_____________________________REPORT_______________________________
Introduction:
This text is a report about the project “borderlines: immigrants environments in a social and technological art context”. This paper intends to describe the project process and how the collaborations between the artists were made. The text is written from the perspective of one of the artist in the collaboration, the ‘artist mediator’, the one that create the social relations during the project production and the collaborations.
The beginning:
When the art start to be totally connected to the life is when we identify how powerful is the intense production of a real art piece.
With the aim to rescue the art and the life is that the work “borderlines” was created. Using my own life experiences, perspectives and social relations I insert and represent into the artwork the ideas and statements related to these social issues.
With the initial objective of represent and work within illegal immigrants in the city of London the work started to create a political and subversive identity, when I try to infiltrate into this ‘fragile’ group and to produce the art piece. But, at the same time it was realized that: ‘if I want to be part of the all project I have to be one of the characters in the process; but my situation in London wasn’t the same’.
After that I decided to start the production alone, before decide which social group will be part of the collaboration.
During the first months my art investigation was to ‘looking for the non-spaces’, and what I mean for a ‘non-space’ is actually what I was looking for, this ‘borderlines’ where I’ll find latter in the collaboration with the immigrants.
The idea is to start the art investigation where I didn’t know what to represent or neither present in my art work, so the ‘non-space’ came as first input to my main goal in the project: denied the elements that I was trying to find in the collaboration.
With this idea in mind I did two video works “looking for the non-space I” and “looking for the non-space II”, where images of melancholic landscapes were used to present the question: When and where this images happen? And what are the characters or the elements in the narrative produced in the video? These questions were totally useful to help in the search for the social group that I was looking for.
Still from the video ”looking for the non-space II”,5’29”
Still from the video “looking for the 'non-space'”, 1’29”
In the other hand I was trying to translate - in my art process - the idea of ‘borders’ and to identify the ‘non-space’ that was necessary for create relevant elements in the translation of the ‘belonging of this non-space’.
The next step that appears in my process was the series of digital photography “immigrants objects”.
When I came from Brazil to England I notice that in my country it’s not normal to find trolleys in the middle of the street, parks, etc; but in London are. And then I decided to document these trolleys in a decontextualized environment and insert the immigrant context into the pictures - when the environment where you are from is not the one that you’re belonging anymore.
After the trolleys I did a documentations of containers also to translate the idea of nomadism and environment movement, using my single point of view about these immigrant issue.
At this time I was invited to partipate in an exhibition at Pernambuco Brazil, from the online magazine 2ptos where I display this series of photography’s.
'Immigrants objects', digital photography
With the process of the project already started by these two art pieces documents I decided to initiate the search for the collaboration partners, where I realize that to be a fare and truly work production I had to find people in the same situation as me: artist who are not from England living in London, which means: artists immigrants.
Before that I also decided that the best conceptual reference for this work it was to use the concept of ‘social sculpture’ (create by the German artist Joseph Beuys to translate the idea of the process as the art piece). To argue with this concept I try to display - in many shows as possible - the project process and to look for the process investigation in a different way, when I was trying to identify the ‘art document pieces’.
And then, to start the collaboration (and also to dialogue with my personal work) I create the work “Portuguese and Magyarország”: a digital drawing produced in a brainstorm with a friend from Hungary when we were discussing how the Brazilian language, the Portuguese, has a lot of similarities with the Hungary language, the Magyarország. This art piece is a paper with notes from when we were talking about it. This work was displayed in the exhibition “Living Room”, at the Emma Thomas gallery, in São Paulo, Brazil.
“Portuguese and Magyarország”, digital drawing
Exhibition view
I felt the necessity to research relevant contemporary references of artist that was also producing artworks related to the idea of immigration.
In my research I use Joseph Beuys to translate the work-in-process and the social implication about the project with some of his concepts and works in the essays and papers that I wrote in the process. I also relate his production to the technological and digital environment where my work came from.
Joseph Beuys in the action ‘I Like America and America Likes Me’, 1974
Another important example is the work ‘on translation’ made by the Spanish artist Antoni Muntatas where he create series of digital photography and video about the immigrants in the border of the USA and the México.
Antoni Muntadas, video installation ‘On Translation’
I still have to appoint the outstanding video documentary “Them” 2007, create by the Polish artist Artur Zmijewski. The video documents a social experiment about different social groups with different political views (conservatives, patriotic Catholics, nationalist Polish youth, leftist socialists, democrats and freedom fighters). The artist invited them to create in a workshop symbolism and ideas about their ideologies, the result is footage with conflict and interaction to negotiate and fight.
Still from the video “Them”, 2007, Artur Zmijewski
Another rich reference is the work “Camouflage. LOOK like them - TALK like them". A video documentary where the Chinese artist Jun Yang reflects the conditions in the everyday life of migrants - legal and illegal - in the West of USA in a climate of paranoia filmed in the wake of 9/11.
