LandEscape Art Review - August 2013

August 2013

JOSEPH CILIA REBEKKAH PALOV NINA BUMBALKOVA MISHA RABINOVICH RAMIN PARVIN JOSEPH O'NEILL WANG HAIYUAN LINDA HAVENSTEIN CAMILLA HAUKEDAL ALDOBRANTI FOSCO FORNIO “Disaster”, by Wang Haiyuan Actor: Ren Zhiyan, Photographer: Tang Nihua, Dresser: Huang Wen

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Summary

Our net review presents a selection of artists whose works shows the invisible connection betwen inner landscapes and actual places.

Apart from stylistic differences and individual approaches to the art process, all of them share the vision that art is a slice of the world to be shared. An artwork doesn't communicate anything: it simply creates a mental space. Language, gestures, or rather a masterly brush-stroke of a painter are nothing but ways to invite us to explore our inner landscapes". Thirty years have passed since this Borgesean deep and at the same time provocative statement has been written by the fine Italian writer Giorgio Manganelli.

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Misha Rabinovich

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A u g u s t

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(USA)

“We are dealing with a “flush away”culture. We flush our once cherished pet fish down the toilet and forget about it. But where does our waste end up? The entry-point and center-piece of the work is Toiletponics. The beauty of infinite rediscovery confronts the futility of eternal return in an aesthetic knot joining the natural and cultural ecologies.

Toiletponics

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Wang Haiyuan (China)

“We have met at this cross, just like when we cross the street, we have been always told "watch out for the cars!"

At this moment, we have met ourselves facing our. uneasiness and ignorance.”

collage Disaster

Ramin Parvin

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(Iran / Germany)

“I start to imagine the walls around us, It’s a big deal to narrait a story with the details and sentiment, looking for closed frames, to be safe, to beeing there, I eliminate the details of a room to express discontinuities between me and the scope of imagination that I dreamed in all these years.

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Camilla Haukedal (Norway)

“ It’s a great distance in the time frame between painting and video. In film one captures the movement in real time while in a painting the movement lies in the imagination, as an extension of the moment captured on canvas. ”

Aldobranti Fosco Fornio (United Kingdom)

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I am a scientist from an artistic background. I am an artist who cares deeply for the scientific method. I am polymath. I am a chemist who cares about the alchemy of light. I am a physicist who looks into the metaphysics of our vision. I am a mathematician who considers the limit, the continuous, the non-linear and the singularity. I am a writer who weighs words to the microgram. I am a colourist who works chiefly in monochrome.

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Linda Havenstein (Germany)

formats. Digital photos of people is used to create a portrait by inverting the color values and leaving only the individual "landmarks". The result is an image that looks profoundly like a night sky, provoking a gaze at the bodies depicted that we usually use to orientate when looking at the cosmos itself “

Joseph O’Neill (USA)

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Rebekkah Palov (USA)

Nina Bumbalkova (USA)

Dear Efficiency

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Memory is one's ability to store information and recall it as well as the experience that is linked to it. By generating memories we set our selves in a context of the world. Photography as an activity of creating images by recording the surface of reality by a chemical process based on light and light sensitive material.

Dale farm protest London

Joseph Cilia (Malta)

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“ To be honest I can say that art has always been at the centre of my life from childhood and I have always been inspired by a wide range of artists, my two favourites being Leonardo and Van Gogh in particular. Leonardo's incessant thirst and yearning to achieve knowledge and to understand the world around him has always inspired me so much! That great desire to capture the essence of reality and to keep studying so as to better oneself is the attitude that every artist should “treasure.

True Self

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My practice is in music, video, drawing and small software.

Thematically I am drawn to many kinds of economics; the economics of home, money, movement, love, history and words. I find the paradox of value exchange, that one thing can reasonably be valued against any other a wonderfully fertile notion and departure point for synthesizing other imagined futures.

Wall of Courage

A u g u s t

“ As native New Yorkers, we take for granted the nondescript objects, sights and sounds, But i try to latch on to these things appreciate them, and hold on to their beauty, knowing that they will soon be lost. I welcome you to enjoy this series of photographs, and to experience what i see through the lens- the rear, raw magic that exists in my city

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Misha Rabinovich (USA) An artist’s statement

An artist’s statement

This multi-cultural ship beckons you to explore broken and reinvented models of existence. The work’s location in Columbus Circle invites a comparison of flows of goods & ideas vs. the flow of people. Who could have journeyed in this vessel and where did they come from? Could we reuse this vessel to escape back to a totally unknown place?

What kind of opportunities will we find there?

We are dealing with a “flush away”culture.

We flush our once cherished pet fish down the toilet and forget about it. But where does our waste end up? The entry-point and center-piece of the work is Toiletponics. The recirculating water-based food toilet farm collapses realms of life severed by ideology into a single alchemical system. The epic quest of the historical alchemist is reimagined as the transmutation of waste into food. The nitrogen cycle is packaged and tuned to resonate with the circular story arc of classic East and West epics (ranging from the The Wizard of Oz to the Journey to the West). The beauty of infinite rediscovery confronts the futility of eternal return in an aesthetic knot joining the natural and cultural ecologies.

Visitors are not required to confront the death of Nature, nor embrace the birth of Ecology, but they are invited to walk through the door.

Misha Rabinovich

Toiletponics (photo by Andy Frost)

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#196 Winter

Misha Rabinovich

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Misha Rabinovich

An interview with

an interview with

Misha Rabinovich

Hi Misha and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the feature that marks the contemporariness of an artwork?

idea at Documenta (13) this year that I was blown away by: it was a request to add the Earth's atmosphere to the UNESCO World Heritage list. I was just standing there reading this letter and thinking that humanity taking Earth’s ability to sustain human life for granted is the real elephant in the room. And like in that old proverb we are the blind people around it feeling it and smelling it but failing to synthesize our collective experience into a group decision.

Great to be here, and thanks for having me. A work of Art can be defined as such only after comparing the artist's intention and the outcome of the work. The contemporary artwork is invested in its social consequences outside of the Art World context. I appreciate Joseph Beuys anarchistic ideas of everyone becoming an artist and arguably the Internet is ushering in such an age. Not everyone is online yet, but those who are are pumping up information. The ability to judge artworks is crucial in our economy of media abundance. The contemporary artwork often fixates on some sort of filtering process of creation, staging an ordering intervention in the post modern milieu of competing narratives. I’m thinking of Janet Cardiff and George Burres Miller’s disorienting/reorienting augmented reality walks, or Olivia Robinson’s sweat-powered meditative mandalas. There was this

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there particular experiences that have deeply impacted your evolution as an artist?

I visited my relatives in Estonia since I was young.

They always make it seem so easy to grow organic vegetables all the time with minimal effort—like a perpetual motion machine in the back yard spewing food at you. Over there I walk down the road between the cemetery and the subdivided communal garden and ruminate on life and death. Living in the States makes it easier to draw natural analogies between cultural death and rebirth. There is so much remixing

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Misha Rabinovich

Toiletponics (photo by Andy Frost)

going on these days that it is not even called out as appropriation anymore: it is completely naturalized, like the breakdown of biomass by bacteria and fungi into their underlying units to be reused for new life.

People do it in their sleep just by dreaming in fragments of YouTube videos they saw that day.

hand building and getting a wood fired mobile sauna street and city legal, we embarked on the social engineering and collaborated with the Canary Project to put on a sauna event and performance at The New Museum. School worked out for me so far, and I hope others who take that path make it work.

By the way, I have read that you have recently received your MFA from the Syracuse University, with a major in Transmedia, so I would like to ask you: what's your point about formal training?

Sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of training could even stifle a young artist's creativity...

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on in your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

I’ve seen some people’s creativity get shut down by too much academics. But I was lucky to meet some great people at SU and Environmental School of Forestry. I found collaborators in the DS Institute which lead to the Mobile Sauna project. After the burden of

I end up doing a lot of research on the internet and talking to real people including experts. I can get much more bandwidth out of real people than mediated ones. Even with lots of help it has still taken

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Misha Rabinovich

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a year on average to reach a completion point with recent projects.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with your recent Video Grow Light: I suggest to our reader to watch it directly at your website http://misharabinovich.com/video_grow_light.html, because sound plays a relevant role as well: could you tell us something about the genesis of this work? What was your initial inspiration?

I started learning about the different frequencies of light that plants want when I had to make a custom grow light for Toiletponics. There are color ratios for balanced stimulation of the two types of chlorophyl and this informed the choice of LED colors. These color ratios can be thought of as a recipe for an light filter. What better source of multi-colored light than abundant user generated internet video?

Time-lapse photography shows us that plants follow the sun across the sky, so why do we put them under lamps that simply turn on and off?

I got two basil plants from the grocery store.

I put one under the window and veiled the other one from all outside light except the light of a projector driven by a video curator robot.

After two weeks the plant under the projector did better than the plant under the window. Granted it was winter, but at least I knew the plant won’t die under projected light; this gave me the confidence to continue to evolve the system into something that actually worked well enough conceptually and aesthetically to make it worth the energy. A lot of people have and continue to experiment with plant stimulation. Now it seems that plants actually don’t care if you play them a specific genre of music. But they do indeed prefer noise over silence. By mixing down the soundtracks of a hundred YouTube videos, I found that the YouTube soundscape tends towards the more natural “pink” noise (sound of a waterfall) as opposed to the more machine-like “white” noise (pure static). In addition, YouTube’s soundscape featured a swell in the frequency range of average human vocals. The fact that “pink”

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#196 Winter Video Grow Light (photo by David Broda)

Misha Rabinovich noise is found everywhere in nature suggests how YouTube content can be naturalized. This cultural production can be usefully modeled in ecological terms. The Video Grow Light is evaluating several YouTube streams at once and you can hear a mix of all the sound.

Eventually this cacophony tends to seduce.

I have to admit that this artwork has suggested to me an idea that might seem a bit naif, but that I would like to share with our readers as well: could the apparently chaotic randomness of a sequence of light & sounds hide a secret geometry? Maybe discovering this hidden order could be one of the roles of an artist and the creative process is a chance of freeing energy, the same energy that in a way feeds those who enjoy an artwork, and the vegetables, of course... what's your point about this?

The project hosts a garden the topology of which visualizes the content of web video. The Video Grow Light is an ordering intervention transmuting information into material value; into real food. This spagyric alchemy thrives on decomposing multi-media and recycles cultural waste into fertilizer. Humanity cultivated culture that allowed us to transcend our animality. At some point down the road, our innovations released us from our ecology. The most destructive cultural concept is the idea of Waste. There is no such thing as Waste in nature. Our culture invented Waste which is accreting into an immutable alien burden hanging over us like a black moon. Waste is ideological. We must disappear this Waste, even if it necessitates the disappearance of non-Waste as well. We will be left only with material: material to shape and use as we see fit. Waste is what separates us from nature. Radical ecology design is a framework for disappearing Waste to rejoin the ecology.

William Burroughs promoted the potential power of remix or “cutup” by claiming that a careful mix of police sirens and crowd noise could actually start a riot. There is a lot of potential energy within YouTube videos but only if they are watched in the correct order. The plants are housed in two way mirrors to reflect them into hyperbolic rows while recycling light reflection. Plants can be conditioned by certain video filtering to grow tall or grow out bushy. People who see the piece experience the same information-energy that the plants are consuming. People are implicated in the plants’ condition through their video contributions to YouTube’s communal nutrient soup and real life audiences are roped in further by feeding the plants with their carbon dioxide exhale.

Another piece of yours on which I would like to spend some words is the stimulating installation Toiletponics, which opened in downtown Syracuse for TONY 2012 Biennial. How did you come to this idea? Moreover, this is a live artwork that literally involves the spectator to reflect on the nature of an ecosystem... I would dare to say that little Beefadou could be even a metaphor of our existence... what reactions have you received from your audience?

When I first came into contact with Aquaponics recirculated water

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Misha Rabinovich self included) heard a lot of stories from visitors and one mother of two—who having suffered through a foreclosure—began considering a shipping container-based dwelling. When people came to the installation over the last few days after Beefadou was gone they were visibly disappointed that he was missing, and the off-putting smell of my experimental substitute fertilizer didn’t help.

The system is now at an urban farm that will showcase it during public tours.

