with a deep abstract feature, your work often deals with

the theme of landscape, which is particulary recurrent and never acts as a mere background: your painting seem to invite to viewers to extract a personal narrative. In particular, your work shows the attempt to deconstruct your personal image of

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landscape to recontextualize it in the universal one, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

The landscapes I paint are inspired by real landscapes .I travelled and took pictures from beautiful places. In 2009 I began painting landcapes from Provence which is located in the South Of France .That is right I don t paint exactly what I see but some of an

interpretation that can give me freedom to choose the colors and the forms. I love the fact my art viewers can decide what they see and feel when watching at my art. A lot of them feel happiness and good feeling when they look at my artworks. Other are trying to see flowers or anything else in my abstracts and that is OK for me. That is true that viewers seems to analyse what they see in my paintings in exhibitions .I am not sure we have to find a meaning in any artwork but I feel my viewers need to do it.I love my freedom and respect the other people freedom too...

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course Van Gogh , Sissley and more are masters I love too.So much great art! About the Japanese art and Calligraphy ,I feel it is a part of my soul and I will learn the technique in the soon future. At the mean time I am very proud to share with you I exhibited in Tokyo with Gallery Bruno Massa which is a French gallery I show with at artfairs wordwilde from 2015. It was my dream to show inTokyo and it came true. I am not sure about the relationship between Tradition and Contemporariness In my works but believe the beauty is what makes the connection between them.

You are fascinated with Japanese art and calligraphy and among your main influences you have ascribed both artists from classical age as Michelangelo and modern painters as Monet, CĂŠzanne and Van Gogh. How would you describe the relationship between Tradition and Contemporariness in your works? Do you think that there's still a dichotomy between such apparently different aspects of art?

I love many Masters works. Michael Angelo and Leonardo de Vinci were classical genius and I admire their creations. I am totally a big fan of Monet and Cezanne and they are the artists that inspire me all the way. Of

We definitely love the way you combine freedom of composition with a carefull attention to the communication process between the artwork and the viewers: while you once stated that you usually have no preconceived idea, how would you define the creative process that lead you to establish such effective channel of communication with your audience? And in particular how do you conceive the abstract narrative that pervades your works?

One of my important character trait is to stay loyal to my truth . When I paint it is for me a sort of meditation and I connect my inner self I think it is why my art speaks to the viewers. I let my heart conduct my hands and I feel when an artwork is ready . I am more than delighted to see people like my artworks . It makes me feel good .

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Painting is for me like breathing and it is my way of life. Even if their are periods I paint less, I know I will return to my canvases. I believe I paint abstract because I usually try to see the whole picture in my life And In abstract style the viewer can build its own world and discover details From imagination. Over these years your works have been internationally exhibited in several occasions, including your recent solo Father at the Hamoatsa and Hahendasdda Gallery: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who 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?

I am so happy when I see people coming to my exhibtions and love seeing them reacting to my artworks. I feel it is very important to show the art I create and I use to exhibit wordwilde And feel that it gives a professional status to my art career. I wish I could travel with every exhibition I participate in. To see viewers reacting I exhibit in Israel in Solo exhibitions and I always Feel good with the feedbacks. Again I

stay loyal to my truth and I think my paintings reflect this fact and people feel it . Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Patricia. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I really enjoyed this interview .It gave me the opportunity to explore the activity Of my art career through the years . About my future projects I believe I will continue to explore oil and watercolor Painting .I have a big will to paint oil portraits .I allready began a new body of works Of big oil portraits but feel I have to learn and practice more in this field. I learned photoshop and surface pattern design these latest months. I really like it. I will continue to exhibit with galleries wordwilde and I hope I will have more and more collectors for my art as I know paintings must be hung in art lover's homes Always seeking for new serious gallery representation and for an art dealer to increase sales wordwilde. I plan having a more spacious studio to work. I hope it will happen soon. Again I want to thank you for the opportunity you gave me with this interview . Hope your readers will love and appreciate my art.

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Meltem Arikan Lives and works in Cardiff, United Kingdom

An artist's statement

eltem Arikan is an author and playwright from Turkey. She has published 8 novels, 1 research book, 6 theatre plays. Arikan has been exploring woman’s existence in her seven novels. Her eighth is a cyberpunk dystopian novel. Her novel Erospa, where a female hacker is trying to save the world against itself, emerged as a result of the turmoil and her ongoing research about the transition from the analogue to the digital world. During these years she researched violence against women, incest and women’s place in Turkish society. She has helped hundreds of women victims who suffered incest or were exposed to domestic violence. She became a voice for them through her novels, poems and articles. She has participated in many projects, giving speeches and doing workshops on these issues. As a female author from Turkey who has experienced censorship, being heard and freely expressing her mind is very important for Meltem Arikan. She has found a new mode of expression through photography over the last two years. Arikan has been exploring a technique where she manipulates or destroys

photographs she has taken to create a completely new image. These images aim to play on viewer’s perception of colour and shape. Arikan creates a fresh approach to perception, using strong colours, combining these images with her text. Meltem Arikan has always focused on woman’s existence, woman’s place in society, how woman is perceived and how woman perceives herself. Arikan has always been interested in woman's selfdestruction of her own femininity as a result of the perpetual oppression she has to face. In each of her novels she tries to break these preconceptions, relate directly to the reader and disturb them. She plays with the usual, accepted meanings of words and de-constructs them; thus subverting the routine thought patterns of the reader, using an agitative language based on real facts. She creates a form where she appeals to the five senses of the reader. Meltem Arikan now wants to explore the possibilities of achieving the same style visually. Playing with viewer's perceptions, she is aiming to create a moment of epiphany.

