Thursday, October 21, 2010

ISEA - The view from the window

The university in Dortmund, where most of the ISEA conference is taking place, offers another fascinating view from the window. I come across this view more or less by accident, when I walk from one conference room to the other. It is a black bird sitting on the roof.

I quickly take a photo. But something is strange. The bird has only one leg, which is connected to a bucket. The bucket is standing on the roof of the buildings inbetween the university buildings. The bird is made from metal or maybe plastic. It cannot move, it just sits there. It seems to be fine, confident, sitting where it is.

Maybe it's looking at the plastic bag which is lying on another part of the roof, lying on a part of the composition of which it is not clear if it is a horizontal or vertical area.

I take another photo to zoom out. The composition remains strange as it is. One detail which adds to the composition, but which is invisible on the photo, is a big german flag which is painted on the wall, right next to the bird. I take another photo.

Who has painted the flag? Why? Who has placed the bird on the roof? Is this meant as an art work? Did someone make this composition on purpose? Did anyone here notice the bird?

Without an answer I continue to the room where the next session is taking place, a session about 'New Art Theory'.


Tuesday, October 5, 2010

ISEA - African Digital Art

There is one panel that I manage to see in Dortmund after the morning session and just before my own presentation. It is a panel about digital art in Africa. Several lecturers from different countries show their projects. It is a pity that the african artists are not more present throughout the whole conference, because some of the works are really interesting.

There is an artist from Cameroon, with a very short, but very interesting presentation. I would like to ask him a little more about his work after the presentations, but I am forced to leave the room before the session is over, because my own lecture is starting in the other room. So all I do is ask him for a contact address. Instead he gives me a dvd, which has ended up in my pile of ISEA2010 materials. As soon as I will find time to watch it, I will post a link here on the blog.

One link that I  can post here now, is a project by a woman from Kenya, who also has a presentation in this panel. She has started a website with links to many different projects: http://www.africandigitalart.com/ I can recommend this website to get to know more about african digital art.

The photo below is also from the session about african digital art. It is my view from the window, while listening to the talks. I was fascinated by the window composition and had to take a photo of it...

Friday, September 10, 2010

ISEA - Connecting net art and recycling

ISEA is known for its very full program. Such a full program is necessary and nice, but it forces you to make choices. It is impossible to see all the lectures at ISEA. During this afternoon however I am not able to choose. There are two lectures where I would like to go, but I am giving a lecture myself at the same time.

The lecture can only be fifteen minutes long, including questions and answers. So I have prepared a presentation which contains just the essential information and still gets to the point where I want to get.

I am not sure though if the outcome of my research really makes sense to the people in the audience. I was talking about the relation between my work as a recycling artist and my work as a net artist, but when my presentation is finished, all the questions that are asked are about the art center which I started in a small village in Austria some years ago.

Well, maybe this small art initiative is the outcome of my work combining net art and recycling.

I didn't prepare a presentation about the art initiative, I just mentioned it briefly in the talk. But no matter all the theoritical research that I tried to put together in my talk, the old farm was what fascinated the audience the most. Maybe my lecture made as little sense to them as many of the other talks of the previous days made to me....

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

ISEA - Dortmund

ISEA continues in Dortmund. I have driven back to the Netherlands from Essen, coming back to Dortmund on tuesday. I am amazed how close it is by car from Utrecht to Dortmund. It is just about the same as from Graz to Ljubljana. The car parking near the train station in Dortmund costs 9 euros per day. Very cheap compared to Utrecht.

In Dortmund the ISEA venues are all over the city. I quickly notice the ISEA signs, which have been connected with adhesive tape to street lights and traffic signs all over the center. I keep following the signs until I come to the university, where I walk into one of the Janez Jansa's. He guides me to the club where the morning session of ISEA is taking place. Inside a dark cinema, a young guy from Singapore is showing a very long video of himself jamming together with two other musicians. The jam session is nice, but it doesn't really fit into the idea of paper presentations and the organizer at the side of the room is gesturing anxiously to the moderator that he should stop the video.

