READ MORE TREBUCHET-MAGAZINE.COM Experienced Actor’S Perspective

ISSUE 4

psychic change psychic The body as a symbol for for The body as a symbol Increasing the range art of

into depiction into provides insight insight provides Conceptualist and and Conceptualist romantic photo-collagist photo-collagist romantic

on the on the Edward Lucie-Smith Lucie-Smith Edward revolutionary impulse impulse revolutionary

12 ELECTRICITY AND TRANSHUMAN MUSIC James Sclavunos and Michaela Davies explore agency and transgression the New World online The CanadianCeltic diaspora and FOLK ACTIVIST LOREENA MCKENNITT: 118 revolutionary impulse Edward Lucie-Smith onthe CONTENTIOUS NUDES 66 psychic change The bodyasasymbol for TRANSFORMATION SUFFERING AND 94

138 A RICH BODY OF DATA The flows and forms of MutualArt ARTISTS ON THE BODY

24 110 Mythological entropy Scars and revelations Mothmeister: Revelations behind Ron Athey: Personal explorations and 150 the mask. public displays. MODERN PATRONAGE 32 114 The inside edge of the Montblanc Progressive augmentation The depth of the vessel Cultural Foundation Stelarc: Engineering the interface Mike Laird: The inner limits of the human body 54 Keeping in the shape of rhythm 126 Louis Cole: From Knower to Solo Pain, wit and gesture Andrew Litten: Timeless models 56 of expression Alchemical transformations in soul and psyche 130 Bert Gilbert: Rites of passage, Mud and the body by-product skins of change Damien Meade: Making the artificial appear sentient 76 Hypnotic memories of the future 132 Adam Dix: Science fiction and new The poetry and potency dimensions in art. of presence Gail Olding: Emotional access 80 Lungs of coral, hearts of stone 146 Katharine Dowson: Internal beauty Sculpture and abstract sensation reflected in nature Sarah Sitkin: Bodies in decline, bodies at rest 86 Elegant geometry, structure 156 and violence Existing beyond the body Martha Parsey: Symbolic feminism Nestor Pestana: Speculative design and the revolt and the new human

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4 44 Cover image: Publisher & Russell MacEwan, Editorial Director God Save The Trebuchet Kailas Elmer Queen. 2018 © R. MacEwan. Art Direction 2018. Image challenges Mark Halliwell courtesy of artist. Art Editors Printed in the UK. Michael Eden, entrenched Edward Winters Culture Editor views by Naila Scargill Music Editor Jed Saint bringing Web Editor Sean Keenan

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Subscription and frontline of general enquiries office@trebuchet- magazine.com culture. Commercial enquiries sales@trebuchet- Something in me knows where I’m going, and — well, magazine.com While every effort has painting is a state of being. … Painting is self-discovery. been made to ensure Every good artist paints what he is. The publishers accuracy, Trebuchet would like Magazine does not - Jackson Pollock accept liability for any to thank: errors or omissions. Jason Colchin-Carter, Reprinting of any articles or images from Emma O’Hare, Trebuchet without the Russell MacEwan permission of Trebuchet Ltd is expressly forbidden © 2018.

EDITOR’S NOTE the body masks

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate;’ -TS Eliot, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. (1915)

In this issue of Trebuchet we look at how a variety of artists have approached remaking the body: as a canvas, a template, and as a site of investigation and statement. The representation of humans within societies has been central to the discussion of who and what we are, asking where does the individual end and the social body start? Where do transgressions against the body move from an agent’s agency to a site of conspicuous controversy?

Society is a compact in which each individual forgoes actions and behaviours (sometimes this is easy, sometimes hard) in order to exist comfortably within local and contemporary values. The representation of the body has been variously knotted with social values, from Hitler’s ‘degenerative’ assignation to Marshall McLuhan’s analysis of Cubism, where the medium of painting replaces the content. In both cases we are asked to read the body as a place of action, philosophy and normative association where what we are seeing is intellectually demonstrative rather than just photorealistically figurative. We are asked to look beyond the body’s physical attributes and into its being, as it appears to others and to ourselves.

The hand, the eye, the neck and the mouth are all symbols imbued with intent. From Ron Athey’s visceral explorations

of Stelarc, James Sclavunos and Michaela Davies into #2200418 transhumanism, the spectrum of work presented here provides cardinal directions from which we can evaluate the continuing fascination we have with our bodies. Jemma Appleby, Jemma Appleby,

Lorem Lorem ipsum dolor as seen on online

ART ED KIENHOLZ’ EARLY WORK Ed Kienholz is an assemblage artist, an installation artist, and a conceptual artist; which is to say that his work lies somewhere within that matrix. Showing at Blain|Southern, London, 2018.

SOUND SOUND NO SPACE FOR THE MELTED ON MY CORTEX UNEXPECTED – XOR GATE “It is more progressive, more uplifting, The latest creative manifestation of more melancholic, more dynamic, there is Donald, one half of Detroit electro a greater emphasis on light and shade, it legends Drexciya and the main figure is heavier, it is more delicate, it has more behind the projects Dopplereffekt, beauty, it has more darkness” Arpanet, Der Zyklus and more.

SOCIETY THE PASSION OF WU YONGNING The final tragic dance of Chinese rooftop artist Wu Yongning. ART ART POSTCARDS FROM THE LOST WHY BEING AN ARTIST IS GENERATION: PICASSO 1915-1925 NOT A JOB Review of ‘Pablo Picasso: between cubism Andy Warhol famously called his studio and classicism 1915-1925’ ed. Berggruen “The Factory” and employed assistants. and Von Liechtenstein. Surely this was a job? ART ANTI-ART REFLECTING A KNOWING SOCIETY ‘Anti Art’ is a reflection of the often ironic, self knowing stance of the artistic player who undermines conventions.

SOCIETY SOCIETY ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE: IAN EQUIVALENCE & THE LOSS OF MCKELLEN PLAYS HIS PART THE ENGAGED HUMAN Frank self-analysis offers some Postmodernity as a condition of being for fascinating insight into Ian McKellen’s those of us who inhabit the developed career trajectory; an essential watch for world in the later 20th and early 21st both fans and those interested in an

century can be difficult to fully grasp. READ MORE TREBUCHET-MAGAZINE.COM experienced actor’s perspective.

10 Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing

- Salvador Dalí

James Sclavunos & Michaela Davies explore agency and transgression Electricity and transhuman music STEPHEN O’MALLEY ON CENTRE POMPIDOU COMMISSIONS AND THE CAVES OF THE DORDOGNE.

NIAGARA REVERB #07150 Fujiko Nakaya + KTL (Stephen O’Malley & Peter Rehberg) Alphorn accompaniment by Alponom, arrangement by Stephen O’Malley Sound spatialization by Manuel Poletti ManiFeste-2017 (the 40th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou and IRCAM), Paris

Previous page: Photograph of Jim Sclavunos by Daniel Efram. Left:Attention is a scarce resource photo by Liam Loke, 2013. Courtesy of M.Davies Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) The body is an electrical emitter, receiver and network Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) is the elicitation of muscle contraction using electrical impulses. station. Interconnected points vibrate with pulse The impulses are delivered through electrodes messages; somewhere amongst the thought, signals and on the skin near to the muscles being stimulated. the noise of action there is some obscure deity called us. The impulses mimic the action potential that comes from the central nervous system, causing the muscles Music changes us; the electrical impulses coursing to contract. through our brains are changed when we make sense of auditory inputs. Sonic experimentation has long pushed the boundaries of what we consider recognisable as music. We’ve changed the setting, format, range, production, even the value of music as a cultural artefact,however, what has remained largely sacrosanct is the role of agency in the creation of music.

Starting from a shared appreciation of the creative possibilities of Michaela Davies’ art-music explorations, Bad Seed James Sclavunos and the Australian avant- garde cellist explored how control might be exerted over musicians via EMS (electrical muscular stimulation). The resulting experimental productions marked the beginning of an exploration by the two artists into the role of the body in performance and whether physical agency and humanity are as closely tied together as most would expect.

Speaking to Trebuchet, Sclavunos and Davies (via a less painful electronic medium) described the history of the project and where this visceral investigation might lead.

16 James Sclavunos: Michaela and I first met at a Grinderman pad had shifted by even less than a millimetre each time gig when the band played at a festival in Sydney. it was applied, it might produce a different degree of She approached me after the show and proposed a reaction, because a different part of the muscle was being project that sounded pretty intriguing, that would have activated. We could easily customise the size of the pads entailed me triggering MIDI impulses generated by my to suit whichever muscle we were endeavouring to target, playing on a drum kit and these impulses would be turned but it was still very hard to pinpoint the exact spots that into electrical stimuli that would control various muscles consistently produced the ideal involuntary movement we in her body. Now this sounded like good fun, but also wanted. Further complicating matters, if we were mildly didn’t sound very… it sounded a bit S&M to me. Not that sweaty (which we often were, it being summer and all) the I have anything against that. I’m happy to go there if I’m pads became less efficient, as our skin was less conductive paid the appropriate fee and I get to wear chains and a with a layer of perspiration. black leather bodysuit, but clearly this was a different kind of proposal. In any case, we spent about a month diligently and methodically charting out an inventory of possibilities The more I learned about what she was on about, and permutations involving different kinds of controlled the more interested I was in the creative potential and movements. We experimented with controlling finger philosophical implications. But it wasn’t until I had seen movement as well, but the technique did not lend itself some actual footage of some of her pieces (in particular to fretboard work, as we couldn’t devise a way to control her ‘dance’ piece Subsoma) that I became very excited finger pressure. It did look pretty cool, though, in a creepy about the possibility of collaborating . Being a cellist, kind of way. Michaela had already done numerous music-based pieces incorporating the EMS technology. I was specifically So at some point I proposed to Michaela that we work interested in collaborating on a musical piece that together on a piece for a string quartet, a format that would integrate involuntary musical performance into a Michaela had already experimented with, and supplement traditional score. The technology she was using was in fact that with a pair of trained classical musicians who would pretty crude at that point, but there was enough potential work off a traditional score. The traditional players would there to encourage us to get together to see if we could play side by side with the programmed musicians who come up with a diverse palette of sounds that could be would be responding synchronously to a MIDI score. produced exclusively by this technique. The programmed players could be either completely untrained, without ever having touched a violin before In the very hot and humid summer of 2012, Michaela in their lives, or be proper classically trained musicians, and I met up in Brooklyn, NY, and hunkered down with our but either way, at least in theory, their response to the laptops and her EMS set-up in my basement and we set EMS should produce interesting results. With this set-up about experimenting on each other to see what muscles in mind, I wrote a three-movement score to accompany controlled what sort of movements, and how those and interweave with the more unpredictable performance movements might interact with stringed instruments, aspects that the EMS would engender. and what strengths and durations and combinations of electrical stimuli produced the most interesting and The idea was experimental in every sense, because reliable sounds. Michaela fortunately has a modicum of regardless of rehearsals we couldn’t entirely predict anatomical knowledge; I had absolutely none. Regardless how well it was going to go on the night. As I’ve said the of that, we learnt very quickly—and painfully—that it was all technology was a bit crude and you couldn’t count on a a bit hit-and-miss: different voltages prompted different 100 per cent consistent result every time. That was part reactions in different people; of course, not all bodies of the reason why we wanted to framework the MIDI- are the same! Further, we found that if the position of a programmed components within a written score, but the

Art Trans-human music “WHAT STRENGTHS AND DURATIONS AND COMBINATIONS OF ELECTRICAL STIMULUS PRODUCED THE MOST INTERESTING AND RELIABLE SOUNDS”

piece also quite intentionally has elements built into it over which I could not or did not exert absolute control.

We also wanted to explore both the contrasts and the similarities of the trained and untrained players. Classical musicians are impelled by their disciplined musical education to strive to play perfectly no matter what the obstacles, and in this case no matter how much the pads were forcing them do otherwise. The untrained string players, on the other hand, were just going with it, as it were. The results in either case were equally interesting, from a behavioural point of view as well as the sonic outcome.

Of course, there was no way to build in pitch variations in the MIDI programming because we couldn’t control finger movement and pressure to any practical result, so we left that up to the whims and taste of the players. The musicians who were following the written score were reading traditional notation that designated precisely defined pitched and rhythmic parts. The MIDI-controlled players would be controlled rhythmically with their bow strokes, but the pitches were determined either by tuning of their instrument and where the bow happened to land across the frets, or in some cases we directed or left it up to them what pitches to choose. There were some performances variables we left open-ended like that.

18 So, obviously there was always going to unavoidably be become a technological resource controlled by the musical a lot of chance and inconsistent elements in any given score, to execute complex rhythmic structures, precision performance of the piece, but that was fine by us. Some phasing and other techniques they would otherwise be degree of improvisation on the part of the players was unable to perform of their own volition. The interface also expected and even required by us. None of the players, enables the performers to play in rhythmic unison without neither those following the traditional score nor those any external cues or obvious tempo. being triggered by electrical pulses, were strictly puppets nor were either fully using free will. At the end of the day, By placing non-musicians in a formalised performance I guess a score is a score, to be followed, whether by setting with trained musicians, and controlling their limbs ‘choice’ or forcibly compelled. so that they execute complex rhythms and techniques which would otherwise be impossible, the work speaks Is there a larger message about free will and to the ‘democratisation’ of music with the advent of user- determinism here? friendly tech, and the subversion of cultural traditions JS: Yes, there is, and Michaela has been exploring those previously reserved for the elite or trained initiates. themes throughout her own work. However, I think anyone can easily glean some of the fundamental ideas we were Inserting these robotic elements into an enduring exploring in this piece. It was Michaela who came up with emblem of Western classical tradition, this eighteenth- the title of the piece, by the way—FM-2030—as a tribute century-meets-cyborg string ensemble provides a stark to the transhumanist/futurist philosopher of that name. example of the man/machine interfacing that is central Michaela introduced me to his writings. I think you can to most contemporary music creation, production and see the influence of his ideas on thinkers like Dr Michio performance, and points to a growing reliance upon Kaku and Ray Kurzweil. In any case, it’s not so much that machines to perform repetitive or difficult tasks I’ve wholeheartedly embraced his philosophy, but we were previously relegated to humans. definitely inspired by the spirit of his philosophy, and his passionate but unsentimental embrace of the possibilities In a broader context, FM-2030 is a creative enquiry of improving the human being by artificial means. into the nature of agency within systems where cognition is distributed across people, objects and environment Michaela Davies: FM-2030, so named for the through technologies of connection. The work aims to transhumanist philosopher Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, inspire reflection upon assumptions about agency and explores sonic possibilities and human limits at the free will both in and beyond the context of interface of technology, live performance and composition. musical performance. The work harnesses the bodily convulsions produced by electrical impulses to control performers in a string So there really isn’t a lot of sentimentality there, then? quartet, who are literally shocked into playing their JS: There is a sort of romantic undercurrent there, this idea instruments. The performers in the quartet are connected of idealising human beings, that there is unlimited godlike to a custom-built electric muscle stimulation (EMS) evolutionary potential. Maybe the real endgame is to get device, which sends electrical impulses to their muscles, rid of humans because they are inherently flawed. Some generating specific involuntary movements. say, ‘Well, we are perfect as we are!’ However, evidence tends to lean to the contrary, as far as I can see. The involuntary elements of the work are controlled via There are theories that the next step in evolution is a composed MIDI sequence. An additional cello and violin non-human. I’m not really convinced that that is going accompany the ‘robotic’ quartet, playing parts written to be a vastly superior scenario, not that I’ll presumably as a notated score. The work creates an absurd dialogue be around to find out. It seems to me that if something between the EMS-controlled players and the ‘voluntary’ has even the tiniest atom of human intelligence in it it’s musicians through the use of repetition, call and response ultimately going to be its Achilles’ heel. But maybe that’s and other techniques from the classical lexicon. a good thing.

The use of EMS in this context extends the potential of Has the technology moved on since then? the human body, enabling the performers to execute tasks It’s a good question. At the time we were working on the beyond conscious capabilities. The performers’ bodies piece I discussed with Michaela at length the limitations of

Art Trans-human music Right: FM-2030 courtresy of Ms. Flora Schnall, New York (via Wikimedia) Above: Involuntary quartet (2013). image courtesy of Michaela Davies. OR TRAINED INITIATES.” RESERVED FOR THE ELITE TRADITIONS PREVIOUSLY “SUBVERSION OFCULTURAL the labelof post-human beings. from thecurrent condition asto merit beings withabilitiesso greatly expanded to transform themselves into different human beings may eventually beable common transhumanist thesisisthat enhance thehumancondition. Themost movement that aimsto transform and or h+)isaninternational intellectual Transhumanism (abbreviated asH+ to post-humanity as‘transhuman’. adopt technologies as‘transitional’ when hebegan to identify people who meaning of theterm transhumanism foreshadowed thecontemporary professors of futurology, and (1930–2000) was oneof thefirst FM-2030, bornFereidoun M.Esfandiary FM-2030

20 20 the technology, as well as what I saw as the particular pros and cons of it. At the time one of the things I liked about it the most was the fact that it was so brutal. That was a big part of the appeal for me, that when people are hooked to the EMS pads and being triggered by the MIDI score, they are actually often in pain and in fact they do usually look like they are in pain. At the very least, they look pretty uncomfortable, which in turn helps convey the presence of this ‘invisible conductor’, in both the electrical and orchestral sense.

Michaela and I have observed that some audience members have difficulty grasping what the performers are going through, that there was electricity coursing through the performers’ bodies and they are actually undergoing James Sclavunos very mild electric shocks throughout the performance. James ‘Jim’ Sclavunos is widely known The only real tangible evidence would be from expressions as a percussionist with iconic ensembles including Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, on the faces of the players and their convulsive and Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch, The Cramps, unnatural movements. I assure you, if the voltage is and Grinderman, as well as near sufficiently high it’s pretty painful; I speak from direct countless sessions. Additionally experience, because as I mentioned before, Michaela and he has acted as a producer/remixer I experimented on each other to determine what voltages for a wide range of artists, written for several publications and has expounded were needed where on the body and we had to examine his encyclopaedic musical knowledge in the limits thereof. That was what we spent that summer a variety of formats. exploring, how far we could push it and how much voltage was actually needed to lift that arm up in a quick decisive movement, etc. It can be very stimulating but also a very exhausting thing to undergo, too, and not a lot of people are willing to submit to it. We were very grateful for all the players that were willing. Some people got immediately scared off from even the mildest exposure to these electrical sensations.

As pointed out earlier, it’s based on the TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) technology and if you’ve ever had any TENS treatments you know it starts off with a bit of tingling and moves up the scale. It’s quite unnerving the stronger it gets and then depending on the amount of voltage, the amplitude

Art Trans-human music Left: Jim Sclavunos by Daniel Efram, courtesy of photographer. Right: Photograph by Kyle Sanna (2013), courtesy of Michaela Davies tell sometimes who was really gettingaproper shock volunteers even enjoyed itto anextent. It was hard to Not asmany as you would think, andI’m sure some Did you losemany peopleduringauditions? broader range of voltage available. Shehaditjuicedup. to a TENS machinebutadapted itsothatthere was a engineer to designaMIDI interface for adevice similar pre-program itallinREAPER. Michaela worked with an ways. We were ableto control allthatto adegree and and theduration, it will make you respond indifferent bad score is ultimately asubjectfor criticalevaluation. as apieceofmusic, and whether itis agoodscore or a I intended thatmy score should standonitsown merits philosophical pointof view. Aside from allthatthough, I seealotofgrey areas here from atheoretical and piece itself? Surely thisisinline with thephilosophicaimsof kind ofresponse. players’ hands asit were, andindisputably causingsome beyond any doubt, the voltage was definitely forcing the cent voltage entirely causingthismovement. However, measure scientifically that yes, thisisabsolutely 100 per the volunteers were entirely reliable; there was no way to the variables inbody response nor thetrustworthiness of achievable to alimited extent. Neither thetechnology nor no control over their bodiesatall, butthat was only us achieve our goal. Ideally we wanted peopleto have cooperate wholly or partially, it was only goingto help objective andifsomeone was willing to participate and a viable performanceofapiecemusic;that was our the targeted movements. at leastcertainminimumstrength inorder to provoke too uncomfortable, butthe voltage would needto beof much because we didn’t want anyone to gethurtor be and who was fakingit. We didn’t usually turnituptoo At theendofday, our goal was to endup with

plays electric bass innumerous projects. in installation andperformance, Michaela residence. In additionto exploring sound festival UK,where she was 2013 artist in Mona Foma Festival andSonica Hobart, Experimental Intermedia New York, ISEA, the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Contemporary Australia, Art London V&A, internationally includingtheMuseum of presented work at galleries andfestivals Digital Shehas Musics &SoundArt. Electronica 2015 Honorary Mention for for andreceived theArts, thePrixArs fellowship from theAustralia Council artist. Shehasbeen awarded a an Australian MusicCentre represented from theUniversity of Sydney, andis Michaela holdsadoctorate inpsychology the context of musical performance. creative outcomes both inandbeyond trajectory of individualdevelopment and and how obstruction can change the in creative processes andperformance, role of psychological andphysical agency practice isinformed by aninterest inthe installation andvideo. Michaela’screative artist working withsound, performance, Michaela Davies isacross-disciplinary Michaela Davies

22 “EXPERIMENTING WITH THE ROLE OF MUSICIANS AND HOW THEY PERFORMED THE MUSIC, EXPERIMENTING WITH THE POSSIBILITIES OF MANIPULATING THEIR BODIES”

I hope those who heard it in its two public performances For a lot of musicians, they work to build the level of [at the Sydney Opera House in 2012 and Sonica Festival control they have over their body’s ability to make in Edinburgh in 2013] enjoyed it, at least as much as they music through their instruments… might have enjoyed the spectacle. Well this is about control, too. It’s also about ultimate control. The ideal is for a composer to be able to exert I approached the score as an experimental music the absolute control over the performance of their work. piece, experimental on multiple levels. We were literally experimenting with the idea of making music a certain So it’s literally a power trip. way, experimenting with the role of musicians and Yes, literally, in every sense of the word power. Personally, how they performed the music, experimenting with the I don’t have a sinister agenda but I recognise the darker possibilities of manipulating their bodies. But in the possibilities. This may turn out to be our reality, our future, end, aside from all that, I suppose FM-2030 must be like it or not, and an artist can say, “I’m presenting this and experienced and judged just the same as any other you should be aware of this.” Pop music around the world piece of music. is already full of hit songs sung by humans that are mixed to sound like robots; robots or cyborgs making music may It’s certainly electro-acoustic. well be the next step. Yes, in a very different sense [laughs]. A lot of composers and musicians have experimented with using impulses And in any case, is it really such a grotesque thing generated by the body and turning those into to be able to extend the capacity of the human body? acoustical phenomena by various means. Whether they Body enhancement in both practice and theory is are measuring biorhythms or blood flow or thermal deeply ingrained in our culture: superficial, biochemical information from the body to activate oscillators, a lot of or surgical. It’s already going on and has been in our work has been done along those lines. I can’t think of any collective imagination for a long time, at least as long as other circumstances where external forces are being used the Six Million Dollar Man or Captain America. Why not to control humans. in the world of music, too?

Cybernetics offers a lot of interesting and disturbing It’s very interesting, and it’s definitely going to be a possibilities. Even the modest level of human body control game-changer, although so much of it is still theoretical we employed might have been offensive to some audience at the moment that I don’t see how anyone can leap to members, not because we’re maltreating our musicians, any conclusions about it. It’s a type of futurism, and the but because it challenges preconceptions of what the future is always fraught with both peril and promise. We’ve creative impulse should consist of and how one should known since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that unhindered go about expressing it. I mean some people—mostly embrace of progress invites a host of moral ambivalences. drummers—were pretty bugged out about drum machines when they first came into use. When you start proposing turning human beings into puppets, I think it really crosses a line for some folks.

Art Trans-human music Top: Michaela Davies & Jim Sclavunos by Kyle Sanna (2013), couresty of M.Davis. Bottom: Michaela Davies Sonica Festival (2013) by Boris Bagattini, courtesy of Michaela Davis 24 24 MOTHMEISTER: REVELATIONS BEHIND THE MASK. Mythological entropy

Mothmeister are a creative duo from there’s a wider range of alter egos out more expression on another level. Belgium whose work in costumery there which we think makes our body This juxtaposition is something that’s and masks has won them fans from even more fascinating. always present in our work: the living around the world. Performative We try and keep things (from our body wears lifeless (death) masks and dreams and deep play with the personal lives and Mothmeister) the accompanying dead taxidermy unconscious form part of the separate; we are two separate people animals are dressed up, appearing modus operandi of the group. but Mothmeister is the brand, if you more alive. It’s a reference to the Strange locations, unconventional will, which is the two of us and we Victorian post-mortem photo shoots, or forgotten exhibition spaces are really are like Siamese twins. One of where the living family often looked all backdrops for their expositional us models while the other one is the more like blurry ghosts (because works. Born out of a desire to photographer, though we make the of their movement during the long lampoon the seeming perfection clothes together. It’s more or less an exposure times) than the deceased, of individuals’ presentation of organic process which begins again who was often dressed and made-up themselves on social media, the with each project. It could be a mask, as if he was still alive. work has taken on a life of its own, it could be taxidermy; we just let our There are a lot of clowns in our reaching a wider audience of people thoughts float and it all happens very work and in that respect it’s quite who similarly wish to play with the associatively. It grows... We don’t think archetypical, but we’ve tweaked it to portrayal of the social self. By no too much about it, but it’s more about make it our own; again these things means a new concept, however, a feeling or emotions that suddenly happen quite organically. We go with with high production values and a create an image, and we never sketch the flow or emotions, whatever brings sense of humour Mothmeister have out things. Things emerge. out the emotion. We do like travelling gained something of a cult following, Our real face is only one possible and isolated landscapes, especially ironically developing a creative way to look at the world. We like to landscapes where nobody likes to go community against the grain of the explore the other you. Your body gives on holiday. That evokes things for us colonised spaces of the online world. you the space and tools to do so. It’s in our imaginations. Reminiscent of the Chapman like a play garden. We like this idea brothers, the intentions behind the of hitch-hiking our body to another In what way do you feel you’ve work are sound and the process place. Our challenge is to reinvent the pushed your conception and profound. Our consumption of it body. And, given the masks we wear, application of the body? may be easy but the large messages to make sure there’s enough oxygen Mothmeister has been out there for resonate. Given Mothmeister’s for our brains to operate, because four years now. Squeezing yourself premise of social constructs, the one who wears the masks often into hundreds of suffocating masks Trebuchet asked them how they suffers from severe asthma and and costumes is one thing. But over see the body: claustrophobia, which doesn’t the last couple of months we’ve really help. tried to change the natural shape Mothmeister: We’ve always Because most of our work consists of our body as well. By wearing considered our body like a canvas of portraits, we mainly use what’s antique muscle suits, uncomfortable to express ourselves: a toy one can generally considered the most Victorian corsets, adding humps, old fool around with, and alter non- expressive part of the body: the head. and rusty prosthetic arms and stuff, stop. Hence our eternally shifting But paradoxically we hide our real we reincarnate into another body; Mothmeister creatures. But obviously face behind a fake facade, giving it we’re playing with some kind of body Clown Horse. 2018. Photo courtesy of Mothmeister © 2018 Mothmeister of courtesy Photo

26 Mothmeister Profile

Left:White Owl. 2016. Right: Untitled, 2015. Photos Courtesy of Mothmeister 28

All photos courtesy of Mothmeister © 2018 Below: Right: Left: Untitled Untitled Untitled . 2015 . 2007 . 2013 30 modification, most of the time in a What do you see as the greatest scruffy, dead, stuffed animals in bleak painless way. From now on we want challenge to the body? nondescript locations. to push that a little further. Somehow, to keep in shape, to keep We saw that people on social media it functional, to slow down the natural were hypocrites in a way, because they What potential do you see in bodies? decay, to battle disease. Since for us were all wearing these implicit masks Actually, pretty much everything the body is a toy, we would love to and we were going to do the same, can change your character and your play with it for a long time. But as but the way we’re doing it is to do the body, how it looks and how it behaves. toys become rusty, sometimes they opposite or at least admit that we are This means wherever we go we try to tend to be rather useless. wearing masks. There is always this incorporate things that are not meant We are urban explorers as well. contradiction in our work. to be worn on the body. Whether it’s So we are used to squeezing ourselves When we go to a shoot, no matter an outdated lampshade, coconut-tree through tiny holes, jumping over high what the weather—we’ve done shoots bark from a garden centre that turns ‘forbidden entry’ fences, clambering in -20°C in Iceland, in snow storms, out to be a great corset... There’s so over military walls, running from but also in 40°C—for the model there much potential stuff out there that security and such... This is our is always a body experience, not we can use. alternative and challenging way of least because he’s allergic to most ‘keeping in shape’. of the masks. So for him it’s not just Are you conscious of your own body something playful but also a process in the same way as in your work? Why and when did you choose the of suffering. We joke about it but it’s We don’t run marathons. But mostly body as a medium for your work? real. So we try to keep the shooting as we travel to the locations of our The figure is very important to us time quite short. But that is part of the shoots we do so (changing voice because we do portraits but not total experience, which makes the final back to non-formal, as these people in the traditional way. In fact we result. Also, when we shoot in nature clearly are!) on foot. Sometimes started with this series some years we never use artificial lighting, always it takes hours of walking through ago when we discovered Instagram. natural light. Most of the time in challenging terrain to get to the eerie, We liked Instagram though we were the morning. isolated setting we had in mind. We never fans of social media; we liked drag along with us all the costumes, the simplicity and the power of a Whose work regarding the physical animals and such. We love to endure small picture in a square frame. human body do you admire? the effects that the weather can have But all we saw there were these There are tons of inspiring artists on the body: pouring rain, violent meaningless repetitive selfies: happy that we admire because of their use storms, extreme heat or cold. It all faces—almost like implicit masks— of the body in a fascinating way: the awakens the awareness of the body. people ostentatiously having fun metamorphosis self-portraits of Cindy Most of the time we arrive exhausted. with friends, showing off their new Sherman; the intriguing imperfect Putting on a mask and squeezing fashionable clothes, hipster party pics bodies of Joel-Peter Witkin; Anna yourself into a costume at that or tanned and half-toasted bodies in Uddenberg; the suffering of Franko moment is not number one on your sunny holiday locations. B; the wax, deformed bodies of wish list but it’s part of the game. We found these portraits very fake Berlinde De Bruyckere; the obsessive, Apart from that we love to dress up, and decided to show the opposite: morphing performances of Olivier de even when we don’t shoot. It’s part of shots of ugly, grotesque and lonely Sagazan; the huge body sculptures of our DNA. creatures wearing old and long- Ron Mueck; the violence to the body forgotten clothes, accompanied by in Paul McCarthy’s video works; and

Profile Mothmeister the live plastic surgery long time. In the meantime they get performances of the controversial mouldy, rusty, scruffy...They slowly French artist ORLAN. decay and fall apart. That’s what we like about them, the never-ending Where do you find inspiration? changes. It adds soul. Character. Since childhood, we’ve both been Whereas permanence mostly doesn’t. fascinated by myths, legends and It’s like a pause button, whereas we fairy tales where animals possess want to play. human characteristics. We’re intrigued by masks used If you could change one thing about in ancient rituals, religious cult how humans are constructed what celebrations, pest control and would it be? carnivals. The transformation into our Take out the brain. And live by alter ego Mothmeister naturally grew heart and guts. through the years, simultaneously with our exploding collection of With developments like VR taxidermy, costumes changing the way we view our and masks. bodies, will this affect your work? Masks are also something Even though we wear fake faces, we contradictory; on one hand you both have an aversion to the fake might hide certain aspects of yourself world. So we are not into this virtual behind a mask, but at the same time reality thing. We stick to the physical you might express a whole lot of stuff. The real thing. something else about yourself by But we think body extension and wearing it. It’s something important hacking is very interesting. Because for us. When we wear the mask we that’s about real transformation. become the character. We’re not really And it’s quite the opposite of the directing the action, we sort of take Barbie-doll robots mass media wants on the character and then certain us to look like. Body extension creates moods take over, and a lot of them are another you and flirts with the nearly sad figures. Whereas in real life we’re impossible. A lot of fascinating myths quite fun and outgoing. Sometimes and legends are based on humans the masks allow us to reveal things. with a twist. So bring it on.