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Meltem Arikan An interview by Josh Rider, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Novelist, playwright and activist Meltem Arikan's work takes a critical view on a variety of socio political issues, with a focus on women’s existence, women’s place in society, how women are perceived and how women perceive themselves. Ranging from the impact of cultural substratum in the development of individuals' identities, to the elusive role that time plays in the way we relate ourselves to society as well as to our inner sphere. In her project Manipulated Everyday , that we'll be discussing in the following pages, Arikan accomplishes the difficult task of investigating about the material female legacy, unveiling the elusive but ubiquitous bond between past and present to draw participants to a multilayered, unpredictable experience. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Meltem and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, will you tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that have influenced your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your Turkish roots inform the way you deal with the aesthetic problem in general?

Let me start off by telling how the urge to write to express myself started. One day, when I was five years old, my parents and I and another family were coming back home from holiday in my father’s friend’s car.

During our first stop for a break at a village farm, the other family wanted to buy two pigeons for their kids. My mother didn’t feel right about it and said, “Pigeons inside a car are bad luck”. But they didn’t listen. A little while later we had a terrible accident. My mother and father were very badly hurt and I had broken bones. The other family, on the other hand, were able to just walk away with their pigeons! They couldn’t find an ambulance, so we were taken to hospital on the back of a pick-up truck. On that journey, I remember suffocating under questions such as: “Did we have an accident because of bad luck? Is God punishing us now? If God gives punishments then why would I love God?” My parents stayed in hospital for two years, trying to recover. I was lucky: I only couldn’t walk for six months because of psychological trauma. That’s when I started to read books and keep a diary for the questions I had; I couldn’t talk to other children because these questions meant nothing to them. Eventually my father left hospital but my mother never did. When she died, I remember how the two words ‘inquiry’ and ‘rebellion’ were united within me. Later, during my teenage years, I found it difficult to communicate with my father in the house so I wrote letters to him,

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expressing myself. I guess what pushed me into writing was the need to understand myself and to express all that I have inside, uncensored. The reason why I became a writer is because of this urgent need to express myself during my step-by-step journey to existence as a woman. For me, writing has always meant to strip bare-naked. And to truly strip bare- naked is not just about being courageous. It also brings a lot of responsibilities. Societies seek to cover up, and generally, people are afraid of nakedness because nakedness also means transparency. My first short stories and essays were published between 1992 and 1995 in various literary journals. My first novel was published in 1999. My fourth novel “Stop Hurting My Flesh”, which was a portrayal of the degree of abuse and incest that Turkish women endure, was banned in early 2004 by the Committee to Protect Minors from Obscene Publications. I fought the ban in court and it was lifted after my argument and campaign, and I was awarded with “Freedom of Thought and Speech Award 2004” by the Turkish Publishers’ Association. After what I had been through with my novel being banned, I was confused and upset. I understood that people in Turkey were actually comfortable with the way things are; that when I tried to talk about something uncomfortable, people thought that I was exaggerating or even paranoid, so I stopped. In a kind of desperation, I started focusing on the world as a whole through social media. When Wikileaks published the cables, it shook the world order; and seeing that world leaders were powerless to stop Wikileaks was very interesting. That’s why I started to follow the developments from social media. I started using my Facebook and Twitter accounts more to talk about what was happening. I got quite obsessed.

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For two years I lived what was happening around the world through social media. I witnessed how social media gave a platform for people to share their personal stories or share information, both by using Twitter and by broadcasting with their mobile phones using Ustream when traditional media was silent. After I got involved in social media, I stopped focusing on individual countries anymore because I came to realize that interactions on social media happen regardless of the barriers of distance, language, nation, religion or ideology. This inspired me to create ‘Mi Minor’, a theatre play about the situations and events happening all around the world. As a writer it was important to be able to understand what kind of a change was happening and to see the importance of the free flow of information. During this time, I realized we are in a transition period from analogue to the digital world. I was interested to see how perceptions were changing, especially to see where young people’s perception was heading and how it affected the relationship between people and governments. This was when I started to contemplate the transition from the analogue world to the digital world. Since 2011, I have been writing articles on this transition. In 2013 ‘Mi Minor’ was accused by government officials and pro-government media of being a “rehearsal” for the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Istanbul. First the members of the creative team, then Mi Minor itself were at the centre of the “counter-Gezi” campaign which eventually forced us to leave the country. When the controversy started about Mi Minor I was writing a fantasy novel, entitled Erospa. The accusations about my play reached to such a level that I started to receive hundreds of life threatening responses from the government supporters. Even though Erospa was half finished, with all that happened I became so stressed, so worried

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that one day I had to destroy it for security reasons. It was a strong moment, an absurd moment, a painful moment, one I can never forget. I had to leave the country within the following days and started to live in the UK. After arriving in the UK, I started to work on my novel again. Each time I tried to focus on writing it, I failed to sustain my intense relationship with words. I guess it was quite different from the times I wrote my novels in the past - because of the sounds coming from the TV that were in English, to which I still couldn’t relate. The battle between Turkish, the language of emotions and English, the language of concepts… During those days, seeing the pictures I was posting, one of my followers on Twitter suggested to open an account on 500px and post my pictures there. A new window opened for me. I started to take pictures of the geese in Roath Park that I used to visit everyday. Despite spending most of my time with my camera and having my first photography exhibition entitled ‘Bird and Words’ where I had excerpts from my writings under the photographs, some things were always missing, the colours, the emotion and the chaos. Then I started to destroy the pictures and a brand new adventure started for me, playing with perception and questioning the real through a new reality created by destroying... to perceive the real, to have it perceived or to open it up for discussion through a different reality created beyond language, but still using the language. Your approach coherently encapsulates several viewpoints that reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between fiction and representation, conveying together an unconventional still consistent sense of unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.meltemarikan.com in order to

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get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between opposite viewpoints as well as different techniques is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

No matter what I’m working on, be it a photograph, a theatre play, a novel or an article, my starting point has always been my existence. Existence is an ever changing, transforming and evolving process. When you create work deriving from your existence, even if these works are expressed in different mediums using different means, they will still have an integrity. When you have the courage to perceive the world through your existence, a contradiction occurs between do’s, dont’s, musts, patterns, all the things that have been taught to us, and your existence’s potential to expand. This contradiction turns into a continuous journey which offers infinite possibilities to you. And most of the time, this journey defines itself. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Manipulated Everyday an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention about it is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating a moment of epiphany through an unconventional combination between insightful abstract patterns and references to the realm of experience, urging the viewers to rethink and even subvert the way we relate ourselves to such apparently opposites categories: while walking our readers through the genesis of this project, would you like to shed light on the new direction you are taking into artistic production?

