måg | issue ten

mag

m책g issue ten/ 2012 published by nabroad www.maagmag.com

GUNILLA KLINGBERG ALEXIS DIRKS SUSAN HILLER NICK LAESSING LILIANE LIJN CRAIG MULHOLLAND SARAH TRIPP

The Electric Bride, 1989 280 x 300 x 240 cm Aluminium, steel, cock feathers, Elmflex micanite, brass, blown glass.

Photo credit Thierry Bal, courtesy of Liliane Lijn.

/editor/ We are standing with one foot in the more-than-physical. We are, all of us, in the above and beyond. We are in the place that we cannot see, touching/not touching, being, almost-ing, betweening, broaching and breeching. The space of the superphysical is the space of the here and now, the still to come, the never was, the might be. It is here, in the smell of powder and perception.

While presented within the context of visual art, it will become evident that many of the ideas presented in this issue of måg are principally concerned with that which is not available to us through our visual faculties. It seems apposite to acknowledge now – at the beginning – that this issue is significantly shaped by the subjective sensibilities, compulsions and instincts of the two editors - as well as the dialogue that has emerged between them. The idea of the superphysical cannot be assessed by criteria that might be applied to definitively prove the verity of assertions made in relation to more familiar or established matters. It must also be stated that this collaborative investigation into the idea of the superphysical is first and foremost intended as an artistic gesture, the fundamental objective of which is to incite a reappraisal of that which lies beyond the realm of the material plane. Since the necessary perceptions remain undeveloped, the superphysical can only be studied and researched through a combination of rigorous study and intuitive analysis.

Much of the material featured in this magazine originates from exceptional artists and thinkers who have generated works of artistic and intellectual significance, the contents of which are in some cases drawn in no small way from knowledge of superphysical worlds. While a tendency to deny any ultimate principles lingers, along with a disillusioned intolerance with philosophical and religious ‘truth’, there is much that distinguishes the present epoch from that termed by some as “postmodern”. Perhaps one of the most notable changes has been the acceleration in the dissolution of boundaries between technology and the human body. While one remains ever aware of the advantages afforded by technologies we

have embraced – in particular in the field of communications – it is worth noting Paul Virilio’s suggestion that faculties of physical perception have been surrendered to technological substitutes. According to Virilio, an intense blindness spreads insidiously through society as we grow dependent upon what he termed ‘vision machines of sightless vision’ [1]. While this may be a rather paranoid view of the ‘virtual multimedia democracy’, it underscores the fact that the gradual abandonment of the bodily senses is a reality which has an impact upon how we inhabit and mediate the world. Upon closer consideration, a great deal of the technological phenomena encountered on a daily basis is revealed to be as strange and beyond the bounds of logic as phenomena considered to be paranormal – or in the case of this investigation, superphysical.

It is evident that the realm of art is the most suitable for exploring these ideas in depth.

Indeed, this magazine might have included a much greater quantity of material, had the decision not been made to confine its contents to those before you. While it is of course vital to maintain some skeptical assessment, it is equally important to reserve judgment so that together we can reignite a sense of possibility regarding the world in which we dwell. The time has come to touch upon secrets pertaining to our human way of looking at the world - secrets that our present-day perception has, one might almost say, quite lost. The time has come to look, and to see between the spaces of our seeing.

[1] Paul Virilio. The Vision Machine. Indiana University Press.1994. p59

RUTH BARKER & PÁDRAIC E. MOORE Editors måg | issue ten http://bit.ly/SfufiJ

/Contents/

10 COVER GUNILLA KLINGBERG ww.gunillaklingberg.com MAGAZINE DESIGN

by Rodney Point © 2011 www.rodneypoint.com PUBLISHER: NABROAD www.nabroad.org

EDITOR: AUDHILD DAHLSTRØM CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: LYNDON RILEY PAVLA ALCHIN MARIANNE MORILD RUTH BARKER LISA STÅLSPETS SUB EDITOR: LYNDON RILEY LILLIAN UTNE SKJŒVELAND EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: TRINE STEPHENSEN ADVERTISING: info@nabroad.org LONDON Copyright of all editorial content is held by måg.

Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden. måg © 2012 www.maagmag.com

gallery 60 LILIANE LIJN 70 SUSAN HILLER

FEATURES 20 GUNILLA KLINGBERG / Pรกdraic E. Moore 30 ALEXIS DIRKS / Ruth Barker 42 NICK LAESSING / Pรกdraic E. Moore

SOUND 14 WOMAN OF WAR / Liliane Lijn

text 3 Editor / Ruth Barker & Pรกdraic E. Moore 8 ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM / Craig Mulholland 54 BEFORE YOU SPEAK / Sarah Tripp

The Bride 1988 244 x 244 x 153 cm mixed media performing sculpture Photo credit Tomek Sierek, courtesy of Liliane Lijn.

SPECIAL

/FEATURES/text/

CRAIG MULHOLLAND Images courtesy of the artist and Kendall Koppe Link: http://www.kendallkoppe.com/artists/9/exhibitions

Illegitimi non carborundum

/FEATURES/SOUND/

LILIANE LIJN

WOMAN OF WAR

/LIJN/

Conjunction of Opposites [Woman of War & Lady of the Wild Things] 1986 400 x 800 x 400 cm Photographed in St. Michael’s, Camden Town, 1987 Photo credit Helga Munt, courtesy of Liliane Lijn.

FEATURES

/FEATURES/

GUNILLA

KLINGBERG

by Pรกdraic E. Moore

/KLINGBERG/ /MUTELEKESHA/

/KLINGBERG/

1) PEM: Much of your work possesses a distinctive visual character and there seems to be a recurring preoccupation with symbols that evoke ideas of transcendence and mysticism. Moreover, your exhibitions are distinguished by a very distinctive approach to display. However, the unseen is also vital concern throughout your work. Does this duality (which was certainly evident in the Parallareal exhibition at Nordenhake) remain a central interest?

GK: It is certainly still of importance for my work, but it is also taking new directions. In a recent work, the sand-print A Sign In Space that took place in a nature reserve in the Basque Country, the duality would be more the mechanical and industrial method and the transitory visual result.

I was interested in the lunar power - and the powerful ocean tide - and here I emphasized that by creating a printed pattern onto the sand which slowly disappears by the tide and people.

For me it was also important to combine the cosmological time, the tidal calendar, with the workers schedule. The pattern is remade again and again at low tide when the tidal calendar is synchronized with the laborers’ work schedule.

2) PEM: Much of your work might be seen as referring or appropriating ideas and motifs that can be categorised as New Age. However, it would seem that you are not necessarily subscribing to many of these possibilities yourself. Instead, you are using them as a means of considering the present situation. Is this the case?

GK: In my work I am interested in reflecting upon these phenomenas, how they relate to capitalism and the secular society, and I am fascinated by these alternative and parallel ways and methods to explain the world and our existence.

My private view on the so called New Age has a different approach, I am in some ways a believer, spirituality and yoga plays an important role in my life. But I am at the same time definitely a skeptic to much of it.

Slavoj Zizek talks about New Age Spirituality in

On belief and the paradox with how it functions as capitalisms’ perfect ideological supplement - in a time with an accelerating rhythm of technological progress and social changes, New Age would offer an efficient way to fully participate in the capitalistic dynamic while still retain distance and sanity, which I think pin-points one role of New Age in the western society today.

3) PEM: Returning to the idea of unseen; although your work is grounded in the realm of visual art –and more specifically in sculpture- many of your works engages with ideas of -unseenphenomena; what might be termed subtle energies. Ultimately, it would seem that you wish to challenge the viewer’s perception. Is this the case? Would you agree that in the contemporary world direct sensory perception is something we are becoming distanced from?

GK: I have always been interested in the physical aspect when experiencing the work. In my work A Sign in Space - the embossed printing on the sandy beach in Basque - the audience becomes part of the process when walking on the pattern leaving footprints and together with the high tide make the work slowly dissolve.