Jun Yang, “camouflage”, video, 16:33 min
This references research is still in develop published in the project virtual diary.
The collaboration chase:
With the propose to work within a small group of artist from different countries I start my search for the partners with an online ad published in magazines where I wrote, “ need artist for a collaborative project”.
With this ad a group of people with interest in the project reply and my work was to choose which one I’ll invite for the collaboration.
After a couple of weeks I send an email to three of them inviting for an informal meeting in my house.
In the meeting was the perfect moment to know better each of them and also for the group to understand what the project is about. And the partners for the collaboration were: Lana Lasagna, South Africa, Francesco Beneamato, Italy and Aline Der Assem, German.
During the time that I had do deal with four different artists and also with my personal work I realize that my function in the project was the ‘artist-mediator’, the artist that assist social relations creating networks where the environment is base by art and technology.
The collaborations was being created at the most natural way, connecting the art production to a day-by-day life, using the partner’ techniques into a digital technology environment, but at the same time giving to them the free opportunity to come with ideas or goals that they want to achieve in the project.
After the first group meeting I start to make individual meetings to talk personally what we were going to investigate in the collaboration and how is the best way for it.
I encourage them to create a virtual diary but this was something that didn’t work, in the other hand was necessary to prove that I’ll really be the filter and the catalyst for the project documentations.
During the meeting with each artist we talk and discuss what we will investigate into the immigrant theme. With this first chats I was able to understand each personality for then propose a ‘keyword’ for each artist to use in the collaboration’ work.
After a few meetings its was clear for me which issue I will be using in the work, choose from their personal dealing with the city of London and how are they’re opinions and visions about their own city and their own life affected by the multicultural space of London.
Lana Lasagna: identity; Francesco Beneamato, environment and Aline Der Assem, belonging.
With the words and issues decided I keep doing my personal work using these ‘keywords’ in a ‘non-way’, i. e, creating art pieces about the word ‘language’ and denying their work environments. This word’s artwork will be more specified in the text below when I’ll describe how each immigrant used each ‘keyword’.
With this I start to produce the series “invisiveis,07”. The objective of this series is to represent the ‘non-identity’ about the immigrants in London, where in a cosmopolitan city; we are always surrounded by different information’s, couture’s and belief. Using the Internet as the resource for the images and applying a digital manipulation (what I call as digital painting) the images ‘hide’ and ‘denied’ the characters identity.
Using online community for social networking I research portrays where people register their life in various situation, such as vacation, in places that they don’t normally go or old images (the memory). With the digital manipulation the characters was erased and replaced by the landscape scenario.
With this series I was invited to participate of two group shows, the first ‘Invisible Polaroid’ at the SESC gallery, Curitiba, Brazil, and the other one ‘Altered Landscapes’ at the Newspace Centre for Photography, Portland, USA.
Another piece create from the words used in the collaboration with each artist is the video installation “from the series: keywords”. Using the projects keywords: "language, environment, identity and belonging" in a simple animation the video is a composite with all the words together resulting in a big sentence, when the meaning from each word is not important anymore because the main focus is each letter, representing the idea of each immigrant as an individual. This work was present at the show “TEXT & IMAGE”, at the Wilson Rd gallery, London.
Still from the video “keywords”
Exhibition view
All this shows was important to contextualize the project concept - ‘the process as the art piece’- where the documents are displayed in different places showing the project process as a piece in different contexts.
‘Invisiveis,07’, digital photography
Identity, Lana Lasagna, South Africa.
The collaboration with Lana was the most natural work. Talking about the issues and her life in informal chats she came with the idea about a short video that tell her situation in London.
In the city for 8 year Lana was applying for her citizenship and during the work she was also filling forms and dealing with burocracy to became a British, so, we decided to incorporate this period of her life in our collaboration.
Before she post the document we decided to shoot a video where she was filling the form with a ‘character fake hand’ in the section that she had to write which day and country she was out of England in the past eight year.
In the video ‘writing’, a fake hand write the British form, the timing and intensive repetition in the video is a truly representation about how difficult is to get a citizenship and how many steps you have to do in this hall process.
Still from the video ‘writing’, 6’02”
Before she post the forms we also did another video, ‘offering’, where the same character run eighty time a tracking field and in the end offers to a mail box eight blue balls that represent the eight year that she was in the country.
Still from the video ‘offering’, 3’05”
After a month Lana receive the result about the citizenship and we shoot the ceremony for the queen of England, where she finally will get the British passport. The material of this ceremony is a documentary still in editing process.
During the period that we were working together we went to different exhibitions and lectures to find references for what we were doing in the collaboration. One lecture that is important to mention is the ‘Intimacy: Across Visceral and Digital Performance” (7,8,9 of December at Goldsmiths University of London) where we watch interesting female artist talking about their performance work in the digital environment.