I think people who do not question their existence have a constrained relationship with life. It gets constricted more with each passing day due to things they learn, things they believe in, things that are imposed upon them, social pressure and eventually self censorship. The

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need to be accepted, to be approved and the desire for success, whether we are aware or not, limits our creativity. I am after an instinctive and fearless creativity felt when you let yourself to your own and free yourself from all concerns. Therefore, when I create a new work, I free myself of all constraints just like that. I even ignore my inner voice. I can only touch another's existence creating unique works by transcending the thought patterns forcibly imposed upon us. Lots of artists from the contemporary scene, like Ai WeiWei or more recently Jennifer Linton, used to convey open socio-political criticism in their works: your approach seems to invite the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead to subvert a variety of usual, almost stereotyped cultural categories. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in a certain sense or did you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

First we invented words to communicate, but we were unable able to communicate using them. We developed concepts in order to explain situations, things, facts, but we became enslaved to these concepts. Concepts turned into boxes and we started to explain life with these boxes. The number of boxes we can check has become our objective; they take away our freedom, not just during our daily routine but also during our creative process. For that reason, I am trying to do my best to keep myself distant from concepts, and them away from me as far as possible. The communication beyond languages, cultures, politics, all the rights and wrongs, all the concepts is what matters to me. Just as how people understand each other when they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak the same language, just as how people express

their feelings, even their thoughts with body language, I believe artistic works use a similar communication. I also believe that only this type of communication could truly bring about a universal interaction. In particular we would ask you to expand on your understanding of political art. Even if it is not explicitly so, must not all good art be in some sense political?

I am interested in the incomprehensibility of simplicity. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m interested in the fear that drives people to still hold on to their beliefs and politics as tight as possible, despite all the technological developments and the intertwining of languages and cultures during this transition period to the digital world. There are enough resources on our planet, more than enough... and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m interested in the fear behind the vicious consumption of these resources. Even though these resources could be enough for all, the fear of hunger and starvation imposed upon us leads to a constant dissatisfaction. Despite all the theories and concepts being generated, the dissatisfaction never changes and leads humanity on each passing day to destroy brutally even more. Just like any religion, every word, definition or concept that is created, amasses its own followers. These followers constitute an ethic of power and oppression through selfrighteousness. The words created through reason that help to make rational discussions, quickly lose their meanings in the stiffness of belief. Then they begin to shape people cruelly or force them to be a certain way. The more people become distant from themselves, the more they become estranged to themselves and the more they become addicted to things. They try to ease their unhappiness not by

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discovering their nature but by seeking to belong to a group. Those who are estranged from themselves become more destructive, intolerant and judgmental as they try to shape themselves according to the thought patterns they belong to. They do not only destroy their creativity but themselves. The more they are destroyed, the more they consume, hoping to fill the gap inside. And at this point what interests me the most is the fear caused by this very gap. How can children still be raped, sold? How can women still be abused, violated? How can bombs still explode viciously, forcing children, women, men to escape from their countries, homes? The attempts to explain the underlying reasons by politics and concepts changed nothing at all for millennia. For that reason, what really interests me is the endless cruelty, greed, yearning for acceptance in humans and how destructive they are… No matter how much we believe that we are individuals, we are actually all made of the same material. And I believe that I could only understand this material through my existence and by tinkering with it, living it, breaking it, reconstructing it, observing it. Therefore, I’m trying to be open to everything and perceive without filters. Things I have said so far would be perceived as political by some, and apolitical by others, so that’s why, as I said before, I am trying to distance myself from the concepts as far as possible. This is simply because I know for sure that no matter what I say or mean to say, everyone else will take my words from their point of view and interpret them as they like. When we see or listen to a work of art, rather than letting ourselves feel and connect directly, we choose to connect through our knowledge. It becomes more important for our perception to coincide with our knowledge rather than our

feelings. If our knowledge does not relate to what we perceive, we immediately reject the piece. Thus what communicates with the piece becomes our knowledge not our feelings. When I create a piece, I try to connect with people’s feelings, angers and pains, not their knowledge. Manipulated Everyday is intrinsically based on the chance of establishing direct relations, going beyond the surface of communication to explore our inner landscape. We find this aspect particularly interesting since it is probably the only way to raise awareness about the unstable notion of identity, concerning both individuals and their place in our ever changing societies. How do you see the relationship between the public sphere and the role of art in public space?

I have been repeating the same thing for years: “We must free our minds from the forced thought patterns and think freely, moreover we must create freely.” But the main problem is that our brains are filled with boxes. How should it be, how can things be better, how can the society change, etc. If we accept how difficult it is to change ourselves, we will see the severe truth of how hard and at times impossible it is to change others. Therefore, beyond wheres, hows and inwhat-ways, the important thing for me is whether I create a tiny question mark in anothers’ existence with work deriving from my own. That’s my only concern. Your successful attempt to relate directly to the readers and disturb them, encourages them to establish a personal relationship with women's identity and brings such ubiquitous notion to a new level of significance: what kind of reactions did you expect to provoke in the participants?