4) PEM: A quality in your work that I appreciate very much is the manner in which you succeed in producing works that can only be located in a hinterland of categories or disciplines. They are of course a manifestation of cultural production but they clearly bring to bear your rigorous research into the natural world and also your concern with educating people about and protecting the environment. Evidently, a wide variety of disciplines and areas of research inform your practice. This is one of the aspects I have always found particularly interesting.

Popular culture, science, religion and perhaps alternative medicine in particular inform your work-sometimes quite directly. Is there a desire on your part to enlighten your potential audience of certain ideas?

GK: My intention is not to enlighten the audience, but the works I make often reflects on issues I am concerned about. The symbols and

/KLINGBERG/

/KLINGBERG/

references in my works are more or less common and could function as an open entry or starting point to read the work. Though there is never any statement. I want to question the predictable and submit other possibilities, a What if?

5) PEM: It was a little over a century ago that a wave of artists began producing works in which an intensive preoccupation with ideas of spirituality led them to work in new formal styles.

Clearly the context and content is fundamentally different but I’ve always wondered if you had any interest in the work of these 20th century artists?

GK: Particularly the abstract art in early 20th century as well as the constructivists and the way the movement connected to the industrial production working with posters, mass production and distribution. Which links back to the previous question regarding education, I think the way ideas and artwork is mediated is of importance and should be as democratic and open as possible, why I also have worked with give-always like posters in several exhibitions.

PEM: Yes, I can see that thread throughout your work.

There is also a great generosity in this aspect of your practice. A desire to disseminate something outward. This was certainly an integral aspect of the Parallareal exhibition at Nordenhake. Thanks for your time Gunilla; I am delighted that we can keep our conversation alive.

IMAGES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: The Doors 2010 Lacquered wood, door handle, 2008 x 96 x 98 cm Gunilla Klingberg Parallelareal Curry Lines 2010 Poster.

Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, 2010 Gunilla Klingberg Parallelareal Curry Lines 2010 Site specific installation Vinyl tape Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, 2010.

Gunilla Klingberg Swivel Chair, 2010 wooden chair, 79 x 37 x 87 cm Gunilla Klingberg Sign in Space 2012 Sandprint at Laga beach, Sense & Sustainability, Art biennale, Urdaibai, Spain. A graphic star-pattern composed of truck tires is printed as a relief on the sand at Laga beach during low tide. At high tide the pattern will slowly vanish as the tide rises.

The printed pattern is made with a mechanical device, a manufactured steel-cylinder, with the graphic pattern as a matrix relief made of truck tires. The cylinder is connected to the beach cleaner tractor which drives from side to side of the beach in the morning, creating the pattern covering the whole beach area. Following the lunar and tidal calendar, the pattern is remade again and again at all possible days at low tide. The work A Sign in Space is performed on dates when the tidal calender is synchronized with the the beach cleaners early morning working schedule- the pattern will be created on days when the low tide hour fits the labour working hours.

Dates when A Sign in Space was performed at Laga beach on several mornings through July, August and September of 2012.

Gunilla Klingberg A Sign in Space 2012 Sandprint at Laga beach, Sense & Sustainability, Art biennale, Urdaibai, Spain.

Gunilla Klingberg LINK: www.gunillaklingberg.com

/FEATUREs/Q&A/

ALEXIS DIRKS

by Ruth Barker

/DIRKS/

1) RB: Images of the natural world often appear in your collage work - from the micro surfaces of rocks and minerals, to the vast expanses of tree-lined landscapes. When I look at these pieces however, I am struck that they seem to reflect internal emotional or psychological territories as much as external or geological ones. How important is this to you, and could you talk about the relationship you find between these states?

AD: When I use landscape imagery in my work, I’m definitely trying to understand or uncover something more emotional or subversive that could be going on beyond just a depiction of the natural world. I tend to think of landscapes as these impenetrable places, places that remain more a picture of a place, rather than a place one could actually get to. That’s where the idealism of landscapes comes from for me, places that remain on the horizon as a mirage, which I suppose is the accurate way to define a landscape – the total picture, or scene of the place itself, that can’t be broken down into its components of trees and rocks and rivers. I think that’s where the psychological aspect of landscapes comes into play for me, in that unattainable idealism that feels almost melancholic.