Since I missed the first lectures that morning, it is not easy to follow the discussion that starts after the presentations. So I sneak out, buy a coffee and look at the people passing by. In the afternoon it will be time for my presentation, in which I will be talking about the relation between recycling arts and virtual reality...

Thursday, September 2, 2010

ISEA - Why

You may wonder now, why do I drive all the way to Germany, to spend the whole morning listening to lectures of which I am not able to recall anything afterwards? And why do I drive all the way to a conference to spend half the day walking around the area?

Well, maybe here I  do have to refer to Brian Massimo's talk. The only thing that I understood from his lecture, for which I drove such a long time to be there, was that it had something to do about the relation of different events, that seemed to be not related to each other at all. And that he was trying to find out how these events were influencing each other and how they were influencing art history and art in general.

And maybe I misunderstood all that from his lecture. But while walking around the terrain, completely amazed by the totally unexpected area, it occurred to me, that very often that is exactly the reason why I am going to a symposium. The symposium is just a starting point, which creates an event, an experience, that is different for anyone. I know, that when I will go there, that I will come across many new interesting people and many new interesting places, of which existence I otherwise would never have known...

On purpose I spend the whole morning listening to lectures which I cannot recall, exactly to have the experience of discovering an unexpected place in the afternoon...

Sunday, August 29, 2010

ISEA - Exploring the Zollverein

The stairs went up about three stories. At that moment I wasn't even sure if I was allowed to go up there. But I wasn't the only one going around there taking photos, so I just continued following the metal structure. When I got to the top of the stairs, I realized that this was not just an emergency exit behind the restaurant. There were many people passing by, all coming from the other direction.

As I kept going, following the metal construction, which had now turned into a long bridge, I started to realize that this walk was going to be a bit longer than just climbing up the stairs. The metal bridge was at least a hundred meters long, leading all the way over the wide terrain to the building on the other side. Under the long bridge were railroad tracks. Trains must have been driving up and down here once, transporting coal around the complex.

While following the path, still up on the bridge, I started to realize how big this complex is. The pathway, on which I was walking, is just a small part of the area. The complex is full with buildings, connected together with bridges, stairs and railroad tracks. These days the complex has been turned into a cultural area, but the industrial site still shows how it must have been.

While wandering around the area, amazed by the giant constructions, I realized that I could not recall anything from the lectures that morning...

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

ISEA - A day of nonhuman performativity

The symposium in Essen continued with a morning about nonhuman performativity, followed by a motion lab, which turned out to be a set of lectures just like the other days. ISEA is a symposium of lectures. That's what it is, that's what it is supposed to be and that's what it will always be.

Luckily there are enough breaks inbetween the talks to get in touch with other participants in a more informal way. During the lunch break I had a very nice meeting in which I learned that it is actually very easy to recycle old paper into new paper all by yourself. All you need is a blender, a pan and a plate of metal with small holes in it, similar like the screen to put in a window to prevent insects from flying in.

There was no time to write down the instructions, since the next session was starting already. But instead of spending also the afternoon in the room with lectures, I went for a walk outside. I took the back door from the restaurant and climbed up the metal stairs that happened to be there. It was the best decision I could have made. Suddenly I found myself in an amazing structure of metal stairs, bridges, cables and buildings. It wasn't until then, that I discovered the amazing area of the Zollverein. Wandering around this industrial jungle made my mind float away much further than any of the lectures had managed to do that morning...

Monday, August 23, 2010

ISEA - The opening keynote

I arrived at ISEA in the afternoon, nicely in time to attend the opening keynote by Brian Massumi. The keynote turned out to be a flow of thoughts, without a visual (powerpoint) presentation to back up the words. In general, without a visual presentation, it is extremely difficult for me to follow a lecture.

That was no different here. There was not much of the keynote that stayed in my mind... Or maybe it is better to say, I didn't understand much of the lecture at all...