It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true

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that humans start to question when in pain, shock or discomfort. Or questioning starts when we are in a difficult time and most often despite ourselves. We usually enjoy being at peace in situations that make us happy, therefore I find the times we are not at peace, the uneasiness, very precious. I create work challenging and provoking myself. It is worth everything if I create a bit of uneasiness in my audience. When manipulating and even destroying photographs you have taken to creating a completely new image, your approach questions the notions of perception and communication, which is comprised of a sender and a receiver and that in your case climbs any identitarian hierarchy to achieve the difficult task of creating a common, almost universal channel of communication between autonomous identities. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once pointed out that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and shows the necessity to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". What's your point about this? In particular, what could be the criteria and the communication strategy that may help to establish whether a work has had any social or political impact?

Without chaos there cannot be silence. For me, progress can only happen through chaos and destruction. If there is no welcome there cannot be a farewell, it’s almost impossible to create something new before you demolish the old. As long as we do not free ourselves from fears, do not get rid of the yearning for approval by others and do not become transparent to the depths of our darkness within, our creative works will gradually end up being trapped in a vicious circle, repeating themselves. We would be ticking the boxes though…

You are currently working on a novel and two plays: any anticipation about these upcoming works? In particular, what directions are you going to take in your exploration of woman’s existence?

I wish I had an answer to this question. With each work, I embark on a different journey and on the way the work transforms me as I transform it. As a woman, everything I witness and experience constantly changes and transforms me. Therefore anticipating the direction this change and transformation leads is like fortune-telling. I am going to explore the direction(s) I am going to take while creating the work. Since 2011 your articles are being published in various web sites in different countries and the short film EXHIBIT that you wrote has been accepted by Cannes Short Film Corner. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who 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?

Whatever I do, it is very important for me to create as if it is never going to be seen or read. Therefore I try to do everything I can to isolate myself from audience concerns. How transparent I am to myself and how I could convey this transparency without self-censorship are pivotal for me in the creative process. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing

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your thoughts, Meltem. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

What I want to do next is to print and colour the pictures I digitally manipulate, in order to create another layer of reality and to keep myself occupied with photography and colours for a while.

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Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

Dalia Smayze

E rik Sigerud My paintings represent spatial features that are built up of several layers of various visual languages.

With my processes, I examine how the combination of vague power structures, distinct models of explanation, life energies, media images and private commitments may create different perceptions of reality.

What interests me is the volatile in the definitions of society and of life, and my work is about exploring what defines an identity, a culture, politics and a society, as well as how these definitions are interacting with each other. The essence of this quest is the encounter in itself as a major creative force in the conceptualization of hypotheses.

Erik Sigerud

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Erik Sigerud An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator articulaction@post.com

Artist Erik Sigerud's work accomplishes an insightful representation of the spatial features that are built up of several layers of various visual languages, to provide the viewers with a multilayered experience capable of walking them into the liminal area in which subconscious level establishes a symbiosis between the conscious sphere. One of the most stimulating aspects of Sigerud's work is the way its unconventional approach accomplishes the difficult task of explore our perceptual parameters to challenge them: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Erik and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview would you tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after having earned your MFA, that you received from the prestigious Ă&#x2030;cole Nationale SupĂŠrieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, you nurtured your education with studies in the fields of Contemporary philosophy as well as in Critical theory: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural

substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello and thank you! During my five years at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, I painted all the time and I was constantly in a critical dialogue with students and teachers. I learned to advance each project as far as I possibly could, and I learned to treat my artistic practice as a process that will evolve over a long period of time. Being Swedish and living in France allowed me to look at the society I lived in with a certain distance. I established a way of working that mixed personal experiences with ideas about how particular aspects of society might look like. My theoretical studies have been motivated by a desire to evolve my practice. I would not say I'm an expert on any philosophical theory, but my thinking and my work have been influenced by the encounter with philosophical thoughts. I'm not sure how my cultural background has influenced my work, but I can say that since I am a white, middle-class man living in a functioning society, I feel that I have no right to speak of other people's problems. However, I have an analytic mind and in

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some way, I want my work to deal with the things I see happening in society. Your approach condenses a variety of mediums that you combine together into a coherent balance: the results convey together a consistent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://eriksigerud.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? And in particular, how does your studies in the field of Psychology inform the way you inquire into the psychological dimension and into the aesthetic problem in general?

Painting is the basis of my work, but for my exhibitions, I have done performances, video pieces, happenings, sound pieces and installations. Everything is a part of my will to affect the experience of those who visit my exhibitions. In the past, I considered my relationship with painting to be different from many other painters. My impression was that many painters often was processing the same painting over and over again, year after year. I, on the other hand, looked at each painting as a unique project in itself and I found a lot of inspiration in performance art from the 60s. Since a few years back now I have tried to change my way of working and create a more coherent body of work. At the same time, I did not want to get stuck in a repetitive way of working. For me, it is important to constantly find myself in a problematic resistance. I have therefore created a mental

framework inspired by the chart that Rosalind Krauss elaborated with in her text about sculpture in the expanded field. My goal is to combine different images, and ways of looking at life. I always have a sketchbook in my pocket in which I lay down ideas and sketches. Afterwards, I plan the paintings carefully in the computer. Sometimes I use found images, sometimes I create the images I use from scratch and often I build up a 3D environment, which I then process in Photoshop. The planning of the paintings makes me more daring when I finally paint. Yet, the actual process of painting always quickly takes the work to a result that is different from what I could have predicted. I have been in therapy and I have done paintings inspired by the things I learned then but I have never studied psychology in an academic context. However, my work has a psychological dimension based on my concerns with the relationships between people. I am interested in the social aspects of being human, and everything that happens in the encounter between people, such as power relations, hierarchies, collective structures and collective work, norms, interpretations of others, the fact that it is impossible to be completely transparent with an identity and the fact that everything that is considered truth only exist in the minds of many individuals, each of which with a unique perspective on life. Although I try to avoid my work to only be about the personal, I try to create psychological tensions and ambiguities in my work.

