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Ani Liu

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 402

Feature · Ani Liu
Words · Izzy Bilkus

“I think that the process of creation and the process of critical evaluation must occur separately”

Research-based artist Ani Liu works at the intersection of art and science to explore the reciprocal relationships between science, technology and their influence on human subjectivity, culture, and identity. Graduating with a Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Master of Science from MIT Media Lab, Liu’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured by the likes of National Geographic, VICE, Mashable, TED, WIRED and more.

Liu’s approach to art making is multidisciplinary and centred around themes of gender politics, biopolitics, labour, simulation and sexuality. Liu’s work interrogates how our plastic subjectivity goes through modifications and expansions with technological and scientific development. It is in this realm of plasticity that Liu operates as an artist to further explore the impact of technology on culture and identity, and ultimately, what it means to be human.

NR Magazine peaks with Liu to learn more about speculative design and storytelling in her work and her hopes for the future.

What inspired you to start working at the intersection of art and science?

As a first-generation immigrant, certain values were deeply ingrained in me from a young age – to work hard, to study math and science, to try to make a better life for myself than the one my parents had. For reasons I still don’t understand, I loved art from the beginning, but given the working-class context that I grew up in, I couldn’t imagine how to make a life of it. As a result, I studied architecture, which combines engineering, material science, physics and software, with design and culture. I think this was the beginning of my merging of art, science, and many other disciplines. My roots in architecture opened my eyes to thinking beyond rigid boundaries to create experiences that transcend each individual discipline.

Your work involves what you call ‘speculative storytelling’. Could you talk a bit more about that? And what does speculative design mean to you?

I am always fascinated by the pulse of technology, and all the breakthroughs rapidly happening in synthetic biology, machine learning, etc. For me, speculative design is a means of making work to reflect on where we are going societally, in the midst of this rapid trajectory. I think this is the value of good speculative design; it can draw the viewer into the world and ask questions that conventional design does not. Some of my heroes in this domain are Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne, who have written extensively on the topic.

You’ve mentioned that you love speculative design that reveals something in the fabric of your reality that you weren’t previously aware of. Could you talk a bit more about that?

There is a quote by science fiction writer Frederic Pohl, where he says ‘a good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile, but the traffic jam.’ I think when you get into the heat of creating within the speculative domain, you essentially build an entire world out of a few artifacts, or a few moves in materiality. An artist and speculative fiction writer that I deeply admire is Margaret Atwood, for the ways she is able to build alternate worlds that scrupulously pierce into pressing issues of today.

In our cultural landscape, how important is interrogating the concept of identity to you and your practice?

It is constant! Identity is unstable and constantly shifting. It’s a construct that we each craft and perform differently in various contexts. I am interested in how technology interacts and co-creates the sense of self. Growing up in the time of internet chat rooms, as a teenager I spent time experimenting with different usernames and avatars, interested in ways I could escape my physical body in cyberspace.

“There is an awareness that the person on the other side of the screen is not who they appear to be, and yet we still consume it at face value sometimes.”

Watching people painstakingly craft their Tinder or LinkedIn profiles is fascinating to me. There is also a darker side to it – for instance the proliferation of beauty filters on social media can be linked to body image and self-esteem issues. Somehow, knowing that they are filters does not prevent us from holding ourselves up to literally simulated standards.

Reoccurring themes in your work include gender politics, biopolitics, labour, simulation and sexuality. What do you enjoy most about exploring these ideas in particular?

In my research, I enjoy the process of discovery and revelation, and the potential for cultural change. It is 2021 and we still live in a world with violent sexism. The right to education, healthcare and bodily autonomy are still things female identified persons struggle with. Through some of my works, such as Mind Controlled Sperm, A.I. Toys or Pregnancy Menswear, the hope is that it can contribute to a cultural conversation that can shift mindsets about how we perceive sex and gender.

Do you rely a lot on your intuition?

I do. I think that the process of creation and the process of critical evaluation must occur separately. I don’t always succeed, but I try to separate those days out in my studio. There are days when I attempt to make in a purely intuitive, non-judgemental way. There are other days when I return to edit the works more critically. The processes exist in a never-ending cycle.

How has living in New York affected your practice?

New York is expensive! I have had to be creative about my practice – I have had large studios and extremely tiny ones depending on the ebbs and flows of my life. I have become good at continuing to create work no matter the physical circumstances of my studio. During COVID I was locked out of my studio completely, and learned how to work from home, like many other people. I adapted my material palette to things that were more domestic friendly and less toxic.

Living in New York, I also spend a lot of time commuting, and have learned ways to fold it into my practice, either by drawing, writing, reading, or simply observing. I do feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so many museums and galleries. There is never a shortage of art to see. There are certain museums that are almost like temples to me – I have been visiting them since I was a child. I feel spiritually nourished every time I return.

How important is exploring an emotional narrative in your work?

Extremely! I am an artist that practices at the intersection of art and science, and while the research component is very important to me, I think it is the emotional narrative that draws you in. It’s also that magical element of art making and art experiencing that drew me in from the beginning – the elements of mystery, contradiction and the transference of knowledge that is not necessarily verbal but deeply felt and understood.

In your 2016 TED talk you mentioned being ‘obsessed with olfaction as a design space’. How do you feel this compares to other kinds of sensory perception with regard to constructing an identity?

The art historian Caroline Jones has a wonderful quote about olfaction. She says (and I am paraphrasing), ‘smell is preverbal, and has no capacity to pretend.’

“As a human who can tend to be hyper cerebral and analytic, I love smell for the ways it continues to remind me that I am also an animal, with instincts, intuition, and involuntary bodily relations to the world.”

Olfaction as a design space tends to be underdeveloped in an increasingly hygienic and sterile world. I love the stories that can be told through the nose, and I am interested in how your own experiences, histories, and geographical memories remap experiences that different people have towards identical smells. What makes something smell disgusting, pleasurable, familiar, or erotic? How many of these reactions are cultivated, and are any of these reactions universal?

What’s your usual process when coming up with new ideas and research projects?

Sometimes it begins with a feeling – a feeling of sadness or longing for a particular memory, for instance. Other times, it begins with research – a paper that I read and bookmark and sparks a new idea. I try to keep a meticulous sketchbook and record of moments I find interesting to revisit in later projects.

Your work is obviously very forward thinking and future-gazing. Do you ever feel drawn to working in the realm of nostalgia?

I actually love looking at retro depictions of the future, such as images of the future that were created in the 50s or 70s. They are simultaneously future gazing and nostalgic. I think I am attracted to these images because they often tell a better story of the time they were created. In some of these images,

“even though there are flying cars and robots everywhere, women are still depicted doing domestic chores and performing the traditional gender roles of the time.”

There is a strange emotional power to simultaneously holding both; I am also thinking of TV shows like Westworld for example, which is both set in the future while containing an amusement park for visiting the past.

What has been your favourite project to work on?

Each project has its own joys and challenges. I laughed out loud quite frequently while creating A.I. Toys, a project where I trained a machine learning algorithm on real world toys made for ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ to get at the zeitgeist of how we teach gender from a young age through things we give them. The machine learning model was then asked to generate new ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ toys based on what it learned. Because the project was essentially a collaboration with A.I., I often sifted through unexpected inventions that the algorithm made up. Something that I didn’t anticipate was that the model would pick on the verbal sass of marketing language.

What are the main things you want people to take away from your work?

My hope is that they come away questioning their relationship with technology. I hope that the world opens up new ways of thinking about gender, biology, biotechnology, algorithms, equality and identity – so many of the things we talked about in this interview. I also hope it leaves them with a feeling, perhaps, the same way I feel after reading a good poem. I know that kind of magic is not going to happen every time, but that’s the dream.

What can we expect from you in the future? Are there any other creative industries you can see yourself dabbling in?

I recently became a mother and have been re-learning my body and crafting new relationships with new bodies. I feel that I am engaging in physical processes that millennia of women and other birthing bodies have experienced before me. In my work, I have recently been trying to capture this messy experience of becoming. As a researcher, I have been delving into the history of birth, the history of medicine and technoscience as it relates to reproduction, gender, and sex. As an artist, I have been making vignettes of these first-hand experiences – of lactating, the waves of hormones through my body, the enormous emotions, the stretch marks, the contradictions of love, pain, exhaustion and branching of identities. It is all work in progress, and like life, I find that some things are better understood in retrospect.

Credits

Discover more here www.ani-liu.com
Images ANI LIU

Ben Kelly

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 208

Feature · Ben Kelly
Words · Nicola Barrett

“Keep going, don’t stop”

One of the UK’s most influential designers Ben Kelly is perhaps best known for designing the interior of the famous Manchester nightclub, the Haçienda which was infamous in Manchester’s post-punk house and rave scene. Of course, this is only a tiny part of his extensive and varied career. Kelly has worked with big names such as The Sex Pistols, Virgil Abloh, Factory Records, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. However, speaking to him one is reminded of their favourite university lecturer, sternly indulgent and ultimately kind to anyone who falls under the umbrella of the ‘young creative’. He has the interview questions before him, he’s made notes and he asks questions. “What does NR stand for?” “How did you research me?” “What university did you go to and what did you study?”. It’s certainly a novel experience for the interviewer to find themselves becoming the interviewed, and that is only the start as NR Magazines joins Ben Kelly in conversation.

You originally wanted to be an artist before you went into design. If you had stuck to that initial career path what do you think your art practice would look like today?

Well, that’s a simple yet complex question. Who knows what the answer is without having a crystal ball. But when I was applying for my postgraduate at the Royal College I was asked why did I want three more years of further education in the interior design department. My answer was I wanted to discover whether it was possible to mix together art and interior design to produce what I called art interiors. I had equal interests in those two subjects. When you’re a student doing interior design it’s frustrating because you never get to see an end product, it only ever exists as drawings and models. But I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with another student to redesign the student bar at the Royal College. I named the student bar the Art Bar and we had a neon sign made saying art bar which is still there today. That’s one of my proudest things that’s been left behind. We went about that project as designers and artists because we had carte blanche because we didn’t really have a client.

Fast forward, I ultimately felt that some years back I had achieved my goal of this combination of references to the art world within the discipline of interior design. Ultimately in the last three or four years, I have produced a number of art installations in 180 The Strand. So I have kind of achieved my goal in a roundabout way. Along that way maybe I was using clients to experiment with this notion of producing what I called art interiors. When we had a looser brief I took that opportunity to investigate those possibilities. I also now operate as an artist in the art world, all be it slightly obliquely, and produce interiors so that’s my answer.

You stated that you are inspired by Marcel Duchamp and that he has “pretty much inspired everyone in the creative world, some way or another.” How exactly do you think he has inspired everyone?

Well, I scribbled down by default. That’s a complicated question but I guess my answer would be that it is an accepted fact, stated by Duchamp himself, that he either intended to or did change the way we look and think about art. If you move that on into the world of design and the broader world it’s unquestionably influenced by the thoughts, approach and activities of Duchamp. I think it’s bled into design and architecture sometimes in subtle, sometimes in obvious ways. It can be almost subliminal. So it’s there under the surface, not necessarily clear or obvious but I believe life had changed generally thanks that one man being on the planet and doing what he did. Without Duchamp, our lives would be different in a quieter way. It would be a poorer world. The thinking behind everything would be different and it would look different. It would lack subtlety and humour.

“Duchamp opened a new toolbox of thought processes and an application of ideas, a new language.”

So historically you go from Duchamp to Richard Hamilton, the artist who reproduced The Large Glass of Duchamp. Hamilton taught at Newcastle School of Art in the late 60s where Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music was a student. Ferry was under the spell of Hamilton who was under the spell of Duchamp. Ferry was equally influenced by Duchamp and the lyrics of his songs related back to him. When I designed the Haçienda I struggled to find a background colour for it because there were acres and acres of walls. I had an idea of that colour but I couldn’t grasp what it was. I eventually found it on an album cover by Bryan Ferry called The Bride Stripped Bare which is a title from a Duchamp artwork. So I enjoyed that connection. I told Ferry about that anecdote and his answer was “I’m glad I could be of help,” and off he trotted.

How has he inspired everyone? By default. By a subtle undertone of influences that other people, other designers, other artists, other thinkers who have drawn inspiration from Duchamp, and that seeps through the cracks.

How would you describe your identity in design?

I don’t and I won’t and I can’t. I like to have an independent identity and not be associated directly with a given description, but I’m interested in the broader description of popular culture. I operate under that umbrella to a degree, but not all the time.

