9 – 12.6.2022 Exhibition
Dark Doom Honey Deep Sea Baby
Graduation Show 2022
NOÉMIE TSHISUMPA
Year of birth: 1994 – Place of birth: Cannes, France – noemie.tshisumpa@hotmail.fr
BIOGRAPHY – Noémie Tshisumpa (she/her) was born and raised in France where she first obtained a degree in Fine Arts and then graduated in Design. She develops an interdisciplinary practice that tends to poeticize spaces and relations through political utopias.
IN FROM BETWEEN – Noémie Tshisumpa (Cannes, 1994) invites us to enter a space between poetic and politic that invests the potential of a breathing space. Material and immaterial connects to transform our perception and, through disorientation, offer another sensitive experience where we recreate an interaction with our surrounding and relate to it. Here, the attempt is to put people in altered state of consciousness to be, to feel more present and ultimately reconnect with our own bodies.
WEI YANG
BIOGRAPHY – Wei Yang (b.1994, Liuzhou) is a visual artist based between Amsterdam and Frankfurt.
RANDOM RECORDS: MARY – For this series of works, Yang pulls references from a close inspection of classical Chinese tales (Chuanqi 传奇) and their influence on social reform after the Second Opium World War (1856-1860), when Britain and France invaded China. One such tale, Random records of a recluse in Wusong (Songyin manlu 淞隐漫录) written by Wang Tao (王韬, 1828-1897) and accompanied by landscape illustrations by Wu Youru (吴友如, 1840-1893) tells of European women falling in love with Chinese men in adventurous storylines, with fantastic landscapes as the background. Prior to the war, both male writers and characters in classical literature could be sensitive, gentle and socially engaged, while under the post-imperial “Body Engineering” reform agenda, they shifted to hyper-masculine, tough and ruthless. Yang’s works inspect the role early gender policy played in decolonization, and how an entangled vision of the West and a post-colonial landscape was portrayed.
FINN WAGNER – info@finnwagner.de www.finnwagner.de
BIOGRAPHY – Studied at the Academy of Media Arts from 2013–2019 with Johannes Wohnseifer und Mischa Kuball -Holder of the Scholarship of «Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes» since 2017 -Residency in Los Angeles from January to March in 2018 and 2019 -Diploma with Distinction with Johannes Wohnseifer and Mischa Kuball 2019 – from 2019-2021 Mentee of Kunstmentorat NRW
TO CRYSTALIZE INTO A SOLUTION (WORKING TITLE) – The video installation combines physical monuments presented in art handling crates with a 3D video shown on three screens. It cracks time, space and history to tell a possible, alternative future. In the last 30 years it seems that there has not been a great revolution or world-changing innovation, everything seems to be in a loop, including culture. The stories we consume in movies or games are also mostly repeating the same narrations. The present is marked by the return of old, evil specters such as war, oppression and xenophobia. Coupled with the unstoppable climate crisis, almost no one can imagine a promising future, at most those who already have power and gain much more wealth through this suffering. Since it is so difficult to imagine a beautiful future, many take refuge in nostalgia and history repeats itself once again. To break out of this loop I create artifacts from the past but also from the future. I work like an archaeologist who creates their own finds to formulate a new future through the creation of a past. Through the choice of materials and the motif I bring into a monument I can navigate back and forth in time. Old materials like stone serve us to remember the otherwise forgotten while new materials like plastic or aluminum are against time and thus against the future (Robert Smithson). In the 3D video, this succeeds even more easily in landscapes and places that are completely self-created. In the fever-dream-like sequences, the viewer wanders through different worlds and times and encounters monuments. In addition to places like a warehouse, many archaic landscapes are wandered through, which do not allow any conclusions about time. The artifacts in these scenes are a self-definition of our western-capitalist society and are at the same time foreshadows as well as relics. The Video is produced within a game engine, so I’m using the same media and some of the aesthetics to break the otherwise always repeating narrations of entertainment. The representation of otherwise spatially separated causes and their perpetrators of oppression and destruction are shown side by side; this is meant to loosen our current paralysis, make solutions recognizable, and motivate action. One strategy is that of crystallization: an unbound, flowing matter like water flows freely, always choosing the path with the least resistance. However, it can penetrate even the tiniest cracks in a hard material, freeze and thus blast itself free with enormous force. It can then become liquid again and flow freely. Crystallization means to temporarily organize in a solid, perfect arrangement in order to expand and create a pressure so great as to break the hardest and most oppresive material such as concrete or steel. The physical artifacts are shown in boxes, as if they had been dumped in the garage of the court and someone had checked if everything was in the boxes. They are evidence that will have to be negotiated later in the court. In the video, the underground garage, the room in which it is shown, is also being cracked. The doors that are currently walled up are broken open and new worlds become accessible.
CIARA O’KELLY – Place of birth: Dublin, Ireland ciaraokelly95@gmail.com www.ciaraokelly.com
BIOGRAPHY – Ciara O’Kelly graduated with a joint BA in Fine Art Sculpture and Visual Culture from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. She creates large-scale sculptures incorporating various mediums, which often includes video, performance and text. Her work is concerned with controlling neuroplasticity, de-conditioning the over-performing body and cultivating resilience through endurance practices.