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We would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from A Secret Left Alone and Matrjosjka, a couple of stimulating works 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 these pieces is the way the combination between tones and texture provides your canvass with dynamic and autonomous aesthetics, to communicate an attempt to transform tension to harmony, and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the genesis of these works, would you shed light on your main source of inspiration?

Both these works are attempts to combine a mental space with a public sphere. Every painting I do is like a test. I propose paintings as a way of trying to create visions of reality. Matrjosjka was at first another painting from a few years back. I wasn’t quite happy with it and I was somewhere else in my processes so I split the painting in two and added the room in which the characters appear and I also added images in the foreground. A Secret Left Alone had its origin in me wanting to depict nothingness but also in trying to combine visual languages that are hard to combine. Furthermore, for me, the empty room is like an encounter with oneself. I wanted to create the sensation of a presence. It’s a nonwitnessed event. The abstraction in this painting can be read as being in the room or on the surface of the canvas. It’s hard to tell you about where inspirations come from. I could tell you about painters I appreciate, like Julie

Mehretu or Katharina Grosse but my inspiration comes from all parts of life and everything around me. Texts by Deleuze and Arendt have made me

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interested in combining visual languages and ways of viewing, Rancière’s ideas about the relationship between politics and aesthetics and

Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about how the reality and our conception of reality relate to each other are other things I might think about while painting. It’s

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those ideas that propose concepts about how an individual exist in relationship to society and to other people that inspire me.

The dialogue established by colors and texture is a crucial part of your style: in particular, the effective combination between intense nuances of tones sums up the mixture of

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paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

Previously, I focused more on the gesture of the brush stroke, like I guess a calligraphy painter would do. The work I did at that time could be related to Tal R, Tala Madani or Anton Henning. I searched for a directness and I was probably more driven by emotion. Today I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really know who my work relates. I can say that my work is not about the psychological. However, I want my paintings to have a psychological imprint and a strong presence, mixed with a commitment to the exterior. For me it's about creating a dynamic balance between moods and rationally planned choices. The painting's structure is as important as the idea of the work, the motive and the colors I use. I paint mostly in primary colors for more realistic elements, more artificial colors for disturbing abstract elements and graphic elements to create contrast. I do not see the way I paint as a two- dimensional composition. Instead, I plan and build the paintings in a three- dimensional way, from the back to the front.

thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a

Your paintings are rich of symbols and evokative elements. When playing with the evokative power of reminders to universal imagery your approach establishes direct relations with the viewers that goes beyond any conventional symbolism: 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

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within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

Previously I used symbols more. I am interested in the relationship between image and language and between a symbol and how you understand it.

Even though I could never draw a perfect circle you would now I mean a circle if I would draw one. I want my work to give the sensation that there is a narrative and sometimes I chose to paint images that are linked to a private sequence of events or a personal memory that is important to

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me. By doing so I am hoping that the image will create an impact on the viewer, in the same way as the story behind the image has a strong effect on me. However, the painting is never about this narrative. The narrative, for me, is a tool that I combine with other tools. However, I do relate to narratives

about the field and the history of art and to narratives about the projections we all create of ourselves and also the narratives about the culture we live in. Your work conveys a subtle but effective criticism concerning the materialistically driven culture that saturate our contemporary age. But

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while artists from the contemporary scene, as Ai WeiWei or more recently Jennifer Linton, use to express open socio-political criticism in their works, you seem more interested to hint the direction, inviting the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead to subvert a variety of usual, almost stereotyped cultural categories. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in a certain sense or did you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

I find that political art is complicated to relate to, partly because political actions has a stronger effect outside of the art world, and partly because it would be hypocritical of me to sit in my ivory tower and comment on other peoples suffering. I think that Ai WeiWei makes interesting art but I also believe that there is a misunderstanding about him. The political actions that he has been imprisoned for he has done as an activist and not as an artist. His artwork has never been censored, neither has it had any significant political effect. However, I take interest in art that is about something and I myself am engaged in political questions. There are artists that have a political approach that interest me: Paul Chan, Santiago Sierra, Kendell Geers, Michelangelo Pistoletto or Doris Salcedo. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like art that talks about the political in an exaggerated direct or subtle way. For me it is important that my art touches upon what I want to say about how I see the shape of our society. Arendt describes French poets

who wrote about their spiritual life before the German occupation. When the poets became involved in the resistance their commitment became directed outward and a public sphere

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was created between those who fought for the same thing. After the war, the poets experienced that their political commitment had increased their selfawareness and that their poems were

considerably affected by this. It is this movement between the inner and the outer and the encounter between the private and the collective that interests me. Therefore, I see my work as

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political. I would not say that I do political art and if the political questions would have been my main priority I would do something else than paint. I am interested in reaching out and in a

dialogue. The work I do becomes political because its about the encounter between the private and a public sphere and between collective truths and mental spaces. In my

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or conceptual but rather painterly linguistic. The political subjects in my paintings almost become a painterly element among other.

paintings, I also try to create images of the political in itself by allowing various perspectives and visual languages come together. Other than that I don’t consider my paintings to be theoretical

When I studied at Beaux-Arts of Paris I was occupied with the definitions of the words “art” and “normal”. Furthermore, I had this idea about searching to depict structures that constitute hierarchies, power relations and norms. At first is was Foucault and later on Judith Butler that gave me ideas about how I could create paintings that related to the thoughts that occupied me. The body of work I call The Rules Of Life And Society is related to this time in my processes. These works of painting, happenings, performances and video pieces was also based on feelings of frustration and melancholy. They were created during a time when I moved between Paris, Berlin, Gothenburg and Stockholm and I was rootless and poor. j. For the question about what role an artist could play in the contemporary society, I think that in the future artists will be employed by companies for their training in creative, critical and divergent thinking. Furthermore, I think that the artwork will continue to have an equivalent importance to society as for example philosophy or poetry. My hope is that art will have a central part in public debate and that art will have importance to more people. My fear is that art will be considered varnish, that easily can be scraped of in scarce times. How painting will be looked upon in the future, or rather how I want it to be looked upon is the question I am

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working with. Nowadays I think that paintings are either appraised according to modernist standards or for the context in wish they are presented. My hope is that I will be able to create autonomous paintings that correlate to contemporary society. Your inquiry into the volatile in the definitions of society and of life condenses the intrinsic ephemeral nature of our reality, giving it a sense

of permanence: your Public Sphere series inquires into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres, providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a contamination the inner and the outside: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space?