Do you see the body as a place of permanence or change? Change. Without a doubt. Not just in terms of age, which happens naturally and is an unstoppable force. Permanence is not in our dictionary as it is boring. It means standing still or stagnation. Lots of the stuff we collect is antique and dates back a

32 Profile Stelarc STELARC: ENGINEERING THE INTERFACE Progressive augmentation

Extended Arm, Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne. 2011

During the 1980s, the iconic Stelarc is obsolete but not yet extinct. started staging his famous suspension That has desires but does not express performances around the world, the them. That feels pain but remains artist suspended by hooks through silent and stoic. A body that neither his body. Visually arresting though thinks nor expresses emotions. the performances were, what strikes – artist’s statement, 2018 us now is how remarkably fresh the intention behind the work remains. Those performances received widespread coverage and Stelarc Although the suspensions deal with continued to explore the obsolescence the physical difficulty of the body and limits of the human body by strung up they have neither religious incorporating robotics; extra arms, intent (transcending the body), the ears and other sensors have all been yearning for shamanistic empowering part of this protean artist’s repertoire. nor as yogic displays of control. They Recognised by several institutions, are realised with neither the intention Stelarc has received honorary of initiation rites nor the S&M professorships in Art and Robotics, exploration of pain and pleasure. as well as fellowship and research What can be admitted though is that grants to continue his exploration a painful experience does collapse the into human hybrid interfaces. Given convenient distinction between the the broad possibilities for body mind and body... extension, Trebuchet asked how The suspensions were a body Stelarc views the human body. sculpture installed in a space of other objects. The stretched skin is a kind of Stelarc: The biological body is an gravitational landscape. The penalty evolutionary architecture that you pay for being suspended in a 1G operates and becomes aware in the gravitational field. Suspended and in world. Its survival parameters are stress the anonymous body realises very slim. Its longevity is relatively its obsolescence... brief. It is soft and damages easily. The nude and silent body at It is vulnerable to microorganisms least in its static suspensions is an that are invisible but often fatal image of suspended animation. An to it. Historically, it is an unstable

Photograph by Dean Winter. Courtesy of artist. of Courtesy Winter. Dean by Photograph anaesthetised and pacified body that construct, not only socially and

34 culturally, but now its musculature is an 11-degree-of-freedom manipulator is in other bodies but what happens modified by machine augmentation that extended my right arm to between bodies, between you and and its cognitive capabilities primate proportions. The Extra Ear: me, in the medium of language with amplified by computational systems. Ear on Arm is a soft prosthesis which we communicate, in the social The more that this body performs, surgically constructed and cell- situations in which we operate, and the more it realises it has no mind grown which will be electronically in the culture within which we of its own—not any mind at all in the augmented and Internet-enabled are conditioned. traditional metaphysical sense. for people to listen in from remote The body has always been a zombie locations. It’s about exploring What do you see as the greatest body that performs involuntarily and alternative anatomical architectures. challenge to the body? it has already become a cyborg body, In an increasingly video, virtual and performing in increasingly automated What potential do you see in bodies? vicarious world, the body asserts its and remotely distributed ways. The body is profoundly obsolete in materiality. In the Propel: Body on form and function. Do we accept the Robot Arm (2015) performance, In what way do you feel you’ve biological status quo or do we accept the body was attached to the end pushed your conception and that the body, although wonderfully of an industrial robot arm and its application of the body? complex, fatigues often and trajectory, velocity and position/ As a performance artist you have malfunctions intermittently? To assert orientation was choreographed. to take the physical consequences the obsolescence of the body is to But the body is now increasingly of your ideas. There is no interest accept the necessity for its redesign. haunted by its virtual other. Online, in sci-fi speculation nor in futurist In the ReWired / ReMixed (2016) the body as its phantom flickers on prediction. What is important is to performance, for five days, six hours and off, glitches as digital noise in engineer an interface, experience a day I could see only with the eyes biological evolution. The challenge is it in performance and thereby of someone in London and hear only to transform from the psychosocial to have something meaningful to say with the ears of someone in New York, cyber systems, to become an extended afterwards. Your ideas can only whilst anyone, anywhere, could access operational system of fractal be authenticated by your actions. my exoskeleton and choreograph flesh of bodies and bits of bodies The body has always been seen as involuntary movements with my spatially separated but electronically an object, not an object of desire right arm. The artist’s senses were augmented, interacting with varying but rather an object that should be outsourced, its agency was split. complexity at different scales. redesigned: a body with a Third Hand (1980), an Extended Arm (2000) and Are you conscious of your own body Why and when did you choose the an Extra Ear (2011). As technology in the same way as in your work? body as a medium for your work? becomes microminiaturised it can This person is this body. You are I began performing when I discovered become a component of the body, conscious of your body only when I was a bad painter in art school! attached and even implanted. you feel sick or when you slip over Using this body was a convenient site It is about the body in excess, the or when you do yoga. This is not a for experimentation and performance. prosthesis not a sign of lack but a person that conveniently splits mind Having no music training, I amplified symptom of excess. The Third Hand and body; this is a physiological, my body signals and sounds. Having was not only a visual attachment phenomenological, interacting body no dance training, I was interested in to the body but also gave it added in the world. What is important is not generating involuntary movements, capabilities. The Extended Arm had what is located in this body or what at first with a muscle-stimulation

Profile Stelarc Ear On Arm Suspension Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne 2012

system, 15–50 volts contracting Describe your technique? and the nanoscale or been able to and choreographing involuntary Performing with a posture of construct our cosmological models movements of my limbs, which could indifference. Being indifferent, not in without our sensors, instruments also be done remotely via a touch- any negative sense; being indifferent and computational systems? New screen interface in such performances as opposed to having expectations. technologies generate unexpected as Fractal Flesh (1995), Ping Body Allowing the performance to unfold information, images and experiences, (1996) and Parasite (1997). In the in its own time and with its own propelling our curiosity and creativity. StickMan (2017) performance, rhythm. Having expectations the artist is connected to a collapses possibilities. Do you see the body as a place of full-body exoskeleton and permanence or change? algorithmically actuated. Where do you find inspiration? We are in an age of circulating The mathematician and philosopher flesh. The blood flowing in my body Whose work regarding the physical Alfred Whitehead asserted that our today may be flowing in your body human body do you admire? imaginations have been only as tomorrow, if you are O+. We can The insect-like locomotion and the good as our instruments. How could extract an organ from one body and

Photograph by Polixeni Papapetrou. Courtesy of artist. of Courtesy Papapetrou. Polixeni by Photograph alien otherness of the butoh dancer. we have imagined the quantum insert it into another. Organs become

36 Evolution: Writing One Word Simultaneously With Three Hands. Maki Gallery, Tokyo 1982

commodified. We can take the hand initially be incorporated inside the when the transformation becomes from a dead body and reanimate it body for medical reasons, detecting apparent at skin level. Its form and on an amputee. A skin cell from an the first signs of pathological clusters functions may alter over time, with impotent male can be recoded into a of cancer cells or other pathological new technologies and most likely with sperm cell—and, more interestingly, changes in temperature or chemistry, off-the-planet environmental niches. a skin cell from a female body can or blockages of the circulatory In fact, all technology in the future become a sperm cell. The body is system. But this would also enable may be invisible because it is inside a contemporary chimera of meat, the possible redesign of the body, the human body. metal and code. The body always atoms-up, inside out. The changes remains contingent and contestable. would be invisible, never felt, and so Nano-sensors and nanobots might incremental they would only be visible

Profile Stelarc If you could change one thing about how humans are constructed what would it be? The body is a wonderfully complex organ structure. It needs to be redesigned in a more modular way to facilitate replacing malfunctioning parts. Pull-out and plug-in organs and replaceable body parts. Ear On Arm Or perhaps to engineer a synthetic Venice International skin. If that synthetic skin was Performance Art Week. 2017 permeable to oxygen and was able to have sophisticated photosynthetic capabilities, you could literally hollow out the human body. No lungs to breathe, no gastrointestinal tract to digest food, no circulatory system to convey oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. A hollow body is a seductive possibility, as you could incorporate more technology inside the body.

With developments like VR changing the way we view our bodies, will this affect your work?

Left: Photograph by Keisuke Oki. Right: Photograph by Piero Viti. Images courtesy of artist. courtesy Viti. Images by Piero Photograph Oki. Right: Keisuke by Photograph Left: It always has!

38 Conceptualist and romantic photo-collagist provides insight into depiction John Stezaker at the Approach

Words: Edward Winters 40 “There is something very odd, even unnerving about surface gives access to a three-dimensional world, either cutting through a photograph,” [John Stezaker] says. imagined or real. Some pictures (those that give access “It sometimes feels like I am cutting through flesh.” to the real world) are used as evidence and can be (O’Hagan, 2018) called upon for various reasons: in courtrooms or at the racetrack, for instance. Others, imaginary pictures, remain What is a picture? Pictures, on the face of it, seem quite puzzling because they picture worlds that do not exist. natural, in need of no explanation. After all, children begin We seem to see, in imaginary pictures, things that have to recognise and even make pictures with little difficulty. no material counterpart in the real world. If, however, (Perspective comes later.) And so one of the problems we could start to think about what it is for a two- facing a philosophy of depiction is explaining the dimensional piece of white paper, with dark lines arranged materiality of pictures against the presence of the image across its surface, to give us the experience of looking at evoked. It’s not just that pictures have surfaces. It’s that a face, we will have come closer to an explanation of those surfaces are part of what we see when we see what pictures that could range over all pictorial representations, is depicted in them. And why should that matter? real or imagined. Here goes. Pictures are various. There are photographs, line drawings, diagrams, paintings, tonal drawings, [I]t is useful to introduce the idea of a picture-object. hieroglyphs and pictograms. There are moving pictures For instance (in both colour and black and white), cartoons, reliefs, bank :-) notes, coins and live-screen coverage of football matches. would be a ‘picture-face.’ In some respects I stand towards There are various projective systems of rendering space: it as I do towards a human face. I can study its expression, perspective, orthogonal, isometric, axonometric, and so on. can react to it as to the expression of the human face. What they all have in common is that a two-dimensional A child can talk to picture-men or picture-animals,

Art John Stezaker surface andto surface. Imaginationisrequired to seeasuitably marked experience ofseeing athree-dimensional world inthat see aflatexpanse ofmarked surfaceandto undergo the pictures. It bestdescribes what itislike (subjectively) to Brian O’ShaughnessyBrian writes, book or asaintgoing abouthisor her miracle-making. Inhis sea battle, or anarrangement offruit with abottleof wine, we mightbestdescribethe on aspect-seeing isfundamentalto the way in which a few remarks. Inthefirst place, Wittgenstein’s work the logicofpictures asIpossibly can, I would like to offer of thelogicalstatuspictures. Treading aslightly round It is, soto speak, infected by aphilosopher’s conception dependent uponasolutionto theprior, logical, problem. problem. What isitfor apictorial representation to bea how dopictures represent? The secondisanaesthetic logical problem. What isapicture and problems. The first andmostbasicisa or picture. are embodiedinplastic, marble, plaster intercession. Saints, for suchbelievers, saint inthestatueto whom they pray for imminence ofsaints:thepresence ofthe them. Roman Catholicsbelieve inthe and pretending thedollresponds to the dollasthey would ahumanbeing, as aliving creature, responding to and embodied. For achildtreats adoll look or which they make. Embedded embedded inthepictures at which they dolls. treats it (Wittgenstein 1953, 194e) as them treat can [Depiction] consists in seeing expanses of colour in such such in colour of expanses seeing in consists [Depiction] beautiful a way that, while remaining expanses of colour for one, one, for colour of expanses remaining while that, way a they simultaneously in a special imaginative sense bring a a bring sense imaginative special a in simultaneously they In fact, depictionpresents two II For children, picture-men are Consciousness and the World the and Consciousness work ofart? This secondproblem is, manifestly, further seethefaceofafriend, or agreat phenomenology

ofseeing

THEY PICTURE WORLDS configured andseen the configurational (how thesurfaceofpicture is in thesinglecomplex experience. The first foldis recognitional (what thespectator canseeinthepicture— formal properties ofthepicture intrudeuponhisproject. the configurational fold—is justtheextent to which these them—to theextent thathe cannot maskoutfeatures of interest to him. To theextent thatheismadeaware of fold, for theflatnessandcompositionare ofno of desire, hemasks outofexperience theconfigurational pictorial pornography looks atphotographs ofhisobject that we are to attend to bothfolds. When theconsumer of sets pictorial artapartfrom other pictorial practices, is the configurational foldandtherecognitional fold. What that requires attention distributed respectively between effect inthemanipulated surface we have anexperience such-and-such arepresentational effect, and, seeing this surface ofthepainting, we seeitasmanipulated to render what it’s a picture of picture a it’s what III

THAT DO NOT EXIST two folds, eachof which ispresent He claims we have anexperience with it isthat we seepictures asbeautiful. Richard Wollheim explains to us why of thelandscapebrought into view. characterised asaface-to-face ‘seeing’ that theexperience would have to be colour removed from theexperience, so illusion isto have theflatexpanses of from thestart. For undergoing an aesthetics. It rulesoutillusionism how they represent hasimplicationsfor that conceptionof what pictures are and with thelogicalproblem inhisbook, but them beautiful. O’Shaughnessy isdealing looking at for one’ thatshapesaconceptionof (O’Shaughnessy, 2000) landscape into view. view. into landscape ). Sothat, when we attend to the It isthe ‘remaining expanses ofcolour as a surface a as aesthetic ); thesecondfoldis pictures andfinding

I am not sure if I have written about the idea of collage the surgical violence of the cut. These I titled Love and by as cutting into flesh. I certainly made that analogy in the chance there is a group of these on show at the Approach titles of my earliest collages. Incisions, was the title I gave at the moment. I have talked a lot more about beheading a particular (right angle) cut in the late seventies. At the in a number of interviews and lectures. I was fascinated by same time narrower, cone of vision, triangular cuts I titled the analogy between the camera and the guillotine made Excisions and were often related to the theme of blindness. by Aries. It seemed to me that the removal of the head was In the film portrait collages (the Marriage and associated a kind of removal of the image’s heading or main legible series) I had been aware that I had cut vertically through reference, liberating the body of the image the eye during one phase. During another it was the for apprehension. teeth touching horizontal cuts. In both cases the cut seemed to be making a Anyway, I can think of countless relationship between the white of the examples in my collages and in those eye or of the teeth and the white of the of others (especially Ernst). Are you border or ground. However, there are familiar with the believed connection other surgical or violent associations between Duchamp’s Etand Donnés and with both areas of whiteness in the the forensic photograph of the surgically body. The teeth of course represent the cut-up body in the Blue Dahlia murder cutting up for consumption which pre- case? As you can probably tell this is figures collage as well being the only a connection that much interests me.” part of the skeleton revealed in life. So (Stezaker, 2018) the cut seam seems to relate to death and post-mortem dissection, or so it A couple lies on a bed. Sweet seemed at the time I was employing that nothings: the faint whiff of device. Both the shiny moist and white existentialism; and of bad faith surfaces of teeth and eyeball seem to revealed to the absent spectator (…) relate to the surface of a black-and- who gazes unnoticed as the lovers white photograph. Initially, I remember return each other’s gaze (…) Now place cutting such stills left me with a slightly something between them. Put something phobic discomfort. I liked to get the cut in-between to disrupt the reception of over quickly. Oddly it took me decades the image; to get something different. to relate this slightly uncomfortable You interrupt the cliché: ‘Love is sensation to my first experience of the something of an agreement between two eye-slitting moment in Chien Andalou longings. Is it real? Does it last? Love is at the ArtLab at which time I was quite an illusion.’ unprepared for the shock of this image. When I belatedly made this realisation And then, her face gets nearer to I decided to exorcise this phobia by his. Or is it just a face? The picture-face directly making a horizontal cut through is not the face of the woman at whom the eye on a portrait, titling the result he gazes. It is a graphically drawn face Blind. By chance one of these which I that shows up as a representation and considered a failure happened to have not as a living smiling face. Both he a secret no copy and by placing the and she become fictions in the picture. incised image over the copy in such a Paradoxically, the drawn face, inserted way as to double the eyes, I felt I had into a photographic scene, calls attention found a way of making reparation for to the mode of representation that was HER BREASTS ARE FICTIONAL. ARE BREASTS HER THE DUVET IS DRAWN TIGHT UNDER TIGHT DRAWN DUVET IS THE YOUTH HER ACCENTUATE TO THEM

Art John Stezaker remain representational. Bitsofpictures remain pictorial. that even if you cutaphotograph up, thebitsthemselves and, also, to draw updisanalogies. Onethinghenoticedis started to make analogiesbetween pictures andlanguage, Pictures andLanguage(Kulvicki 2018). Inthatlecture he lecture atInstitutd’études avancées deParis entitled: pronounces uponlife;shapesour view ofit, soto speak. back to thesweet nothings: “I love you.” Thus, art projected onto the woman besidehiminbed. Now go an imaginary phantom that, nodoubt, findsitself woman (photographed) hasnow becomeamere image: scene, asseen. Sheismore pornographic because thereal she isarticulated assomethingdifferent from theimage than thephotograph shereplaces, precisely because of animagethanareal woman; sheismore pornographic the lived relationship. Sheisdrawn, and, therefore, more image getsthemtogether, themore fictitiousbecomes bed.” More or lessmy view ofhim.) The closer thedrawn of man who would foldhistrousers before hegotinto unlikely. Shereplied, “No. He’s thekind found himattractive sinceitseemedso teaching or research. Iasked her ifshe on administration than with either my colleagues, afastidiousman, keener my students was dancing with oneof At thecollegeChristmasparty oneof abandonment; discovery notenclosure. props to accentuate desire. Disarray and clothes andthefurniture are usedas their breasts, after sex? (Before sex, the woman draws theduvet aboutandunder product; to project, to offer up. What one oldadvertisement promoted its wearing abra, to liftandseparate, as her youth andbeauty, asifshe were drawn tightunder themto accentuate the composition. And so, we beginto lookfor fictionsin to disappear intheuseofpicture. Recently American philosopher John Kulvicki gave a IV Her breasts are fictional. The duvet is

SHE IS ARTICULATED AS interior world (even asit isdepicted asanexterior world). of thetwo heads. (Seebelow.) The contour suggestsan colour landscape postcard againstthedisrupted image alert to thecontour working againsttheintrusionof and rescan theimageto findpattern. Inso doing we are and image, work againstthis, sothat we spectators scan portraits. Yet thecontours, theimpliedcontinuity ofline postcard landscapesare inserted into black-and-white a way thatdisruptsnarrative. Intheseries respects thefragmentary nature oftheir appearance in life’), andintheir new combinationthephoto-collage contribution to theimageflow (the ‘montage ofeveryday photo-collage remain imagepartsdislodgedfrom their the way thatsynthetic cubismdoes. Rather, thepiecesof that doesnotreassemble asanew narrative imagein images, cutup, remain imagespermitsaphoto-collage I see collage as a way of encountering the image as empty empty as image the encountering of way a as collage see I (…) But now, (…) [t]he sense and the space of the image as as image the of space the and sense [t]he (…) now, But (…) opacity rather than transparent legibility seems more than than more seems legibility transparent than rather opacity ever endangered. ever SOMETHING DIFFERENT Kulvicki’s disanalogy might be ofusehere. That the FROM THE IMAGE SCENE (Etgar, 2017) to YuvalEtgar. from photomontage. Here hespeaks a mediumheiskeen to distinguish Stezaker works inphoto-collage, from theseventies through until2017. by John Stezaker comprising works Love I consider montage as a mainstream mainstream a as montage consider I intercutting of images that sets out to to out sets that images of intercutting create a seamless continuum of some some of continuum seamless a create kind; intercutting images in a way that that way a in images intercutting kind; reduces them to narrative legibility legibility narrative to them reduces (…) By contrast, collage for me is about about is me for collage contrast, By (…) opening up the space between images, images, between space the up opening liberating them from their instrumental instrumental their from them liberating use (…) It is a way of trying to reveal reveal to trying of way a is It (…) use something of the abyss or the hidden hidden the or abyss the of something void within this continuum of image image of continuum this within void culture or the montage of everyday life. life. everyday of montage the or culture language doesnotexhibit thisfeature. (Think ofajigsaw puzzle.) Whereas isthetitleofanexhibition of work Masks , colour

44 44 Untitled, Collage. 1976

Art John Stezaker © John Stezaker. Courtesy The Approach, London. Photo: FXP photography What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So So Homes Today’s Makes That It Is What Different, So Appealing So Different, Senior Tutor inCriticalandHistorical Studiesatthe professed Romantic leanings, he was, until2006, of the ‘new photography’ oftheseventies. (Despite his committed to theanalysis ofimagesunder theinfluence But Stezaker isseenasaRomantic artist, even ifhe is that embraced semioticsintheseventies. indeed partof, theintellectual milieu the postcard.) woman whose faceisobliterated by when Iseemto seetheeyes ofthe between theconstituentimagery. (As but which appear to usasacontinuity and seethings which aren’t cutout, his work ambiguous. We lookatapicture exists inStezaker, andthisis what makes single picture. No suchsingular space the cut-out piecesare assembled into a space withinwhichuninterrupted single and wonder. Freud, Marx, Saussure andother founders of the delicate beauty of nostalgia, distancedlove, curiosity it shunsany analytical framework, bathingitselfinstead in of suchrationality inCornell’s work. It isRomantic inthat image anditsphenomenology. Nothing bears thestamp Stezaker’s work disclosesanatural curiosity toward the Wanderlust exhibition there in2015. Academy of Arts inLondonto augmentJoseph Cornell’s Joseph Cornell. Indeed, hegave alecture attheRoyal experience. He hasbeenlikened to andcompared with and for themakingofartworks that values such conception ofthesuitableobjectaestheticexperience, as thatmightbeanotherwiseoverlooked area inour Royal Collegeof Art.) montages ofRichard Hamilton’s narrative. If we lookatsomeofthe to formonecontinuousimageand assembling combinationsofimages Moreover, Stezaker isalive to, and As partoftheconceptualphotography movement, Part ofhisromanticism ishisfocuson ‘the everyday’ By contrast, montageisabout (1956), we seea Just Just

A ROMANTIC ARTIST, EVEN beautifully thecharacter ofStezaker’s work: itself over thefragments. MichaelBracewell captures provides coherence for theoverall image which imposes continuously between thedifferent imagecombinations an imaginedinner life. The useofcontour running simultaneously view theouter world whilst revealing of pornography. lacking anything like the vulgar instrumental value without beingsexually urgent; aestheticandtherefore engagement with thosedesires. Works are often erotic, that permitsour desires andshapesour imaginative perceive around us, replacing itscommerce with a world move us, transporting usaway from thealien world we Stezaker’s act of ‘taking out of circulation’ placed an an placed circulation’ of out ‘taking of act Stezaker’s infinite trove of found imagery at his disposal (...) from from (...) disposal his at imagery found of trove infinite which he then released new possibilities: an intensely intensely an possibilities: new released then he which poetic strangeness, seemingly at once ‘within’ the psychic psychic the ‘within’ once at seemingly strangeness, poetic world of the image, yet rendering it entirely alien to its its to alien entirely it rendering yet image, the of world original purpose of production. production. of purpose original IF HE IS COMMITTED TO Stezaker’s photo-collages looklike images that THE ANALYSIS OF IMAGES as asite ofRomantic permission, or even Art, on sucha view, hasthepower to emotional delicacy ofthe work’s world. the spectator asheor shefeelsthe Such imagesengagetheinner lifeof from thehumdrum world ofcommerce. like transitory space, disconnected put thespectator into astrange, trance- his imaginationdreams upimagesthat Romantic obligation. Like Cornell, virtue ofit, Stezaker isalive to theimage and historical studies, or perhapsin under any suchsurgical procedure. The work would lay mutilated, dead, to explaining aconjuringtrickto achild. the work would be, for him, analogous magical andany attempt to rationalise for Cornell, thepoetry ofthe work is plenty to say aboutthesesubjectsbut the modernsocialsciencesmighthave Despite hiscareer teaching critical (Bracewell, 2012a)

Of “Pair IV” 2007, Bracewell writes,

In his Masks series, for example, the sophisticated figures depicted within the ‘host’ image—often a film still or a studio publicity portrait—are partially blocked by the superimposing element of the collage. These in turn depict chasms, tunnel entrances, cataracts, waterfalls, caves, grottoes and cliffs: vistas and studies of wild or romantic landscapes. In “Pair III” and “Pair IV” (both 2007), for example, a screen couple are drawn into the traditional ‘clinch’, yet the postcards superimposed on the identical images turn their facing profiles into the opposing banks of rivers running through gorges towards unseen outlets. As profile becomes crag and cliff, two equally opposing forms of romanticism appear to come into play: the high society love drama (as implied by the passionate gentleman’s black tie and evening jacket, and the young woman’s extravagant coiffure) and the transcendent calm and grandeur of the natural wilderness or the moonlit night. (Bracewell, 2012b)

The photo-collages are startling. Because of their construction as images—secured by the uninterrupted b contours as they wind through different images—two different spaces seem at once convergent. It is as if we are bc seeing an inner world within an outer world that frames it. And so, it is like having a perception of the world out there whilst simultaneously pictorially imagining a world seen The river’s disguise, the soul buried in a scrapbook, only by the inner eye. the photographs there, the moss, the flood of beauty, all contribute to a complex image, and it collides with these The poetry of these images calls to mind the surrealist images that Stezaker is making, so that there is a visual poetry of Federico García Lorca, here translated into song equivalence with the poetic image. I imagine Stezaker’s by Leonard Cohen: studio with boxes and files of old photographs from movie promotions, black-and-white agency shots of film stars And I’ll dance with you in Vienna now dead. In the thirties Cornell wandered New York I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise City’s streets foraging in used bookstores and junk shops The hyacinth wild on my shoulder, and so began his collection of books, photographs, astral My mouth on the dew of your thighs maps, old prints, theatrical memorabilia, and reels of old And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, movies. Stezaker, too, wandered London, the second-hand With the photographs there, and the moss bookstores of Charing Cross Road, collecting images And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty including early film stills, portraits of film stars, postcards My cheap violin and my cross” (Cohen, 2011) and other nostalgic photographic and film memorabilia to

Art John Stezaker JS:Yes, I do. I’m taking things very seriously that aren’t usually taken seriously. And there is often an uncanny dimension to collecting images. You go out looking for one thing, and you find the image that you really should have been looking for and you realise that your ego’s been in the way…

MB:Your work is in the tradition of the flâneur, for whom there are going to be occurrences in the urban landscape that enable a moment of transcendence.