2) RB: Following on from this idea, is it significant that you often use found imagery, rather than generating the surfaces and samples you use from scratch?

AD: Using found imagery is a way for me to respond to someone else’s experience of a landscape or object. I love collecting images, and using another photographer’s images is taking their subjective experience of something and making it objective. It’s a way for me to play around with ideas of appropriation and authorship in image making. Working from found images creates some boundaries for my work as well, it keeps the source of images a bit foreign to me, but they’re something I’m trying to figure out or learn more about by putting into my work. It sets up this cycle of imagery – collecting and deconstructing a found image, reconstructing it into a three dimensional object, and then

photographing that object to make it into an image once again. All that being said, I am starting to experiment with using my own photographs as the source for making new collages. Taking photographs of places that are quite personal to me, and juxtaposing them with found images of someone else’s experience of something.

3) RB: I’m very interested in this idea of landscape as a non-physical space – that the images of landscape in your work describe an impenetrable location. You mention melancholia, but I wonder if this also touches on a sense of the ineffable, or the sublime?

AD: I’m never quite sure how to think about the sublime. It seems like an authentic experience of the sublime is so rarely felt, that I’m not sure I would even recognize such a moment if I encountered it. But I think that there must be some cross over between the sublime, the ineffable and the melancholic, especially when it comes to experiencing nature. My understanding of the sublime is that it evokes a kind of unimaginable beauty and awe, but there is a degree of terror to its destabilizing force and it is a transcendental experience too intense to be compared to feelings of melancholia. But maybe melancholia can exist within the sublime - a sadness in realizing the unpresentable or the unknowable. I think it’s that unknowableness that interests me the most in landscapes, and why I think about certain places less as physical spaces and more like ideas or objects. If landscapes always seem distant and unobtainable, then that’s when I start to think of them like objects, some kind of thing that exists elsewhere. Making a photograph of a physical space automatically turns it into an object, and in my work I’m trying to be really conscious of the fact that everything I use and everything I make are objects. When I use a picture of a landscape and cut it up and pair it with some other image or object, I want this breakdown of the physical space to be apparent, to demonstrate in a way the disconnect between a physical space and an image of it.

4) RB: And yet this imaginative space that your work opens up, which is physical in one sense but

/DIRKS/

/DIRKS/ intensely not physical in another (and very important) sense, perhaps brings me back to the relationship between our selves and our thoughts. It seems to me that your relationship to landscape mirrors the relationship that each of us have with the territory of our own private mind – that we might know it and not know it simultaneously. How do you feel about that?

AD: The vastness and mystery of landscape lends itself really well towards the same unknowableness of the psyche. I suppose that’s where ideas about the sublime can come into play again, some kind of recognition of the gap between knowing and not knowing the expansiveness of nature. The trouble, I find, is in making physical art objects that attempt to describe non-physical or imagined spaces.

That’s why I’m always trying to make the objects I photograph self-consciously aware of their object-ness. I think of the space I leave around the object - the vacant, empty ground that the objects sit within - as the psychological space and the unknown territories, more than the objects themselves. The images in my photographs might begin as landscapes, or images taken from nature, but once they are turned into objects, it is the vacant space around them that acts as the setting, describing some kind of new and unknown landscape. It is in this new non-space where the unknown territories of the mind might be more accurately revealed.

5) RB: I want to ask you a bit about the process of looking at your work, because I find as a viewer that the way my eye travels over your non-physical or superphysical landscapes is similar to the way that I might look out over a great chasm or gulf. I find it hard to focus on any one area, as my attention jumps from the detail to the expanse and back again. I feel that I’m surveying territory and distance rather than tracking over a flat physical surface. Can you tell me a bit about how you compose, and how deliberately you try to choreograph the eye, in your work?