There are two quotes by journalists, which doesn’t answer your question but it sort of does. One is certainly my all-time favourite. In 1982, the same year I did the Haçienda, I did a hairdressing salon on the King’s Road called Smile. Smile was a really fashionable hairdressing salon they started in Knightsbridge and lots of fashion and music people went there. They took this property on the King’s Road one door away from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop. My brief to myself was to design a hairdressing salon that looked the least like a hairdressing salon as possible. In other words, it wasn’t a typical hairdressing salon. So each styling position was different to the next one, they were all different and I used the colour orange. This journalist said, “Ben Kelly rescued the colour orange from the scrapheap of style”. It doesn’t get any better than that as far as I’m concerned.

The other one was about the Haçienda. A journalist referred to it as “the motorway aesthetic”, simply because I used cats eyes and roadside bollards in the scheme. So I leave what my identity in design is for other people to decide. That the job for other people it’s not mine. I just like to be independent and keep pushing boundaries. Going back to Duchamp, I like taking one thing from one world and another thing from another world and putting those two things together that have never coexisted before and suddenly something new happens.

You have stated before that you have been quite angry with people ‘sampling’ your work, but do you think that anyone can create anything truly original in this day and age?

Well, your research has lead you to quotes where I’ve said I’ve been angry or pissed off or whatever and quite a lot of those things I’ve said tongue in cheek. I think I know what specific example is being referred to here. It’s very flattering if people copy your work. However, going back to the Haçienda, (or it might have been the Dry Bar, I can’t remember which one), but within weeks, not that far away, another place opened and it was almost identical to the piece of work we’d done and that pissed me off! It was incredibly opportunist of whoever that was.

Fast forward. I painted stripes on the columns in the Haçienda, merely as a method of making them clear as hazards as they were on the dance floor. So I took the language of factories and workplaces where hazards are marked as per British standard. But that simple gesture I made somehow found its way into popular culture and it’s kinda gone global, you see it everywhere. One person in particular had seen it, someone who became a friend and a collaborator.

“A man called Virgil Abloh put stripes onto garments for a label called Off-White.”

I didn’t know anything about Virgil or Off-White when it was brought to my attention. It seemed pretty obvious where the inspiration for that had come from. It took me by surprise at the time and I was kind of shocked.

It must have been quite frustrating to see that after spending so much time and effort coming up with the ideas.

Well it was just work, and I never thought it would go further than that. Yeah maybe I got pissed off but it took me a while to think about it and understand that it was absolutely no different to what happens with music and the whole idea of sampling. As I’ve said I don’t own copyright on stripes, that would be ridiculous to even think about, but ideas and copyright are so difficult to define. You end up being philosophical because,

“Virgil sampling something I did has paid dividends beyond what I could even imagine.”

It lead on to him and I collaborating, and becoming friends, and opening doors, and making other things possible. Now he’s probably one of the most famous men in the world and that’s not a bad thing to be associated with. It’s a funny old world.

Do you think the idea of copyright and people copying work has gotten more complex with the rise of the internet?

This might sound contradictory I think it had become both more complex and more simple. Because I think we all now understand the idea of sampling. However, copying is a different thing and I will give you a couple of examples. There is a film called 24 Hour Party People which was all about Factory Records, the Haçienda and the whole factory scene in Manchester. It was directed by a man called Michael Winterbottom who I mostly think is a great filmmaker, a man with integrity, but they copied my design of the Haçienda. They had to rebuild it for the film and they approached me for help but as soon as I suggested a fee might be charged they disappeared. The film came out and they did an amazing job but they copied me. That design is my copyright and that’s all designers have. You only have copyright to protect your work so if it’s copied to the millimetre without your permission there’s something wrong there. I spent several years fighting it legally. I wanted to make a big thing about that and take it to the press to make a noise about how important the issue of copyright is but I was so exhausted by the time the distributors of the film settled out of court, I just wanted to let it go.

More recently Manchester City football club have done their version of Haçienda strips on their T-shirts and that really made me very angry. Nobody spoke to me about it and I thought they did a very poor job, I didn’t enjoy what they had done. Of course, they are one of the richest football clubs that there is, so how could I do battle with them? I have to be philosophical and say a bit of a poor show on their part.

So that’s the way it goes with copyright and sometimes it’s relevant and sometimes it isn’t. You have to be careful and young designers do get their work copied, particularly in the fashion industry. I don’t think that young people are sufficiently aware of how to protect their work. I always wanted to make a noise about it but I was exhausted and wanted to move on. However, I make reference to it where I can, like now, to bring awareness.

How has designing the Haçienda influenced your design journey and ethos?

That’s a huge question for me. The Haçienda opened in 1982. Next year it will be the 40th anniversary of the opening.

“My quote is the ‘Haçienda never dies’, and it doesn’t.”

Its influence and story, it’s embedded in popular culture. It’s been acknowledged as one of the most important nightclubs for a whole host of different reasons. However, for me at first, it became the monkey on my back. It wouldn’t go away and people would only talk to me about having designed the Haçienda. Of course, I’ve designed many things, many different types of interiors, and many other things outside of interior design, and that kind of annoyed me. Then I stopped being annoyed and realised that it was a massive asset to me.

My interpretation of your question is, having designed the Haçienda, the slipstream that followed on from it has massively influenced, and lead on to, the majority of work I’ve done ever since. I could say possibly 99% of what I’ve done since, in one way or another, there have been references to the Haçienda, or it happened as a result of Haçienda, or some intersection of those. Something to do with the Haçienda has been a part of nearly every project I’ve done since. That might not be visible or legible or understandable but I know it’s embedded in there somewhere. So that’s fed into work I’ve done in many other disciplines, it’s been a big part of what I’ve done.

You worked on the set design for the PTB19 runway show. How do you see interior design and fashion working together in the future?

Again with that project they came to me because the collection they showed had been partly inspired by the design of the Haçienda. For the set, there are subtle references to the design of the Haçienda which are
mostly some black and yellow stripes. I’d like to think it was done in a poetic and subtle way. It was great I really enjoyed doing that show.

But to answer your question, I have no idea, I can’t predict the future. Well, going back to Virgil, his last Off-White show was done virtually because of the pandemic. My observation was that he’d taken his inspiration for the set from a combination of two interiors. One was was The Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe. The other was a set from 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick. So obviously you get this really heavy mix of references which is a kind of Duchampian. I know that Virgil, is as obsessed with Duchamp as I am, it’s something we share. So fashion and interiors, there’s no limit to that collaboration. I expect to see really rich pieces of work coming out of that combination of design disciplines and industries. People like Virgil are in the luxurious position of leading the way because they have big budgets and can work with the best people in the world.

But if you put all that to one side and bring it back to young people, who’ve left college and are trying to find a way of being creative, that’s where my interest lies. The future belongs to them and it’s the hardest environment to be operating in right now, my sympathies lie hugely with young people. But finding a space, finding backers, finding a budget, being able to just go to a nightclub, is almost unaffordable.

“To buy a drink in a bar is almost unaffordable so new ways have to be found. They have to be super creative, and sidestep the mainstream and find another way.”

That’s why punk was so great, it was two fingers to authority and invent your own ways of doing things. It didn’t last that long but the spirit and the ethos of it is still there. I’m looking forward to the revolution.

Has Covid affected how you approach your art practice, and if so how?

Well yeah, that was interesting when covid hit and the lockdowns and the poor handling of it by our government. I’m very lucky because I’m sat here talking to you from my studio in London, but I have another, bigger, studio on the south coast. So I went and isolated down there and the phone stopped ringing, well it’s emails and texts these days, but that all stopped and went quiet.

I had been asked to design a piece of artwork as a print, but the pandemic put a stop to the exhibition happening. So I’m sat there in my studio and I thought “I won’t make it as a print, I’ll make it as a painting”. It was to do with the language of the Haçienda, and I thought “Oh I could do another one” so then I did another one and another one, and I did maybe fifteen or sixteen of these paintings over the first and the second lockdown period. It was fantastic, it was like therapy, it was another form of expression. I’m hoping that some paintings I’ll be able to show in an exhibition. So the pandemic physically affected my art practice in that it made me sit down and make some paintings which I enjoyed. It will lead on to me doing more of that kind of work. Something that I independently drive forward, there isn’t a client or a brief, it’s just me. So I have the pandemic to thank for that.

What advice do you have for young creatives looking to work in design?

Be independent, is my advice. Keep going, don’t stop. Mistakes will be made but you learn from those mistakes. You will fail at things, but failure teaches you an awful lot. When I started it was so much easier, because my first projects were done for people who were friends or like-minded people. Now it’s much more complicated because everything costs more money, there’s less money around and the internet changed everything. We need to find a way for young people to operate. For young creative people in the art world to find space to do what they do and add richness to our lives.

“Richness is being removed, the oxygen is being sucked out, and we need to fix that.”

Are you working on any projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future?

Well, two things. I have done a collaborative project with a photographer called Eugene Schlumberger. Using Kickstarter we have funded a book called Haçienda Landscapes. The story there is I stumbled upon his work on Instagram. I kept seeing these photographs that I thought were really beautiful and really just compositionally well thought out and I realised that they were referencing the Haçienda. This guy was finding the language of the design of the Haçienda out in the post-industrial landscape in the North-East of England, with all the ruined factories and machinery with hazard stripes. I messaged him, we started talking to each other and eventually met up in London. I said we need to do a project together and it should be a book called Haçienda Landscapes. I’ve also been taking photographs over the years of things that kind of reference the language of the Haçienda but mine were more snapshots. His are quite thought out, carefully composed and it makes a really nice kind of contrast with these two different sets of photographs. We’ve been very successful so I hope we are going to produce a thing of great beauty. The other is an exhibition at 180 The Strand which has turned into the most amazing alternative art space. The owner of the building is someone I’ve known for a very long time and they’ve commissioned me to do a couple of installations there. It’s going to be called ‘Columns, Revolving Mirrors and International Orange’.

Credits

Images · BEN KELLY

Deadhungry

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 176

Feature · Alex Paganelli
Words · Izzy Bilkus

“I think you can get so stuck in trying to sell something, that you forget you can have fun and play around with it”

Chef and photographer Alex Paganelli has carved himself a unique position in the industry, operating with ease across the realms of food styling, film direction, menu designing and product development. Uniting the culinary, art and fashion worlds, Paganelli injects a vibrant energy into his creations, and has established himself as one to watch, having already worked on campaigns for brands like Skims and Bottega Veneta – but this is only one level of his flourishing food empire.

Growing up in the French Alps, Paganelli picked up his interest in French cuisine and cultural diversity, which came natural with Italian-British parents. Moving to London at 18, Paganelli took the techniques he learned from home with him to the kitchen and discovered a yearning for a creative process detached from tradition, and began shaping his own signature style, creating things that were stunning to behold, but also wonderful to eat.

Since establishing DeadHungry in 2015 – a studio, kitchen and creative hub for his food ideas, Paganelli has catered for specially-curated events and has built a strong reputation for daring menu design and serving eclectic, modern and experimental dishes.

Paganelli continues to subvert the conventions of food photography and conjures up scenes and dishes that are optical feasts, including life-size jelly shoes and handbags, cartoonish pies and mind-bendingly visceral table settings.

NR Magazine touches base with Paganelli in London to learn more about his visual language and creative evolution.

Growing up in France – a culinary capital of the world, how did this influence you when you first started as a chef?

France influenced me a lot. I grew up there and I lived there until I was 18. My mum is from London, so I used to come and spend my summers here with my family. My dad is from Italy, but the whole family moved to France when I was a child and we used to live close to them. They were a typical southern Italian family, so I think I’ve been influenced by all three if that makes sense- my dad’s Italian family, my mum’s British family, and then of course me growing up in France. I think all three really had an impact on my work, what I cook with and what I like to eat.

I grew up more or less with a Mediterranean diet, but then moving to London I discovered so many different types of cuisine. I met and worked with people and chefs from all over the world, so later in life I realised that even if I’m drawn to more traditional food, London has added an element of modern cooking, in a way that I don’t think I experienced growing up in France.

When did you start to shape your own signature style?

It was something that happened over time. I think my style grew after I became a photographer, but that happened a little bit later. At the beginning of my career, I was just focussing on food, but then I started documenting my work and eventually started getting hired as a photographer. Eventually it all melded together and formed what is today my style. It took a little while though. At the start, when I was only working with food and wasn’t really photographing as much, I hadn’t really figured out what my style was, and I didn’t really understand fully what it was that I was trying to do.