Grow Box Photo by Joe Roggenbuck

farming it reminded me of those water-powered perpetual motion machines Leonardo sketched. I collected diagrams of stupendous machines, and then I saw Rube Goldberg’s systems and just got pulled into the gears. Traveling and seeing old technological artifacts from around the world really got me wondering precisely why we are here today and not somewhere else. When flush away toilets were first competing with composting toilets for dominance they won because people just wanted to forget. I wanted to create a sort of inverse toilet that people would look at and see it working well without their usual input and functioning as a source instead of a drain. The symbolism of the toilet as some kind of common unit of exchange with the environment was brought home by housing a solitary fish in its bowl.

The young fish that was donated from a densely packed barrel used in science experiments became an individual potent enough to power a productive grow bed just by living and consuming (and of course excreting). His water was pumped up to the vegetables and spices in the grow bed which ate up the fish waste and the cleaned water flowed back down onto the fish. He grew healthy and big to the point of having to curl up just to fit into the toilet.

One day one of the visitors to the installation complained about the tight quarters. He eventually agreed to adopt the fish. I passed the fish off in a final closing ritual where the Tilapia completed its transformation from an anonymous lab rat to a livestock and finally to a pet named Beefadou who became famous and got on TV. My docent team (my-

Grow Box Photo by Joe Roggenbuck

By the way, I have to say that this piece and its connection with radical ecology has reminded me that although the exploitation of our environment has never been execu-ted on a higher level, at the same time people have never been more convinced of their passion for nature. It's such a paradoxical situation: would it seem that this contradiction is not clear enough as to force us to change our behaviour or, at least, our consciousness ?

I think the problem is actually that we haven’t learned to exploit the environment enough. To get maximum use from our resources we must cultivate them and not just deplete them. I think it is a problem of perspective, not technology. And the Arts are there to tackle perceptual problems.

We also have to put our political money where our nature loving mouth is. Creativity is badly need right now on all levels because we don’t just want to survive: we want to actually enjoy doing so.

There is no going back to a “pristine” form of nature; we have no way of really knowing how the world was before humans. Now that our culture is bigger than any force of nature we have to embra-

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Misha Rabinovich

Video Grow Light (a photo by Andrew Saluti)

them out there for people to step on and seeing how they do. Other than that it is all prolonged, uncertain, and painfully hard work with depressingly low amount of support. I find that if you really want to explore an interest you should go for it anyway, because you could really be on to something and get to work with some inspiring people.

ce radical ecology design. So if you have ideas I hope you are jumping right in.

Besides producing your Art you have also earned experience as a teacher: do you think that being a teacher, with the consequent direct contact with your students, has -in a way- influenced your Art practice?

I’ve been learning how to create an opportunity for mutual exploration and exchange vs. just one-way drilling and this is a dear strategy for art installation.

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Misha. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

artists that I happen to interview, and I have to say that even though it might sound the simpler one, it gives me back the most complex answers: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most?

What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

I am working on an exhibition in the Los Angeles area for this Fall. Please stay tuned via my website http://misharabinovich.com

For me the best part is sifting through ideas, putting

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Wang Haiyuan (China) “We have met at this cross, just like when we cross the street, we have been always told "watch out for the cars!"

At this moment, we have met ourselves facing our. uneasiness and ignorance.�

#196 Winter

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Joseph O’Neill

“Disaster” Size: 252cmX180cm/112cmX80cm/56cmX40cm/Photo Actor: Ren Zhiyan/Photographer: Tang Nihua/Dresser: Huang Wen

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Wang Haiyuan

An interview with

Wang Haiyuan Hi Haiyuan, I'm happy to welcome you to LandEscape.

I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the feature that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

It’s hard to answer this kind of question. Something that can express the feelings and convey the knowledge-- this might be the objective definition of a work of art.

Contemporariness of an artwork is an overall concept. If we accept that there is the democracy in the world, it means that the contemporariness of an artwork under democracy and the contemporariness of an artwork without democracy are not the same. If we give the contemporariness a current reality, then the concept of contemporariness under different social systems has different meanings.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there particuIar experiences that has deeply impacted on your evolution as an artist? By the way, what's your point about formal training? Sometimes I happen to ask myself if a certain kind of training could limit or even sifle a young artist's creativity...

I had served in the army, worked as construction workers, been a propagandist of government, and been an art teacher at high school, now I’m an art designer.

My life experience has decided my interests and the way how I’m doing my job. Pay more attention to other people and ask more to myself, can I change myself and the surroundings? The small problem I faced today might be the big problem we are facing nowadays.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks?

In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

I call all my works as "movie scene", a panorama in the non-life movie scenes. It relates to my occupation.

Technology is a broad term. First of all we need to show the reasonableness of a work, the technology is a method to serve a specific occasion.

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Wang Haiyuan Producing a work is time and effort consuming, sometimes we decide to do a work just in a second, but this procedure needs to do a lot of relevant work, basically we need to make drawings and models, then we get our final works.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with your works entitled Watch Out and Disaster, that our readers have admired in the starting pages of this article: could you tell us something about the genesis of these pieces? What was your initial inspiration?

This is a scam made by a group of people, we are all participants. This scam is specially referred to my living environment. It has the social side, humans continue to explore, it means they continue to expand. These works are from the things I have seen and been feeling in travel, and from the social systems in a development process in China.

We have been hurt by the social system, but we are also the beneficiaries and participants of this system. This is the scam that the system made for each participant.

"Disaster" is talking about a girl, holding a weapon to kill a person. After several chops, at the exact moment when she turned on the light, she found that what she cut was not a person, but a pig. This was a fake crime scene arranged by someone. More horrible is she found someone was watching her at that time, whole the thing was a scam.

The Infestation of Rats: a Plan for Eagles. This is from experience in tourism. The grassland degradation of Tibetan Plateau is very serious now. It’s because of the human, the human’s uncontrollable desire. Tourism, mining, overgrazing-- all these things are like the infestation of rats on a prairie. In this work I set up a movie scene to simulate celestial burial in Tibet. There is some use of props-- jewelry, knives, and Buddhist carvings of judge in the hell. The lack of faith, drained butter lamps—this is a kind of hint, means that after death we will all be judged. There are only eagle feathers, eagle will not be here. This is just an ideal of mankind, another plunder because of the greed.

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"Watch Out" Photo /Size: 120cm * 150cm* 3/March, 2012.3 Another work of yours that have mostly impressed me and on which I would like to spend some words is Watch Out. In particular, one of the features that has impacted on me is the the masterly usage if light that gives a sense of movement to the image and at the same time forces us to something that I would dare to call "meditation". Would you like to take us through your creative process when developing this project?

relationships, which is a fully-fledged carnival. Art is attached to its appearance, to make the word "technology" more gorgeous. Technology is the most fashionable consumer goods in this era. Art is more diversified. Human’s society is going forward along the “Information Super Highway": highly developed technology is creating a high degree of economic efficiency.

People's material living conditions are more convenient, rich, and people's lifestyles have promoted the global economic integration, while the people's mental area is degenerating: the collapse of faith, morals fall, spiritual emptiness, mental illness, and many other phenomena. Globalization helps human to achieve a high developed new information age, the era of knowledge economy. Yet at the same time people's spiritual level is not raised with the economy and technology but has a downward trend: restless, boredom, apathetic-leading the loss of themselves;

The work “Watch out” is from a detail of life. This is happening in rapid development of China. The photograph uses the method of switching and comparing, to show the moment we meet ourselves. This crossroad is like a mirror. Our coldness, sophistication, anxiety and panic—all were written on our faces. How should we face ourselves and get along with others.

The work”Watch out” is a word in the everyday life, in a specific environment. It has universal and present meaning.

Person's life, in a sense, is a war with himself. Each person has his two sides-- good side and bad side.

By the way, do you happen to use modern digital tecniques while working at you pieces? I'm sort of convinced that new media art will definitely fill the dichotomy between Art and Technology and I would go as far as to state that Art and Technology are soon going to assimilate one to each other... what's your take about this?

Today, technology is the most contemporary art.

The coming digital era has changed our spatial

Empty House

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#196 Winter

Wang Haiyuan

human is alienate from himself, other person and the natural world, and the flooding of individualism, lust doctrine, hedonism leads to moral decline, and I think this is exact what the art and philosophy need to confront and explore.

Wang Hauyuan’s Work Photographer: Yu Lu

Life is really not a pleasant thing. People hurt each other, plunder each other. I always think that people don’t know how to get along with each other.

Distance is the way to feel safe in this society. Can we find the exit? I doubt it.

Different ideas about future, the development of technology sounds good for the better life of human being, but this is another kind of plunder for space resources. Too fast. We have collective revelry and psycholagny behind the technology.

together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between several artists?

Diameter 45cm, March 2013, Duration: 22 minutes

A 45cm long stick with two sharp ends is kept in baLance by two human bodies. The stick will fall off if the bodies move away, and moving too close, the bodies will get hurt. We continually repeat this process.

The job as an art designer gives me a lot of experience. Due to space constraints the project ”Empty house” has not been fully exploited and You often work with actors, in order to produce completed. The original idea of this project is to your pieces, and I find this collaborative practice make a static noise environment firstly, when really interesting. Moreover also another interesparticipants walked into the space, shied the ting work of yours, entitled Empty House is the amplified static noise by the sensor, and amplify result of an effective synergy with the sound the sound of participants’ bodies by the sensor. engineer Yong Zhang. Dealing with collaborations, Yong Zhang is an excellent sound engineer, we this has reminded me a quote of the artist Peter “Disaster”have Size: the 252cmX180cm/112cmX80cm/56cmX40cm/Photo same cognition about the sound collecting.

Tabor who once said that "collaboration is working Actor: Ren Zhiyan/Photographer: Tang Nihua/Dresser: Huang Wen In our cooperation, we have

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Wang Haiyuan

enlarged the effect of this work to infinite possibility, this is the most pleasant and I’m looking forward to work with him again. Wish the space problem could be solved and implemented in the near future.

During this years, your artworks have been exhibited several times, both in your country and abroad, and I think that it's important to mention your award at Kassel, Germany: it goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces?

Yes, the award at Kassel is really a great encourage to me.

Thanks Mrs. Reta--the curator who has given me this award.

It is my honor to participate in the “2nd Land Art Mongolia Biennial – LAM 360°” in 2012. Due to the effort of curators, this exhibition has got a lot of attention, and took part in the First World Biennial Forum.

All the works have been combined in two publi-cations: one is the official anthology published by Hatje Cantz (http://t.cn/zHMapBr); another is the topic for magazine YISHU(http://t.cn/zHMapBB). Both of them are firstly published in Venice Biennale this year. As human beings, we can’t avoid these problems and get the recognition from others. It is everyone's desire and satisfaction, which is uncontrollable. to the artists that I happen to interview, since even though it might sound the simpler one, it gives me back the most complex answers: what aspect of your work do

"Wind from the plateau " - Dedicated to the gift of Genghis Khan Installment/ size : 55m x 10m

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Wang Haiyuan

Wind from the plateau

you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

Desire is the motive power of human development. We believe in hope and love, but we also compete with each other, wish the recognition from others.

When you are alone, the world is all yours. It is small, but also infinitely large. It is just like a mirror, everything is illusion. To get rid of delusion in order to see the truth.

Joy and enjoyment is instantaneous. Undertaking, facing calmly, art is like a Chinese traditional medicine, always self-healing constantly.

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Haiyuan. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Yes, I have 2 new projects in South Korea recently: The Sea Art Festival 2013 in Bushan (South Korea) to be held in September this year.