JS:Absolutely. You can go for months and years and not have those moments, and you’ve lost it. But it keeps you wandering, looking; ‘allowing yourself to encounter’—there should be a word for that. It doesn’t matter whether I’ve had the images around on my bookcase for 20 years when I start a series; it’s finding an image in a bookshop that starts a new series of thoughts.” (Bracewell, 2012b)

It’s as if the overlooked encapsulates a wealth of possibility that will awaken only those with sufficient sensitivity developed through making work and wanting more. i There is a feeling of excitement in Stezaker’s ‘you find the image you should have been looking for’. b If Cornell’s work has a nostalgic air, then so too does Stezaker’s. Searching in the secondhand bookshops and bc in charity shops, in flea markets and in seaside bric-a-brac emporia, what is encountered is the forgotten detritus of lives now passed. There is also something of nostalgia use in his collages. With both artists there is a sense of the in Stezaker’s conception of art theory. From the same magpier or the mudlark, seeing something precious in the interview Stezaker talks of his education at the trash cans of a city or washed up in the silt of its river’s ebb; Slade School: saving something with the potential to unlock romantic feelings in what would otherwise go unseen, overlooked; the JS: I went to the Slade for six years, undergraduate and bric-a-brac of the deceased, the contents of a sideboard postgraduate in painting, although I gave it up in the first drawer thrown upon a flea market stall by the house- year. I entered college in 1967, so my first academic year clearance dealer. In an interview in Frieze magazine Michael involved the sit-in that took place in 1968. The reason Bracewell asks about the nature of Stezaker’s collecting: I gave up painting was partly political. I was interested in student politics at the time and was exposed to the MB:Do you feel when you’re searching out the materials Situationist International ideas from France. And that’s for your work, from charity shops or secondhand where collage came from too. I couldn’t read French bookshops, that you are assuming a form of very well, so much of the work of the Situationists was psychic responsibility? a predominantly visual experience for me. Seeing these recaptioned images gave me ideas, that this may be

48 another way of thinking about being an artist. But it was seen as projecting forward from, or receding behind, a strangely schizophrenic course. On the one hand I was the picture plain. The space seen in the picture need doing life drawing with Euan Uglow, on the other I was not include figuration. The essay is a corrective to the entertaining ideas from Guy Debord. (Bracewell, M. 2012b) Greenbergian conception of painting. In that essay he also mentions the temporal nature of the activity, calling Stezaker is content to proclaim himself a Romantic, upon us to recognise that at different historical moments, going back through surrealism and finding himself different features of the appreciative kind can be called influenced by William Blake. How is it possible in a upon or emphasised. He runs through a number of tumultuous world of flowing images to arrest the image features brought to the fore by modern painting: and make it an altar of contemplative thought? How is it possible, now, for an image to arrest us? If this sounds Within the concept of art under which most of the finest, religious in tone and in sensibility, it is questioning what certainly most of the boldest, works of our age have been we have lost in our modernity and this, too, puts Stezaker made, the connotation of physicality moves to the fore. in the good company of Cornell. In his prose poem, The evidence for such a theory at work is manifold, Charles Simic captures something of Cornell’s sensitivity the inspiration of the theory can be seen in a wide that applies equally to Stezaker: variety of phenomena which it thereby unifies: the increasing emphasis upon texture and surface qualities; TOTEMISM the abandonment of linear perspective, at any rate as Inside everyone there are secret rooms. They’re cluttered providing an overall grid within which the picture can be and the lights are out. There’s a bed in which someone organised… the indifference to figuration; the exploitation is lying with his face to the wall. In his head there are of the edge, of the shaped or moulded support… and the more rooms. In one, the venetian blinds shake in the physical juxtaposition of disparate or borrowed elements, approaching summer storm. Every once in a while an sometimes stuck on, sometimes freestanding, to the object on the table becomes visible: a broken compass, central body of the work, as in collage or assemblages. a pebble the colour of midnight, an enlargement of a (Wollheim, 1973) school photograph with a face in the back circled, a watch spring—each one of these items is a totem of the self. It is with such endorsement that it is possible to locate the work of both Cornell and Stezaker within the realm Every art is about the longing of One for the Other. of modern painting, even if that location is peripheral. Orphans that we are, we make our sibling kin out of (The word ‘peripheral’ should not be construed as anything we can find. The labour of art is the slow and pejorative.) In appreciating both artists, the spectator is painful metamorphosis of the One into the Other. called upon to regard their work within the framework (Simic, 2018) of modern painting. Stezaker considers his position with regard to Wollheim and the conceptualist context within In “The Work of Art as Object”, Richard Wollheim which photo-collage is made: provides an account of the nature of the art of modern painting as both intentional and physical. Painting It occurred to me that I should contextualise my requires our attention to the surfaces of its works. We disagreement with Wollheim at the time. I considered need to see them as worked surfaces in a tradition of myself on the dematerialisation side of the conceptual/ representation. Wollheim is liberal in his conception minimalist sensibility and Richard was firmly on the other s of representation, admitting the paintings of both side. My interest in the found image was an extension of Mark Rothko and Morris Louis as representations. this as well as a way out from what I saw as the cul-de- The requirement is that the surface of a painting sac of the concept in art. Only later did an attachment to should support the experience as of the surface and materiality seem to be part of my fascination for images. simultaneously support the experience as of something Blanchot puts it well when he talks about obsolete images:

Art John Stezaker 50 s the oldguard and theavant-garde. skills beingtaught, andthosetensions were felt between their uniqueness. This was atodds with theideaofaset art educationbecametheexpression ofindividuals and schools moved away from astrictcurriculum. Essentially, time when universities were occupiedby studentsandart the riotous timesofthelate sixtiesandearly seventies, a John Stezaker Art 1968? about damaging so was MB:What that now suspended, is meaning its value, its that ‘Now the world abandons it to idleness and lays it aside, the the aside, it lays and idleness to it abandons world the JS:We were dismantling the structure, but had nothing nothing had but structure, the dismantling were JS:We truth in it ebbs, and materiality, the elemental, reclaims reclaims elemental, the materiality, and ebbs, it in truth to replace it with. We had William Gregory for visual visual for Gregory William had We with. it replace to it. This impoverishment, or enrichment, consecrates it as as it consecrates enrichment, or impoverishment, This it. perception, for instance—and all these things vanished vanished things these all instance—and for perception, image.’ The image requires the touch, the revelation of the the of revelation the touch, the requires image The image.’ material substrate. In the show on at the Approach of the the of Approach the at on show the In substrate. material photo-roman collages I represented that discovery. discovery. that represented I collages photo-roman I discovered it in damage, found or deliberate and in in and deliberate or found damage, in it discovered I certain violence to the image. This of course brought me me brought course of This image. the to violence certain very close to the double fold idea that you cite. I doubt doubt I cite. you that idea fold double the to close very however Richard ever noticed or acknowledged my return return my acknowledged or noticed ever Richard however to the fold. fold. the to Michael Bracewell’s interview with Stezaker returns to V (Stezaker, 2018b)

References: Bracewell, M. (2012a). ‘Behind the Lines: The Art of John Stezaker’ in his, The Space Between, (ed. Doro Globus), London: Ridinghouse, 2012, p 340. -(2012b). Ibid., pp 344-5. Cohen, L. (2011). ‘Take This Waltz’, in his, Leonard Cohen Poems, London: Everyman Library, 2011. P.175. Etgar, Y. (2017). ‘Imagine That! Yuval Etgar in Conversation with John Stezaker,’ Aesthetic Investigations, vol. 2, No. 1, December 2017, pp. 49-50. Kulvicki, J. (2018). The ‘Aesthetics and Cognitive Science’ seminar series is hosted by the Institut Nicod, a department of the Ecole Normale Superieure. Collage. 2010 Mask XCV, Mask O’Hagan, S. (2018). Interview with John Stezaker in the Guardian international edition, Thursday 27th March 2014. Accessed on 16/03/2018 at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/2014/mar/27/john-stezaker-sydney-biennale O’Shaughnessy, B. (2000). Consciousness and the World, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000, 347

Simic, C. (2018). ‘Totemism’ accessed on 16/03/2018 at: http://nyrbclassics.tumblr.com/post/22124272297/totemism Stezaker, (2018a) Private correspondence between John Stezaker and Edward Winters, 19 March 2018 -(2018b) Private correspondence between John Stezaker and Edward Winters, 20 March 2018 Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953, Part II, Section xi, p. 194e Wollheim, R. (1973). ‘The Work of Art as Object’, in his On Art And The Mind, London: Allen Lane. © John Stezaker. Courtesy The Approach, London. Photo: FXP photography 52 52 52

© John Stezaker. Courtesy The Approach, London. Photo: FXP photography International Détournement method ofmakingart: between artandtheeveryday world. city. The situationssoughtinthedérive are somewhere turn, thedérive isamore ambitious way ofnavigating the upon others and who likes to belooked uponby themin the dandy aboutthe in a new ensemble, has been a constant present tendency tendency present constant a been has ensemble, new a in of the contemporary avant-garde both before and since since and before both avant-garde contemporary the of as to lose its original sense completely—and at the same same the at completely—and sense original its lose to as the establishment of the SI. The two fundamental laws laws fundamental two The SI. the of establishment the time the organisation of another meaningful ensemble ensemble meaningful another of organisation the time after 1968. There had been an amazing amazing an been had There 1968. after Collage. 2013 II, Opening (Bracewell, 2012b) détourned dérive was outlinedinGuy Debord’s writings for the there isanew enthusiasmfor psychogeography asthat geography andEnglishdepartments (Bracewell, 2012b) of of that confers on each element its new scope and effect. effect. and scope new its element each on confers that line-up of intellectuals involved in in involved intellectuals of line-up the Slade teaching at that time, and and time, that at teaching Slade the afterwards there was this emptiness, and and emptiness, this was there afterwards it never really recovered. But the one one the But recovered. really never it valuable thing I got out of it was coming coming was it of out got I thing valuable to terms with some of the ideas of the the of ideas the of some with terms to Situationists—Guy Debord, in particular. particular. in Debord, Situationists—Guy “La Société du Spectacle” was terribly terribly was Spectacle” du Société “La important. I struggled with it in French French in it with struggled I important. at the time, and then it was published published was it then and time, the at in English in 1969. But his interest in in interest his But 1969. in English in collage made me aware of the subversive subversive the of aware me made collage potential of surrealism—situationism surrealism—situationism of potential comes out of that tradition, as much much as tradition, that of out comes as any tradition of political resistance. resistance. political of tradition any as détournement In thearchitecture schoolsandin and autonomous element—which may go so far far so go may element—which autonomous détournement (SI). Inthose writings Debord defined the , the reuse of pre-existing artistic elements elements artistic pre-existing of reuse the , are the loss of importance of each each of importance of loss the are flâneur . Whilst there issomethingof , the man who likes to lookout Détournement Situationist Situationist isa REMARKABLE ENCOUNTERS removed from the world ofmere consumption. images thatdemandthoughtful contemplation inaspace the imagestream, whilst simultaneously providing us with Stezaker’s work liesinitsability to resist theonslaughtof imagery thatconspires to shapeour desires. The beauty of through which we are soldjunkandthemanipulative work; anditdefiesthetransparency ofthe imagestream imaginative contributionofthespectator inlookingathis this respect. It underscores thenature ofimagery and by corporate prerogative. people released from thebadfaithlimposeduponit available to, andexpressive of, theexperience ofa experience, thusdemocratising artby makingitboth But insodoingitpursued theaestheticofeveryday culture andbringitselfinto the world ofthemasses. work was meantto step down from thepedestalofhigh as didconstructivists andDadaists. Ineachcasethe everyday aesthetics. Arte Povera usedfoundobjects, 2018 John Stezaker, ‘Love’, was at The Approach, London, Thu 15Feb 2018to Sun25Mar THAT ARE AT ONCE Stezaker’s artisbothredemptive anddefiantin EVERYDAY AND AESTHETIC the city anditsinhabitants. and give anaestheticperspective upon from thehumdrum world ofcommerce offers encounters thatexempt themselves effort isto recognise thatthecity everyday are atonceeveryday andaesthetic. The search oftheremarkable encounters that of theartistinsearch ofmaterSial andin have concernedthemselves with Other artistsofthetwentieth century stream. The can appropriate fragments from theimage Cornell andStezaker. It isclear how this space. It appears inthe work ofboth reframes itinsomenew andcontemplative fragment asanoverlooked imageand within theeveryday; itpicks upthe is a ‘forgetting’ oftheoriginalcontext The lossofimportanceeachelement dérive isthe workaday habit

54 LOUIS COLE: FROM KNOWER TO SOLO Keeping in the shape of rhythm

Sometimes the Internet works. For the dimension that is. What do you see as the greatest content creator evangelists it’s toted This meat vehicle that my soul challenge to the body? as a way to bypass middlemen and controls needs to be in good working I’m not sure. But definitely accepting distribute your content directly to an order at all times, so that I can create your natural strengths and audience of people who never knew really good tracks and videos and so weaknesses to try to use them to they were your wildest fans. For many that I can play really sick drum fills your advantage. That’s a challenge. artists it doesn’t pan out, however, and synth basslines. I also use my Or maybe trying to age really well once in a while the digital rainbow body for other really important stuff for longevity. ends in a pot of gold. in life. But creation is probably the Capturing the global attention via most important one to me. Why and when did you choose the a set of visually fun and musically drums as a medium for your work? adventurous videos, Knower (Louis How do you define the body? Yeah, a drum set has a lot of cool Cole and Genevieve Artadi) achieved Maybe I don’t really know, but I have moving parts, so I thought that a strong following, several million pushed my own body to be able to do looked cool. And I used to hit my head views, thousands of subscribers and things with more precision and clarity against my pillow in rhythm to fall a widening trail of online mentions. and focus and speed and agility, for asleep when I was a kid. So maybe I It’s certain they would have been the sake of my music. And my brain, really was obsessed with beats successful regardless of the online I really have pushed it to come up and rhythms. following, however stepping into with ideas I really believe in and record company jargon, they’ve an to filter out the bad ones. And just Whose work regarding the physical impressive reach. But, for drummer/ to always be creating. I don’t know human body do you admire? composer Louis Cole, Knower is just what the brain really does. Maybe it Vince Carter’s dunks, Eldar one musical avenue and under his translates soul into body function? Djangirov’s fingers, and pretty much name he’s released two albums of everyone I see playing drums on my strong musical acumen referencing What potential do you see in bodies? Instagram feed now. Brian Wilson, The Flaming Lips and I think a lot of people could react well The National, as well as a deeper to better quality music, not the corny Describe your technique? knowledge of electronic music. Cole’s boring music they are fed. If the world Well, to give a really simple answer, solo releases are tantalising for was fed better music overall, then I’m just trying to create the best music fans, containing energetic and better music would be more popular possible stuff I can, that feels unique unusual compositional treatments and present. And people would feel it, to me, and I’m trying to create as which are produced with a freshness and be into it. much of it as possible. I really need and lightness of touch that beg a high functioning body to be able a repeat. Are you conscious of your own body to do that. My body is real thin and Taking time out from a very busy in the same way as in your work? long and I think I’m kind of prone to touring and recording schedule Louis I try to take care of my body all the injury playing drums, unless I play a Cole discusses the physicality of his time, just so I can constantly create very certain way, but it’s also good for creative life with Trebuchet. and execute good ideas and play certain things. really nice drum beats. Definitely if I Louis Cole: For me, the body is mostly have a show where I have to play a lot Where do you find inspiration? a tool to create music and art the best of drums though, I have to be extra Other musicians. Or filmmakers, way I can in this dimension. Whatever aware of tension in my arms. athletes, painters, and badass creative

Profile Louis Cole types. Anyone who’s just nailing what they love doing. Also from life experiences, and I sometimes get ideas and inspiration when I drive my car around with no sounds playing.

Do you see the body as a place of permanence or change? Change. Definitely. Always adapting and improving and learning, or maybe forgetting things, getting worse, or ageing.

If you could change one thing about how humans are constructed what would it be? Nobody should be dealt a disease like ALS or Parkinson’s. Things like that really mess with the body’s function. I hope we can cure and prevent anything like those diseases soon.

With developments like VR changing the way we view our bodies, will this affect your work? It definitely will at some point. When everyone’s a cyborg and can play any rhythm or note combination perfectly, things will be way different. At the end of the day though, cyborg or not, nothing beats creativity or a cool idea.

Time is released on CD/Digital on August 10th 2018 via Brainfeeder Photo: Louis Cole (2018) by Richard Thompson. Courtesy of Brainfeeder Records Brainfeeder of Courtesy Thompson. Richard by (2018) Cole Louis Photo:

56 BERT GILBERT: RITES OF PASSAGE, SKINS OF CHANGE Alchemical transformations in soul and psyche

Personal and societal transformation highly potent force and this is sadly religious raves”. The Necro-suit is is channelled directly through the a quality which is often lacking in an based on Aztec priests that used body of the artist in the ritualistic increasingly po-faced art world. to flay their sacrificial victims and works of Bert Gilbert. Her performances can be seen as wear the skin until it flaked off. Gilbert’s interdisciplinary works essential interventions, calling for The Maenad-Medusa, a hybrid of include performance, costume, malleability in a congealing culture. Dionysus’s female followers (often photography, fetishistic objects referred to as “the raving ones”) who, and 2D works. Not afraid to broach How do you define the body? high on a mixture of wine and weed, sexuality and obsession, she has I see the body as visceral and used to run on a full moon into the gained a reputation for pushing the multilayered: emotional, spiritual, forest and rip the skin of anyone that audience to confront underlying physical, sexual, sacred and they came into contact with, man desires and taboo. profane. A portal/juncture to the or beast. past the present and the future. The challenges are to make work Bert is London’s mistress of bucking A house of memories, a record of that, although rooted in a personal trends and blushing cheeks. time, punctuated and scarred by expression, acts as a meeting point - Clare Considine, Le Cool the experiences, the interruptions, for others to experience a physical the rites of passage we experience representation of the intangible There are allusions to Jungian through pleasure and pain. The concept of spirit/collective analytical psychology perhaps most human body as the microcosm consciousness. The rediscovering of obviously in the works Shadows of of the Earth and the Earth as the what Mircea Eliade calls a universal my Former Self and Animus, and to macrocosm of the human body. ‘sacred heritage’, the foundation of alchemy and symbolism throughout My practice explores the internal primordial cosmologies witnessed the artist’s practice. externalised and vice versa; the within myth, nature rituals, folkloric relationship between the body storytelling and music. Her process is one of re-discovering and the mind, dislocating and a universal ‘Sacred Heritage’, the reconstituting parts of the body and In what way do you feel you’ve foundation of primordial cosmologies using these fragments as a vehicle to pushed your conception and (Mircea Eliade: Rites and Symbols form a visual language. My particular application of the body? of Initiation) witnessed within myth, fetish is the skin, and I explore this in My work is physically enduring, nature rituals, folkloric storytelling multiple ways within my practice: time-consuming and ritualised, and music. - Bert Gilbert website The Fourskins of the Apocalypse transferring the energy of the making (2016) are alchemical second- into the final pieces. Previously, I have The attitude, frankness and skinsuits for “ritual sacrifice and kept this behind the scenes; more originality of the artist makes her a

recently I have started to document this process. I am now making much larger works (totems/entry poles) in new materials, experimenting with using my body as a performative tool within the work. This is an uncomfortable transition but is yielding interesting results. By using myself as a channel for communication, removing the self- consciousness of my constructed persona and exploring the liberation within, this makes the body a vehicle for expression of archetypal representations of the collective unconscious.

What potential do you see in bodies? I’m not sure I see any more potential than other artists; all I can do is continue to explore the themes and narratives that inspire me and communicate them in the lexicon of symbols that I am constructing. These representations are unique for me: there is transcendence in the repetition of themes and the body gives unlimited potential for this. It is the vessel that carries life and spirit. The existential search for meaning that is trapped inside the visceral and multiple layers that make up a human body. The alchemist’s views on this are the basis of this interest; the connection to the Earth/cosmos “as above so below”. The beauty in the potential for change, for mutation, for transition into beings undetermined by gender or sexual persuasion.

Are you conscious of your own body in the same way as in your work?

Profile Bert Gilbert female, I am conscious of my body (George Monbiot). To create within his paintings, multiple versions in the usual ways that our culture emotionally based shared experience of Dorian Gray’s rotting portraits has undermined the power of that transcends us from a world exposed from the attic. females via achieving a form of constructed entirely on capitalist Austrian-Viennese actionist unattainable perfection and dismissal principles of consumerism and a Hermann Nitsch staged intense /shaming that results in displaying dysmorphic perception of ‘body ritual productions under the title “un-feminine” traits. beautiful’, grounding us back to Das Orgien Mysterien Theater in As an artist I am exploring the the earth. which urine, faeces, and blood dark feminine and the blurring of were slathered over bodies of the gender until it is out of focus—for me, Why and when did you choose the performers. He was one of the there is a magic that happens in this body as a medium for your work? formative artists that I became peripheral vision. I am conscious also Perhaps not a conscious choice, but a obsessed with, all the blood a of being both male and female at the natural one, being that I live in a body grotesque orgy of bodies and same time and how that relates to and it’s the house that I view and animal carcasses. my construction of self and the wider process the world in. The French artist Orlan gave a cultural ideas of sexuality and Since an early age I was fascinated series of lectures when I was at gender construction. with surgery and wounds and St Martin’s that had a marked effect The ruptures between the interior skeletons, the beauty of the grotesque. on me, her series of projects to have and the exterior, the epidermic I also had multiple illnesses and her face and body surgically altered meeting points of emotional and injuries so on a personal level the to resemble Botticelli’s Venus in a physical spiritual interventions. body literally became a site for both bid to draw attention to the double The filters between what is seen and physical and mental pain. standards and pressure surrounding unseen. The genderless Liberation I was taught to stitch at an early perceptions of female beauty. Suits (2017) made in collaboration age and I think that making stuffed Tim Hawkinson’s collaged body with Izzet Ers were an exploration limbs and embroidering body parts parts from 2007 and his multiple into this. They were based in became a natural transition from hands from 2004. wordplay, the subtext of what is said using these tools to express myself, Cindy Sherman’s constant and what is actually meant. Through stitching myself back together and for reinvention of self and use of her the resulting union of our partnership an understanding of self. own body. (the Jungian concept of syzygy) we There is literal and metaphorical Marina Abramović in the way she created seven bodies in the form of use of the body in my practice: the opens and holds a space for people boiler suits using alchemical symbols material sensuality of the objects to explore healing through her own and colours. produced, the constant repetition physical endurance. Using myself as a vessel, I am specifically of fingers, eyes and Arnulf Rainer’s intense physical investigating the kinetic aesthetic multilayered skins, the mark-making expressions of emotion, the use of that my actions can create, and the and the use of materials such as hair, his feet and fingers, photographing subsequent handling and shaping of bone, fur and my own blood (Baptism himself in states of extreme the material which leaves the essence by fire remains, 2013). They signify as emotion and testing the effects of of my actions subliminally embedded rites of passage of death and rebirth. hallucinogenic drugs on his practice. in the work. Franko B’s bloodletting Whose work regarding the physical performances [on his] own body made What do you see as the greatest human body do you admire? his experience more relatable to his challenge to the body? I loved Francis Bacon since an art audience, because they could imagine To bring back humour, hope and teacher introduced me to him at 11. the pain being inflicted as if it was connection in this “age of loneliness” The violence and energy he captures their own.

62 The Viper, 2018.

Louise Bourgeois... really no function as a source of inspiration words needed. but specifically for the past 10 years Rebecca Horn’s fantastic I’ve studied psychoactive plants/ extensions of the body. ethnobotany (of which a lot of my Other feminist artists such as work has been inspired by, without Hannah Wilke, who presents her own actually imbibing them), the mystery nude body as an object for visual schools, shamanism, chaos magic, interest, allowing her to claim her psychoanalytical texts, philosophy, body and her sexuality as her own. anthropology, alchemical and medical Antony Micallef’s portraits are texts. Museums and shows. particularly awesome. The diseased body, the heroic James Merry’s headpieces for body, the queer body, the abject body, Björk are breathtaking. the body as machine.

Describe your technique? Do you see the body as a place of There are multiple techniques that permanence or change? I use in the creation of work. It is For me it’s change; you can shed a heavily based in psychoanalytical skin and begin again. My Fourskins energetic responses from in-depth of the Apocalypse are archetypal research and repeated themes; second-skinsuits for rites of passage wordplay which then culminates in that are intended to transmogrify a series of multimedia expressions: you from one state to another. installation wardrobe, artefact, Impermanence and change is assemblage, moving image. all we have. More recently I have been collaborating on a series of projects If you could change one thing about with Izzet Ers, which has helped with how humans are constructed what losing the ego and ownership of would it be? work. The work produced becomes The addition of an actual third eye, neither mine nor his and the space or eyes in the back of your head, for play and production that happens the ability to regenerate limbs like between is a vessel of communication. salamanders and grow more arms It became a shorthand that is easier and hands—many hands make light somehow than my normal practice work/Goddess Durga personified— which is still in longhand (as it can and a literal third leg would be take me years to finish a series great as well! or piece of work). Giving ego and ownership over in a partnership With developments like VR speeds up this process both on changing the way we view our production but on a decision-making bodies, will this affect your work? process. When you solely generate Yes of course, as my work will always work, it takes much more time. be some reflection of the time it is made in; even if my practice isn’t Where do you find inspiration? directly based in these ideas, it will Although clichéd, everywhere can still be influenced by them. Whilst

thinking on this, I remembered the healthcare spaces and medical work of Arthur Elsenaar and Eric technologies. The artist Ilona Sagar Kluitenberg (1994). They stated: in Correspondence O (2017) “explores the link between language, surface, The technologisation of the human technologies and the body” through body implies a conceptual abstraction “mediated encounters in social, that destroys the integrity of the political and experiential space. physical experience. Destroying the Illusion and material.” duality between the physical and I am currently looking to work the spiritual, it also undermines the in augmented or virtual reality, traditional opposition of culture and to develop my Portable Portals nature. Our cultural customs, our (2017) into a series of installations habits, our behaviour all become that operate in both planes; mechanisms to be altered at will in a psychoactive multi-sensory order to make the world-machine experience triggered by objects run smoothly. It raises an anxious in the installations. uncertainty about the question: On a lighter note, I would love what does it mean to be human? to explore the technology that can grow organs in vats; I have always Furthering this inquiry, if virtual been obsessed with medical oddities worlds can appear as real as reality in jars and produced a whole series and if this reality is also a construct, of objects and illustrations inspired then perhaps it will lead to the by this (I Put It in Cider, 2005–7). exploration of the absent body—or, The Hunterian Museum has always as Stelarc stated, “the obsolete body” been a favourite place to visit when that man has created technological I need cheering up. I was also a and informational environments medical illustrator for a year or so at which the body alone cannot hope Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, to handle. The body and machine which was a great experience to fuel are merged, a hybrid. my medical obsession, although I There is also an interesting did have to draw the five stages of discussion happening around sexual excitement in male and female wellbeing at the juncture between repeatedly for this time... which was our own bodies, the bodies of others, eye-opening.`

Words: Edward Lucie-Smith 68 As the annual London Photo Fair, just closing as I start to write this, has just reminded me, representations of the body, more specifically the naked or nude human body, have become contentious once again. As perhaps one can sense from the fact that I have just chosen two subtly different adjectives with which to describe it.