Eventually I started using different techniques, like I stopped using animal products and started to create more vegan dishes. That defined it a lot more, and I think that’s what made me grow in a way that was quite unexpected. Up until then I was cooking in a more traditional way, using very traditional ingredients, and when I decided I was going to use more plant-based ingredients, I realised there weren’t really any rules for that because it’s such a new way of cooking. I think that’s what really influenced the way that I cook. I realised that it was this exciting, new territory, where I didn’t have to stick to such a specific and traditional way of doing things. I think that’s when I realised my career was starting to grow in a different direction.

Are you vegan yourself then, or is that just what you happen to cook?

I cook and eat more or less the same stuff. There are a lot of chefs that will cook very differently to how they eat at home, but for me it’s more about blending it together. I don’t really believe in cooking something that I wouldn’t want to eat myself. In London I would consider myself mostly vegan, but if I’m in a place somewhere in the world where it makes sense to eat a certain food, then I can easily be influenced by those local ingredients – I have no problem doing that. I was in Nice for quite a while, and I did eat quite a bit of fish there.

For me, it’s more about blending into the environment you’re in and eating what makes sense in that location.

Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve got a lot of family in Greece, and obviously their cuisine is based a lot around things like cheese and fish, so when you travel there, it’s hard not to eat those things.

Exactly, and I also think the quality is and important part of it. I think eating a packaged piece of cheese from the supermarket is different to eating some that has been made on a really amazing farm. It’s part of the culture there which makes a big difference.

What inspired you to create DeadHungry in 2015?

I’d been working in restaurants for quite a few years, and I realised that the restaurant pace was quite draining. I couldn’t see myself doing that full time for the rest of my life. There was an aspect of photography that I’ve always loved, which started off as a hobby rather than a career. But from the beginning I decided I was going to pursue a career in food and with that and I knew there was an element of creating visuals that I was really drawn to.

I really love creating imagery with cooking, so I found a way of blending the two together. But I never thought I was going to become a photographer – it was never a goal, it just happened.

Your work explores the different textural potential of food and objects, and your film direction, particularly with Bottega Veneta employs similar aesthetics and sensory techniques to ASMR videos. Do you draw inspiration from things like that? It seems like exploring different colours and forms is a key part of your work.

I’m not specifically influenced by things like ASMR. I would say it’s more a case of me liking anything detail oriented. I like anything that focusses on a great depth of colours and textures in general, and I think that’s something that we don’t really see much in food photography, apart from real close-ups of food that I think feel quite commercial.

I was always interested in things that were odd and almost a little bit repulsive. That part of food photography is something that I don’t think a lot of food photographers touch on. That’s become my point of view over time. It’s more about photographing things that we’re not used to seeing, for example I love to photograph things that are rotting, but as a food photographer, that’s not really something that you’re going to focus on, but it’s something that I personally find really visually appealing.

Your work has a very playful feel to it and at times, a darker sense of humour that shows off a different side to food photography. What inspires you to combine the worlds of gastronomy with art and fashion in this way?

Again, that wasn’t something that I specifically thought I wanted to do. Those were just the type of clients that started coming my way, and I realised I had to adapt my work to fit the fashion world and its products in that way.

I think I’m inspired more by fashion photographers than food photographers – like more art photographers and still life photographers. That’s where my references come from. It wasn’t a conscious effort of combining the worlds of food and fashion, but over time, working with a lot of fashion brands and clients, it evolved into that.

I also noticed that some of your photographs are reminiscent of classic still lifes, but with a modern twist. Some of your tables are set in the style of the 60s and 70s, and have a nostalgic feel to them, particularly with the colourful jellies. Do you draw much inspiration from these eras?

I think I’m inspired by those eras for sure. It’s embedded into my work somehow. It’s not necessarily something I’m specifically drawn to, but there’s definitely a nostalgic feel to what I do.

I’m just attracted to anything beautiful, and perhaps a little romantic at times. I think that’s just a product of my taste.

What’s your usual working process – how do you approach developing new ideas?

I approach new ideas in lots of different ways, it just depends on what I’m doing. If I’m thinking of a photoshoot, then it’s more about understanding the product. If I’m working with a brand, I try to understand what their idea is and how I can then integrate that into what I do.

If I’m testing and developing a new dish or certain flavours, then it starts with a couple of ingredients that I want to work with – usually something seasonal that’s just become available. In that case, it’s more a matter of just testing it in my kitchen until I have something that I like.

I follow quite simple guidelines with the way that I shoot – I’m either shooting a beautiful dish as it is, or I photograph the process of it, as sometimes that looks even better than the final product. There are certain things I’ll make that are delicious to eat but that might not necessarily look very good on camera.

In terms of pure photography when it doesn’t have anything to do with a really tasty dish, then it’s more about getting the right elements in the studio on that day and getting my team to do the things they are good at, and honestly just having fun and not overthinking too much.

I think the best ideas come when you have a solid idea in your head, you don’t overthink every shot and you just have an overall idea of what the mood is going to be. The rest just falls into place.

What artists and chefs inspire you at the moment?

There are some pastry chefs that I love like Cédric Grolet in Paris. He’s very famous now but I’ve been following him for quite a while. There’s also this amazing artist called Craig Boagey that I discovered who does these incredible paintings of mushrooms but I’m also a huge fan of Sam Youkilis who does lots of moving images of mountains and stunning landscapes (amongst other things including lots of food) which remind me of home. Things come and go. I get really obsessed with people over a few weeks or a few months at a time and then I’ll move on to something else.

Do you feel like your identity as a chef and as a creative is rooted more in France or London?

I’ve lived in London my whole adult life, so I think everything that I’ve ever created with DeadHungry has been created here, so I’d say that my work is deeply rooted here. In terms of my inspiration, that definitely comes from other places. I grew up in the Alps and spent most of my childhood there, so that’s a very special place for me. Every time I go back, I feel really inspired.

It’s funny though, because I eat very differently when I’m there compared to how I eat here, and I think of food in a completely different way. I think London has this immense pressure – there’s this stress to deliver things that are exciting and different all the time, whereas in other places you don’t think of it like that. Instead, you think of food more as a necessity rather than an artform. I think they’re both very important and they’re both part of how I work. They’re two very different approaches but I don’t think I could do what I do without them both.

What do you find most interesting about the intersections of the culinary and fashion worlds?

When you work for a food client that wants to sell a product and wants to focus on what that food is for a restaurant or a hotel etc, I think you can get so stuck in trying to sell something, that you forget you can have fun and play around with it. What I really love about shooting food for a fashion brand is that it doesn’t really matter what the food is, as long as the overall image looks good or has an energy or an emotion attached to it that is interesting and visually appealing.

If you were just focussing on food clients, all you really want to do is make something look delicious, and that’s not always the best way of taking an amazing image. Sometimes trying to be too realistic takes away from the magic of creating an image. That’s what I really like doing with brands that aren’t necessarily always about food – you can have more fun with them without having to worry about what every element looks like. As soon as you start to do that you lose the sense of a really interesting image, and it just becomes more about the product.

With the theme of this issue being Identity, I thought it would be interesting to hear about your signature dishes or any favourite recipes from your childhood.

Honestly, the thing I love to cook the most is pizza. I know it sounds really basic, but it’s what I love to make the most. It’s so simple and it’s something that everyone loves, but its also something that is a lot more difficult than people think – it took me years to perfect a really good dough.

I also love pastries, and I love to cook with seaweed. I don’t really have a specific recipe that I go back to, but there are certain kinds of food that I seem to always go back to, and then maybe new flavour combinations will come out of that.

I’m really into cooking vegetable skewers at the moment, but things come and go depending on the season. Since I’ve been vegan, I find the versatility of an ingredient like seaweed to be really interesting.

What stands out to you most about the London food scene?

The level of the food industry is really high in London. When I go back to places like France, people always ask me ‘don’t you miss French food and French ingredients?’ and in Italy it’s the same. People say the food is disgusting in London, but I’ve had some of the best food in the world here. There are so many people from all over the world, and so many different communities – you can go east and see the Vietnamese community, you can go a little bit more north and see the Caribbean community, and every community has some stand out places that are incredible.

Something I miss when I go away is that idea that I can have food from all over the world. If you know where you’re going, you can find things that are incredibly special, and I love that.

The downsides are that it’s a very fast-paced city, and a lot of restaurants open and close really quickly, because its very expensive and its not necessarily financially viable to run a restaurant. I think in general, it’s a very hard city to break into. The food industry is one of the most difficult industries to get into. It’s very challenging to own a restaurant and I admire people who can actually run a restaurant 24/7, because it’s so demanding and such hard work. But I think it’s also a very special place for food.

I love it. It’s so diverse, and we have some of the best chefs in the world here. So many chefs come through London just to open a restaurant because they know the clientele is here.

Do you think you would ever live anywhere else?

That’s the question I’m asking myself! I’ve been here for 14 years, and I love it, it’s an exciting city, but I think the older I get, the more I realise I’m ready to live a life that’s a little bit more relaxed.

I think as long as I have a foot in London then that’s fine. I’d still want to be in the city, because it’s an exciting place to be, and I think you learn so much from other people here and get so easily inspired. I don’t think the level of creativity would be the same in a smaller city, and I think I would miss that if I left. But I’m definitely drawn to a more relaxed lifestyle with a bit of sun.

Is sustainability important to you and your work?

Yes, its really important! It wasn’t something I thought was that important when I started working, but now I think every chef in the world has some level of responsibility and should understand that we can’t really be cooking in the same way that we were 50 years ago. I think if we want to move to a more sustainable food chain in general, and we want to really improve our systems, whether that’s the way we farm and fish or the way that we eat – I think it’s a collective effort.

I think chefs have a responsibility to show people options and to make good examples. I take it quite seriously, that’s why I don’t cook with meat and fish anymore. Especially in a big city, you hear lots of people say, ‘what if we all bought meat and fish from sustainable farms?’ and that’s great if you have the money to do that. I don’t disagree with the idea that we should still be eating meat every once in a while, I just don’t think it should be part of our diets in the way that it is now – I think it should be something we do extremely rarely.

The problem is that it’s cheaper to buy a kilo of chicken wings in a supermarket than it is to buy really good quality vegetables. I think that’s where the responsibility for chefs lies, in breaking away from that broken system.

How would you define your visual language?

It’s quite dynamic and has a touch of camp to it. There’s something very raw and vibrant to it as well. The idea of photographing things that are very realistic doesn’t appeal to me. I like things that are a bit surreal. That’s what’s fun with photography – being able to replicate something that you don’t always see with your own eyes. I don’t understand the point of photographing things the way that you see them in real life. Why not have fun with it?

There are amazing photographers that do documentary and journalistic work. Some people are very good at that, but for me, it’s more about being able to capture something that is a little bit surreal.

What’s been the most daring or challenging thing you’ve done in your career so far?

I think generally, opening the studio a couple of years ago – that was very challenging. So far, it’s been trying to establish myself as a chef and a photographer on the same level. That was something that before I had the studio, I was really struggling to do, and my career was moving more towards creating imagery and less towards cooking, so being able to establish that has been very important. It has been challenging but also very rewarding, because I realised how important they both are, and how I couldn’t really be doing one without the other.

I think the most challenging things are yet to come. I’m looking at opening a new studio – something a bit more stable and solid, that could be running a more regularly than what I’m doing now. At the moment my studio is here, but I only open it every once in a while for dinners, so I’m looking to open something that could be a bit more permanent.

Agnes Questionmark

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page (044)

Feature · Agnes Questionmark (Agnes?)
Words · Nicola Barrett

“This is my dream, of being a new creature, half-human, half fish, to be a hybrid, something that can’t be recognised or put in a box.”

During May of this year, while we were just emerging out of a third lockdown and entering a world that was both forever changed and somewhat the same, something else, or rather someone, was also in the midst of transformation. In an abandoned health centre in Belsize Park the art installation/performance Transgenesis curated by The Orange Garden and Charlie Mills, was taking place. Over the course of twenty-three days, Italian artist Agnes Questionmark (Agnes?) climbed into the body of a giant octopus sculpture, which took up the entirety of a drained swimming pool, and stayed there for eight hours every day until the exhibition was over.

For Agnes Questionmark (Agnes?) the start of the exhibition was also the start of her transition from the gender she was assigned at birth. However, she also considers herself trans-species, stating that her “dysphoria is not only gender-related but of species too. I wish I could find a hormone that allows me to become an octopus.” The sea plays a big part in Agnes Questionmark (Agnes?)’ work, she grew up on her father’s boat and being underwater is a comforting experience for her, which she has likened to returning to the womb. NR Magazine joins the artist in conversation.