"Media" Operation : set up a base with height of 1oocm and 40cm*40cm square, put all the small pieces of papers on it. Then let the wind blow them away. Record the duration with a DV. In Tibet, the Buddhists throw “wind horse” on the top of mountains, in their trip or in the celebration in order to pray for peace and happiness.(“wind horse” is a kind of small paper printed with a horse with wings.) Paper is considered as the traditional media in public broadcasting area and the wind is the media of most things in the world. Material :recyclable color paper(cut into pieces of 5cm*5cm, with a smile sign printed) 19

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Ramin Parvin

Ramin Parvin (Iran) An artist’s statement

Actually I have no intention to start painting with a description or prepared text, I don’t care about telling the concepts with a paper that tell the meaning for audience, or bring in a sentence as a title from Influential people as a statement, everyone has his own way and I am looking for an emotional connection between the audience and the images. My big challenge comes from inside and it’s my way to look forward what’s happening in my feeling and more, express my inner sentiments during the watching the painted images, That's enough! and if I get lucky, I could steal a piece of sentiment from my audience to bring them inside and we will start the new story to live, I started this painting when for a several times we had to leave our home,It was a reiterative happening in our family,The first time I remember, I was a child and war began and we were forced to leave home. After several years back in the early, we packed all the things to leave and thinking the new where to install, The war was over and another war began, so we decided never have a home, I remember many memories about moving, I guess moving and relocation and memories of a family it’s the main story that exist in my life, I start to imagine the walls around us, It’s a big deal to narrait a story with the details and sentiment, looking for closed frames, to be safe, to beeing there, I eliminate the details of a room to express discontinuities between me and the scope of imagination that I dreamed in all these years. I split figures ( myself) in a frame, It was a fact and truth, I belive the people never get relax without having focused on disjunct part of their life to figure out what’s happend during the years between them and outside. #196 Winter 20

Ramin Parvin

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Ramin Parvin

An interview with

Ramin Parvin Hi Ramin, and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

First of all thank you for the interview. I believe that a work of art van have different meanings in different periods. It depends on the artist’s social and cultural environment, where he grew up, what has influenced his mind and his imagery, both internally and externally. For example in the past century, since the role of the masses has been smaller in social and political changes and family has been the most important cell, a work of art has been limited to the apparent beauty of people in this limited space, or to avoid the negativity in the word „limited“ in this seperated and personal space. But today, each person as an individual is involved in this multicultural world. Consequently the artist sees himself connected to different media and starts producing. an after interview withof being active in different fields But about a decade of art ( film, painting and literature) my personal opinion is a little different. Seeing the huge amount of works of art created, I prefer to have a different approach to art.

My purpose of creating art is taking the burden of art’s respon-sibility to society and social changes off its shoulders. A totally persoanl and internal approach to myself, facing myself. This is what I consider the characteristic of contemporary art. That is, the artist facing himself again and again in underlying layers of subconcious. Of course you can’t approach different kinds of art, like performing arts which need clearer concept in order to attract the audience and have an impact.

Can you tell our readers a little about your background?

How have your personal experien-ces impacted on your art practice? I have read that you have received a Bachelor of Art focusing on cinema direction from University of Soureh, Tehran. So, what's you point about formal training? Do you think that artists with a formal education have an advantage over self-taught artists?

There is nothing special in my past worth sharing, although this very past, or should I say this life has been

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my inspiration for my work. I can’t imagine myself today without this background and the kind of life that I had and still have. I am an Iranian, and the situation in my country made it possible for me to experience contradictory things simultaniously all through my childhood, adolescence and as a young adult. Because of the kind of government that we have in Iran, we were costantly changing our situation in different times of the day: in private spaces we could behave one way, in the street we had to be another way, in educational spaces yet another and so on.

This, I believe, has made Iranians multidimentional people who are ready to face new things. This is what amazes me each time I want to create a new piece. When I refer to my image, I realize that I am ready to try new things, technically as well as the subject matter, which is of course a little confusing. Academic education in art can not be altogether useless. I have experienced both ways. I studied drama at university but I’m self-taught in painting.

Each way gives you a different opportunity. Sometimes the idea of theoretical knowledge and academic education brings limitations and is off-putting. Academic atmosphere in Iran was like that. I don’t know enough about western universities. But I believe that unversity can just be a base for the start, and also a place for making connections with others who want to learn.

Connections which seem very important in the world of art today, for being seen and continuing the way from being an amateur to a professional. On the subject of art itself, I don’t believe in academic education. Searching and trial and error can be the best teacher for an artist.

Before getting int he matter of your produc-tion, would you tell us about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, on what technical aspects do you mainly focus in your work?

In general in the beginning I'm not looking for a subject outside. A few times that I did try to get inspired, I got disappointed after some thinking. That is why I usually start with myself to under-stand the distance between me and the world around me and understand exactly how I feel at different times and how I deal with my life at the present time. That is why I follow this idea to un23

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derstand exactly what I want, and when I follow the conversation within me, images follow after a short while. This is quite risky because it is improvisation  and these images can lose their attraction after a short time. I don't like to get excited about the ideas that come to me and stop there. I am sure that after some time I can find later solutions or a different perspective. So I try to pause a little and write about what I mean. Or if I need some sketches I make some very brief notes. About the technique I don't have any specific obsessions, but I like to try different media that I have at.

Now let's focus on your pieces that our readers can admire in these pages. I would start from the series Spilit: the feature that has mostly impressed me is the nuance of the color, which gives plasticity to the image... what was your initial inspiration for these works?

my own place and not having a home, in the symbolic sense, followed me day and night.

My family was scattered around the city.

I just wanted some walls to give me a sense of security. That's why I started this series. I Winter drew seperated#196 spaces in a frame and in each

Not having a home. This is the main idea behind this series.  I remember the time when my family decided to immigrate. We didn't have a house and we were waiting for a  Visa. We had returned our apartment, and each member was waiting with a suitcase. It was a weird feeling. Not having 24

Ramin Parvin like to spend some words is Themes to kill a naked Man: could you take us through your creative process when starting these pieces? By the way, how you get the initial ideas that inspire the artworks you create? Could you tell us something about your imagery?

This series is commissioned. Someone that I have never met saw some of my works on Facebook suggested that I paint based on what he said about his life. He was a man about my own age and homosexual, and he considered his sexual orientation a unique characteristic.

After months of chatting about him and his life I started drawing. This coincided with him moving into his first apartment. He had decided to live alone and this new house and the story of his life took me to these drawings eventually: Black and white, and full of contradictions, Â and the struggle between you and yourself.

As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your big challenge comes from inside and it’s my way to look forward what’s happening in your feeling and more. I must confess that it's more than a while that I happen to think that - besides

one on the I tried to tell the story of a feeling.

When we rented a house again, I painted five of those pictures the size of a wall, because we are five in our family. I wanted to pay my debt to those walls. Five walls for five people.

Another series of yours on which I would

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providing an indispensable platform for an artist's expressionArt could play an effective role in social issues, maybe steering people's behaviour. I'm sort of convinced, that the same emotional state that give birth an interview with to an artwork could even reach the audience and create a deep change in their inner way of perceive the world... I would like to know what's your take about this...

point of view... I'm wondering if Art might have the power of going beyond these artificial dichotomies. What's your take about this?

I don't quite understand what you mean by dichotomies. If you mean the cultural difference between what is in my head and where I live, I should add that people do not have boundries, and this theory is just a touristic thing. Especially in this world of media everybody has the possibility to send his mind and thoughts to different places and of course have different results with his encounters. It seems that this kind of categorising in art and analysing it might be suitable for marketing.

In fact, one of my criticisms to contemporary art is the way the artist is seen in his surroundings. What has become much more important is the environment and the world around the artist, not his attitude and his point of view in facing art!

I agree  with you and if I mentioned the inside what I meant by being introvert is discovering the subconscious to have a better effect on my surroundings. I believe that an artist cannot make a difference in his environment if he is unaware of his feelings or his core. Usually this unawareness can be destructive. I still believe that the role of art is improving aesthetics, or  having a different perspective of what happens around us. That is why I intend to discover this new angle with more delicacy.

Even though I do guess that the following question might probabily sound a bit rthorical, I can't do without mentioning Edward Said's concept of "Orientalism" and the related stereotypes about this subject: as a Persian young man now based in Germany you can view the world from an interesting

Consequently the artist will be limited, and the world will be monodimentional. For example the east is what is always expected form an artist from the east. I don't like this attitude.

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Just wondering if you would like to answer

pean galleries yet. I also have a script which I would like to be filmed in Germany. I believe that the ideas that I have these days, with my immigration from the east to the west, must be realized because they are a part of me, And by creating them I recognise a new dimention in myself. Also I will pass from one stage to another. I believe that in the path of creativity nothing can be as effective as living the ideas and facing the adventures. That is why I usually try to put the lingering ideas into action.

artists that we interview: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction? Well, actually ain't

I can say in general that this whole process from idea to execution is enjoyable to me.

When I am in this way I feel a whole different person inside me and this in my opinion is just because of the opportunity that the art gives you: I feel like I have more than two arms and I can extend my hand in any direction that I want and I will get something. Of course at the time that I am executing my ideas and this private atmosphere stays in my mind, that is how I'd like to feel most of the times. I suppose Thanks for your time and your thoughts, Ramin. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Well I haven't been in Germany for long, and I am not quite familiar with  the environment.

I have a series ready and I intend to have an exhibition of my works. But I don't know Euro27

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Camilla Haukedal

Camilla Haukedal (Norway) An artist’s statement

pont (The girl on the bridge) is a video work that has been filmed with super 8 and digitalized. The video shows a girl that crosses a bridge. The work is a reflection on movement and time.

It’s a great distance in the time frame between painting and video. In film one captures the movement in real time while in a painting the movement lies in the imagination, as an extension of the moment captured on canvas.

We wanted to create a traditional landscape painting where the movement is present, where it can be seen.

The piece was filmed over a longer period of time. The aspect of time is also emphasised through a change in the light, shown through an actual event, a sunset.

07:48min Super 8 (digitalisert) Camilla Haukedal

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#196 Winter

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An interview with

Camilla Haukedal Hi Camilla, I'm happy to welcome you to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the feature that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

I believe most everything can be defined as a work of art nowadays. Depending on the context and how the work is presented. The tricky question is what defines a good work of art.

For me I think the contemporariness lies in the artworks ability to reflect upon a nerve in the society. The year of production is not important, but how the work is understood or read and it’s possibilities to reach beyond its contemporariness.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there particuIar experiences an with on your evolution as that interview has deeply impacted an artist? By the way, besides your studies in Fine Arts at the National Academy of the Arts in Norway, you have spent about six month in Buenos Aires, Argentina as a student of Gabriel Valansi: what have your received fron this experience?

Camilla Haukedal

As mentioned I’ve studied five years at the National Academy of the arts in Norway in some ways a troublesome affair. It can be difficult to learn how to be creative inside an institutional system. At the academy you are met with what you in the beginning believe is total freedom but what in the end becomes the greatest obstacle The experience is of course not all negative, I’ve meet some great people, students and professors who has influenced both my way of working and thinking, But in the end the freedom I embraced in the beginning turns out to be a dangerous loop hole. But because of this underlying uncertainty you defiantly learn how to trust and believe in your own projects.

Before this I studied art history and religion at the University in Oslo. This combination of theory and practical studies has been important for me, especially in the early periods of a project. During my stay in Buenos Aires I was introduced to some of my favorite pieces of art and films. I studied under Gabriel Valansi who managed to get to know me in spite of my shyness. And as I said gave me some memorable art experiences.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set

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the ide is fixed but the rest is more spontaneous, depending on our intuition and creativity.

Working in this way is also interesting when working with other people, it makes room for participation.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like broen, that can be translated as The Girl on Te Bridge, whose stills can be admired by our readers have admired in these pages of this article: could you tell us something about the genesis of this work? What was your initial inspiration?

The work is inspired by a piece of Munch called (The girls on the bridge). My grandmother had a replica on her livingroom wall and maybe this early memory of Munch’s picture made this idea come forth.

The video is also close connected to a corporal experience, a pregnancy. The project developed parallel to my own stomach and the fact that every movement suddenly became slower. The bridge used in the video lies on a little road that I almost daily walked. And in the end, walking this little tour took far more time than before.

The video is filmed in early autumn, whit my son lying next by in his carriage. The aspect of time had now suddenly changed, time went fast but we didn’t’ really move.

We did several shootings with super 8. We chose to use super 8 because of its colors, tones and esthetical qualities and to avoid spending a lot of time with a digital post-production. Waiting for the developed films to return was exciting and since we didn’t know what was captured on tape we didn’t truly know the project before the material arrived and we watched it for the first time.

up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

Normally I make two, three, pieces during a year. I spend a lot of time preparing. In a way I sketch the work with words beforehand. Then I start with the technical planning and testing. I’m trying to plan every technical aspect before filming, but unfortunately I’m not always that well organized and we (Anthony and I) tend to experiment a lot on the spot. The story, lines or

By the way, you have produced this interesting video in collaboration with Anthony Tessier with whom you seem to have established a fruitful synergy. Dealing with collaborations, this has reminded me a quote of the artist Peter Tabor who once said that "collaboration is working together with another to create so-

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mething as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two artists?