The only thing that I understood from the hour and a half event, was that Massumi was philosophizing about events and their relation to each other. The main point of the lecture, at least as far as I understood, was the question: if two events happen at the same time, but without any relation to each other - for example I am working in my garden and at the other side of the world a plane crashes - how do these two events influence each other? What is their relation to each other? And what is their relation to art? How do different (random) events influence art?

Okay, that might not even seem such an unusual question. You could even say that there were already many  philosophers discussing this theme. But the way how Brian Massumi was explaining his thoughts, was surely different. This question was only the starting point for his talk, but it was as much as I understood from the whole presentation.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

ISEA - Zollverein Essen

So I arrived at ISEA this weekend. The first location is Essen. Essen is one of those many cities in the Ruhr Area that I have passed by many times on the highway, but where I have never stopped to see the town. This is the first time that I am not just passing by, but that I will actually be seeing something of the town.

Well, seeing something of the town is not exactly the right way to put it. ISEA takes place at the Zollverein, which is located in the north-east of Essen, close to Gelsenkirchen. The Zollverein is where I will spend all my time in Essen.

The Zollverein is a small city in itself. It is a former industrial coal mining complex. Since about ten years the site is officially recognized as industrial heritage. It is on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites. And it surely deserves that, the spot is truely amazing.

The whole construction of the industrial complex is still there. Long railroad tracks on the ground and long steal bridges up in the air are both connecting different buildings of the complex. Next to the walking paths are huge steal cables, which were once used to transport things.

These days the place is like an urban jungle, made out of steal, rusty after all those years, where you can go for a walk on a sunday afternoon. It also seems the perfect location to have an international symposium about electronic arts.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Fifteen minutes at ISEA

I'm invited to Ruhr2010 to do a lecture at ISEA2010. ISEA is the biggest International Symposium on Electronic Arts. The event will take place from August 20 until August 29 in several cities of Ruhr2010 in Germany. I've been invited to do a lecture presenting my recycling arts work, which I would like to show in connection with my work in the virtual space.

I've been preparing my lecture for quite some time already, but only today I found out that just 15 minutes are reserved for my presentation at ISEA2010. I presented my work two years ago at ISEA2008 in Singapore and during that symposium each presenter had 30 minutes, 20 minutes for the presentation and 10 minutes for questions and answers. But in Dortmund only 1,5 hours are planned for 5 presenters.

So I will have to present my answer to the question of the relation between virtual reality and recycling arts in 15 minutes. Which creates a new problem in itself. Because I don't even know how to present the question in just 15 minutes... How can I explain the answer to the problem if I cannot even explain the problem?

I guess I will have to change my strategy now for this presentation. Maybe I will even have to read my own articles again on how to present an artist's statement. And I guess I will have to write a few articles very quickly now on how to present an artist's statement in just 15 minutes.


Thursday, August 5, 2010

Connecting virtual reality and recycling arts

What keeps me less wondering, is the big success of Paul the Octopus. The small creature, only two years old, that became so famous foretelling the outcomes of Germany's soccer games at the world championship. Somehow it seems to make perfect sense to me, that a creature strange as an octopus, fascinates us so much.

We will probably never know, how it was possible for the animal to guess all the outcomes correctly. And knowing now that his predictions were always the correct ones, I would have preferred not to know the outcomes of his fortune telling, before the games were played. But there is not much to do about that afterwards.

In about two weeks I will be visiting Ruhr2010. Paul the Octopus is living in an aquarium, somewhere in one of the cities of Ruhr2010. Who knows, maybe he has his own installation by now as part of the European Cultural Capital program. He would be one of the most famous participants.

I will be at Ruhr2010 at the end of August. I will be giving a lecture on the relation between recycling arts and the use of the internet. Or more precisely, a lecture looking into what connects reycling and the digital age. Or, in other words, on the connection between virtual reality and my work creating wallets from empty milk packages...

I've been searching for an answer to that question for about two years now. Maybe Paul the Octopus can help me to find a connection...

