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Research
the meaning of materials and formal language
The White Cube welcomed in October 2016 the work of Jannis Kounellis and propelled me to looking into Arte Povera's movement. The ground floor of this show gave me lots to think about, especially on simplicity. It was all about the material and all about making it look powerful. It was the first time, for a long time, that I experienced a symbiosis with form/material, rather than content. Having said that, Arte Povera's relationship with form was content-based and their environmental and political aspirations are a match to my work.
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I revered the grandeur in which the big frames said that each material had beauty in itself, and in which each composition sustained an idea about the materials and the ways in which the artist used the material.
Jannis Kounellis at the White Cube, October 2016
Other artists from this movement based in Italy are also relevant to my practice, particularly Michaelangelo Pistoletto, who explores the mediation of images (in his case with mirrors), emphasizes human action and the impossibilities of art. Mario Merz' work is also interesting as he uses language and sculpture to talk about relationships between science and globalisation. Germano Celant, who named the movement, has also included in his "Ars Povera" catalogue in 1969, published by Tübingen:Wasmuth, movements such as minimalism, systems thinking, land and environmental art under the same broad arc.
Mario Merz, 1962-1972
Joseph Beuys is also significant to my practice, for example, the way in which he had a predilection for triads, his environmental preoccupations, his love for actions/performance, his theory of "social sculpture".
​My intentions in dealing with materials are related with their inherent and natural, first if you will, meaning, rather than to symbolise associations. He made his own iconography to justify many of his theories. ​His sculpting theory highlighed the importance of energy, movement and action and his work spoke in codes that were uniquely his, pushing the viewer in "a" (his) perspectives, as if testing waters and wanting us to shiver of inquisitiveness.
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I too see that action and energy are crucial to social sculpting. However, the way in which nowadays we see action is through a screen, and it's this contrast I want to explore: the real experience, the feelings we don't experience but yet, we are aware of because of the plentitude of reports both on screens (TV/film) and images (newspapers/books).
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We are connected, yet so desensitised of that connection that we lack action, because of the fact that we think that the connection we have (through images) is the true action - here too I see a relationship between surface and depth. Baudrillard elaborates on this, in his simulacrum theory in The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact. He places the economic system - capitalism - and the social system - neo-liberalism - at the heart of assimilation. This is because capitalism can even benefit from its own death, perpetuating its use. Similarly, if we transpose this effect to the value of the relationship between image and experience, we start to be immune to the "real" affect that these images should be causing: we enter a desensitisation age, as for example, well illustrated by Richard Mosse's exhibition at the Barbican Incoming. (read essay here, selected to be published in JAWS (Journal of Arts Writing by Students, Vol. 3).
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I am interested in this mediation that leads to questioning whether we are desensitised and in scrutinising this mediation, because I refuse to accept that truth is no longer important:​ The Oxford Dictionary word of the year 2016 was Post-Truth, and this concept denies and obliterates all the work of philosophy that has been made throughout the centuries, it denies the best-hearted part in the human. If truth doesn't matter anymore, we are facing a twisted and maquiavelic future. There is no denying that in the present there are people to which truth doesn't matter, but if we don't deny ourselves the capability of imagining a future where everything is flat, then it's the death of Art, and of everything else. ​​
Joseph Beuys, 1980
Pinch me! Am I dreaming?
Mdf, fossilised coral, limestone, shale, blood, projection, medical drip
PINCH ME! AM I DREAMING? is a response to the world I live in, mediated by images: the Dakota Pipeline protests were at a peak, and "the world was watching". The formal aspects of this work are a development of WE ARE EARTH as I depict a cross section of the Earth's crust as if a cross section of our own skin (dermis, hypodermis, etc). The projection was placed opposite to the sculpture, so that the viewer couldn't focus on both at the same time. There is also a minimal formal language, which is not the same to say that it embraces Minimalism's ethos. Alike Arte Povera, which adopted a similar minimal formal style, my focus was on the two materials used: rock and blood.
Field Research
oil and post-truth
Finding crude was far-fetched, but one only knows if one tries, so I went on a trip to North Lincolnshire to visit two oil refineries in South Killingholme: Total Lindsey and Philips 66 Humber. However, because my interest in industrial landscapes grew as I understood that the rise of oil and extreme environmental crisis' origins was in the industrial revolution, what I really wanted the most was footage of the distilling unit flame, including its noise, which I found to be feature-some in the refinery I visited in Romania (but missed gathering footage as I was being chased by a pack of dogs and security cars).