There are a number of different reasons for this: some a technical, some social, some polemical—all interlocked.

In the history of Western art, from Greek and Roman antiquity onwards, representation of the body, the unclothed body in particular, has very often been a central preoccupation. If this faded away in what we now call the Middle Ages, it revived strongly with the Renaissance. In this it contrasted forcibly with, say, the long history of Chinese art, certainly from the Tang Dynasty onwards. In Chinese ink-painting, it is the representation of landscape that occupies the central, most prestigious position. In Islamic cultures, figurative representations of all kinds have often had an outlawed or semi-outlawed status. This has applied particularly to representations of the nude.

Where paintings and sculptures—images made by hand—were concerned, the relationship between these and

Art Contentious nudes their audience was often more complicated than we, living adroitly stressed in the nudes of the French Fontainebleau in the twenty-first century, are now ready to realise. School of the sixteenth century. Looking at these, we know we are looking at images not intended for the entirety As we can see, when looking at the productions of of the French society of the time, but for a sophisticated, the past, nude representations addressed their intended courtly few. audience in a number of subtly different ways. Sometimes, in a Christian context, their purpose was religious. Images This situation persisted well into the nineteenth of Adam and Eve, shamed by their own nakedness, about century, though the audience eventually became broader, to be cast out of Paradise. Christ, vestigially clothed and while at the same time, paintings, smaller examples in muscular, suffering on the Cross. Increasingly, however, particular, became more and more commodified. That is, these moralistic and punitive associations were absent. painted nudes were no longer produced on commission Turning to imagined antiquity, artists illustrated situations for grandee patrons, but were made ad hoc, in the hope and stories where superb nude figures, both male and of finding a buyer, regardless of that buyer’s educational female, existed in their own right. We look back now at status or position in the existing class system. , 1896.15, Image courtesy of Manchester Art Gallery Manchester of courtesy Image , 1896.15, the heritage provided for us by great masters of the nude such as Titian, Veronese, even Velázquez, with his superb One of the main agents of change, where Rokeby Venus, now in the National Gallery here in London. representation of the nude was concerned, was the invention of printing. A print was not simply multiple but

Hylas and the Nymphs As one examines these productions in historical also cheap, because it could be easily multiplied. It was in sequence one does, however, increasingly begin to notice, addition something that could be studied in privacy, but not only that they are always in dialogue with an imagined also secretly, if the possessor so wished. The result was a audience, but the nature of this audience changes with the great upsurge of erotic printmaking,images that not only passage of time. In the societies of the Renaissance and represented nude figures, but which represented sexual the Baroque, being allowed to gaze at forthrightly nude activity or strongly implied its possibility. Erotic prints

John William Waterhouse R.A, John William Waterhouse figures always contained an element of privilege. This is were addressed entirely to the male gaze. This was true of

70 John William Waterhouse, Study of Nymphs for ‘Hylas and Two Nymphs’ circa 1896 Left: Image courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford © 2018. Right: Image courtesy of photographer Rama © Rama, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr, 2018 Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr, Rama, Rama © of photographer courtesy Image 2018. Right: © Oxford of University Museum, of the Ashmolean courtesy Image Left:

Art Contentious nudes Eugène Durieu, Nude Study, 1854

72 “WE NOW FIND OURSELVES LIVING IN AN ERA OF DRASTIC REVISION AND CHANGE.”

Edgar Degas, After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Back, 1896

almost all non-religious art featuring nude figures made seemed to guarantee that what was shown was not during a period from the beginning of the fifteenth until something imagined. It was necessary for it to have existed the end of the nineteenth century but it was, for obvious in the ‘real world’ for the photographic image to have reasons, particularly true of prints. been made recording it. This perception still exists in the back of most spectators’ minds, even when they are aware A major change, but not a change in the nature of the of how flexible and mutable photographic images have audience, came with the invention of photography in become in the age of the computer. the first half of the nineteenth century. Photographers soon discovered that this new medium offered an ideally We now find ourselves living in an era of drastic convenient and effective way of creating images of the revision and change, both in general, where images of nude. It was used by celebrated artists of the period, the nude are concerned, and in relation to photographic among them Delacroix and Degas, as a convenient source nudes in general. of reference, and it soon achieved an independent life of its own, in dialogue with but separate from traditional This change often involves a degree of self- ways of image-making. contradiction. For example, there have been recent attempts to censor images that were considered perfectly As the century progressed it became more and more innocuous in the past. This can extend to images created firmly established as the democratic medium of choice in the supposedly repressive Victorian past and long on for creating erotic images, with a wider outreach than any view, without arousing protest or comment in major rival. What remained unchanged was the fact that, perhaps public institutions. more specifically than ever, photography channelled the male gaze. Women photographers did make images of One recent controversy that springs to mind is a recent the nude but accepted established formulations when fuss in Britain about a painting by the Victorian artist John they did so. William Waterhouse in the collection of the Manchester Museum. It shows what is at first glance an innocuous One particular aspect of photography endowed it with mythological scene, and it has been continuously on view special erotic force. This was the fact that a photograph in the museum since it was acquired in 1896.

The subject of the work is Hylas and the Nymphs. At the request of Sonia Boyce, a well-known British Hylas was the innocent teenage lover of the Greek black female artist who had a retrospective at this demigod Hercules. The story, as reported in the Guardian institution (March-July 2018), the Waterhouse painting newspaper, goes as follows: was taken down, and replaced by a mass of slogans.

“Hylas goes inland for water. Finding a spring, he A fuss ensued, and the work was soon replaced in its plunges his pitcher into the water—but nymphs, desiring usual spot. But the very fact that there was a big fuss the young man, grab hold of his arm, dragging him under. seems significant. The women are the predators, not Hylas. At the same time, the painting clearly invites the viewer to enjoy the nymphs’ There is, however, a contrast here with other things that naked breasts, while betraying more than a little anxiety are taking place in the art world, for example the rise to about female sexuality.” prominence of LGBT artists and art events, many of which place a strong stress on nudity, though in this case the For a politically correct contemporary audience there erotic images are more usually male rather than female. might be several problems here – not only a possibly A good place to catch a glimpse of this activity is to go lascivious pleasure in juvenile nudity, but in the fact of to the Los Angeles based website of the Tom of Finland female aggression. And not only Hylas, but the nymphs Foundation (tomoffinlandfoundation.org), which devotes who seize him, appear to be underage.” itself to preserving the legacy of the Finnish-born artist and illustrator Touko Valio Laaksonen (1920-1991), and to promoting male gay imagery in general. One admirer has remarked of Tom’s work, “these are not conversation pieces, they are masturbation pieces”. Another admirer, female, claims that “Tom of Finland helped pave the way to gay liberation”.

Art Contentious nudes “THE RISE TO PROMINENCE OF LGBT ARTISTS AND ART EVENTS, MANY OF WHICH PLACE A STRONG STRESS ON NUDITY”

However, reverting to the event with which I began—the This will towards independence from anything London Photo Fair of May 2018—the lack of nude imagery, observed, this will to create images ab initio, has long from what I remember regarding previous London Photo existed in what we still call, for want of any better Fairs, was rather noticeable. Even more observable was description, avant-garde art. You find this impulse in the fact that some of the most striking of the nude images Malevich, and you find it much later in the work of that did make it into the fair were the work of woman Donald Judd and other American minimalists. photographers. Particularly noteworthy was a full-scale paraphrase by Charlotte Colbert of a famous painting by Today, the conflict is sharpening once again. Lucian Freud, Benefit Supervisor Sleeping. In this, Freud’s There is a kind of art that wants to remake the rules of massive nude has been deliberately fragmented, so that social responsibility, even at the price of discarding much you see the body in pieces, on a series of different panels, of the art that has been revered in the past. The #MeToo each separately framed. It’s a case in the most literal sense movement is just one aspect of this. This kind of art, of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’. for obvious reasons, clings to figuration. And there is, on the contrary, a kind of art that wants to opt out completely, Making the rounds of this very large fair, I became and exist in its own sphere, on its own terms. Neither of more and more aware not only of the absence of nudes, these impulses can be regarded as traditional in any usual usually a staple in an event of this sort, but of the urge sense. It’s two revolutionary, or would-be revolutionary, towards abstraction in contemporary photography, impulses going head-to-head. which, given photography’s origins, as briefly outlined above, seems like a massive contradiction in terms. Contemporaneously in London there is an exhibition at Tate Modern called Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art (until 14 October 2018). This has been mauled in reviews by some of my fellow critics, but I feel that many of the criticisms are unjust. Article made possible by I.P.Arts True, it doesn’t quite solve the conundrum of whether or www.isisphoenixarts.com not you can label something a photograph if the process of making the image has completely abandoned the idea of using a lens. Is sloshing about with some chemicals and a roll of photosensitive paper really enough to justify the description?

What the show does bring into focus, in some cases quite literally, is the desire to use photographic means to create images that appear to be completely independent of any aspect of the surrounding world that can be independently observed, and perhaps compared, with what the artist presents you with.

76 ADAM DIX: SCIENCE FICTION AND NEW DIMENSIONS IN ART. Hypnotic memories of the future

Cathedral, 2015

The ominous and ambiguous My aim whilst a resident at Griffin pointing to a time when technology relevance of technology and science was to further the already inherent was seen in futuristic terms rather are put under scrutiny in the work of layering process within the work and than personal commodity. I see the painter Adam Dix. extend its economic language by figures as organic nodes relaying Dix is a visual artist working in a creating works that had an optical information via the machine, mode trail-blazed mainly by writers depth and visual ‘pull and push’ self-perpetuating and succumbing like H.G. Wells, Philip K. Dick and Kurt between figurative and abstract forms to their innate need to connect. Vonnegut, where science fiction is within the painting, through shallow The shamanic character role used effectively to highlight prescient layering of paint. - Adam Dix, 2017 within the narrative is a key character issues affecting our time. found in traditional forms of folkloric The visual language of Dix’s practice is deceptively benign custom and spiritualism that would communications technology, on first glance; the subtle paint be there to mediate between the consumer trends and obsessions— washes, nostalgic imagery and muted, audience and the spirit world. more than a nod to Apple mania well-handled colour make seductive Here in my work I have made is evoked by religious and secular viewing. But there is a lingering sense the shaman a composite of receptor gatherings—are conflated with the of being caught among forces too and conduit. Adorned with a crown iconography of 1950s and ‘60s science great to control. Vaguely utopian, of satellitedish-type spheres, he fiction, giving the work a strangely hypnotic memories of the future. is engaged with other characters. nostalgic feel. Sometimes with evangelical In a world where digital media, How do you define the body? presence he lays hands upon the augmented reality and artificial The figure within my work is used as subjects to complete the circuit intelligence are all on the cusp of a a visual and narrative contrast to the of communication. leap forward, it’s unlikely that he will objects of technology depicted: the The shaman in my work represents run out of pressing subject matter. organic and the synthesised. an individual that aligns himself Dix studied a BA (Hons) in It is as if the people have an over with the devices of connectivity. Graphics and Illustration in 1990 at familiar sense of commitment to these Deciphering and acting as a conduit, Middlesex Polytechnic and in 2009 sterile forms, a necessary relationship his true identity is a masked screen; an MA in Fine Art at Wimbledon of connection. he is a custodian of communication College of Art. Costume and characters are who is there to symbolise the link He lives and works in London and important to my work, emphasising between the individual and an all- recently undertook a residency at the the ritualistic and ceremonial encapsulating system Griffin Gallery, where he reflected on qualities. There is an ambiguous of communication. process and painterly quality in hierarchy and sense of history, a his practice. play of past and present, with ‘dress’

In what way do you feel you’ve exaggerated in their relationship quasi-religious appropriation with pushed your conception and to these contemporary icons of regard to the depicted landscape application of the body? infotainment, conveying a sense of figure and technology. I see the My figures’ appearance and their of compliance. characters aligning themselves to performance within the paintings are As I mentioned before, my these devices in a cult-like state of exaggerated by appropriating the characters are human nodes reverence, aware that these objects ritualistic and ceremonial traits and completing the circuit so the may have qualities that extend their imagery often found in the genres of synthesised current can continue. immediate communication beyond science fiction, national pageantry, This is emphasised by compositionally themselves. The fiction being a sci-fi folklore and religion. Referring to placing the figures in a circle to spirituality, where the user of this these constructed belief systems show a sense of a continual flow; technology appropriates the device I see as fostering a group reaction, also, placing the figures within the as an amulet or icon. where comparisons between past paintings so they turn away from the In other words using the vehicle and present systems of connectivity audience implies that the viewers of science fiction and faith to discuss can be initiated. themselves are privy to something our relationship to contemporary Science fiction as a genre familiar that could be beneficial, communication as an extension to the discusses the social psyche in relation encouraging them to take part. human body, the spirit and the soul. to the wonders of technology. This is exemplified in my opinion through Are you conscious of your own body Why and when did you choose the the literature, pulp fiction and film in the same way as in your work? body as a medium for your work? from mid-twentieth century onwards, Yes, in a way. I am conscious, like I have always worked with the figure. and it is here that I refer to visually most people;I have a phone that I The figure is key compositionally and metaphorically with regard to the peck away at more than necessary, within my work. I use it as a reference imagery. distracted by emails, social media metaphorical platform, depicting platforms and other forms of narratively the figure’s reaction and What potential do you see in bodies? infotainment, via a black screen that role through stance and dress, as a By appropriating sci-fi as a reflects my face and the real world contrast to his or her surrounding contemporary folklore—not unlike around me. environment within the painting. other areas that have ceremonial Through the mixing of genres there is narratives that heavily rely on What do you see as the greatest an unsettling familiarity. choreographed worship—the subjects’ challenge to the body? With physically opposing symbolic

Profile Adam Dix to emphasise this, highlighting qualities of this form of media could and religious ephemera, as well as similarities between different eras be incorporated sublimely as a visiting independent local museum and genres. I use this to direct and directional tool within the painting. archives and county festivals. challenge the viewer’s attention My concern was not to pastiche within the narrative of my paintings. the printed image, but refer to its Do you see the body as a place of character translating the qualities permanence or change? Whose work regarding the physical that were inherent, such as ink It’s a vessel or conduit, with human body do you admire? saturation, mis-registration of changing function. My interests in figurative painting colour blocks, strong contrast tend to align with those artists who between light and dark and soft If you could change one thing about describe the figure in an economic photographic imagery. how humans are constructed what way such as Honoré Daumier, The paintings are subsequently would it be? Luc Tuymans, Jockum Nordström, made by methodically layering thin Fallibility is part of being human, Mamma Andersson, Marcel Dzama layers of oil colour glazes, repeating so for that reason I see no reason and Neo Rauch, to name a few. I am the process from the lightest tone to to change. more interested in the figure as a the darkest tone. receptacle to carry a narrative, rather It is a watercolour process but With developments like Virtual than being representational. done in oil and the majority of my Reality (VR) changing the way we paintings are painted on the flat view our bodies, do you think this Describe your technique? rather than upright. Some works will affect your work? My painting technique evolved can have up to 30 glazes. Virtual reality is an area that I am from my keen interest in old print already starting to address within ephemera and the process of Where do you find inspiration? my work. I am concerned by the lithography. I wanted to originally Inspiration for my works can come extension of the concept of an reference a period in history where from many places. My preference is artificial world where the individual’s there had been a spike in the advance to find references in flea markets, senses are totally enveloped, of communications, which would thrift stores and bookshops rather interacting within that space while subsequently refer to the devices than the Internet, ranging from physically placed in the real world, we use today. By looking at printed contemporary science and technology as if straddling both, and how this material of the 1950s onwards, journals, science fiction novels and may interrupt or desensitise. such as National Geographic, films, printed ephemera, pulp fiction, etc. I decided that the old postcards and photos, folklore

80 KATHARINE DOWSON: INTERNAL BEAUTY REFLECTED IN NATURE Lungs of coral, hearts of stone

Glass, a metaphor for a membrane; party or catalyst comes into play, What have people’s reactions been impermeable, yet penetrable by the like science. As often as not, I link to your work? eye. Katharine Dowson’s work aims the body to other natural forms A lot of the time people think it’s to show us the hidden beauty within and organisms because we’re all very beautiful or they don’t like it. our bodies. Informed by scientific interlinked. So the viscera often It’s either one way or the other; discovery into dyslexia, HIV and look like rocks. There are wonderful people don’t really ignore my work. cancer, her detailed sculptures photographs of coral reefs and they I rather like doing the work where it’s and installations allow the viewer look like internal photographs of the seductive on the outside but you’re to enter the body. Confronting body, for instance inside the lungs. not quite sure what you’re looking aspects of ourselves as permeable It’s a matter of perception. at. I used to like light boxes and they biological, questioning the overlaid If you tell people it’s a coral reef looked like lungs with tracheas and psychological frames through which when they’re looking at lungs they’ll things like that, but actually the lungs we picture ourselves. Her work has react positively but if you say actually are cast as seaweed. The ‘trachea’ been bought by Charles Saatchi it’s lungs, or internal organs, they were blown by a technical glass- and features prominently in the go “Urgh!” For me the internal body blower and then dipped in wax. So it collections of the Arts Council, the is really stunning. Beautiful. For me was based around anatomy but also Wellcome Trust and the Bill and that’s what the body is. make-believe. Melinda Gates Foundation. The psychology of the body and I find beauty in the body because Dowson has spent more than the mind is also important. Most imperfections in nature I think 20 years investigating the intersections of us only start thinking about are beautiful; there are always between science, psychology and anatomy or our bodies—unless you’re imperfections. In fact, what I love art. Speaking to Trebuchet, we asked an athlete—when something goes about Islam is that nobody is perfect whether all scientific advances are wrong. In general, our body continues except for God, so when they are necessarily positive. doing what it does. Women are more creating these stunning kilim rugs sensitive to their bodies because they and carpets they add imperfections as How do you define the body? change in a very marked way during a tribute. For me it’s the imperfections It’s a hidden side of life. I’m fascinated puberty and also once a month. This that are fascinating. It seems to me by the internal workings of the body, is why we are frightened of hospitals, that when things have gone wrong and I see my body as a landscape or dentists, because we are suddenly with the body, the trouble then, is within that. I’m always talking about out of our comfort zones. We are very that it filters into the mind. It can be the hidden side of life that is there vulnerable beings, however much incredibly depressing which is where but remains invisible unless a third we’d like to think we aren’t. psychology starts kicking in. The body

is about psychology, the brain and the able through that to work with the made from rejected spectacle lenses life of the brain, and how the brain Parkinson Research Centre UK and magnifiers. To make them look thinks about how we are. [as another guinea pig] to update random you have to have a fairly [the image of] my brain. This time I specific plan. You see the human form Are you conscious of your own body 3D-printed my brain, laser-etched in various ways; you see them upside in the same way as in your work? it and also cast it. So again I have down, or magnified or not magnified. I am actually. I did a piece of work actual physical evidence of my brain To emphasise the effect we had some called My Soul (2005) regarding specimen and I’ve also done the same contemporary dancers dancing dyslexia. I wanted to look at the thing with my heart. behind them which the viewer psychology of dyslexia. Specifically, People still carry forward the sees stretching or contorting in I wanted to use myself as a guinea pig Victorian idea that the soul is in particular ways. for psychologists to study dyslexia. the heart, whereas we tend to think They put me in an MRI scanner— that it’s in the brain. If there is such What do you see as the greatest this was in 2001/2—and blasted a thing. I have my heart and brain challenge to the body? these words at me, measuring my kept in a way that I can hold them. I think there’s a problem in medicine. responses. From that they could see Life-sized. I’ve also made enlarged We are abusing our bodies in many where the word-processing parts of versions and in marble. One version ways. The ‘perfect body’ is a real my brain were. From that study there is in pink Portuguese marble, problem. It has a terrible effect on was enough of my dyslexic brain 3.5 times life-size. It was quite new teenage girls who have issues morphed with other dyslexic brains at the time but since then numerous around their bodies. Selfies and all to show a general anomaly and justify people have done it. these things are creating a self- more funding into research. I’ve been very inspired by obsessed generation. For myself I had my MRI scans medical museums since the 1990s, Modern medicine is creating which I gave to someone at so I’ve been working with the body problems for the future, in the sense Newcastle University. At the time, ever since. It’s not always internal that I’m a mother, and while modern medical imaging and CAD didn’t anatomy that I’ve found interesting. childbirth is fantastic, how we’ve communicate; they were two different I did an installation called Myriad overcome all these problems. I’m system languages so we had to model (1998) that was thousands of optical interested in what it’s going to do to it specifically. This was the basis of lenses which played with the idea of our genetics in terms of the Darwinian My Soul: my brain, left and right breaking up the external body, but development of the female form. hemispheres, etched into lumps of in a different way. That was talking People are now able to have children glass. That was as close as I could about how what you see and what I who would not necessarily get with the brain at the time. see are two different things. So the be able to in the past because they In 2013, I had a residency at the lenses were curtains three metres are able to have caesareans. National Glass Centre and I was high to anything up to 12 metres long, Now that’s fantastic but it’s going

84 to be interesting to see how the female etchings; I was really inspired by organisms to whatever and then body changes; the hips are going to his depictions of the body in a very similarities between those and get narrower—not least because that’s visceral way. It’s at once poignant quasars in outer space. apparently more desirable in a visual and distressing. There is a brilliant sense. So it’ll be interesting to see etching of this mother, which is very If you could change one thing about how these things develop in future spiky, dry. It’s not the gouged plates how humans are constructed what generations. There is a difficulty in that he did with the soldier in the would it be? thinking about how the body dies; dugout with the rotten flesh and the As Leonardo said, the only constant modern medicine will also create maggots. This one is very spiky and it thing in nature is change. It’s a a situation where our bodies will has a mother within a town that has difficult one as I think it’s the continue going on longer and longer. been bombed and she has these wide, psychology of it; it’d be good to make I think about my darling mother staring eyes that are looking with everyone more empathetic with one who has dementia, who is beautifully absolute horror and she’s trying to another. More kindness. It’d be good looked after, but how can we let go or breastfeed this dead baby. It’s really to breed kindness into it. So if via let people let go of their bodies? I’d say stark and says everything to me about genetic modification you make people that’s probably going to be an issue in war, which is again very powerful. kinder. I mean, if you can do people the future, if it isn’t already. I also love Rodin and you get with blue eyes and no dyslexia then these female figures that look like a why not do it with a characteristic? Whose work regarding the physical giant thumb and you get a sense of So you could cut the megalomaniac human body do you admire? their weight. He had this fantastic gene, the self-obsessed gene... I think Leonardo da Vinci. He was fantastic. technician in the studio that was able it would be a fine thing to change He was a scientist as well as an artist to take these small figurines that he genetics for the good. and inventor; his was just the most created in the studio and he was able amazing brain. He would say the most to enlarge them. So a lot of these With developments like VR incredible things. I had a quote up in sculptures that you see were actually changing the way we view our my studio: “The only constant thing in made for the gates of paradise and bodies, will this affect your work? nature is change.” I think that’s true. then they were blown up from plaster. It will if I’m interested in it. Whenever I love Egon Schiele. I know that When he died these plasterworks I do a project with a scientist I find he’s controversial and similarly I were subsequently cast in bronze. something fascinating. The thing is haven’t been able to look at Eric that I’m not a scientist, so their world Gill sculptures in the same way. It Where do you find inspiration? is forever extraordinary. When I work is contentious. If you look at Egon From sciences, anatomy, nature, with scientists they find the way I Schiele’s work you can tell that he’s psychology; those are the really think quite different. probably not a particularly nice the things that I find something They really love that I get excited character. I think it’s a real problem in. Looking at science plates and about their work and it suddenly thinking that artists have to be squaring the circle, or circling the makes them see things in ways that nice; you have to divorce yourself square (between science and art). they haven’t seen things before. from that. Bacon was seriously I love the book Gaia (James Lovelock, So that’s how the relationship can questionable. Lucian Freud was an 1979) about how everything is work so when they make a new interesting character too. But I was interconnected and looking at discovery, whatever it is, I always really inspired by Otto Dix’s wartime the micro/macro world from tiny find something to make it work.

