NOTES:
not a linear art practice process
Current research:
1. Limulus: video/memories about struggling, insects used for vaccination and music record reference used (spinning record) >> accidental collision of two unrelated objects (a jukebox, which is the same jukebox that was in the bar the artist’s family owned, same songs and some songs bought)
horsecrab substance – used in pharamacy (horsecrab – human dreams; jukebox >> artist’s memories, the substance was tested against …)
in the terrain of water (Hurricane Catherina) conference >> landscape architects* ( Tapooku earthquake happened four weeks after the conference) >> designer: marine biology – biscuits, voice: 50 different marine animals used – creating a monster
*Now – food: questions from previous work – investigating water – river in Peru – changes (artist: Dilip Di Curiko) – made not just there – borders defined by humans >> river Thames: bunked – won’t change – question: Who defines it – people affected by floodings/river – poor, black (USA)
collecting found objects – Instagram: balloon and horseshoe crab breeding >> shapes – design, edit of the sounds of the two objects
2. Eponos Well – 30 objects found in the river Thames + music >> different iterations of the same song (changing through the time) >> haunted by water – spinning in space – objects
3. The eye that articulates belongs on land – Fokushima shore – remains of radioactivity – field trip – floating objects and water >> after an earthquake – radioactive meltdown
Own take away/reflection from the artist talk:
I was particularly interested in the topic of who defines the landscape and the significance of river in the landscape. I think that this is quite relevant to my interest in the seascape. Furthermore, this artist talk influences me to question how the landscape is changing.
Additional notes: River Thames – peaceful, somewhat isolated when looking from the bridge where scarscrapers and buildings create the landscape – banking of the river Thames/rivers – Karen Kramer – interesting topic to consider, link to?
“Selected for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2016, Karen Kramer used her £20,000 bursary to make the film The Eye That Articulates Belongs on Land, HD Video, 2016
Shot in Shiretoko National Park in the far north of Japan, and within watchful radius of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, Karen Kramer’s The Eye That Articulates Belongs on Land offsets beguiling images of unspoilt nature with graphic visual evidence of the ‘re-wilding’ of the landscape around the atomic plant since particular areas became off-limits to human access. Unseduced by romantic notions of wild nature as a wellspring of recovery or transformation, Kramer’s film is a reminder of how our perceptions of the natural environment are often deeply subjective, and prone to being clouded by myth, or partial knowledge.
Alternately embraced as a paragon of virgin wilderness or scorned as a baleful harbinger of a post-human no-man’s-land, our fallback readings of these two different landscapes belie the fact that they are each continually evolving; subject to complex internal dynamics, and never standing still. Outside the margins of everyday experience, and requiring a step into the unknown, Shiretoko and Fukushima are uncertain, liminal spaces – as porous and as shifting as the shoreline locations Kramer repeatedly returns to over the course of her film. A place where the solid ground of familiar existence is met with daily incursions and periodic breaches, the shoreline also has metaphorical significance: as a threshold between the material and the ethereal. As if to emphasise the point, Kramer introduces images of foxes patrolling the water’s edge. A key figure from the pantheon of Japanese culture and mythology, the fox can morph from animal to human form, and commune between the living and the dead. Shape-shifter extraordinaire, it is also a shadowy stalker of the contours of another indeterminate zone; one haunted by the lingering aftermath of a momentous or catastrophic event. Guided by voices that have their own quixotic, otherworldly logic, we are led to a series of deserted buildings, including an abandoned planetarium – its ceiling of stars flecked by dust motes and a phantom electrical presence in the air. As the title of Kramer’s film implies, there are oceanic thoughts in our minds for which we cannot always find adequate expression, as well as unseen forces in our lives whose future consequences remain equally mysterious and unfathomable.”
Karen Kramer, Jerwood/FVU Awards, 2016
https://www.jerwoodfvuawards.com/artists/karen-kramer
Art Studio 2i (2019/20) 