For me, the public space is a physical concrete place while the public sphere

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is a condition similar to democracy. The public sphere is based on dialogue and encounters and it has a psychological dimension since it is created by human interchange. I would very much like to make work for the public space and a goal would then be to create something that could create a public sphere. Except for the work by Richard Serra I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t recall ever having seen a public artwork that interest me. I would like to

create something that invites to conversation or create feelings of happiness and security or creates an understanding for other people, or something that create a collective experience. While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your paintings often to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: you rather seem to invite the viewer to find personal interpretations to the

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feelings that you convey into your paintings... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and memory. What is the role of memory in your process?

And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

l. Memory, and in particular, vague memories that are buried in the mind

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interest me. For me its not about communicating emotions or expressing myself. My processes are more about painting itself and about using what I think might constitute me as tool or as a language that I can experiment with on

the canvas and combine with things that interest me, painterly experiments and interiors that create mental, physical and collective limitations or possibilities. Before I was more of a slave under my emotions and I created symbolic

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paintings by necessity. However, afterwards I was often not very interested in my own work. Many of those paintings I have painted over or continued to work on. What I do now is a purely painterly process in correlation with intellectual choices. Over these years your works have been internationally showcased in several occasions, including eight solo exhibitions. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create an emotional and psychological involvement with the viewers, who 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?

Something I constantly return to the is the encounter in itself. My paintings are all about the encounter and the paintings are also created to create the sensation of an encounter for the viewer. The fact that someone will look at and interpret what I do is something I constantly have in mind and something I try to process. I take the audience in consideration in all the choices I make. I wish my paintings to be both self sufficient and, at the same time, a proposal in a dialogue with the art world and with the people who look at my paintings. These later years I have put more and more effort to give my paintings painterly qualities but I have

always treated my paintings as installation objects. The year I started my studies in Paris I saw an impressive retrospective by Rothko. It was an experience that have influence my work a lot. In the exhibition I could appreciate the paintings for what they were. At the same time I experienced a bodily sensation. I became aware of my body, I felt trapped, heavy and transparent. It sounds like I was on drugs but I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. I have seen other exhibitions by other artists that also have created a physical reaction. This is something I am hoping to create; paintings that are interesting for what they are and objects that can create the sensation of an encounter and a physical reaction. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Erik. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

On a more practical level, I will make smaller paintings to emphasize the idea of a proposal. Other than that I will continue to challenge myself to not only make what I know how to do but to create in the frustrating sensation of being in a problem or resistance. I will make more elaborated sketches to be able to make more complicated paintings. The latest paintings I have done are based on 3d- models that I have made. I will continue to experiment with tools that could help me in the painting process. By continuing to paint interiors, memories, abstractions and visual languages I will search for a dynamic balance that talks to the eye and to the brain.

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Dalia Smayze

C hen C. Bachar Lives and works in Rishon le-Zion, Tel Aviv, Israel

An artist's statement

s a young boy the world of painting was revealed to me, which began in late childhood practicing my copying skills on popular logos, Disney characters and record covers, on my home’s walls and on my classmates notebooks, a habit and a hobby that rose to a huge thirst to acquire the skills of visual art.

As a part of my travels in the United-Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Morocco, Australia, India, Thailand, Laos, China and Mongolia, opened a channel of art in me as a river burst through cracked dam, the world of professional painting was alluring me. While studying Computer Science, I was looking for job, any job but being a waiter, I went to study entry-level graphics, and immediately started to work in graphic design, so I could finance my life as a student. It took me two years to realize that I was born to design and craft. This is my life, not high-tech. I studied at the “Avni” Institute, for a year, plastic art: illustration, painting, drawing and sculpting clay, I continued to a degree in "Visual Communication Design Holon", nowadays I’m the owner of Studio-Karnaf for graphic designing, illustrating, animating and branding.

My Art Methods goes in tandem with my spiritual ways. The Attraction to mysticism has led me to learn Reiki, sit monasteries hours and learn the types of meditation, numerology and NLP to learn, read and implement many books, studied psychology years, going to festivals and spiritual gatherings ignited anew the love and light of internal and global. Remain open to new things, to be tolerant to the reality around me, because it is always more surprising than imagination. I believe that nature around us, that was my playground when I was a little child, fills us with creativity, wisdom and passion of the universe. I use the channels that each one of us have, most of them are based on large and small emotion, feeling the energies around, trying to get to my most balanced place, to enter peace and connect with great love, and out of that silence always set out visions or summons images which I want to create, go through a journey of inner searching. This is my way to communicate with myself, with people, with my God, this is the way to unload and handle, this is the way to make love. This is the search.