AD: I’m never really sure where each work is going to end up when I begin. I might start out with an idea of what I want something to look like, and have it fail completely when I execute it.

So, sometimes I find it’s better to let the found images or objects dictate the direction of the final work, allowing whatever it is I’m particularly drawn to about the found image to be something I work in response to and just trying lots of different arrangements until I get something that looks and feels right. I often think about the works as little exercises, where I’m just focusing on one element that makes the overall photograph.

Sometimes I might be concentrating on a figure ground relationship, other times I focus on the translucency of the found imagery’s paper by changing the direction of the light source, or dissolving the edges of the paper into the ground around it. It’s often only when I take a photograph of the arrangement that things start to look right – the space gets condensed and flattened, and things can change drastically in how you look at the total object.

Textures and forms can overlap, or shadows can add subtle dimension to something that looks so flat. People sometimes ask me why I don’t let the sculptural still life be a work on their own, and exhibit them as sculptures, but they really don’t work as sculptures. There is no wondering about how they are made, or what they are because everything is on display as a sculpture, where as taking a photograph really only lets you look at this thing from one very specific angle and that’s where more interesting questions about material, scale, and even origin and appropriation of imagery come up.

6) RB: We’ve touched on so many absorbing areas - the unknowable, the vastness of the sublime, and the spaces beyond and between what is physical or describable. And yet I find it really telling that we are speaking with such fascination about a subject that is perhaps essentially melancholic - as you say, your work is often bound up with melancholia, and the ‘sadness in realizing the unknowable’.

Finally, I want to know how you feel about that, Alexis: do you think that our interest in these lonely borderlands is an essential part of the human condition? Or would you put it another way? It’s undeniable I think that the landscapes

/DIRKS/

/DIRKS/ you present us with are mesmerizing. Why do you feel that it’s important to occupy this complex, sometimes overwhelming, space?

AD: I never really realized how much my work was caught up in some kind of landscape identity until I moved to from Winnipeg to Glasgow.

I think I was probably really influenced by this art culture in Winnipeg that deals heavily in using landscape as a way to try and describe an identity, either personal or collective. Which makes sense for Canadian artists since there is just so much land here, and so much distance between cities, so there is a lot of land and isolation. I mean, it’s kind of a cliché to bring up that point in Winnipeg now, because it’s been examined so much, - but it’s something quite particular to Canada, not taking up or knowing all of the space we have, being both a big country and a small country at the same time. When I moved to Britain, I felt like I sort of lost access to that feeling of vastness; things felt closer together, there was less to discover in the old world or something - even though it was all new to me. Looking at images of places or landscapes became a way to understand wanting to access these places.

I became much more aware my relationship to places via images. I think that maybe our relationship to the physical world has changed quite a lot because of images, as we have access to images of almost anything now – we can see more things than we can ever hope to physically experience. The amount of imagery that is out there now is a new thing for the human condition to contend with, and maybe that’s where this level of melancholia is felt, being exposed to so much visual material without the ability to physically reach it.

IMAGES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: Twisted Mineral 2011 Digital print on card 13 x 18 cm Alexis Dirks Mound 2012 Commercially printed billboard on blue back paper, wall paper paste 110 x 150 cm (approx) Alexis Dirks Grammar of Landscape 2012 Digital c-type print 60 x 60 cm Alexis Dirks New Saloon 2011 Digital c-type print 45 x 45 cm Alexis Dirks Berg 2012 Digital c-type print 75 x 50 cm Alexis Dirks Tree Strip 2012 Commercially printed billboard on blue back paper, wall paper paste 30 x 420 cm Alexis Dirks Link: http://alexisdirks.blogspot.co.uk

/FEATUREs/Q&A/

NICK LAESSING

by Pรกdraic E. Moore

/ LAESSING/

/ LAESSING/

1) DEM: Though your practice is ultimately grounded in sculpture many of your works would seem to be conceived as devices with a functional element. In many cases these sculptures operate in a manner which engages with -unseen- phenomena, what might be termed subtle energies. Am I correct in assuming that you are challenging what might be termed ‘conventional’ science via these works?