Friday, July 30, 2010

On the road through Germany - part two

All the way through Germany, we were listening to different German radio stations. On that certain day, each and every radio station had just one topic that needed to be discussed. In the morning the comments on the various radios were still a little sad. But as the day continued, the comments of the people on the different radio stations became more and more optimistic again. And almost all listeners who were calling in to the different radio shows agreed that it would at least be better to finish the tournament with winning the game for the third place than with loosing the game for the first place...

But the most important topic throughout all the different radio stations of course, was if Paul the Octopus had been 'forecasting' the outcome of the play or if he had been 'predicting' the outcome of the play. It is two weeks now after the final game of the tournament and Paul the Octopus surely is one of the winners of the event. Just today I read an article about his popularity in fortune telling China. On the other hand, there was another article which was raising the topic if the outcome of certain games had been determined in China...

Which has kept me wondering now for some time already, how it is possible to determine the outcome of a soccer game before the actual game is being played? I know that it is happening more often, but I keep on wondering how...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

On the road through Germany - part one

It was the day after Germany had lost the semi-final against Spain, when we drove on the A3 motorway all the way from Duisburg to Passau. Traffic was slow in the morning rush hour before Köln. While standing almost still in the early traffic jam, I noticed the flags along the highway.

Small German flags, dirty and broken, were lying in the grass next to the road. Small flags, the ones that can be mounted onto a car, sticking out at the roof. Looking at the flags I imagined disappointed people, listening to the soccer game while driving home in their cars. I imagined angry people ripping off the flags from their cars, just after the game was finished, throwing the flags along the side of the road, while still driving on the motorway.

At first I saw just a few of those flags. But as we slowly moved on in the traffic jam, I noticed more and more of those flags along the way. It was a strange image, especially since there was still one more game to play for Germany.

We were standing still for quite some time, trying to reach Köln in the traffic jam. But all this time, moving so slowly, I didn't manage to make a good photo. I've tried to catch quite some of the flags with my camera, but practically all of them turned into a vague combination of colors merging with the side of the road once captured on the photo.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A summer soccer break

It has been a month now since I started writing for this blog. It is the middle of July now, Netherlands has just lost their most important game of the last decade and the temperatures are too high to even think about writing an artist's statement. So I will start a little summer break in my blog posts.

Instead of giving advice on how to present yourself online, I will post some photos and videos to keep you entertained during summer. And since soccer seems the only relevant topic, I'll start with posting some football related material.

The final game is finished and again Paul the Octopus made the correct prediction. But nonetheless today is the day that the Dutch team will tour Amsterdam. And for one last day the Dutch will go crazy again, supporting their national soccer team.

I've been living again in the Netherlands since September. But knowing Austria and Slovenia, I realize that it is nearly impossible to describe the Dutch craziness when it comes to supporting their national football team. So I'll share some photos with you of the area where I live now.

I took these photos last week in the city where I am staying now in the Netherlands. This is just a small town somewhere in the Netherlands. All over the country, from north to south and east to west, you could find similar looking houses and streets. Until sunday that was...

I am far away already by now, writing this article near Graz in Austria. I've never really understood this thing about soccer. But after being away for so many years, experiencing it all live again in the Netherlands, I have to admit, there is something special about it...


Saturday, July 3, 2010

Presenting your statement to the world

Now that you have written a short text about your work, you will need to think about how to present your text to the world. This step is more important than you might think. You might have spent hours and hours already until now, carefully choosing the right words to exactly describe what you are doing and why you are doing what you are doing. But the secret ingredient to really sell your work, is 'it has to look good'.

In general 'people don't read'. And if they read, they just scroll over the text. They will quickly read through your text, pick up some words and then make up their own story out of the things that they already knew. What really impresses people, is how you present your statement to them.

You might think, now that you have spent so much time digging into yourself, finding out who you really are, spending even more time to pack everything into a few sentences that describe exactly what you want to say in just 250 words, you might think that now you're ready.