Chen C. Bachar

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Chen C. Bachar An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Chen C. Bachar's multidisciplinary art practice goes in tandem with his spiritual ways to explore the relationship between our perceptual categories and the imagery from everyday life, to provide the viewers with a multilayered experience capable of walking them into the liminal area in which subconscious level establishes a symbiosis between the conscious sphere. One of the most impressive features of Bachar's works is the way it conveys peace and connection with great love to speak of emotions and a variety of feelings, creating a compelling narrative: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production. Hello Chen and welcome to ARTiculAction: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your rich and multifaceted background: you have a solid formal training after your studies at the Avni Institute, you nurtured your education at Visual Communication Design Holon. How do these experiences as well as your current travels around the world influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your substratum inform the way you

relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

The experiences I had throughout the world has enhanced the knowledge and technical tools I already acquired at Avni Institute and Holon institute of technology. There ,the world of painting revealed itself to me with all its technics that can help me express myself .I got my inspiration from the world, from the people and the places, even from the spices in Morocco ,their bright colors, all that gave me a lot of inspiration and I even painted with spices. The architecture and the culture in many of the countries I have traveled to pushed me to explore more ways and directions in my paintings. I believe the substratum is infinite, with the gathering of elements that forms an artwork, I let it out without protection. It is a quest of inner search that brings out the artwork through the substratum With the search i crack kind of a mystical code in me. From my spiritual travels in India, Mongolia, China, Thailand and more, I found myself exposed to a world of visual spiritual signs which connected me to my emotions and gut feelings. I use the tools that I found and learned all over the world for the creation process , for example: I studied Numerology, Reiki , Jewelry, wood crafting and attended

gipsy

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courses of enrichment for the internal world, all of these experiences help me express my creations and decide with material I pass on my filings for the creation.

took from the Japanese calligraphy world, I try to be as accurate as I can be, paint motif, however small, over and over again to get realistic as possible.

Your approach condenses a variety of techniques that ranges from Painting and Drawing to Digital Art, that allows you to explore the expressive potential of the media you select and we we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.chenbachar.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, have you ever happened to realize that such synergy is the only way to snatch the spirit of the ideas you explore?

For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected African woman and Gipsy, a couple of interesting works that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of these piece is the way the juxtaposition between intense tones provide your canvass with dynamic and autonomous aesthetic: in particular, Gipsy seems to communicate an attempt to transform tension to harmony, and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the genesis of these pieces, would you shed light to your main source of inspirations?

Today I use a number of techniques which I collected to get to where I want to express myself, using a rugged texture to show difficulty, strong colors to express any internal shout or often optimism of childhood. There are several short videos on YouTube in which I revealed the process which I create. A creation is not only the painting itself. It is Very important for me to have the right space, the right time, I built my studio to create a place of inspiration, the right music, with the right materials. Many times the computer is the last thing I touch, giving me a quick and easy solution to get the creation out, there is no doubt that environmental, emotional place, materials and inspirations are a big part of the work process, There are many moments when I let my hand run on the canvas without thinking about it, just fill the movement of my hand, something I

My source of inspiration are people, The moments that people experience. People fascinate me. By nature I am trying to find the balance between all the parts. Like writing a musical piece, every vessel playing carries some weight. It's the same in painting, there are my extremists, sharp and strong parts, that connects to a very masculine energy, and tenderness, pleasant, delicate feminine side. That, as I claim is my connection to the feminine side, it is very important for me to find balance between the parts, even the colors, also in the lines, to pass on the authentic feeling.in "Gipsy" I wanted to emphasize the power of the woman, the power she has in the face of life her incredible patience, her

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the fisher man

feminine containment against her strengths in her body language ,in the colors, the lines and shading. In "African Woman" It was important for

me to emphasize the strength of the woman, to show a sexy, soft, gentle woman, with nobility and strength that can capture me, that can make

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thoughts

me wonder what happened to her, who is she? I took a photo in which she appears, looked at it, and it caused me to be mesmerized for a few days, Until I

decided that I need to capture that moment, studying her through painting, trying to reach a gentle body tones, to emphasize her femininity in the most

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Steve Jobs

gentle way, and simultaneously her power. The story of her life. Another interesting piece of yours that has particularly impressed us and on

which we would like to elaborate a bit is entitled Thoughts: the dialogue established by colors and texture is a crucial part of your style: in particular, the effective combination between thoughful nuances sums up the

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mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

In the Painting "Thoughts" a quest began to search a unique line that speaks directly from the subconscious. From an output of realism to the abstract. I didn't want a purely abstract painting, I wanted the balance. As a realistic character she waited for half a year without a background, then I decided to look for her "thoughts" through the lines I draw on the canvas without desire for realism or perfection, Subconscious to hand. I wanted to

illustrate what she goes through with two colors, orange - animality, creativity and sexual power, and the Purple color that is very high spiritually, a color that channels a huge femininity. It was there, in the search for my unique painterly language, I found the direction from the collection of intuitive lines, extract elements to contact with the viewer, like her breasts, the eagle, parts of the body, all of them exiting her Clothes, the exterior we wear on our bodies comes out to the world and reflects the sensuality and also the messages that are unclear. This painting really started at the end of my studying in Avni , at that time painting a nude model really impressed me, a round and pleasant- looking woman's body, women as something very mysterious in my life, I was curious to

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John Lennon

get in touch with my feminine side and take out lines that transfer this feeling, lines that transfers thought's not necessarily by text, but by something around you. The format I chose was

small and square, I wanted to feel safe in a small format, exploring the new language and then turn to large canvases. I had the need for an intimate format, as a part of the work.