I do agree with Tabor on this. We work quite differently but we have an esthetical fundament in common and I believe that our collaboration bears aspects of us both.

In general my own work is more staged and often they deal with certain matters, political, feministic etc. When working with Anthony we experiment more, we allow us to work intuitive and woutht a script or a storyline. We discuss, disagree and in this way develop the projects.

I think it’s difficult to say how our works demonstrate a communication between us both. I can clearly see how we both have influenced the work but for the spectator I’m not sure if it’s possible to “see” this collaboration. But I also believe that a good collaboration project should not be conflicting, but as a whole, speaking the same language.

achieves to keep a memory of a movement... do you agree with this anaysis, or is it exaggerately strange?

This is an aspect I must admit we have not thought about ourselves. For Anthony this link didn’t seem so strange as for me. But of course there’s a great tradition for pantomime in France. But I must say it’s a beautiful reflection and it really made me think of the work in another way. And concerning the question about feedback this is exactly way I believe it’s so important.

As you have remarked in your artist's statement, this work is a reflection on movement and time and that you wanted to create a traditional landscape painting where the movement is present: I know that this might sound a bit funny, but this feature has reminded me the works of Marcel Marceau and especially Jean-Louis Barrault's ones... it's just like if the images that we can see are the tracks of a mime's gestures... like if your work

It goes without saying that modern digital tecniques play a crucial role in this piece: I'm sort of convinced that new media art will definitely fill the dichotomy between Art and Technology and I will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

I think we share many of the same thoughts on #196 Winter this but I also think there has always been a 32

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or understands the artwork. Without it I believe it would be difficult to develop as an artist. When it comes to an award I don’t know. There might be an excitement connected to the possibility but I don’t think it would influence the process that much. For me it’s really two different stages of a work, the creative part and afterward the distribution. without asking to the artists that I happen to interview, since even though it might sound the simpler one, it gives me back the most complex answers: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

Every aspect of the work has some magic to it, which never seems to turn trivial. Like the birth of a new idea, the hectic hours before filming and of course the final result, seeing my work exhibited.

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Camilla. Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

relationship between art and technology in some ways. Artists have used what was accessible in their time. And course the landscape has changed the last decades and technology has become both more advanced and also more accessible. But this also depends on how you define technology.

Two of my video will be shown at the International Video art Festival, Cologne OFF. They’re touring a whole year showing video art at different places around the world. Anthony and I are also having our first solo exhibition in Norway at the New Norwegian Literature Festival in November. And for those who are interested visit camillahaukedal.com.

During this years, your artworks have been exhibited several times, both in Norway and abroad: it goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces?

It’s of course very important for me to get feedback, Constructive feedback is crucial and it’s a way to understand how the spectator sees 33

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Aldobranti Fosco-Fornio

Aldobranti Fosco Fornio (United Kingdom) An artist’s statement

I am a scientist from an artistic background.

I am an artist who cares deeply for the scientific method.

I am polymath.

I am a chemist who cares about the alchemy of light.

I am a physicist who looks into the metaphysics of our vision.

I am a mathematician who considers the limit, the continuous, the non-linear and the singularity.

I am a writer who weighs words to the microgram.

I am a colourist who works chiefly in monochrome.

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Junction with B2070, A272 North of Peters #196 Winter 10x8 scanned negative

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Aldobranti Fosco-Fornio

An interview with

Aldobranti Fosco-Fornio Hello Aldobranti, I would like to give you welcome to LandEscape with our usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of a piece?

I believe that there is a parallel question and possibly parallel answer around ‘what defines a Joke?’ and it seems clear that both are carefully crafted to elicit a response and in both cases there will be people who “don’t get it” or who even take offence.

You may notice that I have a truly appalling sense of humour, much of my work exists in the absurd…

As to the contemporary, for me it means to look at old things in a new way and I steer my interest by my respect of History. [It must be recorded an interview with that I failed my school exams in History because I could never finish the answers in the times allotted to the questions. Bear with me as I plough on to answer all your questions.]

Aldobranti Fosco-Fornio

linguist. I went to university first to become an engineer but fell into mathematics through a process of extreme laziness. I noted as a student that math students spent less time in class than anybody else and escaped writing up lab reports and other tediousness. But like history, mathematics gave me wondrous powers to understand the world.

Agamben quite straightforwardly identifies a quality of timeliness and this same quality helps me identify the repetitiousness of history. It has been the delight of watching, for instance, postmodern couturiers, Westwood for one, pillaging the past to recycle the old as new.

Would you tell us something about your background? What has led you to turn your previous lives as mathematician into an artist? I have read in your bio that you have started this adventure attending a night-school at St Albans School of Art and Design and personally I find this evolution absolutely fascinating: especially because I have a scientific education myself...

A lot of the work I did as a professional mathematician involved working with computers and I found that I was able to address a rare selection of problems by using exotic programming languages, handling symbols rather than numerical quantities. This has meant that my work has close ties with language and I spend a lot of enquiry to understand where my work is heading to in terms of meaning and intentionality.

My mother was a noted painter and my father a WW2 boffin, naturally I wanted to be a scientist despite demonstrably better skills in school as a 36

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Incandescent bulb III digital camera image, November 2011

For what it is worth, here is my record of the passing of the incandescent filament electric lightbulb. I photographed these bulbs to celebrate the beauty of the manufactured form.

I note the spaces which they illuminate and the shadows they themselves cast. Even when failed, I note their deaths with blackened glass or broken filament.

cent and popular applications of mathematics in Art involve fractals and Chaos Theory. In particular Chaos Theory was thought up in order to explain what classical physics could not.It's an extremely fascinating field.

As a visual artist I am driven by the curiosity to see what an image will come out like: how will it appear if I try to photograph my shadow while jumping onto it to hold it still, how is space portrayed as I move through it with a slit scan camera?

Any dichotomy between art and science is down to weaknesses in the education system—in some sense we need to bring both sides together in our understanding of the cosmology of learning, to repair the same sort of rupture

By the way, I find the synergy between Art and Mathematics really stimulating: do you think that nowadays still exists a dichotomy between Art and Science? Some of the most re-

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incandescent bulb I digital camera image, October 2011

thrown into the old models of cosmography as our better understanding of stars and atoms threatened to destroy our awareness of inner space and inner time.

This awareness of loss of self-knowledge, perhaps just a low tide in the flow of history, inspires the moment to record changes in technology. The incandescent electric light bulb is rapidly becoming a part of a historical dead-end. Its memory will be found only in comic book strips as the hero has his eureka moment.

Metageography verso, torn map satsuma peel, ink, digitally processed full colour #196 Winter Images Copyright Aldobranti Š2010-2013. All rights reserved

Peeling and Sharing

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Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks?

In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work?

My first work as an artist was in ceramics, I went to night school and threw pots like crazy to give myself surfaces to decorate. What did I do? Space filling curves and tessellations! My later work in ceramics became much bigger, in built forms like Hans Coper and giving up on the prissiness of Leach and his Sung dynasty forms. [Though I still have one piece thrown in the manner of a raku pot but of a massively grogged stoneware and it is such a brutal piece.] And as I came back to my schooldays fascination with chemistry and photography I can now be much clearer that the same

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Mont St Michel, digital camera image, 2011

issues of tangibility, of contact and presence drive my practice in large format film. There is much more for me in holding a film negative than looking at a screen; I make much more certain edits of other people’s portfolios from shuffling a deck of prints. an interview with By the way, you have remarked that the performative aspect plays a crucial role in your art practice... what is the importance of the feedback of your audience in your process?

Does it help you to find the Ariadne's thread that leads you to conceive a work of Art?

Hayling Island digital camera image, 2011

The art world has had too long a run of success in building art as a spectacle and while it would amuse me greatly to clown in that circus History tells me that it will all end in tears. I greatly admire the work of Francesca Woodman who for me first set the scope of photography_as_performance.

The response to performance has been the real sea change in photography, I can stop doing worthy documentary or fine crafted prints. People who watch me at work have a chance to become part of the artwork. The passers by who ask my assistant if “he’s all right” can begin to wonder if their acceptance of the answer “he’s a photographer” is the whole story for them.

Otherwise, there is the risk, in the same way that the Minimalists set up pieces to make the viewer’s reaction the artwork, that the Joke may end up on the public.

I do not believe that the performative is a sine qua non for my work: once again, my driver is still the visual curiosity to find out what an image looks like.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would start from the series Junction with B2070 and A272 that our readers have admired in the starting pages of this article. Could you tell us something about the genesis of this work?

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I was very much encouraged by the practice of Joel Meyerowitz who remarked that he had photographed the same landscape many, many times.

Another pieces of yours on which I would like to focus comes form the series Live is a beach. It is obvious that beaches are a quite common usual location to snap a photo, but the feature of your works that has mostly impressed me is the way you have considered it as a place of interface: a space that in a certain sense reflects both the dichotomies and the synergies in Nature... and I would go as far as to state, in our inner Nature....

Please excuse me for correcting your spelling there but it was part of the play on words to write Life is a Beach [c.f. Life’s a bitch and then you die; Weill/Brecht] But to the question, I experience this interface as a moment to leave another world behind, to get sand between my toes and to explore inner space and inner time again. I become alive again, in Britain the British seem very conscious of personal space and to live on the perimeter becomes a delight; to celebrate the old divisions of nature, Fire, Water, Earth and Air is an atavistic response to this freedom.

What was your initial inspiration?

When I first began to drive past this the anarchist streak in me saw the scattergun approach of the traffic engineers attempting to legislate for stupidity. Later I began to see the grouping of the bollards as flocking behaviour in the way that a swarm of birds move as one and I began to study this. As I drove past yesterday I saw that one had been knocked over, I must go back to note the passing. Landscape for me is a discipline in slowing down and waiting for the light to come right. In my first steps with a big camera

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Linda Havenstein (Germany) An artist’s statement

technique that comes in several media formats. Digital photos of people is used to create a portrait by inverting the color values and leaving only the individual "landmarks" moles and pigmentation- behind. The result is an image that looks profoundly like a night sky, provoking a gaze at the bodies depicted that we usually use to orientate when looking at the cosmos itself: drawing lines between vast distances ignoring borders while connecting point to point, knowing that we can only see a small part of a space and system we are far from understanding. Any categorization such as gender, skin color or even number of people dissolves and only the very individual body surface is left behind, connecting bodies in constellations and the notion that there is a huge cosmos of what these bodies and relationships can be.

The method of inversion relates to basic alchemical ideas on micro- & macrocosmos while the inverse visualization of matter is in analogy to recent theories on cosmic space and antimatter.The notion that human bodies are basically formed by the same elements as everything in space is aligned with the fact that human bodies as such are actually space filled with matter. The images shown are of a neon lightbox version entitled "berlin buddies". There photos of multiple people standing together are used to create a portrait of the relationship.

#196 Winter , installation view

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Linda Havenstein

An interview with

Linda Havenstein Hello Linda and a warm welcome to LandEscape.

I would like to start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

I have a very literal understanding of this term.

Everything that is produced after the Modernist period must be called contemporary art. Needless to say, contemporariness can be found in themes, media, processes of production and discourses, especially speaking of the influence of post-structuralism and deconstruction.

There are, however, many artists that produce artworks which inherit the tradition of Modernist art.

In my opinion, they can be referred to as contemporary too. I wonder what the period after contemporary will be called. New-contemporary? Current -contemporary?

Linda Havenstein

an interview with Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there particuIar experiences that have deeply impacted on your development as an artist? By the way, after graduating from the University of Leipzig, you had several international experiences in Europe, Asia, and the United States... Do traveling and living abroad influence your creativity?

cess and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects of your work do you mainly focus on? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

It does take a lot of time to produce my work.

Usually, basic ideas are there from the outset, but when it comes to realizing and materializing those ideas I tend to encounter technical difficulties. Both conceptual and technical developments need a lot of time and can only grow through trial-and-error.

By the end of it all, there has to be a piece which encompasses a unity between physical appearance

Absolutely. I love moving and experiencing new things. It enables me to look at things in different ways - it somehow frees my mind. Also, one of the most important experiences that I had in my student time was hitchhiking throughout Europe.