Your father was a sailor and you grew up on a boat. What was that like and how do you think those experiences have influenced your artwork specifically?

I grew up in my father’s boat. At the age of three, I discovered the underwater world holding his hand and at the age of eight, I dived for the first time by myself. The experience of being underwater was always a comfort zone, a familiar place where I would feel at home. I would fish and hunt, explore the fluid element with my body, feeling part of that habitat.
Being completely submerged was what I liked the most. In that precise moment, which only lasted a few seconds, I would feel at peace. Under the water, where sound is muffled, where sight is blurred, where touch is slimy, my body becomes light, my skin soft, I feel a sense of belonging, it’s like going back to the origin and falling into the arms of mother sea.

When my mother told me that, before she gave birth, I would hide in the womb, I realised that I had an unresolved relationship with my mother’s womb. I realised that my whole life I was trying to go back into my mother’s womb. I am trying to recreate that sensorial experience, being into the amniotic liquid, in the placenta. And the place where I felt closer to my mother’s womb is under the water.
Through my art and my performances, I am creating the feeling of being inside my mother’s womb, to perhaps solve my relationship with it.

I also grew up by the sea and one of my favourite games was to grab a big rock and sink to the seafloor to see how long I could hold my breath for. You stated that “Underwater was always a safe place, a place of comfort.” Did you ever play similar games and do you consider your artwork an extension of the play and exploration the ocean encourages in our childhood?

Holding myself with a rock underwater is still my favourite game. I can now hold my breath for about two minutes, so I have lots of fun holding myself with whatever I find under the water. As I said before, while I am underwater I remind myself that I am still in the womb. I like to watch around me and feel part of the habitat, I would look at the fish and pretend to talk to them, I would look at the rocks and pretend they are part of my house.

Your performance in Transgenesis lasted eight hours a day for twenty-three days. How did you cope with such long performances and did the experience affect you after the exhibition was finished?

Transgenesis was a ritual of self-destruction that announced the beginning of a new transformation. The day I started the performance was the day I started my hormone replacement therapy (HRT). While my body was standing at the top of a giant octopus, inside my body a real transformation was taking place. I was changing in real-time in front of the spectator. Even though the changes were not visible I would feel them. Since the first day I felt my body differently, touching myself felt different, my mood was different and my body began little changes that only I could perceive. Alas! I could not enjoy them because I was trapped and chained in the octopus. Every day I had to stand for 8 hours and perform.
It was devastating, an extreme action that consumed all my forces and all my energies. I felt exhausted, the more I would keep going the more I would feel the pain. I needed this process of destruction, I needed to die, to let a part of myself decay in order to flourish a new being.

After the performance, I felt like a new person. Agnes? Was finally born and my new life began. It was the most dramatic ritual I could ever stage and I decided to share it with everyone. The show went viral, more than four thousand people booked themselves in and walked along my installation. There was a sort of peregrination towards the octopus. Everyone wanted to come see the great mother.

Over the course of the twenty-three-day performance that you did for Transgenesis you must have seen a lot of visitors. How did they normally react to your work and what was the most interesting reaction you witnessed?

Most visitors couldn’t believe their eyes. I immediately felt that I created something out of normal by looking at their faces, they were all scared but somehow enchanted by me. The experience was sublime, in a romantic view of a tragedy happening in front of their eyes, like a shipwreck. The viewer was contemplating a suffering being from a safe position, but they were still scared of falling, they wouldn’t get too close, they wouldn’t talk too loud, they would carefully choose their movements, they were all attracted by me but also very frightened. The energy in the room was very dense, all day there was a constant flux of people entering in the dark and loud space. Sometimes I would rest, sometimes I would be very angry, sometimes I would be calm and quiet. Often the spectator determined the energy of the room, I would perform with them at an unconscious level.
One day, a lady came right in front of me, she looked directly into my eyes and we looked at each other for a long time, I was repeatedly moving my arms back and forth following my breath, slowly she started synchronising my movements, it felt like an instinctive reaction to the connection we established. We performed for some minutes, together, moving our arms, looking directly in our eyes without touching but still connecting.

A man used to come every other day, he used to sit down in front of me with dark sunglasses and watch me for hours. No movements, he would just sit down, listen and watch me perform. One day towards the end of the performance he stood up and started dancing like crazy. At that point I was exhausted, it was almost 8 hours of performance, but suddenly I felt all the energies recharged, he gave me strength and I started to perform with him, I felt like laughing and screaming but I could just express myself through my arms and my breath. Later on I discovered he was the singer of R.E.M.
Since the show was completely free we had the most disparate range of audience, from kids to adults, young students, to curators and gallerists, bougie of the neighbourhood or those who lived or were just lost on the street. An old woman came twice, I recognised her because she was holding the same plastic bag, she was messy and dressed as if she just came out from a Tim Burton movie. She wasn’t scared at all, she immediately came close to me, she came very close until she touched one tentacle. She was the one who came closer and stood up next to me and watched me from a very close distance. At first, I was scared because I felt vulnerable, I felt I had no vantage point towards her, she made me feel tiny and shy even though I was a giant octopus 5 metres tall and 9 metres long…

Your work is very personal and explores your transition. Do you think that the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have allowed people more time and freedom to explore their own gender identity?

Yes, of course, statistics say that gender transition triplicated after Covid. I don’t think it was a matter of having more time to reflect and think but rather we were forced to face our own body because we were left alone with it. There was no opportunity to escape or avoid ourselves, no places to hide. Alone with our bodies, so we all had to find new relationships with ourselves and new compromises.

You have spoken of how your work explores the scientific, particularly in relation to the body. Do you think as technology advances the use of cybernetic body enhancements will become commonplace? Is that something you would potentially explore in the future?

I was always interested in re-shaping and re-exploring my body. I feel our body is a potential machine in constant transformation. Watching my body changing radically through medicines is inspiring me to transform it at an even deeper level. Gender transition is the first step towards my cybernetic future. My next step would be exploring the possibility to expand my senses towards other beings in the sea, and therefore use extensions of my body to connect with them.

You have stated that your dysphoria is not only related to your assigned gender but mainly caused by your assigned species. Recently there has been a rise in popularity in non-human x human relationships in media. Do you think there is a collective desire for marginalized groups to move away from ‘humanity’ and escape post-capitalist patriarchal trauma by becoming and embracing the otherworldly?

Fascination with the non-human is becoming more popular and of a trend. Human prostheses, body extensions, claws, tentacles, tails, we dream of becoming a post-human creature to transcend our humanity and become something new. This is my dream, of being a new creature, half-human, half fish, to be a hybrid, something that can’t be recognised or put in a box. I am tired of being a human, my body is not representing what I feel. I feel more connected to the sea, I wish to talk with its creatures and connect with them and perhaps create new bonds. For this reason, we should rethink our way of communicating and relating to the world and start creating new ways of communication, starting with ourselves and our bodies. If we want to be post-human we ought to destroy our notion of being human and see ourselves as a potential being in constant transformation.

You have spoken often about wishing to return to your mother’s womb and your connection with female octopi who die when they become mothers. Do you consider yourself to have a fascination with the concept of motherhood and do you consider the creation of your artwork as a kind of birth?

The concept of the womb is the one of gestating life. I feel like my art is a womb, my studio is a placenta where things and beings are born. It’s a place that destroys to reshape itself, that kills and gives birth, like the mother. The mother has always been the figure of life and death at the same time. This is why we are all scared of our mother because we know she can kill us.

What advice do you have for young creatives looking to explore their identity and what does identity mean to you?

Identity doesn’t exist, gender is a construction of society. So forget about everything you learned and do whatever you like. You make your own rules. Be a rock star, be a rebel, don’t give a fuck about anything; don’t listen to anyone, follow your instinct and make lots of mistakes.
I always remember that I have the agency of being whatever I want to be, and If you want to be an octopus I am proof that you can do it!

Are you working on any projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future?

I am transforming at a fast speed, everyday I am a new person. So my work is changing very fast too. I see and feel things differently, so I am enjoying my transformation and letting my new ideas come out. There are lots of projects I am working on at the moment, one of them is in collaboration with a great Greek artist who is also a trans-pieces queen so we are making something very special together.

Ziqian Liu

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 316

Feature · Ziqian Liu
Words · Nicola Barrett

“props are not only objects, but also something that brings me ‘knowledge’ through photography.”

A faceless woman with black hair is reflected in the round silvery disc of a mirror. Surrounded sometimes by flowers, sometimes by fruit, these photographs are minimalistic and infinitely satisfying. Ziqian Liu is an independent Chinese photographer who developed her self taught practice whilst struggling to find a full-time job after graduation.

Liu explores two main themes within her work. The first examines the “symbiosis between human beings and nature” She states that “to some extent, it can be said that human beings and the rest of the natural world are equal – we live in the same world, breathing the same air, mutual tolerance.” Because of this, she attempts to illustrate a state of harmony between humans and nature within her work.

Secondly, she investigates the theme of perspective. Through her work, she conveys the need to scrutinise the same thing from different angles so one might discover different findings from the ones we already know. While she desires symmetry and order she understands that this is not always possible in an imperfect world. “In her work, the image in the mirror represents the idealised world she wishes to live in, and the integration with the outside is just a reminder to respect and recognise the imbalance in the real world, but also to adhere to the order and principles of our hearts.” NR Magazine joins the artist in conversation.

You have said that you want your photographs to show a peaceful harmony between humans and nature. However, is it even possible to have that said harmony in a post-capitalist society, where even with ethical sourcing the props you use in your images, such as the flowers and fruit, might have had a negative impact on nature?

I think the harmony mentioned still exists.

First of all, the props used in the pictures are all things that will be involved in my life. I will not prepare the props or throw them away for shooting but shoot what is in the home. Flowers are always in my home; they are my good friends. Fruit or vegetables are also on the menu of the day. In fact, when I shoot, I usually use the plant as the subject and myself as the prop. I will not deliberately change the form of the plant for the sake of the picture, but let my body match the inherent posture of the plant.

In the post-capitalist society, knowledge is in an irreplaceable and important position. Of course, I don’t think there is a clear boundary in the scope of knowledge. I think these props are not only objects, but also something that brings me “knowledge” through photography. I gained knowledge about plants while taking care of them, but more important is the change that solitude brought to my heart during shooting. The whole process was very positive and harmonious for me.

You have said you use mirrors in your images because you want to create the feeling of another reality within your work. Mirrors have often been considered as a bridge between reality in both mythology and popular culture, such as Louise Carol’s Alice Through the Looking Glass. Are these cultural stories something that has inspired you?

In the beginning, it was a very coincidental reason to use mirrors in the images. Originally, I was just taking pictures of plants at home. When I had a rest, I picked up the mirror beside me to look at myself. At that time, I suddenly had the inspiration to try using a mirror in my photography. Later, I found this way of shooting is very interesting, so I stuck with it.

Later, when I saw works in which mirrors appeared, such as movies or even songs, I would feel very familiar, and I would pay special attention to the way mirrors appeared in these works, which sometimes brought me inspiration.

While you consider your work ‘a space that belongs to yourself’, you have also said that you want viewers to be able to imagine that the protagonist of these images can be anyone. Have you ever considered using plus-sized models or models from different backgrounds to create more diversity in your work?

Maybe I won’t consider a model for a few years. All my works are self-portrait to find the most suitable way to get along with myself, which is also the reason and original intention for me to stick to photography.

During the daily shooting, I was alone without any assistant or other people to help me. It is only when I am alone that I am most at peace and inspired to create these images. Sometimes I can only hear my own breathing. I can’t concentrate if I’m talking to people while I’m taking pictures. Secondly, only I have the best idea of what kind of picture I want to finish, such as how high the arm should be raised, how much distance is between me and the mirror, and so on. A very small difference will make a big difference. These details cannot be communicated with the model effectively, so I might insist on completing the work all by myself.

What does identity mean to you as an artist?

For me, identity is the same as occupation. It simply summarises who I am, but does not show the whole of a person. Identity is not important to me.

In fact, I only think that I am taking pictures in the way I love. I am very honoured to be regarded as an artist. This status also encourages me to continue to be myself, not to be disturbed by the outside world, and to shoot more pictures that can bring peace and beauty to the viewer.

You have mentioned your love for flowers many times and you often use them in your work. Do you choose the specific flowers according to their meaning? And if so does that meaning give a hidden message to each photograph?