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Amy Winehouse

While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your pieces sometimes to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, in Childhood you seem to invite

the viewer to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your paintings... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the

The Clown

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relationship between emotion and memory. What is the role of memory in your process? And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

The painting "Childhood" has an old tricycle and behind it two different chairs. The tricycle, in my feeling at that time, felt like me. Something of Child, of the happy childhood that ended a long time ago. During that period I connected to my inner child, especially the wounded child who did not get the correct listening from his parents. They did not understand I am an artist and pushed me toward computers. This is the stage of adolescence where I saw myself indeed abandoned and rusty yet with the joy of life that Tricycle is giving, the memories that cannot be taken, optimism and understanding that my life is not the same as my parents. The tricycle as a metaphor of my childhood, truly broken and sad, but still emphasizes that it holds blossoming optimism, the blossoming of life when you understand what you need to learn and take in life. Understand that you are stronger than you thought, always remain optimistic and look at life differently. The chairs standing there and "looking" at the tricycle do not transfer emotion and connection, just as I felt many times during my childhood. I like this painting because it gives me both the joy and sadness. the playfulness and toughness, the monochromes of memories. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you use human universal

channel to enter peace and connect with great love: we have appreciated the way your paintings convey both wisdom and passion, which are wisely balanced with a careful attention to the equilibrium concerning the composition: your work shows an effective combination between experience and imagination and triggers our limbic parameters concerning our relation with physicality: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

Someone said that art is the soul of our society, I do not remember who said it, but I believe it with all my heart. Art is not valued by society today in a sensible way. I see a world where those who let out their soul and expose it to criticism are people who should be most appreciated. What does not happen now for the most part. I appreciate all the kind of art that does not come to harm the world or its viewers. It's no problem to shock the audience, I think it is a real art if it makes you stop, wonder, do, change something in yourself, that excite you to tears, that connects you to other places in your soul, art does not leave you indifferent and doesn't hurt you. Art sends a message even if it is abstract, I believe that art should be communicative. Art that transfer's a sense of authenticity. The constant search of artists to leave a message, or mark in the world will always be there. I am in favor of some more searching, experimenting, mind opening of new

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inner and outer worlds. To Excite, that is why I am in this world - excite and excitement. I highly admire Contemporary Art and as the digital era evolves I'm attracted more and more towards past techniques. For example, work in tempera, that really brought me back to past lives how they use to cook and prepare the colors used, it was very exciting for me. You seem to draw from universal imagery and your works entitled JOHN LENNON and STEVE JOBS the multilayered experience to whom you invite the viewers gives a permanence to the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the characters you capture through your images. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

In my work on "John Lennon" and ''Steve Jobs'' I had a different journey. "Steve Jobs" is divided into two Canvases and for a good reason. Steve Jobs was a visionary and a kind of dictator, he also changed the world with creativity and also was a person who was hard to work with, so I divided the work. However, I left the piece colorful and optimistic because I appreciate him very much, and it is important to emphasize. The colorful Pop-Arty lines given to the painting of "John Lennon" were mostly to capture the being of the person I painted, the look, his character. I used bright colors and the use of color psychology to transfer my feelings towards the illustrated. I have no personal acquaintance with the illustrated, yet I have much appreciation for them and their work led me to research

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about them, I read the book about Steve Jobs before approaching to paint the character, and I watched the documentary about the Beatles and John to understand him. I'm sure that without connection to the creation and its origins I cannot pain an authentic creation that I'm in there. In each painting I create, I put a part of me in it somewhere. Using a lot of lines that are not realistic, and also the Redirection to paint abstract, comes from intuition and spreading my catharsis that related to the person. You cannot be disconnected from your artwork in my opinion, the connection is even, dare to say, mostly you. I picture myself in a different form, what I put on the canvas are values, feelings and my understanding of the world. This is part of my inner journey. It's like in psychology, where your character could be examined by a simple drawing, the same way you can understand the inner journey I go through that occurred during painting. We definitely love the way your craft production combines rigorous geometry with freedom of composition, summing up into a tactile concreteness the ideas: what about your choice of materials: what drew you to them? In particular, do you start work with a concept or does the idea come later?

My choice of materials depends on the message I want to pass on. There are lots of materials at our disposal and it's important to be accurate, As important

to be wild. My attraction comes from a vision. I visualize what I want but don't go into details, feel like painting acrylic, feel like painting on a big canvas, I feel like I want to paint a half realistic half abstract painting. From there I start if I want a painting hotter I tend to choose oil paints, if something more modern or I catharsis of the moment, I will use watercolors, I could get cracking as soon as possible, and then I begin the journey. Not many cases in which I began with abstract then I got to realistic painting. The concept is important, but I never know where it will take me, I took inspiration in my recent paintings from photographs and channeled them to my zone, my art. There were paintings I painted with spices, coffee, sand, every material gives its energy and it is very important to be accurate, what's nice here is that no one can say or dictate to you what accurate for you. For example, there are paintings of three layers and 15, every painting and my "eagle" with it, sometimes I humanize my paintings in their demand towards how to paint them. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who 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

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process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

It is very important for me to be communicative, to some extent understandable. Also it's very important for me to remain mysterious. I think an artist should have freedom in his area, to create from the heart and stomach, less from the head. It's one thing to consult and listen to criticism and opinions, but an entirely different thing where the artwork takes you, what she whispers to you and if she's ready. There is a huge dialogue in any artwork I do, my interest is to keep in perspective the opinions compared to what I really want to transfer, and how much freedom I give to the art in me. I believe that this journey will have lots of opinions and reviews but it is part of the journey. It is important for me to stay open, to experience, to hear, try and make mistakes! This is quite different than to follow what people say, otherwise the freedom I have to create art, has no weight. I would not want to be an artist that paints only known figures in pop art style, it is important for me to experiment and for that, I need people to give opinions. I respect my art, that is why I show it, but there's an area that is all mine and it's important for me to keep to myself even more. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Chen. Finally, would you like to tell us readers

something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

My work is always in progress, just like in life. Through learning, through new experiences, new countries and interesting people, life goes on and we all grow with them. I'm interested in opening myself for more streams and lines. As long as I call myself an artist, it will always be like that. Being an artist is not just creation, it's something that is always around, there's no break, thinking divergences always gives more solutions, flexible thinking and creativity, whether it's painting, Sculpture, cooking, dancing, conversation, everywhere. As long as I continue the journey in and out, spiritual search for balance I believe I would find more directions. I hope to always be able to surprise or excite with my artwork, to touch and even affect. I started painting at a very late age, after many years of pushing art aside. From computer programmer I became a graphic designer and today my art is part of everyday life. Every day is important for me to create and continue to my journey.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com