However I always wanted to become an artist. I always drew during the classes in school and couldn't look at my school-book because the illustrations were so badly drawn. I was absolutely convinced then that I'd spend the rest of my life drawing and painting.

Despite that, after I had a break from making art and came back to it, painting and drawing became no longer my interest. I don't do it anymore at all.

me one year to materialize as an initial attempt, and it is still far from being complete.

If I were to mention an area of improvement, it is certainly this point that I don't talk about ideas for the piece until it's finished. Talking to friends about conceptual clues and the production process usually helps a lot. They would point out aspects that I wouldn't think of. But I feel that if I open my mouth

Before elaborating on your production, would you like to tell our readers something about your pro-

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, installation view

I thought that there is something deeply poetical and true about that association.

Another pieces on which I would like to spend some words is an interesting video installation The Day of Departure: it is based on a performative act in which people have participated regardless of whether they are born on the island or have lived there for a longer time.

It goes without saying that the chance to create a deep interaction, both with your "performers" and with your audience plays a crucial role in this piece. What experiences have you received during the long preparation of this work?

This piece is somewhat very personal to me. I spent a lot of time on the island so I really needed to produce something to cope with my experiences there. And there was a lot of magical thinking and cognitive calculation involved in the production of the piece.

and talk about ideas they would escape from me and eventually vanish. Nonetheless, I have to be more courageous and get used to verbalizing ideas and sharing them with others.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to

To be more specific, throughout one of the two narrative lines the performers' faces are deliberately not shown, as the camera focusses on their moving bodies.

have admired in the starting pages of this article: could you tell us something about the genesis of this work? What was your initial inspiration?

Looking at my arm! I have a constellation on my right arm that looks like Cassiopeia and when I looked at it and drew the lines in my head everything just broke loose.

I was able to make the connection because I helped a friend with one of his pieces a few weeks before, where I had to print out starry sky images. Since he only needed to know the relational distances between stars I color-inverted the images to save black ink. And sometime later I looked at my arm and found something that reminded me of those images.

With this association in mind suddenly all the things about cosmos and alchemy exploded in my head and

, installation view

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The day of Departure, 2 channel video installation say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

The composition of the piece is arranged with its very slow beginning, which ends with footage showing rhythmical body movements in fast cuts. It is intended to gradually evoke the viewer's empathy with the performers, so much so that their body would symptomatically react and their heart-beat becomes faster, which could also trigger other physical symptoms. Doing so their body becomes a part of the performers and their attempt to move the island. The idea was to make the audience a part of the performative act - in analogy to the political movements and demonstrations on the island. There might be an imperative aspect to this but more than that it is how I perceived the situation there.

However your comment on the interaction of the performers and the audience is absolutely right.

Yes, New Media Arts, that is a big thing . I remember being stunned by my first encounter with biotechnology art and I think that -just as you say it- there will be a lot of development in these fields. As Arts and Technology have always been highly interacting and also have a lot in common in the social section they root and where their money comes from. But as certain forms of technology have become more reproducible to people without an engineering degree I feel that there will be a lot more development there than in the last few decades.

A friend of mine - he's a film maker - just made an interactive video installation that can be downloaded to your phone in an app-format.

One wonderful thing that happened during the production was when I asked the performers to ima-gine becoming physically connected to and being a part of the island. By rowing and treating the island like a boat they would move the island southward. In fact, one of the performers asked: "What if the island really starts to move?"

For me it would be interesting to work with sophisticated media, but as I have a preference for simplicity and minimalism I never went that far to think about fancy formats. Also I'm not smart enough to think through all the technological possibilities given. But I hope I can work with my programmer friends one day on some wild and fancy project.

This very thought is what I wanted to create.

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An adjective that could sum up in a single word your art is "kaleidoscopic": your art practice ranges between several disciplines: from intervention to film and installations, with references to traditional art, as well. I'm sort of convinced that new media art will definitely fill the dichotomy between art and technology and I will dare to

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During this years, your artworks have been exhibited all around the four corners of the world: it goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting #196 Winter an artist, I was just wonderingview if an award -or , installation

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creative process when starting these pieces?

better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces?

The point of departure for Hoffest was an event site.

It was a house yard with 4 walls defining the spacethe yard. So I wanted to create something that deals with the entities that determine that space- the opposing walls. Somehow or the other, to make those walls move was the most obvious way to highlight and at the same time deconstruct the space. And since this is not easy to realize I just made things move that are supposed to stay fixed on those walls. Pars pro toto, so to speak.Another conceptual layer to this piece lies in the fact that this piece was influenced by the images of the big earthquake in Japan, so the walls coming down was somehow pertinent to the stories and the images we saw and heard of then. To make graffiti move was something I wanted to do for a long time, and it fits for the nature of the site well since it is known for street art.

Absolutely. With my emphasis on concept I can't ignore the setting and cultural backgrounds of the people who will see my pieces. They are there from the very beginning of the conception of the piece.

However in a lot of cases people would need some kind of hint to know how to "read" the work because I tend to create pieces where the media or title doesn't give you an instruction on how to gaze at it. This is also because there are different art discourses and trends in different parts of the world.

But this is something that can be part of the concept.

I do respect the art discourses of the very area where I'm producing a piece in expectation of an award - that is to be understood and appreciated.

And I'm very happy when people find some access to my work. They often find new perspectives that I even didn't think of. In this sense feedback is very important to me as well as any kind of resonance.

On the other hand I'm often so exhausted when finishing a work that I don't care what people think.

I'm just happy it's done and there existing in the world outside of me.

I would like to mention a couple of artworks of yours that have particularly impressed me, and that are entitled respectively Hoffest and Transition Triptych: could you take us through your

transition triptych single-channel split screen video HD video, 16:9 PAL, 9 min, 2012

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an interview transition triptych with single-channel split screen video HD video, 16:9 PAL, 9 min, 2012

Transition Triptych is a first approach to bigger themes that I want to continue working on. One of them is the way in which people perform and behave in certain environments that would define the space.

My residence in Assisi was perfect for that since the inner city has roughly two space settings, that is religious performance space and shopping/consumption space. Both come with a very defined set of performance and actions.

nication tool is perceived. Another form of this kind of communication would be certain forms of demonstrations. I hope I can continue working on this. without asking to the artists that I happen to interview, since even though it might sound the simpler one, it gives me back the most complex answers: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

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So I simply swapped them, doing shopping performances in religious performance space and did prayers in a shop. These swapped performance scenes function as a junction between documented scenes of people in those spaces, that would then increasingly dissolve into ambiguity when focussing onto the very space and it's items. Another aspect is this certain form of communication that doesn't receive a direct feedback from the commu-nication partner - one of them is praying. I find this very interesting since it tells us a lot of how body as a commu-

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Idea development. Like brainstorming, thinking through the different approaches to a certain topic. Exploring the vast cosmos of possibilities.

When it comes to perfection and finalizing an idea that is where I have problems with making decisions.

It often takes a lot of time and meditation before I really lay my hands on a piece. But then I also very much enjoy building and installing, using

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my hands and see the piece slowly coming to a form.

hoffest

Thank you for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us, Linda. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

2 channel video installation, stop motion animation video 4:3 PAL loop, 2012 One warm night in august, Haus Schwarzenberg's walls came down and it's graffiti started to set it's wings and flew off the walls.

It would be so great if I could make a big announcement here. But sorry, nothing special so far. If you happen to be in Japan by the end of the year it would be great to see you at one of the shows I'm exhibiting in.

Animation movies edited from photographs of houses and cityscapes makes the rigid and unanimated surface of our daily urban visual input come to life and move it's way along the walls.

One is in Tsushima and one in Aomori. Both will have a installation by the way.

An interview by landescape@artlover.com

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Joseph O’Neill (USA) An artist’s statement

New York City is known as the center of the universe- and most New Yorkers would have to agree. But in my photograph, i steer away from city's the razzle-dazzle, and look for the emptiness New Yorkers experience in their day to day lives. I pay attention to the small, often hidden things of city life. When the sun catches the corner of a building bordering the Hudson River, the loneliness of a child's playground at night or a ornate bridge in Central Park; i preserve the beauty of these moments. in the editing process some pictures are of course discarded.

But more beautiful discoveries take place well after the photo is shot. The process makes me want to share even more, the exposure, lighting, the innocence of subject, that give the pictures their edge and make them unique.

As native New Yorkers, we take for granted the nondescript objects, sights and sounds, But i try to latch on to these things appreciate them, and hold on to their beauty, knowing that they will soon be lost. I welcome you to enjoy this series of photographs, and to experience what i see through the lensthe rear, raw magic that exists in my city #196 Winter

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An interview with

Joseph O’Neill Hello Joseph and welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? And moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

I really can't tell you what art is, but I know it when I see it. Everyone is capable of defining art for themselves; it exists in the eyes of the of the observer. In my experience, a piece of art affects you emotionally; whether the feelings are good or bad—that is the meaning of great art. I believe that photography is innately contemporary. You are snapping a picture in a very particular place in time. A specific moment, captured in real time, has the art be contemporary and definitely relevant.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there particuIar experiences that interview has deeply impacted an with on your evolution as an artist? By the way, I would like to know what's your point about formal training and in particular, do you think that a certain kind of training could even stifle a young artist's creativity?

It wasn't until 2005, after purchasing a digital camera for my girlfriend, (yes, she's a singer and actress, and yes, I got her another present after I co-opted that camera), that I first became interested in photography. I started just exploring the city through the lens and I loved it, and I loved the results. It's only the last four years I finally admitted to myself that this was a real talent and it was time to pursue it further.

Manray and Eugene Adget are two of my biggest influences. And no. I don't think training stifles creativity. I suppose it can if you adhere to it too much, but my training in culinary school—all the techniques I learned, the recipes, the structures—gave me a much broader range when I came back to experimenting with my own recipes. Picasso didn't start by scribbling with crayons —Stay in school, kids!

I have no formal training per se; I am self-taught.

It has been all trial and exploration. I experiment with different lenses or lighting until I come across something that appeals to me. I grew up in a family of artists. There was always music in the house —both my parents play piano— and my grandmother was a painter who worked in oils and watercolors. I have vivid memories of her hands, and the smells of the materials. I went on to surround myself with creative and artistic people my entire life. I live in New York City which has allowed me to experience all things art; world-class museums, every kind of food, theater, music and the art galleries. I focused my talents on the culinary arts; I am a trained chef who spent fifteen years in that field.

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Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

drive to go out and photograph; the energy behind it, was more exciting. It's really different when you can count on the fact you'll be eating fresh fish for dinner, you know?

I working primarily in black and white as opposed to color. Your mind becomes distracted by color. Black and white catches the nuances and moodiness that color just can't.

Although as time has gone on, I have found those occasional moments where color tells the story that best represents the experience of what I saw. Editing is a distinct stage in the artistic process; my second stage of work. So much happens in there. I am a purist in that I do not Photoshop any of my work. I spend hour upon hour staring at photographs looking for that "wow" shot. From there I make a print of the picture, hang it on my wall— I live with it

When I am feeling the need to be creative, I pick up my camera and wander around the city looking for anything that catches my eye and makes me want to photograph it. When I first started, it was a feeling of restlessness; or sometimes even that sort of sadness that quietly shows up for no real reason; or anger, frustration.

Over time, once I'd banked some experience of going out, finding subjects, and successfully bringing home a full net of fish, if you will, the 53

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for weeks, looking at it, ignoring it, listening to it—for the gold. Some of those pieces still get yanked after this phase. The third step in the process is finding 4-5 photographs that complement each other; "speak to" each other—for submissions to galleries.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with your series [1], that our readers have admired in the starting pages of this article: could you tell us something about the genesis of this project? What was your initial inspiration?

Most of my artwork is spur of the moment. There is no forethought. I go out into the world and let the world speak to me, seeking that diamond in the rough. This city is full of diamonds. This photograph is a perfect example of that. I was in right place at the right time of day. I did play around with different camera settings to get that silver plate feel to the picture. It's gotten easier for me, as my eye has become more trained, to spot the gems and bring them to life.

instead right, up instead of down. And sometimes by taking that road less travelled, we get to see or experience something extraordinary, beautiful, or just plain lifechanging.

Another pieces on which I would like to spend some words are [2], [3] and [4]. In particular, I can notice that you have caught an interesting aspect of New York City, absolutely far from the usual stereotyped representation of a frenetic metropolis...