To be honest there are no specific choices and no hidden messages. As mentioned in the first question, I only take existing flowers at home. Before I became a photographer, I always go to the flower shop every weekend to pick out some fresh flowers, I enjoyed the vitality of my home very much.

You have stated that you use your artwork as a way to get to know yourself. Do you consider your art as a form of therapy to help you come to terms with your identity in life?

I quite agree with what you said. I think artistic creation is a way for me to heal myself, just like yoga and meditation, which can bring positive effects to people.

Through photography, I find that the fusion of identity has a lot to do with the change of perspective, and the biggest feeling it gives me is that I can accept myself more easily. Before photography, I was very concerned about my appearance and looked in the mirror to see if there were any flaws that needed to be covered up. But by shooting with a mirror, I had a chance to see myself from different angles, and I discovered that the so-called ‘flaws’ have their own beauty, they are just a normal part of my body. I think the integration of identity has also led to a change in my mindset, a more positive and peaceful self.

Not long ago, I just summoned the courage to face a part of my body in front of the camera – the wrinkles on my stomach. It was the first time that I discovered the beauty of the traditional impression of “flaws”.

You have stated that you wish your work to be apolitical. Do you think that choice comes from a place of privilege, as many artists are unable to separate politics from their work, or is it a necessary choice for your own personal safety?

I don’t pay attention to politics too much in daily life, so the content of my works is mainly about the harmonious coexistence between human and nature, and has nothing to do with politics. But if when the political inspires my expression of desire, I don’t think I will withdraw.

You have said before that you enjoy solitude. Did you find that the pandemic allowed you to be more productive and was a fulfilling period in terms of your art practice?

Yes, I enjoy solitude. All my work is done in solitude. In my opinion, in art practice, the most productive period is before I found my shooting style, and the most creative and efficient period is in the groping stage.

As more and more pictures are taken, I set higher requirements for myself, hoping that the content and details will be more refined. And I don’t want to be confined by a fixed style, so I try to make some changes on the original basis, so it takes more time to complete a work now than in the past.

What advice do you have for young creatives who want to work with photography?

It is important to have confidence in ourselves, trying not to imitate. There is no good, bad, beautiful or ugly work. It is enough that the work comes from the heart and is sincere.

Are you working on any specific projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future?

I like to let nature take its course and have no plans for the future. Now I am still working steadily on my own works.

Ludwig Godefroy

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 300

Feature · Ludwig Godefroy
Words · Nicola Barrett

“the relationship with the emotions you will feel in a space is the very essence of a project”

Raw concrete, old brick and pale gravel glow under the golden light of the sun in Mérida, the capital city of Mexico’s Yucatán state, which is considered as the centre of indigenous Mayan civilisation. When designing Casa Mérida, architect Ludwig Godefroy asked the question “How is it possible to build architecture that reflects and considers the Yucatán identity, to make this house belong to its territory? In other words, how could this house be Mayan?” Inside the decor is as simple as the outside, with wood, stone, and pops of blue which mirrors the turquoise swimming pool at the back of the property.

The site itself has rather odd proportions for a house, it’s only eight meters wide and eighty meters long, resembling a road or pathway more than a traditional plot of land than a home. However, Godefroy has turned this to his advantage, inserting open patios between the buildings to create traditional airflow cooling concepts in a city which is known for its extreme climate and high temperatures. He also references a Sacbé, which is the name for the ancient Mayan road system which would connect the indigenous people’s of the land. “Those straight lines used to connect all together the different elements, temples, plazas, pyramids and cenotes of a Mayan city; sacred ways which could even go from one site to another along a few hundred kilometres.” NR Magazine joins the artist in conversation.

How do you think cultural identity influences design and architecture?

Definitely, it does according to my way of thinking. I always look around me and since I arrived in Mexico, it’s been now 14 years, my architecture changed, became heavier, made out of concrete, stone and tropical wood. Mexico changed my way of designing, I started to look at prehispanic architecture and mixed it with my personal taste, the bunkers from Normandy (where I was born), my European education and background working with OMA and Enric Miralles / Benedetta Tagliabue.

But now, I definitely consider myself a Mexican architect and not a French or European architect anymore. Mexico is the country where I live, it’s my inspiration, and it’s made out of Mexican references and Mexican moments of life. The way I’m building right now is also Mexican, more handcrafted and less industrialised, always integrating locals knowledge and details coming from Mexican vernacular architecture and ways of building it.

My architecture became a bunker from Normandy on the outside, protecting my personal Mexican pyramid on the inside, both connected by the use of vernacular simplicity; vernacular simplicity from my fisherman village in Normandy being, in a way very, close to the vernacular simplicity of the Mexican countryside where I build.

Do you think there is much to learn about sustainability from indigenous’s cultures like the Mayans and which of these methods were used when building Casa Mérida?

It’s a very complicated question, the context of our lives radically changed, and the globalisation as well. But definitely, our relation with nature is the one that suffered the most. I don’t think we have to feel ashamed of building, I mean I’m an architect and it’s my job, but probably what I’ve learned from indigenous cultures and, in my case, more specifically from pre-hispanic civilisation legacy is: what do we want to feel inside of our buildings, how can the atmosphere of my architecture can remain sacred and sensitive?

According to my thinking, the relationship with the emotions you will feel in a space is the very essence of a project, which means once you created emotions in architecture, you don’t need much more. You can naturally step back to more simple architectural elements, made out of simple but massive materials, with the ability to get old instead of getting damaged by time. I want to run away from the “everything throwaway mentality” of our modern society, getting rid of the unnecessary, creating timeless spaces which will slowly change under the action of time, ageing being part of the architecture, an architecture which will get covered by a new coat of materiality: “the patina of time”.

Are there any new technologies in architecture that you are particularly excited about?

Not at all. I really love technology, I need the internet non-stop, computers and smartphones but I still remain a peasant. I was born in Normandy, in a fisherman’s village and I still like what’s most simple in life. I still like to push and pull a switch to turn on and off the light, I don’t need my fridge to tell me what to buy, and I still like to open the curtains myself in the morning. I like the wind, I like the light, I like the heat, I don’t need much technology around me, only music. I enjoy waking up in the morning to prepare a nice black expresso coffee and go to my garden to observe the plants, the trees, the birds and the lizards; it’s my process to start working on my projects every day, contemplation.

Rising temperatures are becoming an increasingly huge issue and you designed Casa Mérida specifically to combat high temperatures without having to use AC. Do you think housing around the world will begin to implement techniques like these in the future or will the majority continue to rely on AC?

No, I don’t think so! I also understand there are parts of the world where it’s almost impossible to survive without AC, and Mérida, Yucatán is one of those. Casa Mérida is a house designed for pleasure, it’s a vacation house, it’s easier than a main residence, or an office space. I made a project based on natural crossed ventilation to avoid the use of AC, thinking if you offer the option to live in a well-ventilated space, maybe you’ll help people change their minds.

My vision of architecture focuses on changing people habits, rather than looking for technological improvements, towards a more simple way of living with fewer necessities, to minimise our impact on the ecology of our planet. It’s basically what vernacular architecture does and always has done, I’m not inventing anything, but just trying to go back to basics.

You kept elements of the old house including the front facade and the old buildings ‘bones’. Do you think this kind of perseveration is vital when modernising homes like this one?

Yes, I love it. I always think you belong to a permanent work in progress. There were people before you on the construction site you’re working on, and there will be people after you. I see architecture as a palimpsest, when you clean up the lamb parchment, the previous story will never vanish 100%. There is always something remaining from the past story in the back of the new story you are writing on top of your palimpsest.

You have stated that Casa Mérida reflects Yucatán identity, in what specific ways does it do so?

I always design my architecture as a peasant would. I always draw short structures, using short beams, between 4 to 5 meters long; dimensions I know any mason in the world is able to build without any specialised skills. I know this way everything will be local, starting with the workers. A house in Yucatán has to be built by people from Yucatán, It´s for me the first step to start belonging. I want my architecture to respond to local techniques, the stone, the wood I use will always change according to the region where I am building. As I said before, my architecture is always playing with temples and pyramids references. In the case of Casa Mérida, the house is organised along a Sacbé ”white way”, the Mayan roads that used to connect temples and pyramids together, ending in the swimming pool which looks like a concrete cenote.

Blue textiles have been used to mirror the house’s swimming pool which is inspired by cenotes. This reminded me of David Hockey’s swimming pool series, is there any connection or inspiration there?

To be honest no, but I really like the idea! Hockney’s work is beautiful, and I like the way it’s simple, almost naive sometimes, it matches with my architecture I guess.

What challenges did you face whilst working on this project and how did you overcome them?

I would say the concrete. Mérida is not a place where people are used to rough concrete. Rough concrete is something more common in Oaxaca state or Mexico City. So we had to learn together with the constructor in charge, explaining to the workers what we wanted to reach. For a mason rough concrete is unfinished, they don’t catch the beauty of it at the beginning. We had to explain it to them.

But definitely, our concrete is not perfect, This is part of something I totally accept, having un-perfect concrete, trying to get better and better during the process of building. Accident is part of my aesthetic, I always tell my clients to stop looking at Tadao Ando, we won’t make a Japanese concrete, we will make a Mexican concrete, rougher than the Japanese one, A perfectly un-perfect concrete.

What advice would you give to young creatives who are interested in architecture?

Don’t buy books and magazines on contemporary architecture. Only buy books and magazines that were published up until the 80s. This way, with those references, you won’t be tempted to literally copy them, you will have to reinterpret them, so this way you will make them yours.

Are you working on any projects at the moment and do you have any plans for the future?

Yes, right now I’m finishing three houses, one outside Mexico City, one in Puerto Escondido Oaxaca and another one in Mérida Yucatán. I have also one hotel under construction in Puerto Escondido Oaxaca. I’m about to break ground for a new house in Mérida Yucatán, a house/Airbnb hotel close to Huatulco Oaxaca, and another house/Airbnb hotel in Roca Blanca Oaxaca. Meanwhile, we are working on three new projects in the conceptual phase in the office.

TeamLab

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · TeamLab
Words · Nicola Barrett

“We human beings have emotions and we also have something we can’t explain with words – it’s cool, it’s beautiful and it’s fun”

Brightly coloured flora paints itself across the heads of gallery visitors while children, and sometimes adults, chase otherworldly fauna as they dance across the walls of the space. You might walk into one room and find yourself knee-deep in water, projections of vibrant carp swimming around your legs. Walk into another and you are surrounded by green lily pads, some as tall as your head. One thing for sure is nothing is ever the same, and you never quite know what you can expect to find in each room, in each exhibition.

Make no mistake, while teamLab was first formed in Japan in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko and a group of his friends, it is now an international art collective made up of “an interdisciplinary group of various specialists such as artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and architects whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world.”

Transcending boundaries is a key concept for teamLab as it states that “in order to understand the world around them, people separate it into independent entities with perceived boundaries between them.” Digital technology allows people to express themselves creatively in a way that is free from physical constraint and the boundary between the viewer and artwork can become blurred. NR Magazine joined teamLab in conversation.

Do you consider teamLab’s work as a form of therapy and a way for visitors to navigate the collective trauma of living in a post-capitalist society that imposes a number of boundaries on us?

A: We are not sure what our output is classified as – we only seek to create what we believe in, regardless of the genre it turns out to be.

Art is something we can’t explain with words and history will decide whether our output qualifies as art. If we can change people’s minds, then it’s art. Art raises questions and design provides answers. We human beings have emotions and we also have something we can’t explain with words – it’s cool, it’s beautiful and it’s fun. What our exhibitions do is underpin the impossibility to “have.” None of our visitors can own the artworks: they can’t “have” but they can “be” (following Shakespeare’s immortal quote, “To be or not to be”). Today’s society drives us to “have” which imposes limits and division. This simple structure of capitalism binds us, but the internet and the digital world beyond have no limitations. At the same time, you don’t technically own anything on Google or Facebook, but you are part of the community. Therefore, you can’t “have” but you can “be.” Our artwork is shared the same way. We wanted to make something that will reach people’s hearts.

teamLab encourages visitors to interact with the artworks and capture their experiences for social media. However, do you think there is a danger of people focusing too much on getting the ‘perfect shot’ and not truly experiencing the work?

A: We don’t “encourage” people to use social media.

But at the same time, we think that the act of expressing oneself is not a bad thing.

Shooting photos or videos and even sharing those with people all over the world is also one mode of self expression, right?