86 MARTHA PARSEY: SYMBOLIC FEMINISM AND THE REVOLT Elegant geometry, structure and violence

My paintings are often large diptychs, What details are omitted and why? What potential do you see in bodies? or a number of canvasses, made With the artist living and working Leaving the bodies as empty vessels without preliminary sketches or any in Cologne and London, Parsey’s allows the viewer space to project other devices,just using my eyes and paintings are part of a number of themselves into the figures. a pencil, drawing straight onto the prestigious collections worldwide My figures are, in a sense, figments bare canvas. Working on bare canvas including the Ovitz Family Collection, of the viewer’s imagination, and means that whatever I paint remains. the Zabludowicz Collection and the space around the figures allows the This gives the process of painting an Musée National d’art Moderne, Paris. imagination more room to roam. element of risk—a kind of performance In this issue of Trebuchet, Parsey For example, in a recent painting in the making of it. Although areas of describes the physical process of Giant Steps (2017) the figure is very my paintings are rendered in great painting as well as the process fragmented, where parts are made to detail I allow unpainted areas to allow through which she ascribes the body stand for the whole. The body parts, space and give the viewer room to as figure and position in her work. the legs and torso, are signifiers, form a discourse with the image. flags of femininity if you like, without - Artist statement, Martha Parsey How do you define the body? the woman in her own entirety. The body is often not fully defined as She’s an emblem of woman, made The large canvasses of Martha a solid space in my work, sometimes up of her fragments reflected in the Parsey contain stylised worlds, where only by markers: clothing, jewellery, mirrors that surround her, like the action, geometry and perspective buttons or the shape of the silhouette. gambling dice on which she stakes create a colourful dissonance. The In fact a lot of the time the body her chances, her upper body defined figures in her paintings, playing out consists only of the bare canvas, only by the shape of a dotted bra. stylised narratives, encourage an which has a skin-tone texture to it. So she’s really a completely emotional and symbolic reading as incomplete figure, where more they intersect a network of subliminal In what way do you feel you’ve attention is paid to signifiers of the geometric elements. pushed your conception and erotic (like the shoe) than to her as Over the course of her career application of the body? an actual substantial being. Parsey’s figures have shown a range I think I’ve stretched the idea of of poise and tone from violent to what needs to be defined and what Are you conscious of your own body subtle, drawing a parallel between doesn’t. Bare areas of canvas work as in the same way as in your work? cardinal emotion and surreal a reminder to the viewer that this is a Something people often forget geometry. A signature element in her painting, an artificial representation, about painting is how physical it work is the manner in which objects and the texture of the bare canvas is. Certainly in my case, working and figures emerge and disappear gives the painting itself a certain predominantly on a fairly large scale, into unpainted areas of canvas; rawness and nakedness. The faces often with a number of canvasses, painted areas in Parsey’s work signify in my paintings are on the whole like in the diptychs and triptychs, static consciousness, whereas the the most complexly painted areas, or indeed in the 12-metre painting, blank spaces are areas where potent enhanced by the contrast of the it’s a very physical act. It takes a imagination is left to play with body which is a vacuous and fair amount of physical and mental historicity. What is unsaid here? incomplete space. strength and sweat to make them, Don’t call me babe, 2011

and by working with your hands, like a musician with their instrument, answered that with the various your own body, to bring this thing or a well-trained sportsperson, viewpoints of Cubism, then Bacon to life, it is a very physical and it becomes a sixth sense, and you distorted and whittled the figure intimate process. can do almost anything with it and it down, severely abbreviating it. The more you paint the more in works for you, like an improvisation. The issue with the human form today tune you get to the physical act of is how to bring across the presence painting. Your coordination improves, What do you see as the greatest of a person without boring everyone your eye, hand, and the way you move, challenge to the body? with figurative representation now almost like a dance: I remember I think the challenge today in terms that the camera has broken that down clearly from the 12-metre painting of painting the human body is how and annulled it as a viable option of being almost like in a trance. photography has changed how we or possibility. When you’re really in tune with it, look at the figure. First painters Why and when did you choose the body as a medium for your work? My work has always been figurative. The body offers a lot of scope for gesture and posture that adds to the portrayal of the person, which I’ve treated differently in many different works.In Sirens Sweetly Singing (2015) I approached painting the body, the naked skin, in more detail, which is something I generally avoid because female nakedness is already an occupied coded territory where you easily drift into voyeurism. I was able to solve this by ‘dressing’ them in stockings, heavily applied make-up, fishnets in their hair as well as by giving them a slightly masculine air. The title comes from the Cream track “Tales of Brave Ulysses” from 1967, based upon the epic Greek poem. According to Homer there were two sirens, often depicted as naked figures, legs scaled, or winged as part-woman part-bird. They entice us with their fixed vacant stares, the

90 Profile Martha Parsey Sega, 1999.

92 Martha Parsey Profile the femaleforminamodernsetting, myth, playing with theportrayal of rope alittlelike asnake inanancient to have thisfemalegymnast with the a lotofsportsphotography. I wanted London Olympics, asI was lookingat It was duringtherun-up to the figure, complete andunfragmented. (2011) I wanted to paintthe whole spelled outasa warning besidethem. pattern ofthefloor, the word ‘achtung’ one outstretched across thescale-like the mermaidlegsboundinnylon, In thepainting

Don’t Call me Babe Babe me Call Don’t

female form. the canonofmale versions ofthe call to self-autonomy outsideof rope inher hands, asanempowering in boxing shoesandgrippingthegym the street. It’s acrudeand violent a stickmanintheroad markingsof fighting over isportrayed simply as skirts. The manthey are mostlikely protruded from under their pulled-up the canvas for thepubichair that in thestreet. Iusedpinsthrough early paintingoftwo women fighting Rip Her to Shreds Shreds to Her Rip (2000)an was

abbreviated andenergised form. image, inmy mind very physical inits from theicy pool. water with hissmallbody emerging create foreground anddepthto the with anartificialpouringofpaintto and schematically, as was the water, The body was painted quite roughly frieze-like pictograms above hishead. as portrayed intheEgyptian-style, still panicaboutaforeboding disaster discomfort inthecold, as well asa and to create asenseofhisdeep show hisbody submerged in water I was interested intheideaofhow to painting ofaboy standinginapool. possible, gobeyond physical and they seemto almosttranscend the often under intense pressure, how when thetwo are working together, combination ofbody andmind, and athleticism andstrength, it’s always a big tennis idols, butit’s never just and women. Iplay tennis sohave my achievements ofsomesportsmen resourceful andinventive one. limited painter andtherefore a very limits of what hecould; was a very he managedto achieve within the is what hecouldn’t doand what What’s sofascinatingaboutBacon have madetwo filmsabouthim. Obviously Francis Bacon, or I wouldn’t human body do you admire? Whose work regarding thephysical becoming almostsculptural. faces are painted inthickimpasto oil, another figure. Here thebodiesand a hamster inhishands, connectsto boy, lookingclosely into theeyes of to anoff-screen screen; only one with tattoos, thechildren’s gazesfixed All their torsos are bare, thefather children playing aSega video game. male family. A mansits with hisfive at themalefigure inagroup, ofthe In I dogetareal kickoutofthe Brace Yourself Yourself Brace Sega (1999) I wanted to look (2001) was anearly

Images courtesy of M.Parsey © 2018 mental boundaries. When you look at Usain Bolt for example, beyond all the playing to the cameras, he has his own unorthodox style and a physique that is not that of a hundred-metre sprinter, and an attitude, making it look so relaxed and easy, not just beating the world record, but by a huge margin, while even slowing down at the end, and almost reluctantly crossing the line.

Describe your technique? Firstly I draw the composition in pencil on unprimed canvas from figures I’ve assembled in some kind of an image in my head. Once the composition is resolved I paint the faces that in large part are the main focus of the painting with graphic areas to suggest the space.

Where do you find inspiration? Paintings, photographs, films, things I see or imagine, being alive. Left:Rip her to shreds, 2000 Do you see the body as a place of Above: Sirens sweetly singing, 2015 permanence or change? I think of the body really as nothing more than a shell and outside of painting I don’t attach that much Most people, if they really want to medium. I’m also not a big subscriber significance to it. It often gets over- draw or paint the human figure well, to the lineal idea of contemporary emphasised, overly coded or used to just need to learn to really look at it. technical development being the give people a false sense of identity. I’d have no reason to carry on if it summit of human achievement— We’re just the way we are, by nothing was easy. Each picture is a challenge I was only just listening to a chamber more than accident really. I set myself to resolve some issue in piece by J. S. Bach and was struck by the painting. how radical and modern it sounded. What would you change about the So I think it really comes down to an human body? With developments like VR individual’s sense of inventiveness, The beauty of drawing the human changing the way we view our regardless of what time or culture he figure is that it’s so difficult! No, I bodies, will this affect your work? or she lives in, than what technical wouldn’t want to change anything Digital photography, photo apps and developments are available to them. to make it easier. You wouldn’t want the reach of social media are definitely I sense we will all soon tire of photo to win Wimbledon without beating already affecting how we view others manipulation and are already yearning a really good opponent, would you? and what we choose to show or expose for something more physical; the Even if the opponent ultimately is about ourselves. Whether that really physicality of painting, the physicality always yourself. Challenges make us changes painting, well, I doubt it. of being, because ultimately, better; I’m not into making it easier, Painting has a very long tradition and we all want to physically connect. I don’t use any projectors or any aids is somewhat contained and restricted like that, just looking and drawing. by the physical possibilities of the

94 The body as a symbol for psychic change Suffering and transformation

Words: Michael Eden 96 “ARCHETYPES BEING SO POTENT CAN ONLY BE APPROACHED AND MADE SENSE OF INDIRECTLY THROUGH SYMBOLS”

We are all ready to win, projecting villains and obstacles Archetypes are typical forms of apprehension, indeed onto the situations and people who appear to be in our wherever we meet with uniformity and regular recurring way, but as always, the enemy is within. ways of apprehension, they are referable as archetypes. (Jung, 1969) Our bodies suffer in space and time: we share this with other people. Our bodily pain has a direct equivalence in The Archetypes for Jung are present in the ‘collective our minds; mental suffering has physical manifestations; unconscious’ defining that space, which is like the psychic physical suffering alters and affects our minds. But if we equivalent of DNA. Present in the collective unconscious externalise our struggle we can never be responsible for are the ancient hopes, aspirations, fears, desires, drives our actions, own our bodies or change our minds. and notions of the sublime which come to define a culture/epoch through there repeated insistence via Physical and mental suffering: mutilation, searing pain individual’s psychic workings. In their essentialised form, and trauma can be given context and even made to work the Archetypes being so potent can only be approached for our best interests; we have a long history of bloody and made sense of indirectly through symbols, through myths and fairy tales and a modern history of updating a translation into meaning via creation myths, stories, these in the premier medium of time, film. No matter art and so on and being the source of psychic energy, how great the external impact on the body, so long as they are inexhaustible. we survive it’s the mind that suffers and the mind that remains malleable to change and redemption, if we can Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that face the true obstacles those we give force to with our an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. own mental activity. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical Jung and the Key to Self-Knowledge language. (Indeed language itself is only an image.) Using Jungian concepts, it is possible to discern how The most we can do is to dream the myth onwards and the myths and fairy tales of a culture have developed to give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or mediate powerful emotions, drives and primordial images interpretation does to it, we do to our own souls as well erupting from individuals. Jung names the psychic forces which are responsible for this ‘Archetypes’:

Art Jungian transformation with corresponding results for our own well being. The Archetype – let us never forget this – is a psychic organ present in us all. (Jung, 1969)

Dr Jolande Jacobi gives the following explanation of this in her book The Psychology of CG Jung (1942) using the example of an ‘axial system’. Jacobi explains:

Thus, the archetype as a potential ‘axial system’ (the archetype per se) is pre-existent and immanent in the psyche. The ‘mother liquid’ – the experience of humanity – in which the precipitate must form represents the images which crystallise around the axial system and which take on increasing sharpness and richness of content in the womb of the unconscious. (Jolande, 1942)

In this way we might understand Jung’s account of Archetype as a kind of river bed carved in the land: “An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries digging a deep channel for itself. (Jung, 1969)

And man, as Heraclitus said, is a river.

We might understand the notion of Archetype further by giving it the status of an axiom in Jungian theory or

98 Bert Gilbert, “THEY CYNICALLY MOCKED THE PAINTING WITH Wrestling with my Inner Demons V, 2016 A SPOOF OF ITS TITLE”

can see how the artists of the romantic and symbolist None of those responsible for throwing over slaves to movement have an affinity with Jung since their work claim insurance were charged with murder. was an attempt to approach such notions, emphasising feelings such as awe and horror, Turner’s Slave ship (1840) Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer above the is surely his attempt to approach horror, his original title sea of fog (1818) is also a clear example of this affinity, the Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying – typhoon lone figure set against the epic landscape immediately coming on pointing directly to the terrible event in which draws a distinction between the power and wonder of a number of slaves were cast overboard so their owners nature compared to the fragility of a human individual, could claim the insurance. Turner gives the event a biblical and yet the young man seems to be risen up on his rocky overtone, the raging sea full of piteous hands and the perch, poised to adventure into whatever lies below the storm threatening to obliterate the whole desperate scene. mist, an image of the courageous human in a moment of profound apprehension of the sublime. The ship was The Zong and the event was known as the ‘Zong massacre’ which took place on 29 November 1781. The romantic and symbolist artists gave primacy to The law at the time stood as follows: intuition and feeling over what for them had become a too rigid rationalism during the enlightenment. Turner had The insurer takes upon him the risk of the loss, capture, evoked the wrath of the popular opinion-makers Punch and death of slaves, or any other unavoidable accident magazine, who satirised his title for its dramatic emphasis. to them: but natural death is always understood to be They cynically mocked the painting with a spoof of its title, excepted: by natural death is meant, not only when it happens by disease or sickness, but also when the captive The humorous magazine Punch, invented a catalogue destroys himself through despair, which often happens: entry which included ‘A Typhoon bursting in a simoon over but when slaves are killed, or thrown into the sea in order the Whirlpool of Maelstrom, Norway, with a Ship on fire, to quell an insurrection on their part, then the insurers an Eclipse, and the Effect of a Lunar Rainbow’ In a London must answer. (www.umich.edu, 2015) pantomime of 1841 there was a scene in which a boy with a

tray of jam tarts falls through a window in which a Turner Imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw painting is being displayed; the shop owner dusts down these projections all and sundry, you get an individual the broken tarts, puts a frame around them, and sells them conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has for a thousand pounds. (Ackroyd, 2006) saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself for he is now unable This contributed to the painting’s ill-reception and was to say that, they do this or that, that they must be fought a sign of Turner’s falling out of favour. against. He lives in the ‘house of self collection.’ Such a man knows that what is wrong in the world is in himself, Jung also encourages scorn for his use of a more (although and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow, then he not entirely) poetic language in his writing. Commenting has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in The Guardian in 2004, Adam Philips rebukes Jung for in removing an infinitesimal part at least of the unsolved “characteristically high flying and far flung titles”. gigantic problems of our day. (Jung 1970) He goes on to say that Jung has an “ominous uniqueness”, finally stating: “The question we are likely to ask Jung is, Here Jung makes clear the necessity for a working why is he so interested in himself? (Philips, 2004) through of one’s own problems, this would be a uncompromising understanding of self, requiring a great Philips, like Punch before him, cast himself in the deal of introspection. We might ask Philips, ‘how can a ‘no nonsense’ role. For Jung he conjures the image of person put their house in order without taking an interest, self-satisfied eccentric, a self-appointed genius in love and eventually responsibility for their own psychic with their own pronouncements. But to say that Philips workings?’ perhaps such a pronouncement is beyond is divisive seems obvious as Jung can answer Philips’ Philips’ no-nonsense approach? glib question himself:

Michael Eden, “TO REACH AS BROAD AN AUDIENCE AS POSSIBLE Linchpin, 2017 BY TAKING RELIGIOUS, MYTHIC OR FOLKLORIC NOTIONS, INTUITIVELY GRASPED BY PEOPLES” Image courtesy of Michael Eden © 2018 Michael Eden of courtesy Image

102 “IT IS A MOMENT OF DEATH AND REBIRTH WHICH

Art Jungian transformation Bert Gilbert, Wrestling with my Inner Demons II, 2016

Philips is not however Jung’s most heavyweight critic: that a coherent theory such as Jung’s can help us to give the sober rationalist AC Grayling has a similar problem them closer study, bringing greater understanding of their with Jung, although for the most part his emphasis is at relevance and implications for individuals and societies. least on Jung’s interests and style rather than the man himself: Archetypes were, and still are, living psychic forces that demand to be taken seriously, and they have a strange Jung’s work, which on a blunt view is vitiated by its eclectic way of making sure of their effect. Always they were the baggage of mysticism, superficial anthropology, credulity bringers of protection and salvation, and their violation and superstition. Freud was at least an empiricist and has as its consequences the ‘perils of the soul’ known to rationalist... even if he is (scientifically speaking) off with us from the psychology of primitives. Moreover, they are the fairies. (Grayling, 2004) the infallible causes of the neurotic and even psychotic disorders, behaving exactly like neglected organs or It’s difficult to know since Grayling gives no specific organic functional systems. (Jung, 1969) examples of what he is referring to by ‘baggage’: he simply lists the subjects via which Jung tried to help One must be clear to understand the distinction both himself and those interested in his theory come to a between ‘personal’ and collective unconscious the greater understanding of analytical psychology, to reach following quote from Dr Jacobi is useful: as broad an audience as possible by taking religious, mythic or folkloric notions, intuitively grasped by peoples, In contrast to the personal unconscious, which is an to illuminate difficult concepts otherwise reserved for accumulation of contents that have been repressed during the elite few, and for Jung, to demonstrate the connection the life of the individual and is continually being refilled between individuals by showing how these themes found with new materials, the collective unconscious consists a voice over and over again across the world. entirely of elements characteristic of the human species. (Jacobi, 1942) With regard to ‘credulity’ we might remind Grayling of his own misstep over his exclusive and very expensive This makes clear Jung’s concept that we, the human University for the Humanities. Speaking after falling out species, share a fundamental base in the archetypes. of favour with leftist students, he writes: “My whole record, everything I have written, is turned its head. Now I am a The challenge of the individual, then, is to confront both bastard capitalist. It is really upsetting. (Carthy, 2011) these archetypal forces which emanate from the collective unconscious as well as what is present as repressed in It’s difficult to accept that Grayling would not have the personal unconscious. This process is difficult: its predicted the anger this move would inspire, after all a beginning initiates the journey of the individual subject little Holmesian deduction can’t be beyond his rational towards a greater knowledge of themselves; we might mind? Grayling may benefit from giving some attention understand this by employing the ancient Greek aphorism, to his shadow, or at least looking at ways to bring his ‘know thyself’ so often associated with Plato and Socrates. teaching to a wider audience. For Jungians ‘know thyself’ is expanded into the process of individuation where by the subject begins the painful Whether Jung’s theory is ‘vitiated’ by baggage must task of coming to terms with their shortcomings, surely be a matter for individuals to judge. For my part, their repressed material, forbidden desires and so on, Jung’s insistence on those themes which AC Grayling lists taking responsibility for these things to form a more so disparagingly in his article are simply helpful in making whole, true self, a man or woman in the round, so to speak. his points clear; we can agree or disagree with Jung as suits us. It is also clear that there are motifs which occur so Every advance in culture is, psychologically, an extension frequently in our myths, fairy tales, literature and cinema of consciousness, a coming to consciousness that can

104 take place only through discrimination. Therefore an advance always begins with individuation, that is to say with the individual, conscious of his isolation, cutting a new path through hitherto untrodden territory. To do this he must first return to the fundamental facts of his own being, irrespective of all authority and tradition, and allow himself to become conscious of his distinctiveness. If he succeeds in giving collective validity to his widened consciousness, he creates a tension of opposites that provides the stimulation which culture needs for its further progress. (Jung, 1969)

Naturally this is a painful, difficult process, one which stretches the limits of the individual’s will and necessarily threatens to shatter previous formations of self. It is therefore paradoxically a process which would be impossible to begin without pre-existing areas of reflection, kept open by the radical implications of fairy tales for example, or if one prefers in art or philosophy and so on, while simultaneously being the process in individuals from which such creativity originates. The odd moebius nature of this concept brings to mind Douglas Hofstadter’s notion of a strange loop:

Despite one’s sense of departing ever further from one’s origin, one winds up, to one’s shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop. (Hofstader, 2007) together with the legend ‘the One, the All’. Time and again Hofstadter’s visual example of this is MC Escher’s the alchemists reiterate that the opus proceeds from the Drawing hands. The ‘self-creating’ motif of this image is one and leads back to the one, that it is a sort of circle like central to the notion of a ‘strange loop’; it is meant to a dragon biting its own tail. (Jung, 1968) help us understand Hofstadter’s idea of subjectivity: It is this perplexing notion of the emergence of In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, consciousness and the creativity which ensues from locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference. greater levels of self-knowledge that that Jung hopes (Hofstadter, 2007) to illuminate by referencing the Ouroboros, the;

This modal seems to complement Jung’s idea of the ...dragon that devours, fertilises, begets, slays, and brings psyche as a self-regulating adaptive system, although itself to life again. Being hermaphroditic, it is compounded for Jung the Ouroboros would surely serve as a better of opposites and is at the same time their uniting symbol. example of the paradox, not least since the image can be (Jung, 1968) traced back into antiquity its variations occurring in many different societies: It is a moment of death and rebirth which begins the process of individuation. This is evoked beautifully The dragon is probably the oldest pictoral symbol in throughout the variations of the Cinderella stories, alchemy of which we have documentary evidence. It where the despised feminine figure must endure until appears as the Ouroboros, the tail-eater, in the Codex she can be reborn and take her rightful place in the social Marcianus, which dates from the tenth or eleventh century, order. Cinderella herself was forced to sleep in the hearth

Art Jungian transformation “KEPT OPEN BY THE RADICAL IMPLICATIONS OF FAIRY TALES”

surrounded by smouldering embers, what better place for It is after all Allerleirauh who represents transformation a phoenix to emerge? itself, suffering and struggle, these themes which seem to evoke the most vivid images in the imagination. One such story, a German fairy tale Allerleirauh (many Many young women stand for this struggle in fairy tales; kinds of fur) has a princess resolve to run away to avoid who can fail to be moved by the painful mutilation of the the incestuous advances of her grief-stricken father. miller’s daughter from The Handless Maiden as she is continually pushed, tempted to act, first the selfish actions She put on her mantle of all kinds of fur, and blackened of her father, whose narcissism is such that he sees only her face and hands with soot. Then she commended one course of action: “Help me in my affliction and forgive herself to God, and went away, and walked the whole night the injury I am going to do to you.” (Jones, 2012) until she reached a great forest. And as she was tired she got into a hollow tree, and fell asleep. (Jones, 2012) A corrupt authority in the extreme who chops off his daughter’s hands to save his soul while simultaneously For the early peoples of northern Europe, the forest looking to be pitied, not even in her mind is she free to was a place of the unknown, of the ‘other’, and going into resent her father such is suffocating nature of his power it represents that ‘going down’ which Nietzsche speaks over her: “Do what you will with me. I am your child.” of where people were encouraged to explore the dark recesses of their inner world and return to a shared reality, The girl’s stumps seem to actualise her acute changed and stronger. The princess must become aware of passivity and the brutal narcissistic wound at play in the the ‘other’ in herself in order to survive. The creature she background due to her father, being too much to bare becomes is not simply a mask, a surface disguise; rather she leaves him, with all his treasures. it is her innermost self personified, a monster, resourceful and capable of enduring all the dirty work. Jung writes: Upon meeting and marrying a king she is adorned befitting royalty and yet still she seems frozen, the silver A person who by reason of special capacities is entitled to hands he gives her to wear, ‘which could not sow or weave’, individuate must accept the contempt of society until such a mere decoration, a symbol perhaps of her new status, a time as he has accomplished his equivalent. (Jung, 1969) bringing her up to standard in a palace of beautiful things. There is a pivotal moment in the story which begins her The princess possesses potential, the symbols of her journey to a greater balance of opposites, a feature of creativity and individuality shut up in a nutshell: a golden individuation. It is the passive feminine which has to ring, a golden spinning wheel, a golden reel, and three die before she can individuate, and in proper dreamlike dresses of the sun, the moon and stars. The impossibility fashion with the character of a non-sequitur, the old queen of these objects being compacted into such a small space slays a doe deer in place of her unfortunate daughter in gives emphasis to the bursting forth of the individuated law and keeps its tongue instead of hers as requested, self, when the princess shakes of her furs, wipes her face to show as evidence of the terrible execution. clean and wears the dresses which catch the attention of her suitor. Of course, the image which is brought to mind With the doe’s death a new story begins, and like when the princess becomes her ‘true self’ is a glorious Allerleirauh the miller’s daughter finds herself in the forest one, but for my part it is Allerleirauh, a dark thing, a stain struggling to survive. In the Russian variation of the story almost, with the voice of a woman, and a single perfect she finds autonomy in the woods; after the silver hands finger which resonates in my mind’s eye. have fallen away she plunges her stumps into a river to save her baby boy who has fallen in, amongst the mud

106 “HIS OVERLY PROUD FATHER WHO WANTS A CHILD TO STIFLE THE GOSSIPS AND IS GRANTED A GROVEL HOG INSTEAD”

and water her hands reappear, the baby rescued. The little incorporation of the feminine, has to burn his hedgehog boy surely a composite of burgeoning masculine qualities skin and leave him charred and black. This transformation like the ones his mother gains and so badly needed to from grovel hog to man is both violent and painful we are balance her character. left with Hans in a bed, ‘human from top to toe’. Now ready for healing, he is rubbed with balms and ointments and If ever there was a creature who “must accept the married again to his true princess. As Dr Jacobi says: contempt of society until... he has accomplished his equivalent”, as Jung says, it is the grovel hog from Hans My The complementary or compensatory relation between Hedgehog. Hans is the result of a cavalier wish on the part opposite functions is a structural law of the psyche.” of his overly proud father who wants a child to stifle the (Jacobi, 1942) gossips and is granted a grovel hog instead. If autonomy is a whole robust self, and these are His wife had a son, who was part hedgehog, the upper half the goals of the painful transformations which occur hedgehog, the lower half human. She was aghast when in individuation, why must this entail so much pain? she saw him, and said, ‘Look what you’ve done with your He continues wishing. (Jones, 2012) The first stage leads to the experience of the shadow, We might see Hans as a personification of the couple’s symbolising our ‘other side’, our ‘dark brother’ who is an unconscious and neglected problems represented by their invisible but inseparable part of our psychic totality. childless marriage. The neglected son is left behind the For the living form needs deep shadow if it is to appear stove, as if to be put to the back of one’s mind, while his plastic. Without shadow it remains a two-dimensional parents fantasise how much easier it would be if he were phantom. (Jacobi, 1942) dead. His form awkward and horrifying with sharp quills, a symbol of a curt and hardened character which has The personal shadow represents all our repressed helped him survive his melancholy childhood. material, our forbidden desires and difficult truths embodied in a figure the same sex as ourselves; it comes The bagpipes his father give him allow Hans to channel into our dreams to haunt us and gives body to our his suffering when he goes into the forest: there his time prejudices when we project onto others. Its assimilation is fruitful, his herd grows and he helps two wayward kings is painful as it requires us to abandon delusional find their way home. Much like The Handless Maide, self-perspective and act responsibly; we can in this mode the turning point of the story is announced by a slaughter, no longer escape into victimhood, although the reward is in this instance of Hans’s pigs – all he has left materially a more creative, whole self. from his parents. In a gesture of paying back he takes them to his father then leaves to claim what he is owed The archetypal shadow is much more ominous, it from his royal acquaintances. is untameable, akin to a kind of ‘death drive’ with the character of Thanatos it can only be coped with, so to He is rejected many times by the agents of society, speak, since it is that which primordial man has feared his parents, the false princess who is made bloody by and ever will it is the other as a changeable god, his quills and her father who sends his soldiers to attack for Nietzsche, the void which looks back at us. him, his eventual ‘becoming’ is no less painful his true

Art Jungian transformation Bert Gilbert, Shadow of My Former Self, 2016

108 The failure to incorporate the shadow is a failing that prevents any further development, and so a most brutal physical act is the marker which comes to symbolise this shortcoming; the horror is a prompt. Our eyes and hands are powerful tools and are symbolic of our ability to be active in the world; they are connected to sexuality, independence and creativity.

Touch, intimacy, survival, skill, giving and receiving comfort, eroticism and violence.

We have seen how the idea of mutilation in myth and folklore is linked to a feeling of being stifled, trapped and frozen in an unhappy state, for example with the handless maiden her bloodied stumps suggest her mental pain, her inability to escape her selfish overpowering father. folkloric references in Gilbert’s practice, directly recall the He treats her as a possession and the injury is present in struggle with the personal shadow, the artistic process of her mind before it’s made real with the cutting off of her creative risk, reflection and action is surely an excellent actual hands. alternative to living out hubris or self-mutilation and takes the cathartic release of watching tragedy further in the In the ancient world too, self-mutilation had powerful active mode of art making. cathartic qualities relating to self-knowledge perhaps most famously with Oedipus, as the blind seer tells him Shadow in Film in Oedipus Rex: “So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell A surprisingly poetic representation of shadow can be you this. You [Oedipus] with your precious eyes, you’re found in The Hitcher (1986) the debut film of director blind to the corruption of your life.” Mark Harmon, previously a landscape photographer. His long picturesque shots of the epic western landscape Oedipus’s mutilation is self-inflicted: he gouges out create that eerie land of the unconscious which in fairy his own eyes because he failed to have insight into his tales is the forest. destiny, and his eyeless face stands for his new informed perspective. The contemporary artist Bert Gilbert explores The story follows Jim Halsey, a young man who picks up personal transformation in her evocative shadow images a hitcher on a road journey through the mid-west to help (Shadows of my former self and Wrestling with my inner him stay awake. The distinction between them is clear: demons). Many of her works utilise her own body in Halsey is young, naïve, full of clichéd pleasantries; an performances which see her donning her creations or awkward youth on a journey to California, the land of his struggling with them. Gilbert’s titles are suggestive but childhood dreams. John Ryder by comparison is an older do betray an interest in Jung (the shadow images man, rough and jaded, the choice of the European Rutger and Animus most directly). While mutilation literally Hauer to play Ryder adding to his mythical alien persona transforms an individual, it stands for the negative in the cowboys and sheriffs landscape. manifestation of the failure to act which creative reflection counters. As her website states: Immediately we are thrust into their struggle, as after an uncomfortable exchange Ryder torments the boy Gilbert’s ritualised and obsessive methods are in turn holding a knife on him. He asks Halsey to repeat: “I want energetic and meditative. What they make signifies a to die.” Halsey is tentative, Ryder acts; this is the theme rite of passage, from one state to another, operating of their ongoing encounters. All the time Halsey appeals as alchemical relics of this transformation, in all their for help; from his brother over the phone, from the material sensuality. (artist statement, 2018) paternalistic sheriffs who follow the trail of destruction and from Nash, a young woman who does lend him her Exploring the ‘dark feminine’ ambiguous images such strength. All the time Ryder prompts Halsey to act, electing as Furka, which manage to conflate religious, Jungian and never to hurt him despite many opportunities, he repeats,

Art Jungian transformation “THE PATERNALISTIC SHERIFFS WHO FOLLOW THE TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION”

“You work it out... I want you stop me.” Ryder even gives The end of the beginning of individuation is the point Halsey weapons to help him survive the clumsy police who at which one incorporates/acknowledges the shadow are hunting him wrongly, and comes to his aid when it components of the personal unconscious. Individuals looks like he will be killed by law enforcers. capable of this have prepared the ground for their life’s work, just as ‘self-knowledge’ is a readily understood idea, Ryder is a horrifying yet oddly compelling figure while its fulfilment is an especial feat of will. The struggle he is archetypal, primal. Like Loki of Norse myth he is to break up the false self and come to terms with our ‘dark mischievous; he mocks the boy and the police for having brother’ represents a process which is ongoing, and it’s a domestic, weak morality, he pushes a coin into Halsey’s this reason why figures such as Allerleirauh, the handless mouth and closes his eyes: “You are damned,” he seems to maiden, Hans and Halsey appeal to me in their absolute say. Give that to Charon. He leaves the boy to ponder the extremity. When they are monstrous, mutilated and meaning of the gesture. desperate they seem to be more human.