NL: Well, I don’t know if it’s so easy or possible to challenge conventional science. Scientific innovation and invention comes about through repeated trial and replication. I guess that’s how we find out if things really work or not - if they work then they become convention.

We can’t really challenge that and neither would we want to if we’re about to have a heart operation or board a jet plane. But there’s also a flip side, a what might have happened if... This is something Lyotard addresses in the Post Modern Condition. How would things have been different if scientific research had not become so integrated into the corporate funding that invests in the probability of certain outcomes? This leads to a situation where scientific research follows an agenda that narrows the opportunities of research specifically for its own sake. I think this might be why Lyotard was so interested in the playfulness of experimentation in visual art - because you could argue that artistic experimentation can exist with a degree of freedom from such constraints (though market forces also will always play their role here as well). If I could challenge something it would be the reasons for following certain trajectories, that only allows for a narrow bandwidth of discovery, thus negating the potential of other ideas.

I try to get aquainted with people who in some way create their own alternative trajectories in what they do. I know a retired physicist in Wales who spent his working years designing and building calibration equipment for the physics department of a university. As far as I can tell he is a highly skilled physicist, but he now spends his time building what his former colleagues would balk at - devices he believes can offer a form of fully sustainable or free energy. His thinking is very clear - he sincerely believes that the science of electricity took a wrong turn at the start of the 20th century. He follows these

barely known scientific papers by forgotten physicists like Oliver Heaviside that claim it can work in a completely different way. It sounds incredulous but when you visit him, hear what he has to say and look at his devices, it’s just great fun and raises a lot of questions. The machines he builds are constantly being redesigned, pulled apart and rebuilt as he is a constant experimenter, satisfied just to prove things for himself rather than for anybody else.

Science has created basic paradigms that form the fabric of our everyday thoughts and actions - like we know how rainbows are made and that the the world is a globe. These views were revolutionary in their time but once accepted end up becoming prosaic. Such paradigms could be stretched a lot further if we asked different questions and perhaps tried to find different ways to answer them. The Hadron Collider is one example where time travel seems to become a possibility.

When you talk about subtle energies and unseen phenomena, in many cases there is not a well practiced science that can contain such ideas or accept them. So in some of the works I make it’s not really about challenging, it’s more about suggesting other potentials or questioning, or simply just tellng a story. Water for example could be seen to be an energy source since it contains hydrogen, but we just don’t think about it in this way.

2) DEM: Much of your work is clearly informed by considerable research. However, the sculptures are sufficiently generous so as not to demand from the viewer that they must also be aware of the knowledge that may have informed the work. Personally, I have found with several of your works that I have studied or viewed in print I often grasp that there is a concern with power beyond human comprehension. Am I correct in thinking that you are interested in the parallels between religious/spiritual belief and scientific conviction? Ultimately both are based on faith.

NL: Any scientist will tell you that scientific conviction is based primarily on empirical facts, whereas a priest might say that spiritual or religious belief explains the unknown in the world - or if you look at it another way, the yet-to-be-explained. It just seems that the yet-to-be-explained is a lot larger a subject than the facts we already know about.

/LAESSING/ I’m on a residency at the institute for climate change in Potsdam at the moment and just read a paper today about climate change and religion. It was pretty interesting - arguing the need to harness religious teaching in the non-secular world to encourage awareness of human responsibility for global warming.

The press office here receives an occasional stream of unsolicited ideas and proposals from outside individuals pitching their own solutions to global warming. The office seems to hold on to them more for their curiosity value than anything else because the institute focuses on data analysis and computer simulations rather than engineering. One such proposal from a self-titled physicist includes religious texts and prayers wrapped up with a bundle of patent applications and letters of reference from a seemingly obscure Russian scientist.