It was a really foggy day, and I was again chased by security and eventually the police: the experience and the visual experience in itself (given that it was a heavy foggy day) impeding me from shooting the flame and manage any clear shots, was what stroke me as pertinently meaningful: a veil of retention, stoping me from accessing, even visuals, of my research target.
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The secrecy of the place, illustrated perfectly by the heavy mysterious mist, which acted like a barrier in itself, made me think of our clouded experience of reality these days, in which for the masses, the truth doesn't matter anymore.
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When returning to London, this was further exacerbated by passing by a coal mill, which was active and allowed me to see polluting clouds, which were hard to distinguish from normal clouds. When talking to a fellow passenger on the train, he said that some of those chimneys were smoking steam and not pollutants.
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I experienced how clouds can be deceiving.
Perceptions
Sound Piece 8'10"
In December, freshly out of the American election furore, the concept of post-truth became mainstream and I was immersed in the idea of juxtaposing statements. This piece is aimed at juxtaposing genres: fictional, the art-like and documentary. Using this mixture, the piece creates a disorientating feeling, asking the listener to escape, imagine and relate. This disorientation is a typical characteristic of our current society and I personally feel this way when it comes to the Environmental problem. Having passed the Earth's tipping point, what is the way forward?
Field research
Phenomenological Research and research
industrialisation vs ecology
and the role of art
My critique of the use of natural resources lays in their exploitation to the extent of habitat destruction: extreme industrialisation to the detriment of local ecologies: we must find a way to preserve life. I am deeply united to the indigenous peoples, I have lived a way of life which I felt was more meaningful because of a closer relationship with nature. (See my shortlisted proposal for the MEAD Fellowship here: "The hybrid language of plantsongs)
Extensive industrialisation is a key characteristic of the Anthropocene and some people believe that mass extinction has already started. James Lovelock, scientist whose theories are the basis of all current climate science, sees that because we have already passed the tipping point, all green efforts are now in vain. If everything is now futile in order to save the world, what should be our ethical stance on life and the planet's preservation?
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Whilst in Lincolnshire, I was able to visit an abandoned ironstone and chalk quarry. The striking orange powder typical of this stone was still visible and the old machinery left abandoned. When I was at the quarry, I felt like I was in an alien land, barren and devoid of life. Not because of the stony or rocky appearance, but because of the dimension of the hole. It was like a hole in my heart had been carved by those machines, which I imagined to chase me as if in a horror movie.
And Gaia theory, by James Lovelock, initially gives the impression to the readers that the author thinks of the Earth as a sentient being, one with the ability of feeling and perceiving things. This implies intelligence and senses. Lovelock clarifies to what extent he believes in this, so that the metaphor is demystified in the scientific community. He criticises the romanticism of some "green" people.
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I think there is a big difference between romanticism and ethics.
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Based on scientific thought I endorse a somewhat teleological view of art. This scientific view of the world contrasts with the causative perspective applied initially in Physics. The main differences are: causative thought is based on cause and consequence, teleological thought is based on purpose. This can be verified in the language we use. i.e. causative: "I make art because talking about the issues I'm interested will produce interesting artwork." teleological: "I make art about the issues I'm interested so that the artwork engages further interest". This rhetoric could be explored when talking about the intentions of the artist.
I come to think that art, the artwork, is something actually highly functional and it's because of this that artists have to consequently plan so much for. There are elements of chaos and imaginative intellect that come into play during the creation process, but the societal system in which we find ourselves, and that art and the artwork will find its place in, has a structure in itself. Therefore the artist's artwork must be a cog part of the system because otherwise it won't provide continuity to the system, and as any system the feedback needs to loop back in to keeping development ongoing. I suppose this is what the educational art institution means when it wants the art students to have "dialogues" with previous art movements and established cultural meanings. On the other hand it also through "incorporating diversity (as we will see shortly in Biomimicry) that we are able to adapt to changing circumstances.
Having finished reading Ways of Looking, prompted me to come back to Stephen Willats for advice. The directive advice on how to embody a system, by Donella H. Meadows in Dancing with systems echoes Willats' manual: "the artist's intervention is to change what is perceived as normal by the audience, not reflecting to them what is already normal, but using normality to provide an access into what initially are likely to be difficult concepts to internalise".
Alike two of the rules of Biomimicry (i.e. integrate the unexpected, reshuffle information), Willats statement is in agreement with an art pro-innovation, an art that doesn't quite repeat itself, but learns to overcome normality by innovating in relation to the meaning of reality. Biomimicry Science is concerned with replicating the technology of life, by design and function, so that human presence blends in with nature and works with it, rather than using nature to work for human's needs. Having read Jack Burnham's "Systems Esthetics" I thought that Biomimicry could be a more up-to-date, and scientific, version of the core of his thinking.