Sadly, Halsey grasps this too late and in the most controversial moment of the film he fails to act, and Nash, who is tethered between two lorries, is ripped apart before the impotent police and traumatised Halsey. Ryder is disappointed in Halsey, hanging his head while pushing down the accelerator. , volume 11, Princeton, N.J, N.J, Princeton, 11, volume , Princeton, N.J, Princeton Princeton N.J, Princeton, For those of us who are willing to think symbolically, www.recorse.org ,

however, Nash’s death is not gratuitous: it serves to magazine. Times Financial announce the turning point in Halsey’s individuation [sic], collected works of C.G. of C.G. works collected [sic], where the inferior function is incorporated, for Halsey, Birkbeck University like the handless maiden, it is active masculine qualities which are needed to bring balance to the psyche. Nash is like the doe dear, her death is the beginning of Halsey’s Paul. Kegan England, Oxford, . , Basic Books. , self-reliance, his taking up of the shadow’s challenge. newspaper. Guardian The , “I want you to stop me,” and that he does; he ignores the police and their appeals to ‘polis’, he seeks out Ryder in Vintage Books. London, ,

Turner Fairy tales and their meaning course, tales and their Fairy Jung love, the psychoanalyst has a new admirer, has a new the psychoanalyst love, Jung search of something more eternal, more primal, and in a loop I am a strange

sychology and alchemy, collected works of C.G. Jung, volume 12, volume Jung, of C.G. works collected and alchemy, sychology A man in two minds man in two A

Controversy over AC Grayling’s new college of the humanities new Grayling’s AC over Controversy unconscious and the collective Archetypes Psychology and religion: west and east, collected works of C. G. Jung G. of C. works collected and east, west and religion: Psychology suitably arduous struggle Halsey kills Ryder, then looks Jung G. of C. psychology The on him sympathetically as the camera pulls away. References (2006) Peter. Ackroyd, Carthy, N. (2011). (2011). N. Carthy, Jacobi, J. (1942). (1942). J. Jacobi, Jung, C.G. (1970). C.G. Jung, Hofstadter, D. (2013). (2013). D. Hofstadter, Jung, volume 9 (Part 1), Princeton, N.J, Princeton University Press. University Princeton N.J, Princeton, 1), 9 (Part volume Jung, P (1968). C.G. Jung, Grace-Jones, D. (2012). D. Grace-Jones, Grayling, A.C. (2004). (2004). A.C. Grayling, University Press. University (2004). A. Philips, Princeton University Press. University Princeton (1969). C.G. Jung,

110 RON ATHEY: PERSONAL EXPLORATIONS AND PUBLIC DISPLAYS. Scars and revelations

Ron Athey: The masochist who puts How do you define the body? take a lot of cheap speed, write writers under his spell. Aside from two modes of body art, together and record it on a cassette - The Independent, 2012 I’ve studied structural bodywork while running through underpasses (post-Rolfing/Wilhelm Reich and industrial space. Fuck, sweat, Performance artist Ron Athey techniques); I feel different circulatory and live in piss-soaked clothes. has a fearsome reputation for systems (blood/lymph/xi), the This idea of using endurance tests confrontational body art. Since malleable connective tissues which to arrive at a readiness to perform. the 1980s his performances have include collagen and cartilage. But perform what? I think the referenced S&M, religious imagery, And, referencing Anatomy Trains, idea of pressing the body to arrive body modification, blood, alienation, there’s front, back, side, diagonal somewhere esoteric beyond the body mental illness, heightened states and spiral lines that make up the while still inhabiting the body. of awareness and transcendence. anatomical meridians. I’ve never been post-human! Not that the visceral nature of his Philosophically, there’s depth, But I’m well aware of taboos, even performances haven’t received their and on the surface or the screen, if I don’t feel them myself. Again, the share of controversy. width. There’s a hierarchy of intensity, face and the genitals have this strong A target in the NEA ‘culture war’, head-heart chakra-genitalia. reaction of empathy. I’ve tried to enter a movement by Conservative US The receiving body (orifices), the that shock/rejection and find a poetic politicians to bar artwork by visibly penetrators (digits/fists/glans/ way in through other senses. gay or feminist artists, Athey has tongue), and the sacred invisible: remained unsilenced and continues the neuro-psycho-psyche systems. What potential do you see in bodies? to host exhibitions to a broad global It’s a nervous golem. The beauty of fucked or perfection. audience. Evidence of his influence The articulations that come after can be found in the retrospective Written on the body is a secret code exhaustion. Grace. Exposure versus publication Pleading in the Blood: only visible in certain lights: the nudity. Embodiment. I think in my The Art and Performances of Ron accumulations of a lifetime performance Solar Anus (1998), Athey (2013), in which artists including gather there. something transmitted; the action of Lydia Lunch, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, In places the palimpsest is so pulling a two-metre double-strand Antony Hegarty (Anohni), Robert heavily worked that the letters feel pearl from a tattooed ass region Wilson and Bruce LaBruce describe like Braille. was preparation for the penetration the importance of his work. Cultural I like to keep my body rolled up away scene. It’s a little understood fact that engineer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge from prying eyes. Never unfold too something described as pornographic (Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV) much, tell the whole story. - Jeanette can be non-sexual. describes his performances thus: Winterson, Written On The Body, 1993 Are you conscious of your own body In his bloody self-obliterations, In what way do you feel you’ve in the same way as in your work? Ron Athey reveals the profound pushed your conception and It’s definitely an enhanced, symbolic enigma of the body as primary application of the body? body in performance. Twice I have left location of SELF. His flesh is a source From Fakir Musafar: “It’s your body, my body! Once as the Sebastian at the of LIFE and a source of DEATH… play with it.” It can take a ride. In 1980, Abode of Chaos in Lyon, and the most Yet his performances are also when I was 18 years old and making intense time on my fiftieth birthday implicit celebrations. my first performances with Rozz performing the Self-Obliteration in

Profile Ron Athey Russell MacEwan, Ron Athey (Crown). 2016

112 enhancements if you will, but you question. What is the real definition have to stay alive. of healing and what does it look like? How would this scenario play out if it’s Why and when did you choose the being decided by a trickster? I have body as a medium for your work? a research-based practice; I want to Dissociative disorder. I went through make darkness visible, public private teen angst trying to feel my body, in a certain way. The deeper I go into trying to fill the God hole with esoteric practice, the harder it is to comparable experience. So even then, remove it from its own restrictions, maybe more than, life art was the miracles without dogma. theme, every sexual or psychedelic journey… Where do you find inspiration? In the time I was with Rozz Studying belief systems, problematic Williams (1979–1983) everyone had or not. Intuitive shamanism. Shabby a band and I didn’t have the skill set shamanism. Literature and evil. or feel the calling for music. Jean Genet. I was raised in unruly But performance art blew my mind, Pentecostal Revival meetings and Johanna Went, COUM Transmissions... I still focus this lens on making work: Suddenly I felt that articulation the collective witness of audience, Russell MacEwan, Ron Athey, 2018 within an action, that it was more reclaiming ritual, channelling ecstasy, than pornographic, more than pleading in the blood of Christ. mortification of the flesh, way more Digging in deeper to exhibitionism, than abjection; it made the entry finding context for penetration. point of content a formality. The real Light design as illumination. destination is the reason for Psycho-neuro acoustics. Bataille. profound art, something beyond Americana. Funeral rites. agenda and identity. outside and wasn’t performing; Do you see the body as a place of I became an element. Whose work regarding the physical permanence or change? In life my self-image is much human body do you admire? Incorruptible flesh, the illusion moodier: I can be casual, low energy, Right now I’m working on something of preservation versus death and or momentarily cocky! new with an incredible artist: decomposition. No one gets out alive. Cassils. Starting with their strength/ These times: transexual journeys, What do you see as the greatest bodybuilding/stuntperson and enhancements, illusions. It’s all still challenge to the body? fighting skills, but taking it beyond decomposing/heading towards death. Besides the pedestrian and to the formal high art presentation, timeless, sickness and ageing, the with an ice mould, under fire, If you could change one thing about contemporary body (with a spending pounding down their own weight in how humans are constructed what budget) has access to enhancements modelling clay. I’m particularly moved would it be? that still fall short. Hormone therapy, by bodies that defy standards: Leigh I’ve always resented the need for anabolic steroids, surgeries, buttock Bowery’s chunky but funky full figure; sleep. I didn’t realise until I was in implants, cyborg bits and pieces. the bionic pop star Viktoria Modesta my forties that I had become useless As an American, health insurance. and her conceptual prosthetic if I miss a night’s sleep, I have such inconsistent medical care legs; World Famous *BOB*. It has and that amphetamines are counter- that I’m paranoid I’m going to die of to be more than a super-body and productive once your adrenals say, malign neglect. I tested HIV+ in 1986, more than a freakish body; it’s the “No more!” Can’t I be a vampire? and this year I’ve been taken off of embodiment, intention, project. medication because no one wants to pay $3,000 a month for it. This is Describe your technique?

Profile Ron Athey With developments like VR changing the way we view our bodies, will this affect your work? It already has. We live in the times of extreme-normal and extreme-cruelty. It’s not a great time to be tender! Experiential technologies like virtual reality are interesting, but I tried working with sensors as early as the 1990s, and needing four hard drives to run something a technician could ‘mime’; well, it’s not always what a performance needs. However, we can try, but we cannot ignore the context that we live in. When I started working with blood, blood only meant ‘HIV’ in the public eye. The 1970s’ conceptual art Russell MacEwan, Ron was not relative. It became relative Athey, 2018 again thanks to the work of Franko B and Kira O’Reilly. Now we are in this literal reading of everything through identity politics. That was the climate when I started showing my work at proper art centres in the early 1990s. I never claimed to speak for people with AIDS, but I made rituals to try to understand, in the archetype, where all this process of sickness and death sat. How it looked to a medievalist, channelled through classical and mythological references. But yes, we can also put on the goggles and trip on the personal 360.

114 MIKE LAIRD: THE INNER LIMITS OF THE HUMAN BODY The depth of the vessel Image courtesy of Mike Laird Mike of courtesy Image

Profile Mike Laird Reaching the North Pole

Arctic mountains, endless deserts, question: despite what appear to scale starting with desire and ending deep forests, traversing remote be extremely dangerous activities, up with sheer bloody-mindedness and passes under the crack of gunfire; to what extent does knowledge of determination to make things happen. all territories that we’ve commodified your body really prepare you? Self-belief is paramount to realising as a comfy night’s good viewing. one’s own potential. Not everybody However, for adventurers who’ve “The body to me is a vessel. It takes has self-belief, let alone desire. been and seen those places, they take me places, it allows me to do things on a higher value as the reward at that I want to do. That said, it presents Are you conscious of your own body the exhausted middle of a journey me with many challenges, such as in the same way as in your work? full of physical peril and mental age, physical ability and occasionally I am very conscious of my body hardship. Often the return is the injury. Throw in a bit of ‘out-of- and critical of it. Age is something most dangerous part: more people the-box thinking’ and a heap of we can’t control, though we can die coming down from Everest than determination and most challenges lessen the effects of it on the body during the initial climb. The location can be overcome. But not all!” by maintaining an exercise regime of this danger is, more often than and general activity. I currently live not, the body. That is where things In what way do you feel you’ve in Bali which is a global hotspot for go wrong, where things break pushed your conception and yoga, and I am aware of the benefits down. Let’s not forget that the final application of the body? of yoga, yet I have to confess I have fading widescreen is the closing of One of the areas where I like to push shied away from attending classes our eyes. Explorer Mike Laird is a the body (and usually admire its because of my awareness of my own man who knows the pitfalls of this response) is adaptability, particularly inflexibility and fear of feeling very inner territory and has spent his life with regards to extremes of hot and inadequate. Self-awareness, self- fighting his limits. cold. I’ve walked and skied in the acknowledgement and answering A trustee of the Scientific Arctic in temperatures approaching frank questions can be very cathartic! Exploration Society, Laird has been -40°C yet I’ve also worked in southern Perhaps doing this interview will give awarded fellowships to both the Royal Iraq in temperatures around 50°C. me the impetus I need to tackle this Geographical Society and the Royal I don’t think there are many other personal challenge. Asiatic Society. He is also an honorary creatures able to adapt themselves member of the Anglo-Bolivian to operate in such a wide range of What do you see as the greatest Society. He has trekked to the North temperatures, other than, perhaps, challenge to the body? Pole, cycled solo and unsupported non-migratory species living in Personally, I don’t believe that the 4000 km across Australia, journeyed areas of the world like Yakutia. challenges faced by the human on foot through Pakistan to join body have much changed over time. Coalition forces in Afghanistan, What potential do you see in bodies? The levels of expected performance and through much of all this I think that a body’s potential is against challenges have though: held down a corporate job in risk fuelled by desire coupled with humans (in some but not all societies) management. Which prompts the willingness and it’s a cline, a sliding have grown taller, got stronger,

116 Diving in the white Sea, Russia,

run faster, and they live longer. If I had to encapsulate all of that into one word, it would be ‘endurance’. my last two years at school I took Describe your technique? Humans as a species have an a great interest in weight training, I have to confess that my work incredible ability to evolve, adapt and I feel this gave me a platform starts with little more than a chance and endure. I also believe that from which to maintain a moderate happening or a comment from or this is driven by factors within the degree of fitness throughout my life. discussion with a friend. I have two environments and societies in which I’ve never been athletic and my forte great friends in London, Gary and we live. Some of the factors are would be physical strength rather David, who usually ignite some notion physical, i.e. the need to do something than speed, agility or stamina. If I had inside me to go and do something or better in order to survive, and others to liken myself to any animal, it would take on a new challenge. We often talk are mental or psychological, i.e. the be a hippo: slow to start, not super- over ideas, try to establish whether desire to perform better, perhaps fast even at top speed, good in the they have ever been done and as an athlete. water and not much hair! consider the feasibility of doing them. The next two ideas are already well Why and when did you choose the Whose work regarding the physical advanced in their planning but I can’t body as a medium for human body do you admire? tell you what they are just yet! your endeavours? One person who always left me Around the age of 17. It was very awestruck was the Romanian Nadia Where do you find inspiration? much a conscious choice. I had been Comăneci, the first gymnast to All around me. Watching people in told that I might become mobility- achieve the perfect score of 10 at the the street, hearing about those who impaired at a relatively early age Olympics. She was at the Olympics in have overcome adversity, reading and with that in mind I decided to 1976 and 1980 and I can remember stories of personal accomplishment do something about it. I was, watching her on TV. Looking back and, occaisionally, learning about in all honesty, quite a lazy teenager. on it, I think it must have been the challenges which have not yet been Whilst my brother excelled at precision with which she executed accomplished. These, though, are sports at school, I could barely even her moves, and realising the rapidly diminishing in number as the be described as mediocre. I was sacrifices made and determination world becomes ever more accessible moderately able but had almost no that had got her there that made to the average person.

interest in applying myself. Through such an impression. Laird Mike courtesy Images

Profile Mike Laird Finishing a 4000km cycle, Australia.

If you could change one thing about how humans are constructed what Do you see the body as a place of would it be? permanence or change? Ideally, I wish we didn’t age. At 48, Change all the way. The human body I am conscious of the fact I am slower is ever evolving. During my lifetime and less fit than I was in my twenties. when things get very tough. A world- I have seen the world 1500-metre I accept the fact that this is natural class sprinter takes years of training record reduce from 3:46 to 3:26 and but so often I wish it was not. At this to possibly realise a goal in under the 200-metre swimming record stage in my life I have the knowledge 10 seconds. A world-class explorer reduce from 1:54 to 1:42. There is no and toolset (as well as the finances) takes years of training to achieve doubt that humankind is getting that allow me to do so much, yet I something that may take them one faster. That said, fast alone does not wish I could do even more. I have month, six months or longer, and necessarily take it account strength, failed on an Arctic expedition and every step can be filled with pain and agility and endurance. Neanderthal on a Channel swim and at the time peril. Many don’t make it to the end people were almost certainly stronger they both really hurt me mentally and and some don’t make it at all than us and perhaps so too were physically, but I have been able to —they perish! the great warring tribes, like the learn from them and see them both Spartans, the Vikings and the Celts. now as very positive experiences and - It would seem therefore that humans ones for which I am grateful. Everest: truly do physically adapt to the ‘Among climbers who died after scaling higher than environment that surrounds them, With developments like VR 8,000 meters (26,246 feet) above sea level, 56 percent and as it changes so they do too, even changing the way we view our succumbed on their descent from Everest’s 8,850- if that means they become physically bodies, will this affect your work? meter (29,000-foot) summit, and another 17 percent weaker. It could be argued that in In a nutshell: no! Explorers and died after turning back. Just 15 percent died on the some societies there may in fact have expeditionists need more than just a way up or before leaving their final camp.’ been a trade-off between increasing physical body to help them achieve. blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/ intellect and reducing physical ability. They need drive, determination and death-on-mount-everest-the-perils-o-2008-12-10/ the will to keep pushing through

118 The Canadian Celtic diaspora and the New World online Loreena McKennitt: folk activist 120 Is there a future for folk? Two decades into the digital on the Celts ever assembled, and I realised that there revolution we’re still noticing the knock-on effects that was this vast collection of tribes that had spanned out this transformation has wrought on the creative across Europe and into Asia Minor. I also knew that there industries. From printers to suppliers to artists, were so many already performing traditional music, the move from physical sales to streams has not resulted probably doing it better than I could, and also with more in a diffuse injection of money into an industry much authenticity than I could. So I thought, maybe I’ll head broader than just the biggest labels and artists. The idea down the history–of–the Celts road and use it as a creative of underground music hasn’t changed, but the possibility springboard, and now it’s almost an act of musical travel of it being a viable living for niche artists has. writing. It also compensated for the formal education that I wouldn’t have. That exhibition was pivotal, because I saw Canadian musician Loreena McKennitt has carved a that there were Celts in Anatolia and Greece dating back rare path in genre music. Releasing her own interpretation to the time of the Silk Road. of Celtic music since 1985, she has maintained control of her music and publishing (Quinlan Road), which, coupled Once I understood the geography of the where the with multiplatinum sales, has given her a deep insight on Celts went I started to understand the broader scope the music business and its development in the digital age. of Celtic culture and certainly Spanish history, with the Galicians, etc., then I went to Morocco and spent some Talking to Trebuchet in a café overlooking London’s time there, which culminated in the album The Mask and Hyde Park, McKennitt discussed her career and how the Mirror (1994). When I look back on it, I see that it was an twenty-first-century artist must come to terms with the act of self-education that I also used as inspirational fuel connections between community, business and creativity for my own creativity. I wasn’t being strict with myself, in order to survive.

Loreena McKennitt: I wanted to be a veterinarian and to be involved in animal conservation; I never dreamed of this! I heard traditional folk, people like Simon and Garfunkel, and became smitten with it. I loved the feeling of Celtic music. I’m sure there’s a neuroscience explanation for it; there’s something about the modality. My interest just evolved and around 1985, after working in the theatre in Stratford, Ontario, I made my first recording with some money from my parents. I recorded it in about a week, (album cover) 1987. Image courtesy of L.Mckennit/Quinlan Road. Road. L.Mckennit/Quinlan of courtesy Image 1987. (album cover) and gave cassettes to my friends, and then went busking on the streets of Toronto. It’s just morphed from that.

There were a few critical junctures: in 1991, I attended an exhibition in Venice (The Celts - The First Europe, Palazzo Grassi) that was the most extensive exhibition To Drive the Cold Winter Away Winter the Cold Drive To Previous: Loreena McKennitt, McKennitt, Loreena Previous:

Sound Loreena McKennitt a large partofthatcomesfrom have been involved inthe express certainimagery through music choicesandIthink work; Idothat with music. It’s justreally interesting to trying to achieve, sortoflike how painters autograph their recorded there’s animagethat corresponds to what I’m colour andtexture to work with. For almostevery songI’ve have your canvas andthemusicians andthepalettes of recording it. Recording isaninteresting exercise; you sitting insomeone’s living room rather thanfretting about of repertoire, butImuchprefer to beengaged initjust There issomethingsobeautifulin doingthatsimplesort and thefirst recording hasmore traditional pieces. and visiting someother place just gettinginto the vehicle oftheCelts have adirect Celticconnection, buteven I wasn’t saying thateverything hadto recordings in2010 with English who have taken my musicinto their lives. it is. There are alotofpeople who don’t understand One ofthefascinatingthings with musicishow universal Celtic people... You’ve reached a wider audiencethanjust explore different places. I’ve hadmore resources to gooffand lucky inthatasmy career hastaken off times andplacesthatI’ve beento. I’m recordings becamelittlesnapshotsof Fermor. (Following theminasense) the William DalrympleandPatrick Leigh I love writers like BruceChatwin, learning abouthistory andcultures, writing andIlove travel writing. Ilove retrospect it’s aformofmusicaltravel fodder for my work. Idoseethatin I drew onmy own personal lifeasthe but Ididn’t want to have acareer where of my own experiences inthere as well, It’s allpermutationsreally, with some Are you creating fictions? helped me.” Regarding authenticity, I’ve donemore traditional

The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the Shakes That Wind The

WHERE YOUR SURVIVAL

come over and we help eachother out. I know thefarmers intheneighbourhoodandthey’ll it’s partofacodehonour. Ilive ona farmnow and concept that you should give backasmuch you can; people before me who hadsacrificedandgiven. It’s abasic I was ableto achieve for myself was offthebackofmany at leastinCanada. As Igrew older, Irealised that what depends onothers pitching in. It’s a very rural thing, middle oftheCanadianprairies, where your survival I thinkitstems from growing upinthecountry, inthe charitable works; how didthatcomeabout? You’ve used your musiccareer to supportpoliticaland how thingscometogether. sense ofplaceandtime. It’s suchahodgepodge, constantly at work; I’m evoking certainfeelingsanda group trying to harmonisestandards onlifejackets and drowning andiscurrently working with aninternational different placesaround the world andconventions on the water safety fund, andshe’s exceptional. Shegoesto These days Ihave aperson who isprimarily devoted to DEPENDS ON OTHERS Water safety issomething I’ve beenheavily involved in. PITCHING IN bowing icicles. up onthat, but whenever Ihear it, it’s like know whether mostlisteners would pick harmonic thatrang through. Idon’t something very cool. SoIusedahigh 2018), it was very angular, I wanted and so with and instruments have suchdistinctive voices blend theminto the vision. These instruments, Ithinkabouthow Ican instruments, includingMiddleEastern palette. Even when Iusea variety of rather Igravitate towards aparticular particular images with my songsbut that vision. theatre andfilm. It’s allaboutsupporting (recorded 1989, released on There isapsychology thatis That said, Idon’t really thinkabout Ages Past, Ages Hence Hence Ages Past, Ages

Lost Souls Lost

, 122

Photo by Demetris Koilalous, Image courtesy of L.McKennitt/Quinlan Road. it quite intensely for thelastfive or six years butonly on children and young adolescents. I’ve beenstudying connection technology ishaving adetrimentaleffect of research thatisindicatingthepremature useof to childdevelopment. It seemsthere’s a growing body a keen interest inconnectiontechnology asitpertains have ever imagined, soIputback where Ican. I’ve taken compulsion. My career isfar more successfulthanIcould Yeah, maybe, butIthinkhave a ‘fix it’ pathology or quite ethereal music. world thingsfor someone who makes These are surprisingly physical, real- owner ofafamily centre. making itsuitable. SoI’m stilltheproud so we didthetransformation towards community wanted afamily centre, plan for thebuilding. It turnedoutthe community to comeup with another it from demolitionandto allow the a longtime. Mainly Iboughtitto save Originally, Ididn’t thinkI’d keep itfor school andturneditinto afamily centre. between everyone. to dothatandbeathread ofcontinuity events internationally andshe’s able few are ableto goto allthedifferent Ottawa. There are many groups, butso PFDs (personal floatationdevices) in My career will beokay becauseI’m alegacy musiciannow, quite intimately how it works andthe damagethat’s done. time isspent working onthebusiness, soIunderstand and becauseImanagemy own career, 90per centofmy Victoria. Copyright isonly asstrong asits weakest link, six years ago we hadpirates offthecoastfrom Halifax to countries to ratify itscopyright legislation;untilabout to changethelaw. Canada, sadly, was oneofthelast have appeared before standingcommittees to get them this, soI’m very interested to seehow ittakes shape. companies andtheschoolboards are alsolookinginto now isresearch ableto tell ustheeffects. A lotofthetech In 2000, Ipurchased aheritage I’ve alsoadvocated copyright reform inCanadaand

THE INDUSTRY USED local printers, and we went from selling35,000 copiesof in 1991, Iobligedthemto continuethecontract with the CD booklets, etc. Before Isigned to Warner Music Canada locally by theprinters who manufactured my insertsand really happenedover 20 years while technology came through outlets like Facebook. This isthecarnage that got clobbered inthesame way asthemusicindustry they were tethered to thenewspaper andthenewspaper account for thoseprinters. Butthey’re gonenow, because Parallel Dreams Parallel sized localpaper, the So Stratford, when Imoved there in1981, hadadecent- didn’t realise thatit would affectthemtoo, andit has. tsunami cameitaffected themall. (Traditional media) ecosystem ofpeopleandplayers, andthat when thedigital that inactualfacttheindustry usedto bea very broad industry asonly themajor labels, without appreciating wheel andoffthemark when they referred to the music in thetraditional media, too. They were abitasleepatthe what happenedinthemusicindustry hasplayed itselfout they’re gone. Here’s oneexample: inStratford, the agents, themasters, themanufacturers, theretailers, suppliers, assistants, thedrivers, thecaterers, theprinters, TO BE A VERY BROAD ECOSYSTEM OF PEOPLE (1989) to many more , which was ahuge industry; studios, studioengineers, to theextent thatit’s decimated a whole a $22bnindustry to a$6bnindustry, happened to us. InCanada, it’s gonefrom and diesby thesalesIcansee what’s view onthis, butasan artist who lives There are many different pointsof plummet from 27cto 0.0084c per song. people to survive on. It’s apretty big or whatever, it’s justnotenoughfor and then£1.50for 1,000 plays (Youtube) song on vinyl or CD, 24cfor adownload when artistsgetbackaround 27cper is alittlebitbetter thannothing, and while theincomefrom streaming feels thatit’s okay to have musicfor free, the sameamountofsuccessIhave. it would beimpossibleto achieve But for anyone startingoutnow, as Ireached apeakinthe late ’80s. There isa whole generation that Beacon Herald Beacon , that was printed