When a given theory or idea is accompanied by religious conceit, it stands every chance of ending in catastrophic failure. Often such ideas don’t get as far as being properly tested by mainstream science because of the outlandish claims that are made for them. But you can’t entirely cancel out the thought that against all the odds there might be the chance of the opposite result - of success. And for some reason I am fascinated by this possibility. I just read a book about the history of communes in California and it became clear to me that the most successful and longest lasting communes were founded upon religious faith. What fascinates me are exactly these paradoxes and the extremes of human nature that religious conviction can inspire in this context of invention.

There is also the matter of inspiration and knowledge, of insight and revelation, which is inextricably linked to religious and spiritual experience. I have come across accounts of individuals who claim to have built devices that were literally mapped out in their mind without any conscious thought or effort. Paul Baumann, a member of a religious community in Switzerland was imprisoned for a crime committed in his village. While incarcerated he grew frustrated by the lack of light to read by in his cell. Then one night he experienced a

sudden vision of a machine that would provide him with light to read by. Without any scientific training he built the machine with other members of his commune. It is claimed to create electricity by harnessing energy from the atmosphere. Of course it sounds like an impossibility, but if you look into this you can find witness statements by engineers that have tested it and have been unable to explain the source of its power. Baumann explains it by saying that it replicates the way the atmosphere generates lightening and converts that into useful electricity. It’s a beautiful looking device.

In the work Voice Figures, I was interested in the idea that Margaret Watts Hughes (the inventor of the Eidophone) believed the results of her experiments were channelled through her from a divine source. She believed that the imagery she was able to “sing” through the resonance of her voice were expressing the divine forces of nature. It’s pretty clear that it was her religious nature that inclined her to interpret her work in this way. But I wonder – would she have gone to such lengths to create these extraordinary experiments without this faith? And it’s these questions that inspired my own lengthy research into her work. I wanted to discover if this was replicable, if I could find the same results.

3) DEM: As I previously mentioned, your work touches upon and engages with mamy areas of research that lie outside the realm of visual art.

Yet, in my opinion the success of the work is the fact that it is still very much ‘art’. In terms of the history of visual art, is there any practitioners that interest you. I ask this not because I am interested in whether or not you have been ‘influened’ by any particular artist. What I am really interested in is where your aesthetic sensibilities lie. Perhaps that might offer another lens through which to consider your work.

NL: Gustav Metzger Chris Burden Ilya/Emilia Kabakov Gordon Matta Clark Joseph Beuys

/LAESSING/ IMAGES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: Voice Figures (Eidophone-Performance View) 2011 Installation view; Mélodie; toujours l’art des autres. CEAAC. Centre Européen d’Actions Artistiques Contemporaines.

Nick Laessing Voice Figures (Eidophone) 2011 Installation view; Mélodie; toujours l’art des autres. CEAAC. Centre Européen d’Actions Artistiques Contemporaines.

Nick Laessing Voice Figures (Eidophone-Performance View) 2011 Installation view; Mélodie; toujours l’art des autres. CEAAC. Centre Européen d’Actions Artistiques Contemporaines.

Nick Laessing Prototype II (after U.S. prototype 6545444 by John Bedini) 2009 Plexiglass, metal, magnets, electronics, batteries.

180 x 70 x 30 cm Nick Laessing Voice Figures (Detail) (Eidophone) 2011 Video Still Nick Laessing

TEXT

/FEATURES/text/

SARAH TRIPP

BEFORE YOU SPEAK

/TRIPP/

Before you speak

by Sarah Tripp

Silence takes hold and eventually extinguishes every murmur, even the movement of swallowing ceases. Many arms are folded, criss-crossing the banks of the amphitheatre.

Now, they are architecture regarded with the most serious thought. They have found their identity as an audience and intuitively they wait to be addressed as one. You stand at a distance acknowledging the depth and volume of the crowd, agreeing with its stillness. It gives form to agreement, like a queue or a march. Their anticipation holds you firmly.

Your skin and their skin tightens.

For a brief moment your eyes lower as you listen inwardly, then they lift and fix on a point in empty space with blunt concentration. What is it to summon up something in your mind? To retrieve an image or a word then keep it on the verge of utterance, immanent yet obscured.

That is what the body can do – hide thought then release it.