By the way, New York City - as our readers can see in most of your works that I suggest to visit at [website] - plays an indubitably important role in your imagery: and since our magazine is called "LandEscape" I cannot do without asking you: what is the significance of the landscape in your art?

In life and in art we are so used to looking at eye candy; the sugary-schmaltz aspect of our lives, that we forget we can choose to turn our head left

Landscape does play a huge role in my photography. #196 It canWinter set the mood, frame the 54

Joseph O’Neill could also reveal unexpected aspect of our reality, which are hidden by our daily "movement". Even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, it's like if a photography just tell us: "Hey, wait: there's something that you didn't notice, but it's important, fix your eyes on it"... what's your point about this?

There is a form of photography called documentary—most of the time it is of people or significant historical events. That's not my mission. I prefer to document my life in New York, and the New York that is around me—the changes that I see going on in my daily routine of living in an ever-morphing city. With photography, it is the real moment which reveals the interpretation; not your interpretation of that moment before or after the fact.

central attraction, serve as juxtaposition between the foreground and the background—it can be the entire reason I shoot the picture, or sometimes it is passively just sitting there, quietly observing.

As you have remarked in your artist's statement, one of the goals of your art is to latch on to attention to the small often hidden things of daily life and hold on to their beauty knowing that they will soon be lost. It goes without saying that one of the earlier "functions" of photography is to condens the volatile components of memory: I was wondering if a such artwork

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Another feature of some pieces of yours that has impressed me is the way you have achieved to keep a memory of the movement: this is evident especially in [5] and [6] which moreover seems to have a "channel of communication", an not only because there's a tree in both of them ... would you like to tel us more about this feature?

New York City is a very linear world of straight lines.

I am drawn to organic shapes when I encounter them. I will place the inorganic as a background to the organic; I love how they dance together. asking to the artists that I happen to interview, since even though it might sound the simpler one, it gives me back the most complex answers: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

I am a voyeur, I like to watch and observe people, places and things. And photography is an extension of that voyeurism. I get excited about finding that unique image; like it's a secret only I have discovered. Through my work I get to expose that secret, while at the with same time leaving it where it is, an interview untouched.

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Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Linda. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Recently I have been getting more acknowledgment for my work; selected to show in group exhibitions and competitions. It's been exhilarating. Artistically I am starting to work on portrait photography. I have a feeling there will always be something new for me.

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Palov

Rebekkah Palov (USA) An artist’s statement

An artist’s statement

My practice is in music, video, drawing and small software.

Thematically I am drawn to many kinds of economics; the economics of home, money, movement, love, history and words. I find the paradox of value exchange, that one thing can reasonably be valued against any other a wonderfully fertile notion and departure point for synthesizing other imagined futures.

I am stuck on inflections and activating the hunter eye on how the movement is thought, and the amount of soul a pause requires. These performance expressions, as well as surprise and wit are characteristic of my work. My best wish for this practice is a developing approach toward free space, strange and resonant. #196 Winter

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A still from Dear Efficiency

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Rebecca Palov

An interview with

Rebecca Palov Hello Rebekkah, I'm happy to welcome you to LandEscape. Let's start this interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the feature that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

A word I like very much is potential, and if one makes a good piece then it has multiple emergent potentials. And that potential, functions to dull reinforcements of the same-old, same-old. This is important because the same-old enables coercive systems to emerge and these should be up held up to inquiry. Please understand I'm not talking innovation, I don't think that idea all is that useful in terms of artworks.... Just that the artwork has a potential for different types of understanding.

Rebecca Palov Both those experiences are really important. First my mom and computers, she started as coder in the 1970s, I learned that technology is a tool that makes new tools and or phenomena and this is empowering, because worlds can be shaped with them. Also that if you decide to follow potential, and take something on, then you can pull off the unexpected. And that the unexpected is a really delicious thing in life. As for my studies, I am extremely grateful for them, I went to amazing programs, but also, I had my life going in a certain investigation, and that education came when it should have, and I feel ownership of it. Since finishing up with the MFA it's been good, I was a bit intimidated by art-school as an institutional construct, in a way it's kinda business, I had come out of punk/activism and experimental film which seems more about love, so it's been good, to use an analogy, move back 'downtown'.

I imagine this potential has something to do with what is called contemporaneity, though I consider the word contemporary to be a flawed wrapper, contemporaneity sounds like an artistic period or an with blockinterview of time, which one could argue fell apart some time in the 1960s. I think we are now in a broader system of artistic tendencies, marked by generational differences. I work in an experimental tendency, with I think a peppering of postminimalism, and these are valuable tactics, which are applied to current or contemporary conditions, and as conditions change, tactics are adjusted, or re-imagined. Humans are shifty creatures with shifty culture and art necessarily needs to be shifty as well.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there particular experiences that has deeply impacted on your evolution as an artist? And how have your studies influenced you and how has your art practice developed since you have left school?

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

My background I would characterize as american, it's a really complicated place, but also a place where one can make things up. My mother was a young mother of three children, who decided she'd go to college and became a computer systems engineer.

I first attended college at 29, after formative years in rock&roll- punk-activist scenes.

That varies, I had been more tight with my work. I

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A still from Duchess in Riot Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with your video installation Duchess in Rot :could you tell us something about the genesis of this work? What was your initial inspiration?

have an aural intelligence, which is about emphasis and pause, which marries well to editing time based-material, which tends be precise/tight, then at some point a couple of years back, I really loosened up, took on a kind of confidence, so the work has gotten far less tedious. Otherwise, if something is going on, or in conversation/experience that intrigues me i'll make a piece around it, this has always been quite loose.

It was during autumn, and I like to sort of 'disappear' into the landscape, so I walked off a road and into the creek below and started shooting my video of leaves, water and the leaf-bare trees. The camera work was fast, with expressionistic gestures. Autumn is pretty dramatic and I feel the change in my circadian rhythm as forceful and somewhat commanding, so the sort of macho Stan Brakhage type quality of the camera work seemed correct. It was a very beautiful site, and again hidden, the shots are full zoom close ups, so there is this idea of being hidden/small.

With my set ups I've gotten away from installation multi-channel practice, supporting it is materially demanding, so currently I've been working in single channel & stereo audio. Prep-wise, I embrace new technologies/software, so that is not consistent, just a lot of 'What can it do? What if I try this?' and I like to work with 3d shapes.... Process-wise, mapping out time-base media has a captivating almost drunken quality to it, very expansive, the evolving/processing of image and sounds, then putting it together in time, I can't really be clear as to how long any of it takes.

Of late the work has happened much faster, but this too could change.

I was excited about the footage, it seemed linked to this fascination I have with the physiological transformation wild salmon go through prior to their death, this force and transformation that the land and living creatures experience, the gush of smell, force and color, seemed captured within the footage.

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A still from Bow Box

The offsets and changes between the six panels took a very long time to edit, I wanted to slow down the frenzy of the season and infuse it with moments of inertia, affect it with roll, pitch and yawl. The sound is a key to the success of the piece, it has a surprise and lightness that unburdens the image.

Another piece that has particularly impressed me is the recent Bow Box... If I have been asked to choose an adjective that could sum up in a single word your art, I would say that your it's "kaleidoscopic": it ranges form several disciplines: drawing, music, video and even software production. By the way, I'm sort of convinced that new media art will definitely fill the dichotomy between art and technology and I will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

You could look at it from an idea of a fusion of art & tech, it does seem, something is going on, at least in terms of the arts. They seem to be merging in a profound way, text becomes moving-image, becomes the novel, becomes photography, becomes music, becomes the newspaper, becomes painting.... As it comes to us through network-http distribution. But then complex mediums and electronics have always been my interest, which why film/sound-vision was my choice of study, but with the changes afoot, I think we now can go beyond, even that. I try to get into it.

The concern I have, is the mesmerizing aspect of this apparent union of art and technology. Sometimes, I think that half the time I don't know why I do what I do, but really if I really stop to consider, I think a lot of it is following impulse and situations unawares. Bow Box has a mesmerizing effect, its great that you use the word kaleidoscope, which has an effect not quite unfamiliar to our current media ecology, which is, at times spellbinding, and a state of mind susceptible to being captivated and captured. Possibly there is a sinister and hidden aspect of these new media experiences, like the p in http, protocol, 62

#196 Winter Bow Box, Installation

Rebecca Palov a type of inflexibility for the sake of control, which is how this impulse machine of the internet is run. I think it is good to consider these things also.

And we couldn't do without mentioning Drop Fog and Dear Efficiency, that our readers have admired in the starting pages of this article. I would go as far as to say that there's an underlying "channel of communication" between these stimulating pieces: for sure, an effective reference to apparently simple geometries, which hide an unforeseeable complexity... maybe that one of the role of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of our Nature, in the wide sense of word ?

I think so, but not to reveal them per se, here I will explain my thoughts on the simple geometries/complexity with an analogy. There is complexity, like the ocean with currents, events, and the like, those systems are moving, and one cannot master emerging complexity at scale, especially when you only have a small piece of being 'at sea' and still need to navigate it, get your boat to where it needs to go.

Again for me the mark of art is potential, I don't think I could, very well reveal sides of our nature, that seems a tall order which could fail and verge on a type maxim (which I think is a possible problem with Dear Efficiency, except that it's dealing with ethics, so...) but I do think I can propose types of potential, or awareness and query around something not quite readable but there.

During this years, your artworks have been exhibited several times: it goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award-or better, the expectation of an award-could even

A still from Drop Fog

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influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces?

Besides producing your artworks, you have also gained a wide experience as a teacher in several colleges: how has this influenced your career as an artist? Moreover, do you think that being a teacher, with the consequent direct contact with your students, has -in a way- influenced your Art practice?

Of course I want people to like what I have made, I made them and enjoy the works and wish to share this excitement, of course that is a wonderful thing, but I have not made much success with awards, and this is fine while not a feel-good feeling - ha!

That is difficult to answer, politically I have enjoyed one good thing about the petty authority, that I choose not engage it and instead offer students thoughtful questions about their work, and hopefully foster in them a greater sense of autonomy. As for making art, I am still working at better cordoning off personal mind-space to make my work, teaching is rewarding and takes a lot out of you.

Indeed the expectation and work toward receiving a grant/award can influence the artist process, Boris Groys speaks of this, unfunded project proposals that an interview with are abandoned or reconfigured for a better chance at being awarded ... I feel a profound commitment to my wits which inform the artworks and not as concerned with professional achievement but definitely there is conflict.

The greatest influence from students has been on my perception of talent, I have learned that many people are very talented, this has demystified talent and its consequence. This had been very liberating in my own work. It's a bit uncanny, how really great some student work is, I feel I give some permission but otherwise it all seems a pleasant mystery.

As to who might enjoy the work, I feel like I know those people, but cannot say who they are, nor can I imagine a clear 'this is my audience', my thought is the audience for the work is not so easily determined, and I have great respect for that.

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Ever, may, 15 2013 detail software

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Rebekkah. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

without asking to the artists that I happen to interview, since even though it might sound the simpler one, it gives me back the most complex answers: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? And what gives you the biggest satisfaction?

Thank you for the opportunity to answer your thoughtful questions, which has very much been my pleasure. As for the future I am working on a book of interviews with the artist Ralph Hocking (founder of the Experimental Television Center).

Also I 'm in early stages of starting a local community arts collective for sonic arts, plus working on the series 'new orientalisms', working with Chinese currency and appropriated footage from Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.

I enjoy engaging in the labor of making the artwork, it's that same feeling of being on a road trip, the pleasure of no worries except the moment, and moving to the next, a precision of the moment, I very much enjoy that experience.

Also not really knowing what the project will be, the experiment of setting off is very satisfying,

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Nina Bumbalkova (Czech Republic) An artist’s statement

Memory is one's ability to store information and recall it as well as the experience that is linked to it. By generating memories we set our selves in a context of the world.

Photography as an activity of creating images by recording the surface of reality by a chemical process based on light and light sensitive material. John Berger describes memory like a field where different times can coexist, it is continuous in terms of the subjectivity which creates and extends it, but temporarily it is discontinuous.

In my project I am working with the idea of combining different timelines in one space, randomly ordered as it happens in our dreams. Photographs should not be considered memories them selves but they interfere and they are sort of like building blocks that we create with in the process of remembering and recalling. Photography, compared to what we are able to capture in our head, is a much more simple kind of memory but is closely associated with it. It is based on the importance of visual experience more than anything else and that is the only thing it can recall most accurately.