It is a natural human desire to share emotions or something that is moving and inspiring. However, the “experience” cannot be cut out.

Through smartphones or TVs, people can understand only with their heads. Knowledge may be gained, but the sense of values and perceptions cannot be changed or broadened. Only through the actual, physical experience of the world or artworks, people can start to recognise things differently. Even if people look at teamLab’s works on Instagram, their values will not be broadened.

teamLab wants to continue creating experiences that cannot be shared with just photos or videos.

Our interest is not the technology itself, but instead, we’re trying to explore the concept of “digital” and how it can enhance art.

Most of the Silicon Valley-originated technology is an extension of someone’s mind. Facebook, Twitter, these digital domains see the “self” as the principle. These are meant to be used personally.

What teamLab wants to do is to enhance the physical space itself using art. It doesn’t necessarily have to be yourself that intervenes with it. It can be other people or a group of people that vaguely includes you. And instead of a personal use, we want to make it usable by multiple people.

By digitising the space, we can indirectly change the relationships between people inside. If the presence of others can trigger the space to change, they’d become a part of the artwork. And if that change is beautiful, the presence of others can be something beautiful as well. By connecting digital technology and art, we think the presence of others can be made more positive.

How has the pandemic affected the collective and has it changed how teamLab approaches exhibiting art?

A: Right now, we are isolated due to our fear of the virus. But in order to overcome that, whether you are in lockdown or not, we hope to encourage you to realise that there never are and never were boundaries, that we are connected to the world just by existing in it, and that we don’t have to try to connect with others by rejecting them.

The fact that we can connect with each other, regardless of where we live or anything else, is a message that affirms human existence from the ground up. We would be happy if humans could accidentally connect with others and derive positive value from that.

Humanity has faced many problems over its history, but we do not believe that these problems have ever been solved by division.

The birth of civilised nations and the spread of infectious diseases were both the result of globalisation and the loss of world boundaries, but humanity has solved this problem not by dividing people, but by working together to develop drugs and vaccines, advance medical technology, and improve sanitation.

We believe that people need to remember the benefits of history and science because if we only look superficially at the immediate events of the current coronavirus pandemic, we promote emotional division.

Art and culture have expanded humanity’s “standards of beauty.” Art presents a new standard of beauty that has changed the way people see the world and, to put it plainly, has allowed them to see flowers as beautiful. teamLab’s artworks are also designed to help people experience the beauty of a world without boundaries and the beauty of anti-division.

Humans are driven by beauty. Corporate organisations seem to be driven by logic and language, but when we look at individuals, they often determine their actions based on their sense of beauty. For example, a person’s choice of a profession is heavily influenced by aesthetics, not rationality. The way in which “standards of beauty” are applied changes a person.

Everything in the world is built on a borderless, interconnected continuity. We believe that human beings should be celebrated for being connected to others and to the world and that experiencing a “world without boundaries” can change our values and behaviours and help us to move humanity in a positive direction.

This is a fundamental affirmation of human life.

We have created an artwork that allows people to experience being connected to others and the world, even in the comfort of their homes. Flowers Bombing Home is an artwork that transforms the television in your home into an artwork. The novel coronavirus has forced the world to become more isolated, causing people to become confined to their homes. This project was created to help us realise that our existence is connected to the world and to celebrate the fact that the world is connected.

However, as we mentioned, we believe that our art is meant to be experienced in person in a shared, physical space. So as the world opens up again, we are excited to welcome visitors back into our exhibitions, where they can explore the continuity of life and time.

Are there any new technologies that teamLab is particularly excited about and is planning on incorporating into the artwork?

A: Technology is just a tool, like paint.

Although it’s a tool, it does greatly affect the creation, just like how the Western landscape painting developed because it became possible to bring paints outdoors.

What really makes teamLab unique is not the technological advancement, but rather the fact that teamLab has become able to do truly massive art projects simultaneously worldwide in-house at a high speed – to the extent that no one has been able to do before.

We could say that technology is the core of our work, but it is not the most important part. It is still just a material or a tool for creating art.

We have been creating art using digital technology since the year 2001 with the aim of changing people’s values and contributing to societal progress. Although we initially had no idea where we could exhibit our art or how we could support the team financially, we also strongly believed in and were genuinely interested in the power of digital technology and creativity. We wanted to keep creating new things regardless of genre limitations, and we did.

Digital technology allows artistic expression to be released from the material world, gaining the ability to change form freely. The environments where viewers and artworks are placed together allow us to decide how to express those changes.

In art installations with the viewers on one side and interactive artworks on the other, the artworks themselves undergo changes caused by the presence and behaviour of the viewers. This has the effect of blurring the boundary lines between the two sides. The viewers actually become part of the artworks themselves. The relationship between the artwork and the individual then becomes a relationship between the artwork and the group. Whether or not another viewer was present within that space five minutes before, or the particular behaviour exhibited by the person next to you, suddenly becomes an element of great importance. At the very least, compared to traditional art viewing, people will become more aware of those around them. Art now has the ability to influence the relationship between the people standing in front of the artworks.

You have created an interactive at-home art installation, that people can access around the world, can you tell us more about that work?

A: The novel coronavirus has forced the world to become more isolated, causing people to become confined to their homes. This project was created to help us realise that our existence is connected to the world and to celebrate the fact that the world is connected.

The television in your home becomes art. Watch at home, participate at home, and connect with the world. People from around the world draw flowers, creating a single artwork that blooms in homes around the world.

Draw a flower on a piece of paper, your smartphone, or computer, and upload it. The flowers you draw and the flowers drawn by others bloom and scatter in real time on the YouTube Live Stream. If you connect your home television to YouTube, your television turns into art. As the petals scatter, the various flowers form a single new artwork together.

When a new flower is born, the name of the town where the flower was drawn is shown.

You can also download Your Flower Art, which combines the flowers you draw with those drawn by people around the world.

The flowers that people draw around the world will bloom until the end of the coronavirus. When the coronavirus ends, they will bloom and scatter all at once in various places all over the world. And, in the future, perhaps the flowers will continue to bloom forever as an artwork for people to remember this era.

It is stated that teamLabs work fuses together art and science but can you ever really have one without the other?

A: We have always liked science and art. We want to know the world, want to know humans, and want to know what the world is for humans.

Science raises the resolution of the world. When humans want to know the world, they recognise it by separating things. In order to understand the phenomena of this world, people separate things one after another.

For example, the universe and the earth are continuous, however, humans recognise the earth by separating it from the universe. To understand the forest, humans break it down into trees, separating the tree from the whole. Humans then cut the tree into cells to recognise the tree, cut the cells into molecules to recognise the cells, and cut the molecules into atoms to understand the molecules, and so on. That is science, and that is how science increases the resolution of the world.

But in the end, no matter how much humans divide things into pieces, they cannot understand the entirety. Even though what people really want to know is the world, the more they separate, the farther they become from the overall perception.

Humans, if left alone, recognise what is essentially continuous as separate and independent. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous continuity over an extremely long period of time, but human beings cannot recognise it without separating it into parts. People try to grasp the entirety by making each thing separate and independent.

Even though we are nothing but part of the world, we feel as if there is a boundary between the world and ourselves, as if we are living independently. We have always been interested in finding out why humans feel this way.

The continuity of life and death has been repeated for more than 4 billion years. However, for humans, even 100 years ago is a fictional world. I was interested in why humans have this perception.

How can we go beyond the boundaries of recognition? Through art, we wanted to transcend the boundaries of our own recognition. We wanted to transcend human characteristics or tendencies in order to recognise the continuity.

Art is a search for what the world is for humans. Art expands and enhances “beauty.” Art has changed the way people perceive the world.

Groups move by logic, but individuals decide their actions by beauty. Individuals’ behaviours are determined not by rationality but by aesthetics. In other words, “beauty” is the fundamental root of human behaviour. Art expands the notion of “beauty”. Art is what expands people’s aesthetics, that is, changes people’s behaviour.

It may be the whole world or only a part of the entirety, but it is art that captures and expresses it without dividing it. Art is a process to approach the whole. And by sharing it with others, the way people perceive the world changes. Through the enjoyment of art, the notion of “beautiful” expands and spreads, which in turn changes people’s perceptions of the world.

Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous continuity over an extremely long period of time. teamLab’s exhibitions aim to create an experience through which visitors recognise this continuity itself as beautiful, hence changing or increasing the way humans perceive the world.

So we can say that there is no boundary between science and art in our activity. Both of them are ways in which to recognise the world, and both are important to our aim.

Is there a specific teamLab work that stands out from the rest and if so why?

A: Our most recent works often stand out because our output is a result of accumulated knowledge and experiences.

But of our many exhibitions worldwide, one that holds a special place in our hearts is the annual outdoor exhibition teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live in Mifuneyama Rakuen in Kyushu.

The 500,000 square meter Mifuneyama Rakuen Park was created in 1845, during the end of the Edo period. Sitting on the borderline of the park is the famous 3,000-year-old sacred Okusu tree of Takeo Shrine. Also in the heart of the garden is another 300-year-old sacred tree. Knowing the significance of this, our forebears turned a portion of this forest into a garden, utilising the trees of the natural forest. The border between the garden and the wild forest is ambiguous, and when wandering through the garden, before they know it, people will find themselves entering the woods and animal trails. Enshrined in the forest is the Inari Daimyojin deity surrounded by a collection of boulders almost supernatural in their formation. 1,300 years ago, the famous priest Gyoki came to Mifuneyama and carved 500 Arhats. Within the forest caves, there are Buddha Figures that Gyoki directly carved into the rock face that still remain today.

The forest, rocks, and caves of Mifuneyama Rakuen have formed over a long time, and people in every age have sought meaning in them over the millennia. The park that we know today sits on top of this history. It is the ongoing relationship between nature and humans that has made the border between the forest and garden ambiguous, keeping this cultural heritage beautiful and pleasing.

Lost in nature, where the boundaries between man-made gardens and forests are unclear, we are able to feel like we exist in a continuous, borderless relationship between nature and humans. It is for this reason that teamLab decided to create an exhibition in this vast, labyrinthine space so that people will become lost and immersed in the exhibition and in nature.

We exist as a part of an eternal continuity of life and death, a process that has been continuing for an overwhelmingly long time. It is hard for us, however, to sense this in our everyday lives, perhaps because humans cannot easily conceptualise time for periods longer than their own lives. There is a boundary in our understanding of the continuity of time.

When exploring the forest, the shapes of the giant rocks, caves, and the forest allow us to better perceive and understand that overwhelmingly long time over which it all was formed. These forms can transcend the boundaries of our understanding of the continuity of time.

teamLab’s project, Digitized Nature, explores how nature can become art. The concept of the project is that non-material digital technology can turn nature into art without harming it.

These artworks explore how the forms of the forest and garden can be used as they are to create artworks that make it possible to create a place where we can transcend the boundary in our understanding of the continuity of time and feel the long, long continuity of life. Even in the present day, we can experiment with expressing this “Continuous Life” and continue to accumulate meaning in Mifuneyama Rakuen.

Have you found that digital interactive work has become more popular in recent years and if so why do you think that is the case?

A: To be honest, we do not know.

All we can say is that teamLab believes digital technology can expand art and that art made in this way can create new relationships between people.

Digital technology enables complex detail and freedom for change. Before people started accepting digital technology, information and artistic expression had to be presented in some physical form. Creative expression has existed through static media for most of human history, often using physical objects such as canvas and paint. The advent of digital technology allows human expression to become free from these physical constraints, enabling it to exist independently and evolve freely.

No longer limited to physical media, digital technology has made it possible for artworks to expand physically. Since art created using digital technology can easily expand, it provides us with a greater degree of autonomy within the space. We are now able to manipulate and use much larger spaces, and viewers are able to experience the artwork more directly.

The characteristics of digital technology allow artworks to express the capacity for change much more freely. Viewers, in interaction with their environment, can instigate perpetual change in an artwork. Through an interactive relationship between the viewers and the artwork, viewers become an intrinsic part of that artwork.

In interactive artworks that teamLab creates, because viewers’ movement or even their presence transforms the artwork, the boundaries between the work and viewers become ambiguous. Viewers become a part of the work. This changes the relationship between an artwork and an individual into a relationship between an artwork and a group of individuals. A viewer who was present 5 minutes ago, or how the person next to you is behaving now, suddenly becomes important. Unlike a viewer who stands in front of a conventional painting, a viewer immersed in an interactive artwork becomes more aware of other people’s presence.