You might think that these few sentences should be enough to get your message across. But here I have to disappoint you. These 250 words are only the beginning. Writing your artist's statement was a good step for yourself to realize who you are and where you stand, but unfortunately it is not enough to convince the rest of the world of your qualities as an artist.

In the following articles I will look into different possibilities how to present your work.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Writing your own personal artist's statement

While writing the first articles for this weblog, I did some research on how to write an artist's statement. The website that shows up as the first link when you search for 'artist's statement' in google, even before the Wikipedia entry, is a website by a woman called Molly Gordon. I had never heard of her before, but she surely knows how to do promotion, if her website ends up on the number one position on google, even before the Wikipedia entry.

On her website she has a very good, step by step protocol to get to your personal artist's statement: http://www.mollygordon.com/resources/marketingresources/artstatemt/ If you are serious about what you do, take your time and go through all the steps that she describes on her website. You don't need pen and paper though, just type down all your thoughts immediately into a text document, which you can use again later.

If you are the kind of person who doesn't have the time to spend hours and hours digging into yourself, finding out who you really are, then the 10gallon Artist's Statement Generator at http://10gallon.com/statement2000/ is something for you. Just fill in all or any of the fields and the website will create the statement for you. And even if it doesn't describe exactly who you are, it might still be a good start. You could simply start changing the text to make it more yours, without having to think too much about it (yet) yourself.

Friday, June 18, 2010

How to write an artist's statement? (again)

Now that you know WHY you should write an artist's statement, there is still the problem of HOW to write an artist's statement. The best way to solve that problem is to just start doing it. And then, while you are writing, you will realize that you have to think everything over again.

The interesting part of writing an artist's statement, is that you will start thinking about what you are doing. You will start wondering what exactly it is that you are doing. And you will start wondering why you are doing what you are doing. And then, at some point, everything that seems important in your work, suddenly starts changing...

All the things that were always so clear, suddenly don't make sense anymore. Once you have it all written down, all those keywords together in a text document, printed out on a piece of paper, you suddenly realize, that it is something completely different that you really want with your work.

So you start writing your artist's statement again. And you realize that you should first make some new works of art, that will fit to your artist's statement, so that your artist's statement will fit to your work. And you realize that... and... until you realize, that you will never manage to put together an artist's statement...

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Why do I need an artist's statement?

An artist's statement is a short introduction of yourself for all those situations where you cannot be there in person to give an introduction. Think of an artist's statement as a representation of yourself for all those situations where you cannot be there yourself.

You could say that your work should speak for itself and that it doesn't need an explaination. But there are many people who like to have a short introduction together with the work. Just think about all those times when you were watching an art work in a gallery, when it wasn't really clear to you what the work was about. And then, after reading the explaination next to the work, you slowly started to understand what the artist wanted to say with it. And after understanding it, you maybe even started to like the work.

An artist's statement can be a great help for other people to better understand your work and to maybe even like your work. The artist's statement tells your story when you are not there yourself to tell it. For example to a visitor on your website. Just remember, the statement should be clear and to the point. This is the first impression that someone will get from you. KEEP IT SHORT! People don't have time to read other people's stories. If they want to know more about you, they will contact you for more information.

Here is a great link with information on why to write an artist's statement: http://www.artbusiness.com/artstate.html

Sunday, June 6, 2010

How to write an artist's statement?

In an artist's statement you describe yourself, without explaining in detail all the things that you do. An artist's statement is a short text in which you present yourself to someone who doesn't know you (yet). An artist's statement should be short, clear and to the point. It should be easy to understand for anyone, even for those who don't know anything about art.

An artist's statement is always written in the first person. That means that it sounds as if you yourself are telling about yourself. You can still ask someone else to write the statement for you, but it should be written in your own words, in your own way of speaking and in the first person: 'I like to do art' not 'he or she likes to'.

It might feel strange at first to write a text about yourself in which you use 'I' and 'me' and 'my' all the time. The best way to start, is to imagine yourself explaining your work to someone who is standing next to you. What would you tell to someone who you don't know yet very well and who is interested in your work? How would you describe your artistic work to this person?