By creating our photographs we create our own place in the passing time. Both - photography and memory are dependent on it. Both preserve moments and propose their own form of simultaneity in which all their images can coexist. Both stimulate and are stimulated by the interconectedness of events. The neighborhood is an ongoing project exploring the medium of photography in connection with memory. Throughout the present I return to places which have been in some ways important in my life (the place I was born, houses I grew up in, etc.) but I do not recall the memory of them. I explore them in the present, creating images that create a new memory for my brain to recall to. Therefore I am creating a new environment which combines the images randomly and out of context as the flashbacks in our memory sometimes do. The photograph also manipulate the viewers and force them into a search for a certain location or a time line.

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Nina Bumbalkova

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Nina Bumbalkova

An interview with

Nina Bumbalkova A warm welcome to LandEscape, Nina. We would start this interview with our usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of art? By the way, what could be in your opinion the main features that characterize a piece of Contemporary Art?

What actually is defined as a work of art has evolved and varied in the history, sometimes it was more related to science or religion. I think what links all art disciplines together is the need for ones' expression, communication and aesthetics. It can be produced by anyone in any place and form. What is important in an art piece is that it must be able to communicate its message to the audience. With contemporary art I often find that difficult, it feels like there is less craft and too many words that don't actually say much to the viewer.

We would like to ask you something about your an interview background.

Afterwith studying in Prague, your hometown, you have moved to London and there you have recently studied Design and Photogra-phy: how has the experience of formal training impacted on your current art practice? I sometimes ask myself how much a certain kind of training could influence a young artist's creativity...

Nina Bumbalkova

love with London and 3 months suddenly became 3 years. I don't regret getting an insight into a different field and a more practical approach then I was used to at my first Uni. I took up my photography MA at the University of Westminster, where with support from the Czech ministry of culture I was able to work on my Squat project. That year was more than anything a big school of life and thats always the most valuable thing.

At first I have studied design in secondary school, photography was also taught there but no one really cared about the subject till my last year, that was when I got encouraged and really started shooting. Then I started my BA studies of photography at the AAAD in Prague which happened to be a disaster as well as they didn't manage to get tutors for the first year. The following two years were better, but at the end of the third one I decided to go for a 3 month internship to LCC. After arriving I was told there is not a possibility to join the photography class and had to take up design again. I was a bit stuck as far as the tasks given, but absolutely fell in

Can you tell us about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, on what technical aspects do you mainly focus in your work?

My work is mainly documentary, I don't usually use any forms of staging or lighting. If I do I keep it simple but most of the time I work with what is available on the spot. I don't like to arrange, I like to have as much of the real thing as possi68

Nina Bumbalkova

From the Neigborhoood series

From the Neigborhoood series

possible in front of me. One of the moments when I needed to manipulate was when I was shooting portraits of the Squatters. I had to take them out of their environment, I felt the need to separate them from the so often negatively perceived place they live in and have them in a clean space without any distractions. The moment of ripping them out of the context of their situation and presenting them to the viewer with the magic of their own played an important role in the way I built up the series.

ronment which is randomly combined and out of context such as the actual remembered moments can be in our brain. Even though photographs should not be considered memories them selves they interfere and they are sort of like building blocks that we create with in the

Now let's focus on the artworks of your that our readers can admire in these pages: I would start from your series The neighborhood: what was your initial inspiration? Could you lead us through the development of this interesting project?

The Neighborhood triggered my passion for the urban environment and the search for the familiar. It lead me to places which have been in some way important in my life, but I was not able to recall my own memory of them. Questioning my mother and then exploring these places in the present helped me produce images which substitute the memory and create a new envi-

From the Neigborhoood series

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From the Stubnitz series

process of remembering and recalling. By creating photographic images we are making our own place in the passing time. This project crates my own place in time, but a strange one and in the wrong time.

Another series of yours that I have found very stimulating and on which I would like to spend some words is Stubnitz, my favourite one.

Although I'm personally not that fond of "interpreting" an artwork I would go as far as to say that it's a narration of colours that shows how colours are capable of communicating the idea of beauty besides the contests: a nuance of yellow -that I can recognize in Squat as well, and that seems to be recurrent in your "photographic palette"seems to tell us about the unsuspected beauty of an industrial plant...

From the Stubnitz series

up living in for a certain period of time. Stubnitz was a place of visits, but it is just magical, one can feel the homy atmosphere the moment of entry. It has all the aspects of a space that I like, its old and difficult, but has a great energy from the people who live and work on it. I have always found derelict places attractive, whether its a factory, house or a ship, they all preserve some feeling of habitation and serve as "museums" left after their previous dwellers.

When I began my photographic practice I was shooting mainly in black and white, if i shot color I would make sure the tones would be as pale as possible. This changed after a year or two. All of my projects, especially The Squats and Squatters in London have been very personal and this led to a certain search for intimacy. The Caravaggist lighting is used to reflect my own relationship with the space or person and reflects the way I feel about them. It took me a long time to find the right places and in the end I realized that most of the Squat interiors that photographically worked best for me were the ones that I ended

Moreover, I cannot do without mentioning Occupy London and Dale farm protest London: I would go as far as to say that your Art speak us about sociopolitics, but from a intimate viewpoint. Do you think the main art’s purpose #196aWinter is simply to provide platform for an artist’s

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From the Stubnitz series

injustice happening around the world that I feel people became ignorant, started seeing these images as a regular part of the world and often aren't moved or affected by them at all. I still believe it is worth while to use an artist expression to call attention to problems around us, but doing it affectively became more difficult.

While working the Squat project I got a bit overwhelmed by the feeling that no one really cares, but it was my own personal odyssey, I had to finish it and I believe it is one of my most important works. Almost a year later - now in

expression? Even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, I must confess that I'm sort of convinced that Art could play an effective role even in facing social questions, not only speaking, but also steering people behaviour... what's your point about this?

My interest in Occupy and Dale farm came from the Squat project and the fact that I was squatting myself at that time. Everything that was happening then was really interesting for me, it had a vibe and a lot of people around. It is very difficult for me to work on a topic if I am somehow not a part of it, no matter if I first live the project and then start capturing it vice versa.

With art and social issues it is bit difficult. Today there is so many images of social struggle and

From the Squat series

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Nina Bumbalkova

From the Squat series

From the Squat series

May when I was photographing the Caris boxing club for homeless people in London I realized how doing something like this can make people an interview withfor them. happy and be important

often let us to discover an unexpected political side of a an artwork...

Thats the great thing about art - it gives people the freedom to see what they want to see and feel whatever the need to.

That was king of a fulfillment for me, seeing that people care and appreciates my work on the same personal level as I created it.

And since our magazine is called "LandEscape" I cannot do without asking you: what is the significance of the landscape in your art? I can see that it doesn't play the passive role of a simple "background", isn't it?

I like to combine the inner and the outer landscape to create a new environment. One thats intimate and special for every single image.

I absolutely agree with you when you state that photographs should not be considered memories themselves but they interfere and they are sort of like building blocks that we create with in the process of remembering and recalling.

Sometimes, I happened to think that one of the role of an artwork is to allow us to discover a hidden Ariadne's thread, that for example

From the Nearly Home series

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Nina Bumbalkova

tly on the move, discovering new places, people and their ways of life. I like the possibility to get close and explore with a camera in hand having the possibility to experience anything in the world.

Thank you for this interview, Nina: my last question deals with your future plans: what direction are you moving in creatively?

Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

From the Squat series

Currently I am finishing a documentary project in Prague covering the Czech film industry at its current state. I am organizing an exhibition in cooperation with one of the biggest building companies in Prague which will present work of emerging Czech artists in the streets of the city. In September I am leaving for a road trip to Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and returning through Russia if possible.

the artists that we interview: what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

Then I have some plans for London and Prague, staying on the move.

Thank you for this interview and the possibility to be presented in LandEscape.

Biggest satisfaction is being able to be constanAn interview by landescape@artlover.com

From the Nearly Home series

From the Nearly Home series

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Joseph Cilia

Joseph Cilia (Malta) An artist’s statement

Hi, My name is Joseph, sometimes Jo`Jo` for short ;) and I have been painting since I was 12, exploring different styles and media as a personal passion more than anything.

To be honest I can say that art has always been at the centre of my life from childhood and I have always been inspired by a wide range of artists, my two favourites being Leonardo and Van Gogh in particular.

Leonardo's incessant thirst and yearning to achieve knowledge and to understand the world around him has always inspired me so much!

That great desire to capture the essence of reality and to keep studying so as to better oneself is the attitude that every artist should treasure.

On the other hand, the powerful emotions and stark contrasts as expressed in Van Gogh's work call the artist to look at reality from a completely different point of view - that of truth of essence of form, element, shape and spirit.

His self portraits and the Starry Night as well as Starry night over the Rhone are some of my favourite works of Van Gogh.

Joseph Cilia

True Self Acryil on canvas #196

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Joseph Cilia

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Joseph Cilia

An interview with

Joseph Cilia Hi Joseph, and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

Hi, and thank you for the opportunity of this interview.

Well a work of art is defined by emotion to me, it is the emotion in the image portrayed and an apparent story that lies behind the image that makes a couple of paint splashes an art work. As weird as this might sound, when I am working on a painting, I like to sort of feel the life in my painting – or see it come alive so to speak. Then I feel that this painting is truly a work of art, and it is that which I also look for in other people’s work to decide its value (to me).

Joseph Cilia

I once heard it said that Art is the expression of the consciousness of the age – for example in pre-historic art one finds the cave art which demonstrated that which intrigued the soul of the hunter-gatherer communities, in medieval art one notices the heavy an interview Christian influence in with art, as what mattered to the populace was the saving of their souls. In the same way, it is the ability to capture the social consciousness of the time that makes one’s work more contemporary. In my case it’s the concern with human rights as well as the concern with the environment and such issues that make my art contemporary to the thoughts of the times.

always strive to achieve greater strengths and to excel in my skill. My personal life has influenced my art heavily. Since I grew up in a very strict religious background, most of my earlier works revolve around Christian themes – even the style per se was a more traditional one so to speak. It was when I started exploring my sexuality as a gay person that I have truly been able to put my thoughts on the canvas.

Regardless, I haven’t really studied art at a high level as some other artists may have done. I first started experimenting with oil when I was 12 years as I was always fascinated by the works of Raphael and Leonardo, so I wanted to try and do something like that. (A task whose level I believe is still beyond me to date, yet I strive to reach higher levels).

Can you tell our readers a little about your background? How has your personal experience impacted on your art practice? I have read that you have been painting since you were 12, so I would say that you are quite experienced...

Moreover, what's you point about formal training?

Do you think that artists with a formal education have an advantage over self-taught artists?

Hence I tried my hand at painting and was always encouraged to try and do better. I think my art is quite a work in motion and an evolution of my ability per se. Nonetheless, my work was highly amateurish at the time and it was only after I received some training from a local artist at the age of 16-18 that my work has truly started to come together. To be honest, I sometimes feel that in terms of skill, people who are better trained than I am have an advantage, yet, when I observe art by self-taught artists I notice that their thought is stronger than that of someone trained in a formal setting. I find that self-taught artists have

I was always encouraged to paint or at least to explore the arts from a very young age. When we were young, my older brother and I always observed our father drawing and that is what encouraged me to explore the arts. There has been some form of sibling rivalry growing up as well which always created a form of competition between us; hence this has helped me to

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Joseph Cilia

Dianic Blessing, Acrylic on Canvas

greater laxity of thought and a more flexible / dynamic style. It depends on the artists I suppose though, as one cannot really and truly generalize on these matters.

read stories, or listen to music with that particular theme. Generally I always have some music or a film on with as loud a volume as possible while painting.

This process helps me to create the right atmosphere that I want to transpire through my work. As to the rest, I just go with the flow of the feeling that I have at the time, right until my own feelings just want to stop painting because the painting “feels alive and ready”. This “alive thing” is a bit weird really, but that is how I see my works. When I see them come to life before me, it is then that I believe they are ready and I need not work anymore.

Before getting int he matter of your production, would you tell us about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, on what technical aspects do you mainly focus in your work?