Marina Abramovic, in her Brazil film, realizes that Art is much more needed in cities because of our alienation from nature, which gives us a spiritual dimension. I have reflected on this upon visiting Meditations on Anthropocene.
The systems that operate in cities are very ill, extremely maldesigned and detrimental to the environment, which in my view feeds-back immediately onto our very own well-being. Hence, art comes into play as a necessity so that we can fulfil and enliven our four dimensions wholesomely: intelectual, spiritual, corporeal and emotional.
It is clear to me that my practice stems from different ways of knowing and my research has led me into observing how we are detached from "real" experiences because of a number of things: images mediate our experience of reality (Society of the Spectacle), this mediation has been assimilated and is perpetuated by our capitalist system (Simulacrum theory - Baudrillard) and the media currently is devised by a powerful governmental and corporate machine that delivers fake news with the purpose of instilling the concept of post-truth in our lives.
As a counter-philosophy to this, I wanted to create an artwork that relied on all sources of research I could embody and chiefly, experience: a phenomenological approach to processing information in the context of systems and the destruction of the Earth by drilling. Phenomenological research is based on experiential functions, as detailed by Suzan Kozel in The virtual and the Physical: a phenomenological approach to performance research. Deleuze had detailed three forms of knowledge, to which Kozel added kinepts to affects, percepts and concepts.
Terra nostra diagnosis
sandstone, hand-outs
TERRA NOSTRA DIAGNOSIS alludes to the first time the world was officially colonised by being divided between the Portuguese and the Spanish. It was since then that the the western world as we know it, took shape. It was since then that the body of Earth started its suffering from matter's abuse. The embodying of the Earth is in this piece manifest in the conceptual, yet experienced, sculpture of my own body, by abusing - drilling and chiselling - its health. It's a reflection born by the rock sculpture.
This artwork is the core of a system I came up with called "The Ecological Artwork Generator" and it focuses on matter and follows the rules of Biomimicry.
Research and Field research
Traditional ecological knowledge and Earth sciences
TERRA NOSTRA DIAGNOSIS and PINCH ME! AM I DREAMING? were perceived as minimalist works. I struggled with this connotation because not only I wasn't looking into their aesthetics, I wasn't neither looking into their concepts. Because of such associations I looked into Carl Andre's work, which focused on industrialisation and had a formal language that was indeed rather similar to TERRA NOSTRA DIAGNOSIS. After listening to him talking about his work and reading the greater part of "Things in their elements" it became clear to me that even though I was looking at the same materia prima as he was, my focus was on the excess of energy put on the extraction of these elements, may they be metal or stone, instead of the absence of energy, which was his focus: the element, the unit, the untouched raw material that allowed for great feats to be built. Andre's focus was on a nostalgia for the power of civilisation at its purest, simplest material form. A macho man liberation of industrial craft. My work, similarly, bears a fascination for the materiality of raw materials, but it focuses on the opposite spectrum of industrialisation: it emphasises the destructive nature of its excess and not the grandeur of its possibilities.
nature and the environment but not from a political point of view, except Romanticism, which was then the contemporary response to the Industrial Revolution and left a lasting effect in literature, art and even politics (with the rise of nationalism).
These movements are nowadays re-surging as Ecological Art (even though the term is not yet overtly coined, authors tend to use designations like "art and ecology" or "environmental activist art") because the contemporary relevance for this art to emerge is evident, as climate change starts to make it to the big headlines. A movement stems from a common ground of principles and erects a whole philosophy, sometimes, even processes unify the movement's art practice. If I was to explain how 'ecological art' is different from the environmental art of the past, I would focus on explaining how it borrowed principles from all three afore mentioned movements, but placing them in the complexities of today's world. This includes colonialism, activism, corporate networking/economic system, the scientific community (climate change and the anthropocene at the center, but ranging from genetics to biomimicry for example), meta-romanticism, use of advanced technology, design, overpopulation, natural disasters, energy industry, displacement, and more: the adaptation to our current reality which is millionfold.
In addition to content, there are also a variety of approaches, which we can categorise in their outcomes' focus, as if they were a genre: utopia (or romantic/fascination), use of natural materials, research, documentary, conservation, use of natural systems and technology, criticism, activism, hyperbole, dystopia. This gauge is a selection of where does my practice sit in the wider context of Ecological art.
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Peoples of All Nations, 2017
Pinch Me! Am I dreaming?