Try to write down a few sentences what you would tell to explain your work. For example start with 'My work is inspired by...', 'In my work I try to...'.

Just write down anything that comes to mind and then leave it again for some days.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

What exactly is an artist's statement?

Nowadays artists often create works in very different fields. Many artists are not just a 'painter' or a 'sculpturer' or a 'musician' anymore. This can be difficult when you need to put together your biography. But even if all the different kinds of work that you make, seem to have little in common, there is always one important element that connects all of them together: you!

All these works were made by you. Now it is up to you to find out what all these works connects together. What is your 'fingerprint', your 'signature'? What are the themes that are visible in your work. What inspires your work? Which elements keep coming back in your work? Which keywords would you use to describe your work? Don't think of keywords like 'photography', 'digital art' or 'video', but think of keywords like 'nature', 'street', 'people', 'cats', 'old houses', 'foreign countries', 'travel', 'aliens', etc. Anything you can think of that relates to your work.

In an artist's statement you explain who you are, what you do and why you do it, in very simple language, understandable for anyone. In an artist's statement you don't list all the projects that you have done in the past, but you explain what you are doing now, at the moment. Imagine yourself talking to someone who you've never met before, explaining that person who you are and what you do.

My first blog articles will show you step by step how to create your own artist's statement.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

How to write an article in which you present yourself as an artist in less than 250 words?

No matter in which field of art you are working, sooner or later you will be asked to send in your biography. Whenever you write an application for a project, grant, exhibition, festival, etc., organizers want your biography. And preferably, your biography should not contain more than 250 words, because people usually don't have time to read other people's biographies.

When you are just starting as an artist, your biography might not yet be so long. You could of course include any job that you have done, including any babysitter or dishwasher job, but that might not look so good on an artistic biography. You could invent some projects, making the list of exhibitions look bigger than it really was, including even the art presentation you did in your parents' livingroom. But that might not look so convincing.

The trick behind writing a short biography is to understand that people are not really interested in knowing all the dates of every presentation or performance you have done. In general, it is a much better idea to write an artist's statement, rather than a biography. In an artist's statement you describe the artist who you are, you explain your backgrounds, your thoughts, your way of work, without a long list of data of all your projects.

In the following articles I will try to explain how to write an artist's statement with less than 250 words. To give you an idea how much that is: this article has exactly 250 words.

Friday, May 28, 2010

An introduction in 250 words

Two weeks ago I was invited to be one of the first regular bloggers on the new website of the Art Department of the University of Nova Gorica. I am not a typical blogger, but such an honour I couldn't refuse. The assignment is to write three articles a week. That doesn't sound like much, but I know that writing three articles a week on a regular basis is actually a lot of work. So here I am now, writing the first article of hopefully many to come.

Why did I say yes to the invitation? First of all because I like the school. Second, because I hope that writing a short article on a regular basis, will give me a beautiful collection of material after some years. And third, because writing for a blog that is not my own, makes it more official and therefore -hopefully- will give me a certain pressure to really keep up the rhythm to write something every few days.

There are so many blogs around these days, many of them just writing about anything that comes to mind, that I decided to structure my articles around certain themes. My main focus will be on themes that are interesting for art students. And since artists usually are most interested in themselves, my first topic will be 'how to write an article in which you present yourself as an artist in less than 250 words'.

To give you an idea: this article has exactly 250 words.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Welcome to this blog!

The articles posted on this blog are originally written for the website of the School of Arts 'Famul Stuart', University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia. You can read the original blog posts at http://vsu.ung.si/

Since the school website is mostly in Slovene, I decided to keep a separate blog simultaneously to the Famul Stuart website, in which I archive my blog entries in an english language area.

My blog entries for the Famul Stuart website do not have a certain theme. But I gave myself one restriction: each blog article has exactly 250 words. And restrictions are there to be broken, so some of the articles actually have a little more or less than 250 words.

This article for example, has exactly 125 words.