Belonging, Aline Der Assem, German
Aline had already work in collaboration with children that she did when she was in German. She is a very conceptual artist and the process with her was very important to contextualize the project process. She was always putting me in the spotlight and making questions to test, and maybe check where she was getting into. This ‘conceptual confront‘ was very important because she help me to questioned myself and to make me understand, actually, what I was doing.
Aline Der Assem, Collective Drawings # 3 (detail), 50 cm x 200 cm
Our meetings were always with a lot of coffee and talk and massive discussions about artists, works, institutions, art market, etc.
Aline and I was going to investigate the idea of belonging and I think this issue was very important to her because she was always travelling between German and London, belonging to the booth countries.
At one time that she arrived London she came with the idea of using the ‘kitchen’ as an input to start our collaboration; and also with the title “My house is my castle”. With this input I suggest that we could make a first experiment building castles installations with frames in our own kitchens.
With 30 frames we start to build the installation. First we did in my room and than we move to my kitchen. Starting with a very straight form (like card castles) and then incorporating the installation with the object that was around the castle, like the bed, floor, chair, table, ashtrays, etc.
“My house is my castle”, series of digital photography
The images generated from these installations will serve as a second input for the collaboration, helping us to find what belong represent to us.
In the meeting in her home – to build the frame installations in her kitchen - we realize that we wasn’t happy with the result; the images that we had it wasn’t the correct way to communicate what we were trying to say. After a hall day talking and discussing about our work we notice that the object that we were trying to use it wasn’t the frames neither the kitchen and actually the furniture around the ‘castles’. The furniture represents the private space of our houses and belongs to our houses, and than we decide to use this concept in a public context.
After this meeting Aline went back to German for a couple of weeks. During this time we were making online meeting to talk about this idea of furniture and researching artist that already start this discussion, like the Brazilian artist José Bechara, which has installations with beds, chair, etc and the artist Carl Palm, that create inside the gallery space an accumulations of house objects.
Carl Palm, “Two day Trojan art house show”
Jose Bechara, “paisagem domestica”
After that Aline start to document the furniture nomadism in German, where the citizen put the old furniture that they don’t want anymore on the street creating real ‘natural urban installations’.
“My house is my castle”, series of digital photography
We still in the process to find the better platform to display this series of pictures and also the name of the work change because we found the differences between the meaning of the words ‘house’ and ‘home’. House describes a particular type of building. Home is the place where you live and feel that you belong to.
So what we were doing is “My Home is my castle”.
Environment, Francesco Beneamato, Italy
Francesco reply for the project’ ad because he wanted to live in a more arty environment. He starts painting when he moves to London 4 years ago.
His paintings have a lot of information, strong colours and an intensive message. In the group meeting he show me a painting where he try to translate the London environment, ‘a city where we receive a lot of information every day’ and definitely he could tell us that with that image. Francesco is a city guy, during the meetings we were always in different’s cafés or pub and meeting new artist, people, etc. I didn’t have other choice than give him the environment issue to investigate in our collaboration.
Francesco Beneamato, “the dead of two cactus”, painting
At the same time that Francesco is an immigrant that belong to the city, he is like the city, quickly, fast and with a lot of information and things happen around him. This was one of the personality that we wanted to translate in the work.
We produce two videos about London and Italy: one with narrative (park-city) e other with a poetic aesthetics (city-park).
The idea is to represent the booth countries in Francesco’s mind. In the video ‘park-city’ he is walking around the city and writing in a notebook about the environment that he is in. And in the video ‘city-park’ are two screens at the same time, in the first you can see his robe (the one that he use to paint) flying with the wind and in the other steps of an escalator with a slowly and poetic movement.
Still from the video park-city, looping, 2’09”
Still from the video city-park, looping, 0’37”
Francesco keep writing in his notebook about his life and his perspectives about the city and the notebook is another piece that we want to incorporate to the project.
The shooting of this video was a real art piece, where in a long day he decided where we’re going to make the shoots and he was leaving me to places and spaces that he like in London.
The real art piece in the collaboration with Francesco was the day that we were walking through the city without destination to shoot the video. This day was like the happenings in the 60’ 70’ in New York and certainly was a ‘dérive’ work, like the Situationist Guy Debord where in a philosophy concept means “(...) an aimless walk, probably through city streets, that follows the whim of the moment. It is sometimes translated as a drift. This idea is to try and convince readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces.” (Wikipedia. Last access at 6th March 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive)
Conclusion
Having as a start a schedule and aims produced in the beginning of the project I realize that the process was very intensive and productful. The work is not finish yet because I still have some other few questions to investigate and experiment related to this idea of immigration, not just about persons but objects and concepts.
The Website is another very important tool to display the project process and to show how the work is being create with the idea of the ‘art piece documentations’
All the papers and essays (and also this report) are very important to contextualize the conceptual of the project, creating this network though the digital technologies and art.
I know that a project to be good is a project without an end, a project that is possible to be applied in different context and spaces.
This work is in your process and is totally relevant to keep with this methodology in different social groups and also to produce new statements about the society nowadays.
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