Unlike a physical painting on a canvas, the non-material digital technology can liberate art from the physical. Furthermore, because of its ability to transform itself freely, it can transcend boundaries. By using such digital technology, we believe art can expand the beautiful. And by making interactive art, you and others’ presence becomes an element to transform an artwork, hence creating a new relationship between people within the same space. By applying such art to the unique environment, we wanted to create a space where you can feel that you are connected with other people in the world.

All we do is create what we believe in – our hope is that our output reaches people’s hearts and changes their ways of thinking or behaviour. Popularity is just a byproduct of that. We never consider popularity when working, all we focus on is creating something we believe in.

What advice do you have for young creatives who are interested in working with digital and interactive works?

A: teamLab was started by a group of friends who simply enjoyed spending time together, and it has continued to grow and change. If you only think in practical terms, logically, you will fail. It is good to start with the things you enjoy in life.

We aim to create artworks and experiences that allow people to experience the beauty of the world with their hearts and their bodies. In the 20th century, we were taught to only understand the world through our “heads,” but it is important to experience things with our hearts and our bodies. Do not think you can understand the world just through the internet.

Is teamLab working on anything at the moment and what plans does the collective have for the future?

A: You can find the information about upcoming exhibitions worldwide on our website – please check there for the latest updates!

Credits

Images · teamLAB
https://www.teamlab.art/

Naomi Gilon

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 262

Feature · Naomi Gilon
Words · Izzy Bilkus

“It flows, it bubbles, it can be matte, shiny, satin – it’s great”

Multidisciplinary artist Naomi Gilon has a rich history of experimentation that encompasses a wide range of methods and materials. The Brussels based artist combines beauty with the macabre in a strong effort to break away from the restrains of the art world’s expectations.

Gilon’s ceramic work has a life of its own. Consisting of a series of sculpted bags with claw handles, vases with long witchy fingers and high heels with mangled toenails, her pieces challenge our perception of the medium. Drawing on a wellspring of inspiration from pop culture, fashion, gore, and mythology, Gilon explores the aesthetic and psychological potential in everyday objects and breathes new life into them through her process of metamorphosis.

Gilon embraces the fiendish and the unconventional in her practice and crafts her pieces with a glaring sense of beauty. Her ability to transform everyday items into otherworldly hybrids subvert our attachments and relationships to the objects, forcing us to sit with and question our sense of discomfort and ultimately, our sense of being.

NR Magazine speaks with the artist to find out what makes up the weird world of Naomi Gilon, and what her monstrous creations can reveal about us all.

Does the desire for experimentation with your work stem from anywhere? Do you channel this into other aspects of your life?

It’s my way of expressing what I think. I have always been a shy child who listened to the needs of others. It’s not easy to extricate yourself from this behaviour when you become an adult. It’s both a work on myself and on others. I try to have a sociological point of view with my work. It’s a reciprocal exchange between my art and me; I bring reflections to my work through my reading for example, and conversely my works teach me a lot about life and myself. So, this desire to create and to experiment is simply a desire to live. I also channel this energy through botany. I like to see the evolution of plants.

Your practice has evolved a lot over the past few years – you’ve created installations with found objects and explored the tuning industry, whereas now, your practice has moved towards ceramics and crafting objects from scratch. Can you talk about this development?

It’s true that the discovery of ceramics was a revelation for me. Before that I worked mainly from assembly methods, textiles, car body parts, stickers, etc. The hybridization process was already present. As a self-taught ceramicist I’m able to not be in a system of appropriation of forms, but creations. I have almost total control over the objects I create.

Also, my subjects contrast to the ceramic material: fragility and violence, the sublime and the monstrous. I like it a lot because we are looking for confrontation. Beyond that, my thinking remains the same, over time I’ve just deepened it. It draws its source from popular culture. It’s a very large and constantly evolving subject.

Is constant artistic evolution important to you?

Yes of course, it’s linked to our personal development. As I mentioned before with experimentation, the evolution of our work is needed to live.

You’ve exhibited your work in lots of places in Europe. What is most important to you when displaying and showcasing your pieces?

What is most important to me is sharing a story, first and foremost a fantastic story and something that makes you dream. We try to widen the boundaries of the mind and share it with as many people as possible.

I also realise that my works have their own existence. Once out of my imagination, they travel without me. We see them for what they are, and I become secondary, as sometimes I answer questions for interviews. What I mean is that my works don’t need my words to create a discussion with the person who encounters them.

Throughout the development of your practice, I’ve noticed that your sculpted claws have remained present in most of your pieces and have become a sort of key signifier for your work. Could you talk a bit about this recurrent motif? What is the narrative behind it?

The claws appeared to me through the imagery of car tuning – the beast under the hood, the roar of the engine, etc. Then at the same time I discovered the book ‘Crash’ by J. G. Ballard, the film ‘Christine’ by John Carpenter, and the film ‘Titanium’ by director Julia Ducournau.

Following this car-related imagery, I plunged into the world of gore and horror films. They’re an inexhaustible source for questioning the identity of a monster. I also turned to mythology, folktales, Nordic stories, etc, as well as representations of the figure of the monster in paintings through the centuries. It’s a timeless fascination.

“I consider my hybrid ceramic objects as the chimeras of our humanity. It’s the sublimation of the horror in our lives.”

Your work, and your recent ceramic pieces in particular draw on aspects of horror, gore, fashion, and pop culture. What are your specific influences and what intrigues you most about these things? Have they always been of interest to you?

The human hybrid has fascinated me since I was little. I’ve never been a big fan of monsters before; it was through my painting studies at ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels that I explored these interests.

I’m influenced by the cartoonist Emil Ferris, the authors Aldous Huxley, René Barjavel, Philip K. Dick, George Orwell and the authors of the Nouveau Roman like Alain Robbe-Grillet. Also, directors like Ridley Scott for Blade Runner 1982 (my favourite film), Dario Argento for Suspiria in 1977, Rosemary’s Baby, David Cronenberg and Videodrome…. the list goes on and on.

The image of the monster can take different forms, it adapts to the times and that is what fascinates me. It’s always a reflection of society.

What is it like living as a creative in Brussels? Has Belgian culture influenced your work at all?

Living in a large multicultural city is very rewarding, and Brussels has lots of great qualities. The arts scene is important, but I don’t draw inspiration from it directly. Everyone is obviously hugely influenced by the internet. Subliminally my influences are global.

But still, I love the work of Aline Bouvy and Xavier Mary – they marked my debut in the art world.

What was your aim when creating your online shop?

To break the notion of art acquisition. During my studies we were told that walking into an art gallery is like walking into a store. I never found it easy, and I think most art spaces want to keep that aspect of privilege. By creating an online shop, I feel like I’m breaking away from these principles. People who enjoy my work can acquire it as easily as going to collect bread in a bakery. We buy unique things in an almost banal way. And the direct creator-to-buyer relationship is easier than having one or two intermediaries, but I do enjoy collaborations and discovering new networks of people, I think that’s really important.

The form and texture of your pieces have always been interesting to me. What’s your approach to working with different materials, and are there specific materials you enjoy working with the most?

I really like materials that imitate others, like faux fur textiles or mock snakeskin, or materials that drip, or spread like a disease. I love studying the set design and makeup of 1920s gore films.

I also love having my hands in clay. It feels like a real connection to the earth. My favourite part is the last step; that of enamelling. There’re always surprises. The colours are always unique and have an almost captivating depth. It flows, it bubbles, it can be matte, shiny, satin – it’s great.

What have you been finding inspiration from at the moment?

My creations of monstrous shoes were inspired by the exhibition ‘MARCHE ET DÉMARCHE’, at MAD in Paris in 2019. My interest in the historical journey of objects emerged from this exhibition. This is a process that is now part of my thinking and methodology. My new bag series is also based on a nod to the past; it’s an object with great history and connotations, that never ceases to evolve, like a living being.

You’ve mentioned that with your work you try to put societal fears and desires into narratives, words, and images. Why is this important for you, and has this always been a focus of yours?

It’s a way of making memory appear physical, and to create memories of objects. When I started out as an artist, the term ‘connotation’ was a big part of my way of thinking. The spare parts of cars whose sheets were crumpled, bent, and scratched were the vestiges of a moment in time and of an emotion.

The concept of time is very important to me because it moves so fast and takes with it the things that have forged us like words, objects, smells and people. When I make a piece of ceramic, it’s a product of all the thoughts that I have during that moment that permeate the clay. I’m a very nostalgic person and I must highlight all those moments that will eventually disappear. I think that’s a big fear of mine – my ‘monster’.

What is your usual process for creating hybridisations and distortions of objects?

It’s not a process, it’s just an automatism. Bringing everyday things to life that we no longer pay attention to.

“Everything is important and nothing is trivial. I don’t have a specific method.”

You work a lot with commonplace objects. What interests you about working with them? You describe your work as ‘unique and precious banalities’, so it’s clear that you see a lot of creative and critical potential within these objects.

It’s like listening to the radio every day and hearing the number of people who have died from Covid, migratory accidents, wars and attacks; it hits us for a few seconds and then we continue with our daily life. Like the words of Hannah Arendt, its ‘the banality of evil.’ This might be a bad example, but humans make everything that doesn’t directly impact them uninteresting and unimportant. I’m not interested in the individualistic human.

I like the idea of asserting individuality and sharing it. I want to banish the idea of normality. Recognising its privileged position is the first step in thinking about things differently.

What is left on the day you die? The image of us, but it is not eternal. Objects into which we’ll have slipped a few words of love, the words on the back of a postcard, or a compilation of music that we have probably listened to hundreds of times. Life is abstract and complex, so you we should go beyond it and make the mundane things unique and precious.

What things outside of your practice do you feel are ‘unique and precious’?

The people we love and the mysterious things that bind us to them. I’m a lonely person (besides being nostalgic), but I love being around the people I love and listening to them talk. I love to read and taking the time to do nothing.

With the theme of this issue being Identity, I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on how you explore your own identity through your work.

My artistic approach is mixed with my personal matters, it forms a hybrid. The evolution of my works reflects my own determination and of the way in which, little by little, I come into alignment with who I am. We must establish a harmonious cohabitation between our inner and outer being, between the angel and the demon. We should learn from our mistakes and accept that we will make them. The monstrous hand kind of symbolises this oscillation between the two sides of our identity.

Many aspects of your work revolve around monstrous forms. Could you talk a bit about how you explore the concept of the body?

I see the body as a hybrid object, something organic that evolves and distributes energy, both positive and negative.

Like J-M Gustave Le Clézio said, we’re contained in a sack of skin. I find once again that it’s something incredible yet minimised. Moving your body, feeding it, making it work properly is a wonderful thing and full of mystery.

I really like the vegetable head portraits of the painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo because he presents us with a vision that goes beyond our human limits, and which reminds us of the fact that we can be anything. We’re not that different to vegetables and we too will rot one day.

I’m also influenced by the chaotic landscapes of Jérôme Bosch, where we can see the energy of living and the beauty of heterogeneity.

Where do you see your practice heading? What can we expect from you in the future?

I’m working on many new projects. Hopefully I can still work collaboratively in the world of styling. I also want to explore new materials alongside ceramics. I have a solo show at the end of October in Brussels and joint show at the end of November in Amsterdam.

Credits

Images · NAOMI GILON
Interview · IZZY BILKUS
Discover Naomi Gilon’s work here www.naomigilon.com

Max Siedentopf

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 324

Feature · Max Siedentopf
Words · Nicola Barrett

“Turns out, there’s actually a lot you can do while taking your serious passport photo”

Somewhere in the golden sands of the oldest desert in the world, the Namib stands a circle of white plinths. On them sit speakers, playing Africa’s Toto for, well, eternity. Or at least that’s what Namibian-German artist Max Siedentopf tell us, the location of this artwork is undisclosed and, as no one has yet to find it, it’s rather hard to verify if it’s actually still blasting “We bless the rains down in Africa” into the wilderness.

This tongue in cheek in cheek approach is seen throughout much of Siedentopf’s work, his guerrilla art installation which involved binoculars tied to the railings of the viewing terrace at the Tate Modern allowed visitors to zoom into Roger Stirk Harbour + Partner’s Neo Bankside housing across from the gallery. It was a response to the residents of Neo Bankside taking the Tate to court as they claim the viewing gallery “unreasonably interferes with their use of their flats.” Siedentopf pointed out that the “Please respect our neighbour’s privacy” the Tate put up seems like a sign for an art exhibit and pointed out the irony of having huge windows that no one is ‘allowed’ to look into.