All the attention is on your head but your mind is not confined, it is in your fingers, your shoulders, everywhere from waist to crown. You are as hollow as a drum. You do not sound, outwardly or inwardly, an empty chamber.

A second deepening promotes the sounds of the room.

The audience listen but there is nothing beyond the electrical hum. This is it. Now, the idea of ‘now’ enters everyone’s mind at exactly the same time. You make a decision. You call up the first three words. You hear them in your own voice.

These three words guarantee all the other words will follow.

The words are there, on your mind but not yet spoken.

The moment is on hold. You are on the brink. In a moment they will know what you are withholding. It is on the tip of your tongue.

GALLERY

/GALLERY/

LILIANE LIJN

/LIJN/

/LIJN/

/LIJN/

/LIJN/

IMAGES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE Burma Requiem (Detail) 2008 295 x 50 x 50 cm Aerogel fragmented ring on bronze mirror in Perspex case, perlescent metallic coated square column housing dvd player, projector Photo credit Liliane Lijn, courtesy of the artist, In Sua Memoria 1971 61 x 56 x 53 cm and 35.5 cm respectively Optical glass prisms, Perspex, stainless and chromed steel.

Photo credit Stephen Weiss, courtesy of Liliane Lijn.

Ruins of Kasch 2008 295 x 90 x 90 cm Aerogel and rosin on mirror in Perspex case, perlescent metallic coated square column housing dvd player, projector Photo credit Liliane Lijn, courtesy of the artist, Inner Space Outer Space Same Distance 1969 Collage no.2 44.5 x 23 cm Photo credit Stephen White, courtesy of Liliane Lijn.

Inner Space Outer Space Same Distance 1969 Collage no.4 54.5 x 43 cm Photo credit Stephen White, courtesy of Liliane Lijn.

Inner Space Outer Space Same Distance 1969 Collage no.3 48 x 25.5 cm Photo credit Stephen White, courtesy of Liliane Lijn.

LINK: http://www.lilianelijn.com

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SUSAN HILLER

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[Detail] ‘Homage to Marcel Duchamp’ 2008 50 Colour dry prints Each: 12 x 12 in. / 30.4 x 30.4 cm Overall Approx: 149 1/2 x 149 1/2 in. / 380 x 380 cm Copyright Susan Hiller, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery [Detail] ‘Homage to Marcel Duchamp’ 2008 50 Colour dry prints Each: 12 x 12 in. / 30.4 x 30.4 cm Overall Approx: 149 1/2 x 149 1/2 in. / 380 x 380 cm Copyright Susan Hiller, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery ‘Homage to Marcel Duchamp’ 2008 50 Colour dry prints Each: 12 x 12 in. / 30.4 x 30.4 cm Overall Approx: 149 1/2 x 149 1/2 in. / 380 x 380 cm Copyright Susan Hiller, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery ‘Homage to Marcel Duchamp’ 2008 50 Colour dry prints Each: 12 x 12 in. / 30.4 x 30.4 cm Overall Approx: 149 1/2 x 149 1/2 in. / 380 x 380 cm Copyright Susan Hiller, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery Susan Hiller [Detail] ‘Homage to Marcel Duchamp’ 2008 50 Colour dry prints Each: 12 x 12 in. / 30.4 x 30.4 cm Overall Approx: 149 1/2 x 149 1/2 in. / 380 x 380 cm Copyright Susan Hiller, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery [Detail] ‘Homage to Marcel Duchamp’ 2008 50 Colour dry prints Each: 12 x 12 in. / 30.4 x 30.4 cm Overall Approx: 149 1/2 x 149 1/2 in. / 380 x 380 cm Copyright Susan Hiller, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery [Detail] ‘Homage to Marcel Duchamp’ 2008 50 Colour dry prints Each: 12 x 12 in. / 30.4 x 30.4 cm Overall Approx: 149 1/2 x 149 1/2 in. / 380 x 380 cm Copyright Susan Hiller, courtesy Timothy Taylor Gallery

IMAGES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

LINK: http://www.susanhiller.org