124 in unregulated; people didn’t know what its positive intensity of the problems makes it difficult to know how and negative aspects were, how to position themselves to respond, I debate that with myself: for how long and and what the new business model would be. I’d say that how hard must I lean against the wheel before I need to essentially the old business model was dismantled before take a break to look after myself and just enjoy simple anyone had any clear idea of what the new one would be, things? It’s something that you have to decide for yourself, and they’re still looking for a viable model. recognising that that time away is important, possibly to a greater degree than we might imagine. I see a lack of viability for certain genres, specifically folk, classical and jazz, where we’re being told that It’s funny because this press tour is so different than it relentless touring is the way forward. That’s fine was 20 years ago. It used to be that we’d do a showcase when you’re young, when you tend not to have other and in-store performances, but that was part of an commitments, but once you have relationships and family, ecosystem that has gone, and so a lot of that activity it suddenly get really tough. I don’t think it’s wrong that has gone online. There isn’t any evidence (convincing one should be able to commodify their own creations and to me) how effective that is, plus these companies get an get a proper income from it. It goes back to having a value enormous amount of content for free, content that isn’t system around your work and having a business model free this end as it takes a lot of time and energy to create. that supports that. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this is my last lap, because it takes so much just to stay in the game. Also it’s quite Do you think that it relates to how ‘community’ dangerous, because if you miscalculate, there might be is constructed? repercussions. For instance, I financed all my recordings I love the anthropologists I’ve encountered on the way, so I could be in a situation where I have paid off all the especially Robin Dunbar, who studies primates and expenses and I’m left thinking, well, I hope somebody buys formulated “Dunbar’s number”. He was curious to know this recording. Whereas with the old model, regardless whether or not there was a physiological element that of how broken or corrupt it was, you knew the drill; predetermined the size of primate social groups. you knew how to measure things and you knew what to He found that there was a correlation between brain invest less into. Now it’s like the first day in the music and group size; for people, it’s around 150. Which seems business and I don’t have the humour for it any more. about right; it’s that size where you can meet each The absolute uncertainty of it and the time we spend other, need each other and care for each other, a village analysing: is this working? Is it worth it? How’s it done? I mean, sort of size, where reciprocity is quite direct. Another I’m okay, but for other artists it’s not going to be feasible. anthropologist I enjoy is Ronald Wright, who I mention in the song Lost Souls (2018). He studied civilisations like This is unique for me and my career. I used to have someone would study the black box of an unfortunate two offices, one here in London and one in Stratford, and aircraft. He believes that as a species we have a tendency we’re really working around the clock to make this happen. to get ourselves into progress traps. He talks a lot about And we can, and we do, but it’s not the quality of life that how we’re really exploiting the environment as we always I really want to have. So we’ll see. It’s too soon to see what have, always thinking that there is a new world to go to, the upshot will be. We’re planning to tour South America but there no longer is any new world to go to. in the fall and then here in Europe in March. We could tour all the time, probably, but we just don’t want to. I want to Do you ever get a sense of guilt when you go on holiday have a normal, stable, integrated community experience. and get away from the news and these larger problems? I mean, it’s not my career at all costs. Shouldn’t we be thinking about these issues all the time? It’s a real moral dilemma, as we’re born into a world in crisis and it’s against one’s moral instinct to run Cooke Reese water safety fund.

away from it. But at the same time the scale, depth and http://www.cookreesfund.com/index.html Road. L.McKennitt/Quinlan of courtesy Image Haughton, Richard by Photo

Sound Loreena McKennitt 126 Andrew Litten Profile

Andrew Litten,Breathing , 2012. Image courtesy of Anima-Mundi Gallery ANDREW LITTEN: TIMELESS MODELS OF EXPRESSION Pain, wit and gesture

The visual oxymoron of a whimsical Litten’s forthright, engaging style emotionally. It is usually important and lyrical tendency combined and the frankness of paint handling that the descriptive information is with raw, almost brutal elements make him a premier example of present without slowing the reading is the driving tension that gives an unpretentious contemporary or jolting the flow of engagement. Andrew Litten’s work impact. artist working with psychologically I suppose this sounds simple, but it He is an expressionist painter intriguing subject matter that often takes time to work through a lot of and, although he had some formal explores sex, death and violence, and visual information. training (evening drawing classes), the awkward need for companionship. Depth of emotion comes through one can’t help thinking that had consideration and reassessment of he not later abandoned art school How do you define the body? life experiences, and I think that this (reflecting on its claustrophobic My approach to representing the is important if you want to really and restrictive atmosphere), he body is almost entirely guided by represent something tangible in a may have been influenced by the a sense of the subject that I am convincing way. far more commonplace irony and wanting to connect with. The figure sensationalism that was typical of can radically change position or What potential do you see in bodies? his generation of artists. shape as the work evolves. I have to The human body is the most powerful go with it and support the changes timeless model of expression and Creativity is empowering and compositionally and anatomically. I enjoy the process of trying to find empathy is powerful. I want to create The face is an essential element my own way within a genre that has art that speaks of the love, anger, for me. We all intuitively read people’s historical weight behind it. I can’t loss, personal growth and the private faces to understand their thinking really say beyond that, as my ideas confusions we all experience in our and initially go for the eyes and and inspirations change all the time. lives. Perhaps subversive, tender, mouth—particularly to read emotion. malevolent, compassionate—the need Often, when I am creating the Are you conscious of your own body to see raw human existence drives figure, a likeness to particular people in the same way as in your work? it all forwards. - Andrew Litten 2018 I know will creep in and the subject My painted figures are usually might then begin to live in a around life-size. I view them as actual Expressing intelligence, wit and slightly different way. Sometimes identities that are being created, raw emotion is a tall order and I use a photographic reference not just as images of something. difficult to balance on the picture for further information, but it is So, for this to read convincingly, plane, often failing or slipping into all exploratory and there are no I am actually engaging mentally and one or the other. Litten’s practice predetermined processes. physically. In this way I am aware manages to contain this energy: of my own body in relation to the choice of colour, materials and a folky, In what way do you feel you’ve painting and there is a behavioural naturalistic approach to figuration pushed your conception and connection as I self-identify deeply helps to douse and add a little poetry application of the body? with what I am creating. to brutal mark-making and difficult My approach to the human body subject matter. is to make representation read

128 What do you see as the greatest challenge to the body? Personally... staying alive. I don’t know, otherwise.

Why and when did you choose the body as a medium for your work? I left art college early because I was tired of the ego-driven environment and constant talk about ambition. This was the time of Brit Art and Shock Art. Personally, I preferred awkward honesty. In one way or another, I have endeavoured to represent this within my particular milieu.

Whose work regarding the physical human body do you admire? I tend to gravitate towards female art as it is typically more honest about feels alive and unstable at the same misunderstanding are stuck in their the body. Louise Bourgeois obviously, time: like a mass of raw nerves on bodies and have to quietly cope with Tracey Emin, Jenny Saville. I love the the surface. not fitting in. power of Rodin’s sculptures at the moment, as I am using clay. Where do you find inspiration? If you could change one thing about I never get inspiration copying how humans are constructed what Describe your technique? images or anything stylistic. would it be? Any predetermined technical It is always actual observations, Fewer fingers, please! For some approach bores me quickly and if conversations with people, hearing reason thumbs are great to paint and I decide to do one thing I usually or reading their stories. It’s the sculpt. And three fingers look good, begin to see equal worth in doing personal stuff that means something. too, but four fingers is a struggle for the opposite. Each piece of work me to represent. I don’t know why, needs to be a discovery for me and Do you see the body as a place of but often think it. this means allowing in self-doubt permanence or change? together with the moments of clarity. There is possibly a hopeful world With developments like VR My attitude is to engage in an out there where we can change our changing the way we view our unguarded way. To focus to the extent body limits to a significant level alter bodies, will this affect your work? that I can think about nothing else gender, intelligence, stop ageing Definitely. All these things are and for long periods of time create and cognitive decline, or potentially exciting and odd so will affect an image that feels right—even if it improve our bodies in extraordinary my work. looks wrong and unexpected, it has ways with prosthetics, etc. to feel right. It is all very precarious. The vast majority of people The whole surface of the painting who face discrimination and

Profile Andrew Litten Left: Andrew Litten with his work. 2018 Below: Sexual Inter- course, 2012

orem, Xxxxxxxxxxx Lorem, Xxxxxxxxx, XXX. orem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur. Image courtesy of Anima-Mundi Gallery of courtesy Image

130 DAMIEN MEADE: MAKING THE ARTIFICIAL APPEAR SENTIENT Mud and the body by-product

Damien Meade’s paintings begin as How do you define the body? My original art school training was mud, but live on as creatures of dirt. The body, or the figure, is an oblique quite traditional—we were made to Minerals suspended in water are reference for me; a by-product of do lots of life drawing—so maybe it made compact—first by time, then what I do. For me as an artist, thinking began there. the artist’s hand—and transform into about my work strictly in terms of the something that Meade cannot, or at convention of the body makes it very Whose work regarding the physical least does not want to name. Paint difficult to escape that convention. human body do you admire? shifts onto linen panels like dried-up It is everything and it is nothing, El Greco: how he totally re-imagined Play-Doh curling at its edges, which is a form of stagnation, so you human form into something more creating what looks like hair, pairs of have to develop disrespect for the human. And Rembrandt. Both artists lips or the surface of skin, perhaps. convention, which results in a kind made a kind of proto-AI, in that they In an unusual twist of tradition, this of iconoclasm. For me, the challenge made the artificial appear sentient. clay will never see the inside of a is to trick yourself into ignoring it furnace. Instead, it stays wet and, so that you might find it again. Describe your technique? once he is through, will be crushed It is something counter-intuitive. I make paintings of my sculptures, and churned into the shape of artifice within artifice. Meade’s next model - Olivia Fletcher, In what way do you feel you’ve for Peter von Kant Gallery pushed your conception and Where do you find inspiration? application of the body? Sometimes in failure. It makes me Meade (b. 1969, Ireland) lives and I’m not sure if I have, at least less precious. works in London. He obtained his not consciously. Or if I have, it is MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College a by-product of trying to push Do you see the body as a place of of Art. Meade creates paintings which something else. permanence or change? are simultaneously melancholic and Heraclitus: “Nothing ever is, thought-provoking, exploring ideas Are you conscious of your own body everything is becoming.” of creation and destruction. in the same way as in your work? Meade references the modern Art is a by-product of a subjective With developments like VR digital world in his practice mediation of reality, so maybe it is all changing the way we view our (manipulated images provide subject self-portraiture. Most artists I know bodies, will this affect your work? matter for works), combining this with are narcissists, but some are better at I think it all points to crisis, which is a hands-on physical approach which hiding it than others! always healthy for art. sees him create sculptures that seem in process. This gives Meade’s work a What do you see as the greatest strange status, virtual intruding into challenge to the body? the material, a similarity to our time The loss of effective antibiotics. that is deliberate and uncanny. Recently showing at the Peter von Why and when did you choose the Kant Gallery this serious, thoughtful body as a medium for your work? and hands-on artist proves that Painting is my medium; the body painting is still a medium for deep is more of a nestled subject. thought and reflection. Untitled 2018

Incomplete, severed manifestations in 1999, solidified in 2003 when she In the work called Hold Me Close of trauma and lack are politicised was nominated for Beck’s Futures there is a trolley on which there is a and given context in Gail Olding’s art prize. pair of cast plaster feet from the top vision. Highly personal, she recalls of which a hook protrudes a claw/ experiences from her family life How do you define the body? pincer. Here the body is missing; and reflecting her social and Defining the body is a difficult one. I realised that when I was life drawing political concerns, and as with any I am sure there is a good definition in I never drew the hands or the feet. successful and accomplished artist, a medical dictionary. On the one hand Next to the plaster feet a glass she has found ways to make these it’s a living, functioning biological suit knife speaks of fragility, and its lack authentically experienced subjects that I am wearing; it’s the place where of ability to perform its function universal, layering life experience I am looking out from. It is the thing properly. Next to which is a hairbrush with criticism and adopting a poetic, that embodies me. And on the other threaded with long hair. The female multi-discipline approach. The works hand, it is a war zone, a political issue, child. In certain mythology, the cutting have a strong physical presence, often it’s a place of cultural control. of the pubescent female’s long hair directly referencing the human body My grandfather had his foot signals her sexual maturity. either in anthropomorphic forms or amputated, then his leg to just My grandfather’s limbs were large phallic weapons. above the knee. His hand was then attached by a leather corset which Born in London, Olding studied amputated, then eventually his entire was tied and strapped to his stumps; for her BA (Hons) at The London arm due to gangrene. He also had it was highly fetishistic. In the piece College of Printing in Photography false teeth and wore glasses. I was Pulse the pedals of the piano are in the late 1980s and during the ‘90s terrified of him as a small child; present and on top sit the piano’s went on to study at The University he would unscrew his hand and screw keys, which are played by the hands. of Westminster and Central on a large hook to undertake various The body is missing. Next to this is a St. Martins to complete two MAs: tasks. At night my grandmother would pile of ash—possibly the missing body one in Photography and one in take him apart and put him to bed; returning to dust. Behind which is an Fine Art. Formative experiences his false limbs were placed next to animal trap. We are trapped in our included studying painting with the bed, his teeth—in a glass of water— own bodies. the painter Hermann Nitsch in were placed on the bedside cabinet. Austria, and working with the late In the morning she would put him In what way do you feel you’ve photographer Fay Godwin. back together again. His body was pushed your conception and Olding found public recognition partly his and partly plastic in order application of the body?

Profile Gail Olding Mother Daughter Sister, May 2015.

134 Bottom: Bottom: Gail Olding Profile Right: Gallery, 2014 Exhibited at Espacio Top: Formate PULSE, PULSE, Hold me close me Hold , 2009 , 2017

Images courtesy of G.Olding © 2018 136 from the starting point of disability bodies altered to suit. there are three branding irons and its fetishised quality through into We have synthetic bodies in the each bearing a word: BITCH SLAG issues of body and flesh of the female sense of robotics which use artificial and HO. These are words used in our under the scrutiny of the male gaze. intelligence. Sex and the robot, society to shame women for their The film Crash by David sexual obedience and the desire sexual behaviour; they are a form Cronenberg was a particularly for that in the other. of punishment. Here the woman is interesting exploration of sex and branded, the implication of the mark the disabled /prosthetic body. Why and when did you choose the of the flesh, scolded for being female. body as a medium for your work? We have been taught to double- What potential do you see in bodies? I think the body chose me due to the think. We know that these words are The body is your home; one can experience of my grandfather. wrong and indeed unfair, however we only gain pleasure from one’s own It’s what we have been given to live use them still: they are promoted by body. Bodies are being integrated in until it eventually returns to dust. the press, all forms of media with science in such a way that one’s In the piece The First The Last The and music. body’s performance can be enhanced Beginning and The End there is a We live in a marketing holocaust by chemical intervention row of burial urns in pearlised white where women’s image has been sold or mechanical or digital implants. giving them a glow, and in the centre to the highest bidder. is a black urn on which a crow sits. In the work Un-namable this is a Are you conscious of your own body It is said that the crow inhabits both random form of flesh which displays in the same way as in your work? worlds of the light and the dark; it is signs of a female body; it lies on a Yes, I am conscious of my own body. the keeper of the secret of creation metal trolley, it is fetishised by a pair I have been taught to measure it and also plays a role in the occult. of tights rolled halfway down. The against other female bodies and the The budgerigars/parakeets are in female under the male gaze as flesh: male ideal. I am not sure I have a certain mythologies the keepers of no brain and no speech, no power, particularly strong relationship the secret of creation. The urns are to be taken. with my body I tend to live within. the keepers of the remains of the Lacan says that the interior and body (the urns also have feet, exterior are the same surface. What do you see as the greatest necks and lips). challenge to the body? It’s fascinating there is so much Whose work regarding the physical I probably see that the body is thought around the body, whether human body do you admire? under scrutiny; as medical science through religious ideologies, cultural, Louise Bourgeois would be the most evolves and develops so do ideas and ritual, sexual, or hatred. We live in influential. Her work is brutal but desires, from body piercings, tattoos, a society where because my body is deeply moving at times; it is visceral all concepts of body adornment, as biologically female I have had to be and also tender. There is experience well as fashion. Leading to eating judged on my body, the outer surface and life which come into action and disorders, hatred of the body and of me. I didn’t choose this body; I am are made manifest through the object. destruction and manipulation of the embodied in this body. Francis Bacon has been a great body. Age is to be defied through I am pleased to see that there is a inspiration through his depictions procedures and surgery in order radical movement in progress, where of the monster within through the to keep the body looking young. women are demanding equal pay and distortion of the body employing the Diet and exercise to keep the body equal right to the planet on which ugly. His work is unafraid and electric. in function. they live—it’s about sharing. This is But its greatest challenge is proving a hard thing for some men Describe your technique? gender. We are starting to choose/ to understand, let alone relinquish. I work in lots of materials; materials elect our own gender and have our In the work Mother Sister Daughter have a language and I try to match the

Profile Gail Olding language with the meaning. breath, the moment had passed. I make most of the components of my ” We are in constant change. work whether it be casting, turning The body fails and needs treating, wood, or welding metal. I enjoy the the body has a different value in process of making, I therefore rarely different ideologies, the body is outsource. I work quite intuitively; controlled by the shifting ideologies I like to use my body, my hands, to feel controlled by our thinking. the materials and find their strengths Placebos or just the viewpoint and weaknesses through a tactile from which we project. exploration and experience of them. Our belief in our bodies comes from This builds a knowledge and the other. We are based in language; understanding of materials. I therefore if enough people tell us our bodies rarely work from measurements or are fat, thin, wrong detailed drawings; or ugly, etc., we believe it. I am more likely to make lists. I like my Transgender, the body in total body to play a central role. transformation from one gender I can tell if the proportions are right to another. through scaling up against the body Parts of the body can be grafted through the object relationship to the onto other parts of the body, scale of the body. transplants are gifts of organs to sustain the life of another... Where do you find inspiration? The body is up for grabs! But ultimately I like to read. I’m interested in how the human body will die. the Bible/Christianity has had a lasting effect on our society, If you could change one thing about how it is embedded in our psyche. how humans are constructed what This is changing due to cultural shifts, would it be? but fundamentally most religions are Periods and the menopause. about the same thing. Reading, poetry, Fucking massive design faults if you lectures, conversation and looking at ask me. the work of others. With developments like VR changing Do you see the body as a place of the way we view our bodies, will this permanence or change? affect your work? It has to be a place of change, even if Yes, I have already touched on these it just the transformation from birth issues in some works entitled Formate. to death. It never remains the same. These works are a series of forms bodily Duane Michals’ black-and-white but random. They are plaster which is photograph titled Moment cast in condoms: when the plaster fills of Perfection is an image of a man the condom it starts to transform from pulling his shirt off over his head, a male penis shape into a more female and underneath it reads: “He was breast-like shape. Transforming into its unaware that at the exact moment he binary opposite. These are sanded into removed his undershirt, his body had perfect smooth forms which hold grown to its perfection. With his next a seductive fetish quality.

138 The flows and forms of MutualArt A rich body of data The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive - Robert Hughes

In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for a record $450.3m, making it the most expensive painting ever sold and also a factual meme that people around the world can easily recall and repeat.

As Gavin Turk might point out (and Damien Hirst tacitly implies), people’s fascination with the value of art is a reflection of their judgement of their own judgement. How closely their appraisal of a work’s value matches industry consensus via an auction validates them on a personal level. Taste being a broad signifier of individual position, whether or not the worth of a work harmonises our personal convictions is only relevant in the context of our lives. Whether we see an old master or Banksy being worth what it sells for at auction becomes a statement on who we are.

140 “PEOPLE’S FASCINATION WITH THE VALUE OF ART IS A REFLECTION OF THEIR JUDGEMENT OF THEIR OWN JUDGEMENT”

‘Earn your worth, negotiate your value’ is a shop-worn galleries or more famous artists), conspicuously resold or HR cliché, however it reflects a binary relationship at the displaying some inspirational innovation. However, with a heart of any exchange, especially of non-functional art. broadening base of artistic collection this might be about For an enthusiastic collector, a sense of value creates a to change. functional need which informs how much they are willing to pay, at which point they’ll start to be interested in how Zohar Elhanani is the CEO of MutualArt, an online art much the piece is worth. The work could then become resource that claims over 500,000 members, who receive either a decadent fling or a canny investment, depending sales and exhibition information on 300,000 artists on the appraisals of the market. and 17,000 venues. The aim of the resource is to make widely available sales figures for artists and works in an Value in art is based around a set of nebulous socially easily digestible manner. Increasingly, a broader cohort derived intersections: novelty, influence and (elite) of collectors are purchasing art; how this will affect the appeal. Worth in art is seemingly more transparent, existing system in terms of both value and worth remains existing as a form of marketplace-situatedness, defined to be seen. Emblematic of MutualArt’s vision is Elhanani’s by sales history, related works, market projections and own observations on collecting as well as his background inflation. The layman quickly understands that while the in blue-chip business. appreciation of value is open to everyone, the appreciation of worth is the province of a closed cadre of people whose Elhanani: I’ve been with MutualArt since mid 2017, so financial decisions about their collections inform a work’s I’m relatively new. My background has been fairly broad continuing worth and thus its lasting value. in terms of global start-ups and I am a collector, so the relationship between collecting/investing and The power held by esteemed collections is that over transparent information combined with technology was time fewer paragraphs tend to talk about works that aren’t very interesting to me. The opportunity I saw was that influentially collected (either by respected collectors, you can take a market that is lacking in information,

Society MutualArt Previous: Jemma Appleby, #1300817, 2017 Left: Jemma Appleby, #5270817, 2017.

or is asymmetrical in terms of who has the information, information in advance of the exhibition happening and provide tools and technologies that mitigate the (the same applies to auctions and even articles), because uneveness, allowing for better decision-making. Anyone you need to have a consolidated view of current data. who has amassed a large collection eventually has to look This is what our moderation is focused on, taking in the at it at least in part as an investment; there will come a data and making sure that it’s correct—auction houses time when you have to liquidate your collection. So it’s a do make mistakes—and we have a way to present it in sensible approach to also look at the economics and the the most accurate aggregated fashion. trends and everything that goes along with the actual purchase decision. How it works is that once we have the data the next step is to deliver the analytics that are driven by that At MutualArt we cover the gamut of the users from data based on the different user patterns we see. enthusiast to professional; we have a real broad base For a professional, it’s drilling down into an artist, of users. Of course, it rotates with time; the enthusiast finding comparable works and seeing what they went becomes the collector, who then becomes an investor, for at another auction, and whether that is due to so we maintain a broad relationship throughout their seasonality and overall trends and what external factors development. We handle the entirety of the dialogue may have influenced previous prices. For a market, with our users. there is a whole raft of things to take into account: genre, individual auction sales analysis, post-sale analysis, The initial goal was to gather the data and make and more. We look at the entirety of the data and we try sure that it’s presented in a very personalised manner. to prioritise what’s important and present it consistently. Our primary role was (and still is) to gather information in an accurate and timely fashion. For example, if there’s an upcoming exhibition that covers artists that you

142 MutualArt Society #1280817, Jemma Appleby, 2017.

At that stage we have a mechanism where the user defines is guaranteed, you ensure that the data is isolated from for us which artists they’d like to follow and we push the tech because you know it had a protection against it information to them, sending ongoing alerts based on failing put in by a third party or the auction house itself, what they want to hear about. It could be a number of and that has to be looked at in a different light, i.e. as an things: upcoming exhibitions, auctions, specific artists or estimate set versus what something sold for in a more movements. We also have an app that gives a location- open market.We look at all these factors in our analysis based service about where an exhibition is taking place. and we want to continue to offer these services, not to Plus you get all the information pertaining to the artists replace the human aspect of art. Advisors, galleries and you follow in whatever city you’re in. The mobile side of dealers exist for a purpose, and we don’t see this being what we offer is something that we’re developing quite an automated service any time in the foreseeable future. strongly, given that art is something you generally see I don’t think it can be. I’m not an art person per se—though when out and about. The website is great, but people need I’ve become more familiar with it—but it’s good to be that information at hand. providing tools that can back up the feeling I get when I walk into a gallery and that decision to purchase. Is it possible to deliverately skew your analysis by What that does, in our view, is extend the market long submitting incorrect data? term by making more people aware of this aspect of art The data is directly sourced from the auction houses and thus more comfortable acquiring or investing in it. and exhibitions—we don’t use third parties—so in theory, People feel more comfortable buying if they’re aware of if they’ve made a mistake or they publish inflated the trends and the liquidity of the art they purchase. information, we’ll be processing that. As an example, So even if people are not familiar with the inner workings there might be an auction that has higher estimates for of the industry, they can still invest in it, which in the long an upcoming lot; in that case we’d look at the entirety of term is good for the industry. In the short term there may the data and it becomes clear when there are abnormal be some resistance to increased transparency, but if it outcomes. That’s our higher-level rationale: the more grows the market that’s a good thing. information we have the more we can analyse the likelihood of something being persistently inaccurate or Do you think that this will mean the end of artists being relatively low, which you wouldn’t pick up if you’re relying quickly overvalued? on a single datapoint. I think art is different from many other assets. As opposed to, say, real estate, there is a perception that flipping art, We’re looking for standards and commonalities and buying works in order to sell them on versus enjoyment from these we can gauge how the data from a particular and long-term liquidity at the end of the process, is a bad source performs, what the deviations are, and how volatile thing. Our view is that the platform is objective; we don’t individual results are. There are guarantees nowadays cater to any one single user. We provide data as objectively on certain lots sold by certain auction houses. If the lot as we can and again the data should reflect that a work

144 “IN THE FUTURE WE’LL BE ABLE TO DO MUCH MORE WITH IMAGE PROCESSING, OR MACHINE VISION”

has been sold multiple times, as we can bring up every instance of it being sold (assuming that it hasn’t been sold privately) and then buyer or the party can ascertain whether the data has been in some way manipulated or public statement made about authenticity. I don’t see is optimistic versus long-term appreciation. This is no a conflict between our data-driven approach and the different from the stock run-ups or real estate run-ups morality of a work; it’s a question of being on top of that do happen; if people had simple tools to analyse current data as it becomes available. In turn, if it skewed those, it would allow them to read the bigger picture. the current results, we’d have to annotate it, and the same We do not take a position on whether reselling art at would apply to unsold lots and we even cover low-value inflationary rates or holding it long term is a better lots. Our methodology is very transparent and I’m happy approach. We want to provide the data to allow people to share it. We’re not really reinventing statistics or maths; to make that decision for themselves. the key to making presentations or tools is to have the data at your disposal, and you have to acknowledge the You’re looking at an industry that is hundreds of source, the frequency of collection, etc. Say you were doing years old and so there is a natural tendency to maintain an article on a particular work (more difficult with prints a certain way of doing business. We see many different or editions), we could calculate the rate of return over time personae on our site, some want to look just at the art and by going through how many times it was previously sold, some want to look strictly at the pricing and economics benchmarked against the Dow Jones. of it, and some want to look at both. That tells us that there are different perspectives on what art is. Is it an The artificial intelligence part of the site is still a work investment? Is it a collectible? Is it a trade, or is it a little in progress and we are constantly moving to use more bit of everything? So if you get people looking at the art in intelligence based on patterns and conventions that are different ways, you’re going to get different perspectives recognised in art. In terms of artistic style, genre and and some might be in conflict, which is why I stress movement, we can take data and associate it, so long neutrality. It is the only way to approach it, because you’ll as it’s been tagged well, and suggest associations and be discounted by one perspective and loved by another. comparable artists or works. Within a particular movement We’ve remained objective and developed our services or time span, if you know the artist and their peers, you according to requests from the analytical side and also can present the user with other suggestions that fit their from those who want pure information on the artistic side specific tastes. In the future we’ll be able to do much of things. We balance those requests as they come in to fit more with image processing, or machine vision, actually with our overall vision. looking at the image and from the image understanding what the user is seeing. Using the contextual and textual Art has been tied to politics in a variety of ways and information (gallery notes, for instance) along with image the movement of art has raised certain questions about recognition you can develop a deeper level of tagging exploitation and theft. Do you think that there could and association. It would go some way to associating the ever be a case where your objectivity is challenged by emotional draw and visual draw along with the contextual moral obligations? draw. This is where technology will take us and it’s If a work that has been sold turned out to be fake or something that we’re looking at. stolen, we would exclude or annotate that within the data set. Again, though we don’t make the assessment whether something is fake or stolen, we’d take note if it was removed from sale or there was an authoritative

Society MutualArt To ask a sensationalist question, assuming that you have Would this power a new sort of democratisation of an AI-based model that is distributing data to show a long-term value based on a more diffuse locus of general trend within a market, is it possible that you collection and appreciation? might spark an art market crash? I don’t foresee this as a problem [laughs]. With financial How would this affect grand collections? It’s hard systems that use automated trading and algorithmic to imagine that they would ever become unloved and trading platforms this could be the case, but with art it’s forgotten, but would this new knowledge create a new not likely that it’ll reach that level of liquidity. If that did sort of audience? The mechanism for all this hinges on a happen, I think we’d swap our stock for art. financial historicity denoting a currency of interest and thereby artistic merit. The reduction of art to finance is It’s something that I’ve discussed with different a horrifying concept; that a price tag might have more financial advisers. In 2016, 51 per cent of wealth managers significance than the intention behind a work is abhorrent viewed art as a way to store value, and 45 per cent viewed to anyone who ever had a moment of artistic revelation. art as a way of accounting for a client’s overall asset Yet the financial sustainability of output has always been value, however in 2011 it was 28 per cent and 17 per cent the dark partner of creativity. A new economics within art respectively. I think this upward change in the perception could be a sea change for a variety of artists whose work of art as investment has to be correlated with wealth has never fitted easily within existing narratives creation but also the availability of information in a and which, separated from the general drift of broader way. This is something that is indicative in data, establishment, might find new value as it is interpreted but again, I don’t think it’ll be an algorithmic trait so by separate markets. I wouldn’t worry about a crash. Of course, considering Robert Hughes again, we must What do you see as the main challenge for MutualArt bear in mind that all pronouncements on the future of going forward? art are invariably wrong—not that that should dissuade It’s always the data, getting to the data, and getting to the us from making them. Simple access to market has customers with the data. In a sense it’s no different to any never guaranteed a product’s success, despite being other business that matches a product to a consumer, but a constituent part of its success. However, the deeper I think in this case we need to educate the market and education of a wider base of collectors to diverse global make the tools readily available. It’s always a challenge to art communities cannot be ignored. broaden the universe of users but we really believe that today’s enthusiast will be tomorrow’s investor and we need to support them throughout their exploration of the arts. That’s why our vision is very broad and very objective, with a core of tools that can support different user personae. That’s the challenge, and we’re seeing progress in the number of users but also in the degree of engagement. We have users who are spending much more time on the site, asking us questions and giving us feedback, which indicates to me that there is keen interest in this sort of information. ---

Looking into the future, we can see that the buying trends of disparate private collectors might overtake the importance of grand institutions. It’s possible that art writing might find a larger audience of the willing and paying, itself supporting a more diffuse sphere of discussion. Would this new journalism express a vibrancy surrounding the variety of trends and practices of different institutions now visible through data?