More recently he has created works about the pandemic, including a series of mask alternatives like bras, lettuce leaves and shoes, (which was met with some controversy as he created the series early in the pandemic), and an online series titled Home Alone – A Survival Guide which depicted a series of challenges for those bored at home during the lockdown. NR Magazine joins the artist in conversation.

What does Identity mean to you as an artist?

That changes every time I look in the mirror.

You are known for your guerrilla artworks, examples being Please Respect Our Neighbour’s Privacy at the Tate and Slapdash Supercars, and in addition to these, you also created artworks while stuck at home during lockdown. Do you think, as we become more digital, artists are moving away from the need for gallery backing or even gallery spaces to build their reputation?

Yes, of course, there are so many new and incredible ways today for artists to show and capitalise on their work that the gallery system isn’t the only way an artist needs to go today. With the click of a button, artists can show their work to a global audience and the success of your work is a lot more determined by the actual quality of the work and less by the gatekeepers of the gallery world.

You are known for using humour to explore serious topics in your art. Do you think that people these days, particularly the younger generation, see using humour as a coping mechanism as part of their collective identity? If so how do you think that affects how they approach the creative sphere?

I think humour often helps tackle serious subjects in a more digestible way for a wider public;

“I’m sure when the world will finally end the last artwork will be a funny meme about how the world is ending.”

However even there is a strong increase in art using humour as a coping mechanism, at the same time art has also become more serious than ever and there is much stronger pressure to make “politically correct art” which sucks out most of the fun – it’s like pleasing a big committee, in the end, no one hates it, but no one is super happy about it either.

Your work Toto Forever, in which Africa by Toto is played in the Namib Desert on a constant loop, gained quite a lot of attention, but you have never disclosed the exact location. Has anyone ever been able to find it and do you know if it’s still playing?

Good question, I guess you will need to find it, to find out.

I’m curious, has anyone ever questioned the validity of Toto Forever? It reminds me somewhat of the moon landing conspiracy theories, and as there is no exact location for people to visit I wonder if anyone has asked you if it’s fake?

Wait, the moon landing wasn’t real?

Passport photos play such a huge part in our ‘official’ government recognised identity, but in reality, they show very little of us. How did you come up with the idea for this project?

The series came about when I had to take a new passport photo. I thought to myself that being a passport photographer must be one of the most depressing things a photographer could do as there are so many rules. Your head needs to be straight, nothing may cover your face, you’re not allowed to smile and you need to have a plain white background. I wanted to challenge all these rules and find a way that you could still express yourself even under such heavy restrictions. Turns out, there’s actually a lot you can do while taking your serious passport photo.

Do you think in the future, technology will change how we are identified?

Of course – on the plus side I think it will make a lot of processes a whole lot easier, from how we travel, check-in or pay, however as with every technology that makes our lives easier we will need to give something in return, in this case, a piece of our anonymity and personal freedom.

Your project Home Alone – A Survival Guide was popular on social media and many people joined in the challenges you set. Now people are struggling with going back to normality as restrictions are being eased. Would you ever consider doing a second project, a survival guide for the outside as it were?

I didn’t think about it until this question but I could imagine it could be a good series – as life slowly goes back to “normality” I think there are a lot of factors that should be readjusted to a new way of living.

“I strongly believe we shouldn’t just chase the reality we had before the pandemic, which in many ways feels quite reckless (and got us into this mess in the first place) and instead focus on new, more responsible ways of living our day-to-day life.”

A step-by-step survival guide could be a good start.

Your project How To Survive A Deadly virus was met with some controversy, do you think if you had made it a year later people’s reactions would have been different?

Yes definitely and since the series came out I’ve seen hundreds of artist impressions similar to the series. However the series came out the beginning of February 2021, a time when most people in Europe were still very naive towards what was going on and didn’t anticipate it would ever affect their own lives – the series was a classic example of “too soon” and it was too early to talk about such a serious subject with humour. However, a few months later the series was received very differently when people started to accept the new reality and were able to joke about it.

What advice do you have for young creatives?

Eat your vegetables, exercise, spend quality time with your family, make work that brings you joy and most importantly don’t overthink too much, in the end, nothing really matters anyway.

Are you working on any projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future?

Always – however the only certain plan for the future is to eventually end up in a coffin.

Credits

Images · MAX SIEDENTOPF
www.maxsiedentopf.com/

Jessamyn Lovell

Posted on 5 de 11월 de 2021 by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 168

Feature · Jessamyn Lovell
Words · Nicola Barrett

“we can find power in the choice to engage in public sousveillance (surveillance of ourselves) but it also gives power away”

A wallet is stolen from a gallery in San Fransisco, just over a year later a woman receives a summons to appear in court for a petty crime she did not commit. It sounds like the beginning of a movie but for artist Jessamyn Lovell it was reality. She learned that her identity had been stolen by a woman named Erin Hart, who had been using her name to check into hotels, hire cars and to shoplift. As a way to help deal with the trauma of the situation, Lovell began the Dear Erin Hart project where she documented the process of tracking down and surveilling the woman who had stolen her identity.

Unable to find Erin Hart on her own Lovell hired a private detective and soon discovered that Hart was already in jail for a previous misdemeanour. However, upon Hart’s release Lovell and the P.I she had hired followed Hart around the city, photographing her. Lovell decided against contacting Hart directly and instead wrote the other woman a letter explaining the project to her. No reply was ever received. While Dear Erin Hart is perhaps Lovell’s most known work she is no stranger to documenting the lives of herself and others and it forms a central part of her practice. NR Magazine joined the artist in conversation.

What does Identity mean to you as an artist?

I have often used my artistic practice as a way to research and hopefully come closer to understanding the different and fluid aspects of who I am in relation to others. Throughout my life, I have assumed and shed many different identities, which have brought waves of immeasurable grief as well as limitless joy. I see my job as an artist to explore and reflect on these observations and discoveries to those that might see my findings as interesting and/or useful.

Do you think surveillance has become an integral and practically unnoticeable part of our lives given the rise of social media and apps having access to our phones at all times? How do you think this will affect us in the future?

I cannot really speak for other people’s experiences navigating public and private spaces but I certainly notice the mechanisms of oppression in every surveillance camera and security guard watching me. I have come to understand surveillance to be part of my everyday experience while doing what I can to avoid it. I see it as a gaze of sorts coming from systems of oppression. I think we can find power in the choice to engage in public sousveillance (surveillance of ourselves) but it also gives power away, especially for more vulnerable populations like young people who may not be as aware of the implications and lasting impact willingly sharing information might have. As a private investigator, social media is an important research tool in the work I do. As I have learned more and more about how much and what types of information you can learn about people online;

“I have personally pulled away from engaging in sousveillance on social media, which has compelled me to find other ways to artistically process my experiences.”

I think privacy is very rare these days and I only see that becoming more and more the case.

Can you tell me more about your work ‘No Trespassing’ where you documented your estranged father?

The gist of this project was that from 2007-2010 I found, followed and photographed my estranged father as a way to sort out if I could ever reach out to him or be in his life again.

“My father tried to have me kidnapped when I was a little girl after he left our family. I was estranged from him for most of my life by my own choice after that.”

I started following him initially as a way to take my own power back using the long lens of my camera. As the project progressed, I started to see my acts of surveillance as a private performance just for me. I came away learning more about my own identity apart from him as well as the ways in which the abuse I suffered at his hands had, in part, informed who I had become as an adult. I documented the process and shared it as a book and exhibition as a way to interrogate the spaces between fact and fiction in our own histories as well as in storytelling.

You obtained a Private Investigator licence, what are the requirements to gain this license and now that you have it what is the legal extent of what you are able to do when surveilling an individual/s?

In the United States, the license needed to legally practice as a Private Investigator is state by state but the requirements are all pretty similar. In New Mexico, where I live and work, 6,000 hours of investigative work are required as well as passing a jurisprudence exam, paying a licensing fee, and then participating in annual training. Because Private investigators are civilians, not police or military, the same laws apply to execute our jobs. So, for instance, when I conduct surveillance I must obey all laws regarding privacy and distance. I have had to learn a great deal about public and private space as it pertains to paparazzi law in order to navigate what is legal in terms of gathering information.

“I mostly have had to learn by research as I go and through developing relationships with other P.I.s, lawyers and sometimes even law enforcement.”

Has Covid affected how you approach your art practice?

While I have had a pretty substantial increase in private investigation clients during the pandemic, I have found that doing fieldwork to complete my jobs has been very tricky. I have given talks and performances nationally about my work in years past but have not been able to do that during the pandemic. I have had to put a project on hold that I was starting work on in 2019 because it depended on collaborators. I am happy that I have just been able to resume work on it this month. I hope to get back to booking lectures, talks, and performances again soon.

Can you tell me more about your ongoing work ‘D.I.Y. P.I.’?

Do It Yourself Private Investigation (D.I.Y. P.I.) is an ongoing project that began with getting my private investigator’s license in 2017 after putting in the five years of investigative work. I documented that process, shared the work on my Patreon, at an exhibition in Albuquerque, and toured a series of performances and talks. I think that my work comes across the clearest when I am able to present it publicly sharing the stories and adventures of making it. I hope to get back to doing more immersive performances and presentations about the work I do.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

Oh, wow – lots of places! Living my own life and observing how other people move through their lives has provided the most inspiration for me. Facing the systems of oppression in my day to day living and helping others to empower themselves in navigating these systems is what fuels me to keep getting up every day and trying.

“Making art in those spaces of feeling disempowered has literally kept me alive.”

Music and film also inspire me greatly.

‘Dear Erin Hart’ is perhaps your most well-known work, what do you think in particular draws people to this artwork?

Dear Erin Hart, lends itself well to a wider audience for a few reasons. One is that it is about identity theft, which is prevalent in our culture at the moment so it touches on a timely issue. Identity theft strikes at something very vulnerable for most of us. Our identities are all we have that is ours and only ours so when someone uses our name or image to commit acts that we do not ourselves do, it feels like a real violation and loss of control on a deep level. I think that those who read what I did for this project (following the woman who stole my identity) as an act of revenge, they seem to appreciate how I took back my power from this person who wronged me. For others, they see the compassion I found for this woman who is living her life the best way she knows how. Over the time I executed the project and really for the years that have followed, I have come to see it as an act of restorative justice on my part and long to actually know this woman.

What advice do you have for young creatives looking to explore concepts of identity and surveillance?

I encourage young people to explore how surveillance impacts them personally and professionally as well as how it informs their own identity. I will say that it has been very valuable to me to learn as much as they can about the laws around surveillance.

I have found self-reflection about my own identity to be a critical part of how I research and explore it on a larger scale outside of myself. In terms of those wanting to explore identity publicly as their work, I would advise anyone moving into this realm to deeply consider how they present themselves publicly and privately.

“Sharing your story is an act of generosity and trust and sadly, not everyone who has access to our images and stories can be trusted to be respectful.”

Are you working on any other projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future?

I am currently working on a collaboration called Practiced Disguises where artist and photographer Heather Sparrow is working with me to document the wide array of disguises I have employed in my work as a Private investigator. We are still in the early stages of bringing each disguise to life and I cannot wait to share this in the coming year or so. I am also working with a well known Canadian actor to create a movie or TV series about that part of my life. We are working with a screenwriter on the script now, which is getting pretty exciting. I think it will be really interesting to see how the project unfolds!

Credits

Images · JESSAMYN LOVELL
www.jessamynlovell.com/

[태그:] Interviews

Ani Liu

“I think that the process of creation and the process of critical evaluation must occur separately”

Ben Kelly

“Keep going, don’t stop”

Deadhungry

“I think you can get so stuck in trying to sell something, that you forget you can have fun and play around with it”

Agnes Questionmark

“This is my dream, of being a new creature, half-human, half fish, to be a hybrid, something that can’t be recognised or put in a box.”

Ziqian Liu

“props are not only objects, but also something that brings me ‘knowledge’ through photography.”

Ludwig Godefroy

“the relationship with the emotions you will feel in a space is the very essence of a project”

TeamLab

“We human beings have emotions and we also have something we can’t explain with words – it’s cool, it’s beautiful and it’s fun”

Naomi Gilon

“It flows, it bubbles, it can be matte, shiny, satin – it’s great”

Max Siedentopf

“Turns out, there’s actually a lot you can do while taking your serious passport photo”

Jessamyn Lovell

“we can find power in the choice to engage in public sousveillance (surveillance of ourselves) but it also gives power away”

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