The basis for my work is an emotion. Whatever I try to capture in the work is an idea or a feeling, for example sadness, grief, or freedom. Then I ponder that thought while going about my daily life and make notes about the pictures and images that this emotion generates. The colours to be used for example are a big part of this process, as colours always help to create a particular aura surrounding things. For example reds could create vibrancy, power and exuberances well as a zesty passion, while when/if combined with the right colours and subjects, they could evoke suspense, fear, tension and despair.

Regardless, after all this process, I still work on myself so that I actually immerse myself in the emotion / thought that I wish to portray; therefore I

Now let's focus on your pieces that our readers can admire in these pages. I would start from Beyond the Silver Veil and True Self: the feature that has mostly impressed me is the nuance of the red color, which springing from the dark gives plasticity to the image... what was your initial inspiration for these work?

The inspiration of these works is completely at opposite ends. Beyond the Silver Veil is mostly inspired by the thought of an afterlife, of death and rebirth. As I was brought up in a strong Christian family, the idea of the soul existing after death has

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Two of a Kind Acrylic on canvas

been, I rather say, drilled into my head and ever present. However, it was after my older brother’s passing last November that I started to think of the afterlife again, and even though I have long since shed my Christian upbringing, yet the thoughts still returned, those existential questions regarding death, portraying my current spiritual beliefs on the matter. The main figure in fact is seemingly made out of flame, is symbolic of fire, not fire that is burning away the departed soul as one observes in renaissance art but the fire of transformation.

Fire as an element has the symbolic traits of purification and transformation as when something is burnt, its chemical / physical composition is completely transformed. Therefore fire is the element of change. Regardless, fire is also the element of energy and activity as it burns and spreads with agility. Therefore this image also shows that the soul is now free from other physical constraints to be whatever it is meant to be. Furthermore, its true nature is now revealed that it has shed the constraints of the former life.

The veil however, is silver and gray, seemingly made out of satin, symbolic of the ignorance that we have regarding the morose subject.

Obviously if we were able to say with certainty what happens after death, we wouldn’t be here to tell the tale – therefore the entire reality is enshrouded in mystery. Regardless, the veil is still parted as I believe that loved ones that have passed on are part of us and hence they can never be completely separated from us – if anything, by thought one evokes memories of them.

True Self on the other hand celebrates life with a passionate gusto.

The symbolic image of the horse rushing through the grasses / reeds shows a creature that is powerful and healthy ready to burst with energy. Its name is implicative of Charles Taylor’s thoughts on authenticity. When thinking about the authentic individual Taylor claims that to be authentic it is important for a being to express his

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Beyond The Veil #196 Winter Acrylic on Cancas

Joseph Cilia own self in whatever way he can as long as he does not impinge on the liberty of another creature. Hence the painting calls the individual to be who he is, without shame and to celebrate himself in all aspects that make him unique and vibrant. It is my belief that most individuals do not realize their beauty because they adhere to an idealized stereotype of beauty, when beauty in reality is relative, and finds itself expressed in different ways.

Hence, with its contrasting and energetic styles, True Self calls the individual to let himself free of the constraints of stereotype and live who he is, with all its beauty – however this self expression of one’s authentic nature finds its limits where the expression of other people’s own self begins. This is so since all creatures are equal in their own right and are to be respected in equal measure.

Since our magazine is called LandEscape, we cannot do without asking you: what is the role of the landescape in your artworks?

For example, I can see that in Taming The Beast it reflects such a contrast towards the subject of the painting, while in most of your pieces as Embryonic Nightmare (one of my favourite ones of your paintings) it seems to play the role of a background, but not a passive one...

Taming the Beast rises from the issues that were current in the last general elections in Malta. Over the last few years, the younger generations have been lobbying with the state to open its laws towards freedoms such as divorce etc. One of the major issues that were on the agenda was gay marriage equality.

The painting expresses my personal anger at institutions – like the Church – that still have political power in terms of influencing ideas and the voters ( not legal power) – who speak out against gay people without truly understanding what it means to be gay, and the arguments that they raise against any equality issues are based on senseless fear spreading. Growing up as a gay man in Malta, and coming from a family that is highly Catholic, I have often heard homophobic comments being said / spread about by members of the Church which are particularly hurtful and may at times even incite discrimination.

Regardless it seems that lately new generations are beginning to voice their opinions, hence the painting is a reflection of what I dream of having in my country – the ability to be an equal citizen as other heterosexual citizens. The two figures are both male for that very purpose, they are faceless as they represent the gay community in Malta which is somewhat faceless, although that is now changing. The buffalo represents all those who discriminate who are being tamed and whose mentalities are now starting to change the world over, slowly but surely. This painting is one that is designed in the same way that the Americans used art during the revolt against the British, it is a jibe towards those who discriminate and stereotype humanity through their own narrow view of the world, and it tells them that in time irrationality will be silenced.

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Joseph Cilia

an interview with

Embryonic Nightmare Acrylic on canvas

Embryonic Nightmare on the other hand is characterized by the child within the adult, that child that suffers in silence.

The painting was a reflection of the grief I have been through after my brother’s passing the last few months. It was basically the expression of my own pain, yet it is also representative of those dark periods in our lives that hit us unexpectedly and make us wonder and think about the purpose of life itself. The name Embryonic Nightmare is metaphoric implying a Maltese saying that (to transliterate) goes something along the lines of “If a child knew what he would go through as an adult, he would not be born.� The saying thus highlights that at times one feels that he is at a precipice and helpless. The figure is purposely set in a foetal position, crying due to the deep despair that he feels, the swirling mass of colours altogether going about frantically depict the confusion of it all.

Furthermore, similarly to Taming the Beast, this painting also has an activist motif to it. It is representative of all those gay

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Joseph Cilia teens that grow up hearing homophobic theories about who they are and who they should love. It demonstrates the deep pain that exists in the heart of people who grow up believing that what is normal to them is somehow bad – this implies that they are born bad and broken themselves. Thus, the painting asks individuals to think before spreading; to realize that words have power and weight and that one word can mean the world to a growing child. One word could determine whether there will be an extra percentage on that year’s suicide rates among gay teens or not, hence it is important to think before speaking.

Another pieces of yours on which I would like to spend some words are Virginia and Guilt and Remorse: Could you take us through your creative process when starting this piece? By the way, how you get the initial ideas that inspire the pieces you create? Could you tell us something about your imagery?

The imagery in these two particular paintings happened quite differently - somewhat haphazardly for Guilt and Remorse whereas with Virginia it’s quite planned. To start off with Guilt and Remorse, it is basically a meditation on the guilt that one feels when dreams / chances to make amends are lost forever.

As I said before, I grew up in a staunchly Catholic family, and the fact that I am gay and have diverted from my Christian upbringing has caused somewhat of an estrangement with my family. Quite honestly I cannot really claim that there was much thought as to how the imagery was evoked in this painting, it was simply the expression of my own guilt at never having made amends with my older brother who was a Catholic priest.

Hence that is why the angel is now bound and gagged beneath the tree. The tree behind the angel is representative of the possibility of further growth as well as further sustenance due to the fruit that it bears. However, having bound himself, the angel is now unable to reach to the fruit. The powerful reds in this painting indicate tension and stress, that deep moment of despair upon the realisation that some goals are now best forgotten and hopeless.

Taming the Beast Acrylic on Canvas

Similarly, in Virginia one notices the same feeling of bitterness and despair as well as gloom, yet the blue hues as opposed to the stark reds indicate that the tension has somewhat lessoned.

Differently from the previous one, this painting gives the person choice. Inspired by the tragic life and death of the author Virginia Woolf, hence the name, the boat and river represent one’s journey through life and the turmoil one endures in life, yet though Virginia took her own life (by drowning herself), the painting implies that in the point of despair it is a person’s choice whether to ride the waves or drown. When preparing for this painting I was haunted by questions such as “Why do people commit suicide? Why am I able to overcome hardships where others have failed? What makes me so special that I was

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Joseph Cilia

to overcome my grief and others are depressed and let go?”

Questions like these and others were abundant during this period; to date I have not managed to answer them, yet I have come to the conclusion that it is what a person is made of that makes the difference. Some people choose to sail through the storms of life, others let go... it is up to the individual. Saddening though these thoughts may be, yet Virginia in itself does offer hope to the person, hope of a better future that will come in its right time and all will be better.

As you have remarked in your artist's statment, Leonardo's incessant thirst and yearning to achieve knowledge and to understand the world around him has always inspired you: despite the times of Leonardo, where artists were also scientists or engineers (just think to another italian pio-neeristic artist Brunelleschi or Michelangelo) nowadays we are used to an apparent dichotomy between Science and Art. It's quite a while that I was wondering if Art could play as a substitute of traditional learning and I'm sort of convinced that a synergy between scientific point of view and an artistic method could really helps us in capturing the essence of reality... what's you point about this?

Well in terms of learning / teaching it seems that imagery and symbolic learning is on the rise. Pedagogy nowadays encourages the exploration of matter and the exploration of anything through art; so in that sense it seems that it is helpful. However in my opinion it is more than just helpful, it is vital. This since art allows you to be more creative in exploring anything artistically. One scrutinizes the subject under observation; one has to understand the soul of the object – to use such metaphors – and the way it is relating to the world around it. In addition, the artist makes use of a multiplicity of ways to create new things out of what is already there or what is absent. He has the ability to think outside the box – a skill that a genius like Leonardo harnessed centuries ahead of his time. Hence I think that art in this sense is extremely important for learning. Furthermore, the artist always challenges the status quo, is a character that is always important for the advancement of humanity otherwise everything becomes stagnant if ideas do not evolve. In terms of science and art, both artist and scientist need to have a skill that is common to both and with equal importance, that is, observation. A scientist for example needs to observe a bee’s flight in all its minuteness in order to understand how it is able to fly. An artist on the other hand observes the flight of the bee not merely to explain it to others, but to capture its ability and recreate it on canvas.

And I cannot do without mentioning Lady Morrighan: I have been very impressed with this work: in particular, I have been struck with the deep red that however does not seem to be a very recurrent color in your pieces, and that here gives a lively -and I would dare to say- a tragic touch to this interesting piece. Would you like to tell us more about this

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#196 Winter Acrylic on canvas Lady Morrighan

Joseph Cilia Feature? By the way, any comments on your choice of palette and how it has changed over time?

The Morrighan is a subject of much study. As you know I am highly interested in ancient history especially pre-history and antiquity. The Morrighan was a Goddess of the ancient Celts (Irish Celts). She is known as a goddess of the battlefields and a warrior who enjoys bloodlust. In mythology it is she who chooses those who are to live or die in battle. Thus many were those who feared her and feared worshipping her. The Morrighan to the Celts is the personification of death that calls the warriors from the battlefield – similar to an ancient grim reaper. The stark red that is evident all over represents her bloodlust and her ruthless determination.

Furthermore, she is passionate and a furious archetypal warrior queen raging in the battlefield. Thus the reds create the atmosphere not simply of death and battle, but the heat and energy of the battle per se, the regal strength that needs to be harnessed by death blind in its justice to everyone.

Thus, since she was equated with death, she is often times thought of as evil and that is why she is feared. However, in the painting I wanted to portray the reality that death is just a path which we all must take; it is not evil in and of itself. It is just a part of life and it is important to be able to die in order to appreciate life. Without the possibility of death, life would have no meaning; our lives would have less value. Thus it is important to think of death as a good thing, it is part of reality. Moreover, being naked and holding a red towel, the figure looks as if she is about to help someone give birth. The vermillion at this point also refers to blood that is shed at birth thus showing that birth and death are but two faces of the same coin. The nudity of the Morrighan is such that it shows that in death we are all the same, and we are all in a continuous process of rebirth.

What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

There are several aspects that give me satisfaction. For example the ability to please people with my work, and to have my work enjoyed by others; yet painting to me is like giving birth (as far as I can ever imagine what it feels like). I see part of me living on the canvas, breathing and evolving. The more I paint the more I evolve and grow. I think this is what pleases me most, the ability to transcend my thoughts and give them life on the canvas.

Thanks for your time and your thoughts, Joseph. Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Well I do not really have any set plans. However, I am still planning on applying for projects involving art in the EU and possibly even in the US. I like to live day by day and see whatever comes my way. Nevertheless, I still see my career as being at its start at the moment, yet I look forward to whatever may happen in the future.

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