2016
Positive I, 2017
Ethnocide, 2016
The New Kids in Town
(Portraits of drilling), 2017
Terra Nostra Diagnosis, 2017
Caryatids for the Amazon, 2016
Gospel According to Sedimentary Basin, 2017
Homage to Tank Man,
2016
Th(d)e Code and Sense,
2015
Since I read Decolonizing Nature I became more and more interested in embodying a conservationist approach in my work and local en global ecologies became clear to be a way of understanding environmental issues.
Art that works within the boundaries of the relationship between man and nature started with Land Art, Systems thinking, Art Povera. Other pre-modern movements also looked at
Carl Andre, Still Blue Range, 1989
A fracking pointless discussion, 2016
It was since before TERRA NOSTRA DIAGNOSIS & THE ECOLOGICAL ARTWORK GENERATOR that I felt the need for my artwork to embody and be my research, instead of only representing or documenting an idea, even if not literally (you can read my views on 'being literal' on this review of Richard Moose's exhibition Incoming - selected to be published by peer reviewed journal JAWS). Since early in the Masters I was also concerned with Indigenous cultures and therefore I kept researching on them. Heavily influenced by Amar Kanwar's work's conservationism and the concept of local ecologies, whilst writing and developing my shortlisted proposal "The hybrid language of plantsongs" I came across a term used in Anthropology called "Traditional Ecological Knowledge" (TEK). Realising (also in a semi-full loop, when looking at some of the aspects of 'The Public Book' proposal) that I had always been interested in the fruitful friction between tradition and innovation, hand-made and machine made objects, in a bid to place my technique and artistic skills, I now realised that TEK is central to my practice in the context of Ecology and human intervention. TEK is in short defined by the knowledge that cultures hold and pass on to next generations to foster a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature AS culture.
Bearing in mind that one of the most threatening problems in my local ecology - Britain - is fracking, I decided to continue to focus on it (for now), but this time with not only a geologic frame of mind, but also from a conservationist view point. Collecting shale in the Crackington formation in North Devon made me feel like a budding geologist collecting samples on an expedition; it was amazing to be able to see the gigantic fractalian dimension of shale: from minuscule and fragile striations to 10 story high single plates, the layered pattern repeated itself all along Hartland Quay's coast. I wanted to cast this shale and the space in between stones, so that the value of our soil is visualised, made evident, to the viewer, as if the artwork (my energy and actions) froze/stopped the harmful actions in the shale grounds (no drilling) - symbolically conserving the Earth.
However, I wasn't happy with just symbolically, I also wanted to embody the philosophy I embrace - keep it in the ground - so in a markedly conscious decision I will from now on not only use easily/readily accessible/available materials (in following with Biomimicry) but also materials that are either recycled or re-used, especially those that have their origins in mineral or oil extraction, e.g. metal, plastic. In this way the material of choice for this sculpture was recycled aluminium. Its ubiquity makes it go unnoticed, but its extraction is one of the most harmful to our planet producing tonnes and tonnes of annual toxic waste left out in open air in bauxite tailings.
Positive I, Positive too
recycled aluminium
POSITIVE I and POSITIVE TOO represent the natural and the machine. POSITIVE I embraces the organic language of delicate landscapes supported by our romanticised view of nature, and POSITIVE TOO is a reference to the space in between that needs to be kept as such, with a more brutal formal language to evoke the industrial damage caused by the drilling of the earth. They both embody the ethos of anti-drilling by using recycled aluminium, which is a consolidating turning point in my practice.
Peoples of All Nations
Digitalised encyclopaedia: digital film 29'38"
PEOPLES OF ALL NATIONS is a complex piece. It references a time when colonialism was at a peak, 1935, and the body language seen in the pictures manifests it. It conserves the images in the book (a two volume encyclopaedia) in another effort of mine to take on a conservationist approach (this time of knowledge). The question is: to conserve what? If in the case what we can see is critically politicised in the context of our current understanding of the effects of colonialism over nations across the world? This piece needed a text that could clarify my intentions. The images, to me, speak of cultures that have lost their innocence over a mentality that favours the earth's destruction. They also speak of the absence of passing of knowledge, when images all over the internet show citizens of capital cities to be dressed more and more alike, as globalisation takes place and ancient or traditional customs have been replaced by "modernisation" which obviously has advantages, but again, because of it's inherent globalisation and extreme industrialisation, flattens the world's intricacies into a capitalist culture.
I am moving on with the latest developments in my practice, which are now more defined but not stagnant: I take my inspiration from the world around me, which is in constant change. I am hoping to disseminate meaningful art to the wider public, not just the art audience, so that the work completes its own ecology and it's rendered in reality, where it came from, but transformed too, like nature and ourselves.