146 SARAH SITKIN: BODIES IN DECLINE, BODIES AT REST Sculpture and abstract sensation

Los Angeles based sculptor Sarah How do you define the body? Sitkin makes uncanny art. Anatomical I think about this all the time: sculptures created from silicone the divide between my body and clay, plaster, resin and latex convey myself. I feel the self exists in my psychological themes on which the brain, and that I’m still myself even viewer is simultaneously attracted if my body changes. I view the body and disturbed. Containing liberal as purposeful in scientific terms—for inferences to surrealist works which example, its symbiotic relationship in turn reference classic European with the many forms of bacteria it painting, there is a presence and houses—but in terms of the survival verve in her work which is of the self, I view the body as sharply original. unnecessary, a very limited vessel Primarily exhibiting on the that we are confined to during our West Coast of he USA, her reputation, lives. What isn’t a challenge about bolstered by social media and select having a body? In my work, the body viewings in Europe, is extending requires very careful consideration to a wider audience. Challenging and management, particularly when the tropes and methodology of her lifecasting models. Creating and previous work, Sitkin is an evolving maintaining a supportive emotional artist whose recent work displays an environment for models is probably increasing engagement with audience the most challenging aspect, since perceptions of the body. making a mould takes some time Her March (2018) exhibition of from start to finish, and you have to Bodysuits allowed participants to consider their physical needs and wear a variety (race, sex, age) of safety throughout a process that meticulously detailed body forms, employs very dangerous materials... re-contextualising the role of the I mean, if you are not precise and viewer in sculpture in the process. careful during the moulding process, This is a particularly charged site of you could literally kill someone. creativity regarding contemporary The body is also in constant flux, polemics around the perception of which is almost impossible not to the human form as it relates to art, record when making a lifecast; containing as it does central ideas of dicks get soft, nipples get hard, being, heteronormality. appropriation posture changes under the weight and change. of materials during cure time, Discussing her relationship with even breathing... This is tough. the human form, Sitkin allowed You have to deal with the fact that the Trebuchet into the techniques and duration of the mould appointment perspectives she employs in her from beginning to end will almost arresting art. always dictate a result different from the form you started with.

Profile Sarah Sitkin Images courtesy of Sarah Sitkin © 2018 148 In what way do you feel you’ve North Hollywood, and they used to the lungs; removing the necessity of pushed your conception and bring home materials that I would breathing for my models would make application of the body? experiment with when I was young, my work a lot easier. It’d also be great I don’t think I’ve done anything like alginate and clay. if I could make moulds of people with particularly new or revolutionary with their eyes open, so eyeballs could pushing the conception or application Whose work regarding the physical go next. of the body; my work starts with human body do you admire? me having questions about my own I really do admire Joel-Peter Witkins. With developments like VR corporeality, why I am this way, I remember when I first saw his work changing the way we view our and I explore these questions through when I was in high school, and I was bodies, will this affect your work? my practice. just floored by it, that people could That would definitely affect my really make art like that and in a practice. As media culture grows What potential do you see in bodies? sense, get away with it. It expanded and we are able to envision and I see the lack of potential actually, my understanding of what art can be. experience our bodies beyond their our lived-in bodies as a limiting place, born limits, what my work with the a vessel we are contained in that we Describe your technique? body can be is greatly expanded, annoyingly cannot escape during Probably my most important which is very exciting. our lives. technique is managing models’ comfort during the moulding Are you conscious of your own body process while also trying to ensure in the same way as in your work? the intended mould comes out I’d say I approach other people’s successfully. The rest is just a lot bodies quite differently from my of chemistry. own: a lot of very, very deliberate caution and care, as necessitated by Where do you find inspiration? the materials I work with. While there My work is not really created is some catharsis in the creation of according to any outside influences. other bodies as my work, it isn’t a cure It’s mostly a product of my own for my experience of the live body as inner toil. a frustratingly limiting container. Describe your technique? What do you see as the greatest I’d say the only permanent aspect challenge to the body? of the body is that it is a site of Memory. Technology these days is constant change. allowing us to not suffer the labour of remembering. Our memory is a If you could change one thing about muscle that is shrinking. how humans are constructed what would it be? Why and when did you choose the I would change so much! Ideally I body as a medium for your work? would just remove the body entirely; When I was a kid, actually. it is such a massive collective of My parents own a hobby shop in inconveniences. But I’d start with

The idea of a foundation conjures a variety of responses from the artist, from being a lifeline when drowning in debt and insignificance, to the conservative enemy that captures and corrals art’s small buying audience into the fertile furrows where practice coalesces into canon, and from there into career.

A foundation has principles and aims, which are rarely those of the individual artists, meeting often at the midnight crossroads of finance and bureaucracy. The Green Manalishi of patronage has a mixed reputation, however; it has also allowed legions of artists to find the critical fellowship and support required to fully develop

152 The Montblanc Cultural Foundation, led by curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, is an organisation based on subjectivity. It takes a level of confidence to invest power and influence in two people. The success of this, of course, depends on who they choose, and historically the Montblanc Foundation has chosen well. They have commissioned new works from artists including: John Armleder; Monica Bonvicini; José León Cerrillo; Thomas Demand; Hans-Peter Feldmann; Sylvie Fleury; Liam Gillick; Gary Hume; Fang Lijun; Thomas Ruff; Tom Sachs; Chiharu Shiota; Cerith Wyn Evans; and Heimo Zobernig.

In 2016 Bardaouil and Fellrath were appointed as chairmen and, pulling from their joint experience of international exhibitions, publications and lecturing, they are shaping the Foundation’s strategic direction. Both have an impressive CV behind them, as academics as well as curators.

Some of their previous exhibitions include: Staging Film: The Relation of Image and Space in Video Art at ‘inter-temporal’, ‘trans-cultural’ and ‘cross-disciplinary’, the Busan Museum of Art (2016); When Process Becomes which are themselves a cross-hatched area between Form: Dansaekhwa and Korean Abstraction at the Villa the field of modernist studies and global contemporary Empain in Brussels (2016); I Spy with My Little Eye: artistic practices. This begs the questions: isn’t a cultural A New Generation of Beirut Artists at the Mosaic Rooms foundation a fundamentally modernist idea, and what in London and Casa Árabe in Madrid and Cordoba (2015); relevance does it have today? Mona Hatoum: Turbulence at Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha (2014); and Songs of Loss and Songs Montblanc: Guided by the belief that the arts inspire new of Love at the Gwangju Museum of Art (2014). ideas and thinking, the Montblanc Cultural Foundation has aimed to facilitate artistic exploration by unlocking Bardaouil and Fellrath have also held teaching opportunities for artists to produce and showcase work positions at several universities, including the Tisch School for over 27 years, and by recognising patrons of the art of the Arts at New York University; the London School through highlighting and supporting the respective of Economics; the Singapore Institute of Management; organisations and projects that they care for. and the American University of Beirut. Their academic monograph Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the The Foundation’s core initiatives include the globally Art and Liberty Group (I.B.Tauris, 2016) recently won recognised Montblanc Arts Patronage Award, which to the prestigious 2017 Modernist Studies Association date has awarded close to €5m in prize money to over book prize. 250 art patrons and their organisations around the world. Since 2002, the Montblanc Art Collection has supported Looking at their curatorial projects as a whole, over 170 artists by commissioning them to create new one notes they are marked by many hyphenated terms, works. The collection includes many artists who went on to become internationally renowned figures.”

Society Montblanc have a panoramic view of what is happening in the arts in different parts of the world and enables us to make e interesting connections and build bridges. How do you keep your perspectives fresh? Our decision to work independently is what allows us One imagines that you’ve a unique perspective on art to keep our eyes and ears open to all sorts of cultural and trends. What do you see currently ascending and currents and artistic practices that are happening within what do you see descending? and beyond familiar networks and institutions. There is not one general answer to this question, This independence gives us the freedom to travel but perhaps we can give you a few observations. There is extensively and meet artists and cultural producers certainly a desire to connect between institutions from from different backgrounds and extremely diverse types different places across the globe. Larger museums and of institution, not only in the visual arts but also in other institutions are increasingly looking at smaller and more disciplines, such as literature, cinema, theatre, fashion fluid organisations to learn from their model. Also, more and design. This provides us with insight into different global awareness is guiding the exhibition and collection cultural models and forms of artistic practice,allowing strategies of many museums, where artworks and artists us to constantly expand our horizons and approach to from different parts of the world, which have been less the work that we do, including the Foundation. represented in the past, are being acknowledged and celebrated. What are the main challenges of your work? Fighting jet lag! With 17 Arts Patronage Awards in What are the constituent parts of the Montblanc 17 countries, we do our best to engage and be present at Foundation as an art body? Why does the Foundation’s most of these events. For the Montblanc Artist Commission title use ‘cultural’ rather than, say, ‘art’? Is this a Program, we are constantly looking at various artists, distinction that allows more latitude? talking to curators at different institutions, and exploring Art is one aspect of culture. With contemporary art, potential recipients for the future. This entails constant in particular, the traditional definition of what art is, travelling and searching, which we love, as it allows us to and what it can achieve in terms of social relevance,

154 “META NARRATIVES CAN OFTEN BE REDUCTIONIST AND MAKE MEANINGLESS CLAIMS ABOUT THE DIFFERENT SUBJECTS YOU ARE TACKLING”

is constantly expanding and the boundaries are always through endless piles of things, but only the trained eye shifting. Culture is a more inclusive term that includes can recognise what is truly valuable. The benefit of the all forms of artistic expression. Since we believe that art Internet is that it has made things accessible, at least in is a reflection of all aspects of life, culture seems to be terms of visual proximity. To a certain extent it has also the more fitting word to describe what the Foundation diluted the authority of the expert, as anyone can post stands for. anything and market it as authentic, true, or valuable. The democratisation of seeing is essential to any society Would you say that you take a meta view of curation, for a free flow of ideas and exchange of opinions. Within viewing curation as a creative act within itself? this context, we do not think of our job as curators as In our publications we actually try to move away telling people what is better or more beautiful. Instead, from meta narrative, whether it is about curation or we like to confront people with different things, presenting anything else. There are of course overarching themes them in intelligent contexts that encourage people that underpin many of the projects that we work on, to engage in a conversation and arrive to their own such as our interest in art’s normal considerations, the conclusions. We most certainly have our own opinions and interdisciplinary connections between different art forms, would share them if asked, but this is not what curation multiple modernities, and so on. Meta narratives can often is about. Curation is about talking with people and not be reductionist and make meaningless claims about the talking down to them, and almost always, there is a new different subjects you are tackling. Furthermore, we see perspective that you discover from that conversation. many curatorial projects operating within preconceived notions. Instead of truly investigating a subject, some The dynamic between curator, patron and buyer projects set out knowing what they want to say and look remains opaque; how do you approach for artworks that fit. Instead, our work is marked by this relationship? rigorous and open-ended research. We always strive to We think that these roles are becoming less categorical allow the artwork and the artist to have their own voice and more fluid. You are also forgetting the most important and speak for themselves. part of this equation: the artist. In our work as curators, we always base our selections on our conviction in the We are used to seeing curators as arbiters of taste. To validity and formal quality of the artwork and its relevance what extent is this position challenged by the Internet? to the place and time in which it exists. We are aware that The Internet is a like a flea market; you can browse our selections have an impact on other aspects, making the artwork desirable to collectors, therefore influencing its market value. What we find truly inspiring is the dialogue we have with artists when working together

Society Montblanc Andre Hemer, The Cobra Effect #9, 2018.

on an exhibition, and then, the final encounter with the Foundation, we are working on a number of audience, which provides a new reading and context to new publications. We are joining the curatorial team at both the artworks on display and the curatorial ideas the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, and we are preparing behind the exhibition itself. In that regard, the audience two thematic contemporary art exhibitions that will has a very important role to play; they provide the artist travel internationally from 2019 onwards, as well as and the curator with that final reality check: is the work/ solo exhibitions for two distinguished artists. exhibition truly connecting to the public, and if so, is it doing that in ways that were expected or different? This is a very exciting aspect of what we do.

Where does your artistic interest lie, personally and within the Foundation? And if there is any tension between those two strands, is it a tension that you enjoy e.g., when ‘off the clock’, I’m going to delve into some nasty street art? Our aim is for all our choices to be relevant, whether in the recognition of patrons or the selection of recipients for the artist commissions. We believe that the Foundation should reflect the global complexity of contemporary art, and that our fingers should be on the pulse. In that sense, our independent curatorial work and our work with the Foundation operate along the same lines, and have the same objectives. It is about seeing how any of the various artistic styles that exist out there are being reinvented and envisioned to be a testimony of the times in which we live and a pointer to where we might be heading to.

What does the future hold for you two prolific authors, academics and curators? We are looking forward to announcing the winners of the Arts Patronage Award for 2018, and to seeing the works of the three artists (Emmanuelle Lainé, Mercedes Dorame and Ruby Onyinyeche Amanze) who were commissioned by the Foundation to come to life within their respective exhibitions before they join the collection headquarters in Hamburg at the end of the year. Besides our work with the Image courtesy of KH Gallery © 2018 of courtesy Image

156 NESTOR PESTANA: SPECULATIVE DESIGN AND THE NEW HUMAN Existing beyond the body

Criticising the homogenisation of the body. “The Infumis” is a sort contemporary technologies. the human being, and exploring the of response in a way; it provides Our bodies are therefore in a constant potential for an endlessly shifting a more holistic understanding of state of definition. For example, in the body augmented by emerging the human body and assumes its current informational era, governed technologies, the work of Nestor biological nature. The human body by informational technologies, data Pestana taps into the zeitgeist of is not an isolated entity that can be is what primarily defines our bodies; our turbulent age. precisely measured, as presented we have the urge to understand them Pestana is a speculative designer in “The Interviewee”, but a complex through it. Take the human genome and multimedia artist currently based ecosystem that expands to the project: a pure translation of our in London. His work explores the environment through layers of materiality into a series of codes links between science, design and biodiversity: bacteria, fungi and other that ultimately hold the promise technology to promote creative and microorganisms that work together in that one day we will take evolution critical thinking, as well as sharing symbiotic relationships and that play fully into our own hands. and exchanging knowledge. Speaking an important role in defining who Still, advances in biotechnology of a recent project, he says: we are. - Nestor Pestana, 2018 are providing us with another, more holistic understanding of Biotechnologies might open up a Projects are expressed through the body: an ecosystem made of new perception of our bodies as a a variety of media including film, millions of organisms in symbiotic malleable material, and perhaps even animation, illustration and immersive relationships, dependent on each new forms of interactions with our and interactive installations and other for survival. This also raises environments. - Nestor Pestana, 2018 performances. He has completed fundamental questions about our own an MA in Design Interactions at nature: where does the human body Pestana himself defies the Royal College of Art. His recent begin and where does it end? categorisation by blending scientific, exhibited highlights include Night And even trying to put a boundary philosophic and design-based School on Anarres at Somerset House, in such a way is a pure illusion, approaches in his works, sometimes with work also shown at Seoul’s 2015 as everything is interconnected reminiscent of a behaviourist bio-art exhibition Sustainability: through biological systems existing in experiment (B. F. Skinner comes Abundance of Life and Swiss different states of density. to mind). Projects such as Pavilion’s School of Tomorrow at “The Interviewee” see a young woman the Venice Architecture Biennale. In what way do you feel you’ve interrogated by a seemingly benign pushed your conception and but ultimately stultifying system. How do you define the body? application of the body? More recently he is expanding his All sociocultural, political and Through fictional narratives and exploration of the body. technological aspects of a given speculations. This has allowed me to time and place play a key role in be more or less free from some of the My latest projects might seem a little the definition of the body, or at least issues presented by ethicists in the different from “The Interviewee”. in the way we perceive it. It is in this real world, and from the limitations My new projects, After Information: sense that I think post-humanism that emerging technologies “The Infumis”, they share a lot in provides a robust definition: currently have. Although these are common. “The Interviewee” is a it embraces the idea of a body very important aspects to take into protest piece, a critique to a society defined not only by its biology, account when designing fictions that sort of wants to standardise but most importantly by its (if only to make them more plausible),

158 this freedom has allowed me to set the environment in which they exist Why and when did you choose the ground to imagine what would it be or simply a materialisation of their body as a medium for your work? like if we developed a technology own ways of thinking. They perceive I was always interested in topics in a certain way, and see how it their bodies as a material that can that were more or less related to would change the way we perceive be modified in significant ways, what it means to be embodied and and interact with our bodies and and although their bodies are very disembodied. I am perhaps more surrounding environments. Although similar in appearance to ours, they aware of this now than I was ever some of my projects may seem a have a slightly different biology that before. So I don’t think there was a little far-fetched, their technical allows them to exist in a different conscious choosing process, but just development would be impossible way than we do. I am not able to be a natural interest that grew over with the current state of our conscious of my body in the way time as I dove into post-humanism technologies. However, my aim is not that my characters are, because our literature, philosophy and to present them as solutions for our biologies are different. But I have conversations with scientists with futures, but to share a vision and start empathy for the characters. whom I work. Using the body as a discussions. I think there is a huge medium for my work has allowed potential to be explored by designers What do you see as the greatest me to directly explore such topics, in the micro and quantum worlds of challenge to the body? imagining other ways of existing our own bodies. Science, technology, philosophy, through technology, questioning the feminism and other disciplines are very meaning of our own materiality, What potential do you see in bodies? providing us with a range of and challenging assumptions and Some microorganisms, such as perspectives on what it means to conceptions about the body and its bacteria, are naturally able to have a human body. Many of these relation to sociocultural, political metabolise the most unwanted perspectives are still complex and and ecological topics. materials into useful components for challenging topics for our society. humans. For example, Marinobacter While the scientific Whose work regarding the physical hydrocarbonoclasticus is a type conceptualisation of the human body human body do you admire? of bacterium able to synthesise as a biological object among others, From biohackers like Lepht Anonym hydrocarbons—a pollutant—into which our rational capabilities have to academics like Donna Haraway. nutrients like lipids. Advances in differentiated us from, is widely Although my work is speculative, biotechnology are allowing us to accepted by society, it lacks of the I find it interesting how the biohacker manipulate such microorganisms social and personal contexts in which community have taken technologies in substantial ways, opening the body came into being; how does into their own hands and started opportunities to be inventive with the mind of an individual relate to its experimenting with their own bodies, regards to their metabolic and embodiment? Is the body female, DIY-style. It is not only their courage, symbiotic processes. Perhaps in the male or non-binary? I think that these determinism and perseverance in future we might be able to modify and other similar questions have been pursuing such endeavours, even if certain elements of our own bodies brought by different disciplines they go against established legal in order to establish alternative partly because of the necessity to systems, but also how they are symbionts with different types of understand the body in relation to pioneering a new understanding of bacteria, which could potentially technological advances. On one hand, the human body in the field of body allow us to exist and interact with our biotechnology presents the body as a modification and enhancement. environments in a different manner material that can be modified to suit I also admire Lepht Anonym’s views than we currently do. our needs and desires. On the other and criticisms on who ultimately has hand, informational technologies access to technologies—normally an Are you conscious of your own body are raising even more fundamental elite of wealthy people. She is to some in the same way as in your work? questions, by making us think that extent proving that the contrary is In my work I imagine fictional we can transcend ourselves into also possible. characters that modify their bodies disembodied virtual beings, so I only recently discovered Donna using technologies. They have their humans can actually exist beyond Haraway’s work through a good own reasons to do that: a response to the body, gender and perhaps even friend of mine. Although written in other bodies. Profile Nestor Pestana AIS The Infumis - film still, 2015 Image courtesy of the N.Pestana © 2018 the N.Pestana of courtesy Image

160 back in 1984, her Cyborg Manifesto the many factors contributing to the technological developments and is one of the most interesting pieces body as a place of change. imaginings of new ways of existing I have read recently. She portrays We have been modifying our through them. I therefore find it the cyborg body as a rejection of bodies for many years—take, for extremely important to keep up to traditional boundaries that separates example, the Kayan people and date with technologies, and how these humans from other living creatures their ancient tradition of stretching are constantly informing the way we and machines. For her, everything is their necks. Or the artificial cranial perceive our bodies. But rather than linked in an open, fluid and distinct deformations performed by some using these perceptions as design semiotic flow. It is only in this holistic cultures in Peru. From health to prepositions, I am more interested in understanding of the body that cosmetics or even for ideological imagining what other perceptions of my work can be understood. reasons, we still change our bodies our bodies we could potentially have in today’s world, and we will in the in the future and how we could Describe your technique? future. Technologies are allowing us design for them. My projects are research-based to deeply understand our bodies on and conceptually developed through various levels, and therefore have conversations with experts and more meaningful iterations with it scientists. Collaborations are than ever before; we will perhaps crucial in my practice. look very different in the future and The ideas are materialised through not necessarily because of natural a variety of mediums, such as films, evolution, but because of our animations, illustrations, immersive own decisions. and interactive installations and performances. Props are sometimes If you could change one thing about produced to further explore a how humans are constructed what certain aesthetic of a project. would it be? I always wondered why some Where do you find inspiration? organisms are able to regenerate Research and collaborations. In major body parts while others, like us trying to answer some questions humans, are not. It seems the most I sometimes have, in talking with reasonable feature for any organism scientists and in understanding how to have, so why hasn’t evolution other beings exist, such as bacteria. provided us with that? Salamanders I think these are the most bizarre for example are able to regenerate creatures on this planet; they thrive in almost everything in their bodies, the most extreme conditions and are so if we evolved from a common able to feed from the most unwanted ancestor, is it possible that components. I think they are very regeneration is built into the human inspiring creatures. genetic code? And if so, how can we take advantage of it? Do you see the body as a place of permanence or change? With developments like VR

Change. The body is in constant changing the way we view our AIS The Infumis - film adaptation to an ever-changing bodies, will this affect your work? still, 2015 environment, and this is only one of My work is highly informed by

IT COULD EXIST AS SOMETHING HALLUCINATORY SUBSCRIPTIONS OR AS A PHANTOM PRESENCE…”

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. ornare hendrerit. Vivamus suscipit dignissim ante, Donec imperdiet libero sit amet dapibus maximus. fermentumefficitur est faucibus at. Donec aliquam, justo quis tempor consequat, velit metus ullamcorper lectus, in Aenean ullamcorper nibh vel.imperdiet porta. Phasellus pellentesque est dolor ac lectus. Curabitur tempus lacinia eros enim, venenatis non maximus ut, dictum eleifend velit, in tincidunt dolor dictum eu. Donec tincidunt, nisl augue. Praesent sed imperdiet metus. Quisque a sem eu bibendum euismod, libero orci venenatis lacus, vitae semper, tristique mauris sed, volutpat orci. Mauris rhoncus egestas tortor dolor in libero. aliquam feugiat. Mauris arcu lorem, feugiat ac velit vel, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing gravida dignissim velit. Nullam elementum viverra nunc elit. Donec imperdiet libero sit amet dapibus maximus. in sagittis. Sed magna lectus, sodales at commodo vitae, AeneanPublished ullamcorper quarterly, nibh available vel imperdiet globally porta. Phasellus tincidunt vel nunc. eros enim, venenatis non maximus ut, dictum eleifend Mauris at elit quam. Quisque luctus, erat quis augue. Praesent sed imperdiet metus. Quisque a sem elementum mollis, lacus sapien vehicula leo, id aliquet semper, tristique mauris sed, volutpat orci. Mauris rhoncus ex augue vel tortor. Nullam vitae nisi ut eros rhoncus aliquam feugiat. Mauris arcu lorem, feugiat ac velit vel, pellentesque quis dignissim urna. Lorem ipsum dolor sit gravida dignissim velit. Nullam elementum viverra nunc amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In ac magna porta leo in sagittis. Sed magna lectus, sodales at commodo vitae, facilisis accumsan. Nam ut pharetra urna. Nunc mattis tincidunt vel nunc. imperdiet quam, et hendrerit sem imperdiet id. Vestibulum Mauris at elit quam. Quisque luctus, erat quis vestibulum libero diam, vel vulputate magna semper vitae. elementum mollis, lacus sapien vehicula leo, id aliquet Aliquam eleifend, turpis sed sodales ornare, nunc dui ex augue vel tortor. Nullam vitae nisi ut eros rhoncus tristique ante, vel ullamcorper eros tellus in dolor. pellentesque quis dignissim urna. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In ac magna porta leo Aliquam erat volutpat. Donec quis urna sit amet magna facilisis accumsan. Nam ut pharetra urna. Nunc mattis tempor suscipit quis a ante. Donec in purus arcu. Aliquam imperdiet quam, et hendrerit sem imperdiet id. Vestibulum id ipsum nec tellus suscipit tempus. Etiam non metus ut vestibulum libero diam, vel vulputate magna semper vitae. purus gravida fermentum non venenatis elit. Nam tellus Aliquam eleifend, turpis sed sodales ornare, nunc dui tellus, posuere eget consequat quis, fringilla quis leo. Nunc tristique ante, vel ullamcorper eros tellus in dolor. imperdiet, ipsum volutpat volutpat consequat, mauris dui Aliquam erat volutpat. Donec quis urna sit amet finibus nunc, et lacinia metus justo id elit. Nulla vel iaculis magna tempor suscipit quis a ante. Donec in purus arcu. orci. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in Aliquam id ipsum nec tellus suscipit tempus. Etiam non faucibus. metus ut purus gravida fermentum non venenatis elit. Sed semper vel dolor eu pretium. Mauris lorem lacus, Nam tellus tellus, posuere eget consequat quis, fringilla imperdiet vel justo dapibus, commodo rhoncus lectus. Duis quis leo. Nunc imperdiet, ipsum volutpat volutpat euismod viverra arcu, et viverra orci malesuada ac. Nullam consequat, mauris dui finibus nunc, et lacinia metus justo lacinia scelerisque leo nec condimentum. Nunc placerat id elit. Nulla vel iaculis orci. Interdum et malesuada fames nunc vel elit pulvinar lacinia. Pellentesque nibh justo, ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. efficitur quisSUBSCRIBE orci at, pulvinar elementum AT justo. TREBUCHET-MAGAZINE.COM Maecenas Sed semper vel dolor eu pretium. Mauris lorem lacus, ultricies non tortor quis molestie. Morbi nec interdum erat. imperdiet vel justo dapibus, commodo rhoncus lectus. Duis euismod viverra arcu, et viverra orci malesuada ac. Nullam NuncFROM tristique nisi nec£35 ultrices (UK maximus. RETAIL Sed in ligula £44)lacinia FOR scelerisque 4 leoISSUES nec condimentum. (+P&P) Nunc placerat et mi scelerisque ultricies et ut dui. Proin pharetra nunc vel elit pulvinar lacinia. Pellentesque nibh justo,

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