PURE RESILIENCE – “Pure Resilience” is a video installation composed of a film and large scale metal sculpture inspired by fitness machinery. The viewer is invited to sit in the structure and view the film with headphones. In the video the artist wears a professional speed skating suit, custom printed with notes and affirmations displayed through branding. This technically-designed, aerodynamic piece which promises minimal wind drag while exerting control over external particles. Detail shots show the designs stretching over contracting muscles, long limbs and exhausted tissue. A voice speaks to the viewer in an instructional tone, describing how one can navigate their body and adapt physical behaviours to an unbalanced environment. Polluted psychological air flow particles float haphazardly, yet strategically, striving for mind commodification. The work explores a fight against the continual drive to condition and curate the malleable mind. In neuroplasticity research, we see how the brain is constantly responding to its experiences within its environment. The brain is seen as something which is modifiable, formable and formative at the same time. The body and mind functions in fluidity with its environment; each component constantly interacting, redefining and influencing one another. Through video, sublimated text and narration, endurance practices are discussed as a way to reformulate the mind, body and environment relationship, and thus, exert a presence needed to gain control. Repetition of an act creates a rhythm, but by pushing the threshold of suffering until reserve capacities are depleted, chaos erupt and attention is forced inwards for psychological support of such physical behaviours. In bodybuilding, a form of shock therapy is used to gain muscle growth. A highly calculated process of training each muscle group and pushing them beyond their limits until they break, and are forced to grow back at a larger capacity. Variety in training allows the individual to continually shock the body, forcing it to never gain a rhythm. Traversing the line between control and chaos allows an individual to disrupt the usual process of malleability inflicted. An exertion of energy, this state of being “used up”, develops a strong bodily and physical resilience. A feeling of indistinctiveness; a place where organic thoughts and actions can arise from.
FRANCESCA MIAZZI – Place of birth: Padova (IT) – fremiazzi@gmail.com
BIOGRAPHY – Francesca Miazzi (IT, 1997) graduated with a BA in Design from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA) of Milan. Through performance, sculpture and video she explores alternative healing practices that blur the line between the physical and the psychic. Her work aims to present healing as an act of both organic and political resistance.
RESPIRO VOTIVO – Respiro Votivo is an attempt to understand her breathing condition in relation to the unregulated toxic output of cement factories in her hometown. Working with archival footage of protests performed over the last 20 years, she recognises and questions an inherited vision of political action, proposing new healing rituals as alternative forms of resistance. Referring to Italian magic traditions where illness is perceived as a domination of forces that threatens individual presence, true healing can only be achieved when the psychic reintegrates with the physical. Through this installation, Miazzi presents her own rituals which are based on a process of detachment from her body to establish new ways of inhabiting it.
ANA LIPPS – Place of birth: Vilnius ana.lipps@gmail.com https://www.ana-lipps.com
BIOGRAPHY – Born in 1997, Vilnius, Ana Lipps (they/them) is a Lithuanian-German artist, currently studying and working in the Netherlands. Their art practice is predominantly based in large scale installation. Through creating objects, photographs and interactive installations they aim to train the viewer’s eye to recognise liminal moments of suspension encouraging choices of change rather than a continuation of the expected.
YOU BRAKE IT, YOU TASTE IT – ‘Liminality’ was coined by anthropologists to denote the in-between state within rites of passage. Over the course of history the liminal has been suppressed from being a vital part of life for individual and community growth, to being seen as a dangerous and undesirable space. Liminality, the centre that divides two binaries moved to the peripheries of our society. This neglect of transitional spaces harvests an anarchic undergrowth and the liminal becomes a portal which can be utilised as a tool for resistance. A trained eye can recognise the liminal within almost anything, as it is all around us. However, through the way in which power structures have situated it within the outskirts of society we rarely recognise such an opportunity when it occurs. For those reasons my graduation project aims to create a rupture in the predominant version of reality. This years graduation show will take place at the Courthouse underground parking lot. I was interested in working with an object that belonged to the space as the parking lot is already a liminal space. Taking the car as a starting point for the project, I was looking to create an opportunity for the visitor to become an active agent in the queering of the space. “Intake Manifold” consist of a car with broken windows that are made of candy glass. From the back you can see the break lights glowing. As you approach the vehicle strange coloured lights and sound draw you closer. Parts of the car seem to be overgrown with other strange and fluid shapes. From the inside of the car you can hear the broken radio playing a tune that calls to you to break another piece of the glass and let it melt in your mouth. The participatory breaking off of candy pieces from the car allows the visitor to have a part in shaping the form of the environment. In that sense it becomes a tool in unraveling preconceived notions of what can be real, or can be possible. It is giving the parking lot as a liminal space a more central role, as well as collapsing in what the space is meant to be and what it can be. The car becomes then a vessel for this change.
LIANE ROSENTHAL – Place of birth: Jerusalem liane31@gmail.com https://soundcloud.com/lianerosenthal
BIOGRAPHY – Liane studied industrial design, where her interest in sound as a material developed. As a DJ her sets focus on dark industrial techno and seek to cultivate an emotional exploration which evolves in a rolling flow. She deals with coping through sound and clubbing, explores the power within vibration and its ability to affect the collective, the body and mind.
EGGS THAT SURROUNDS – The work is dedicated to Ziv Matushka (1971-2020) My work is about vibration force and its ability to create an effect on an individual as well as on a collective (unconscious). Vibration manifests as sound and influences both our physical and mental being. The work explores this notion within the context of club music (techno), where bodies share space on the dancefloor and influence each other. Therefore music functions as a mediator between bodies. As sound can evoke emotions and can trigger the (collective) unconscious, a range of feelings can be expressed on the dancefloor. Those feelings are revealed through the surface of our bodies. The club is a loop of music, feelings, emotions and bodies, contrasting, influencing and moving each other. The work is constructed using three parts; candles in the shape of an egg, sound which slowly evolves into a techno track and a 3D animation video. Each element functions as a separate theme which together act as a collective. On its surface, each candle has a sign of a ring within a ring which correlates with the way that Sara Ahmed refers to fear and how it shows on the surface of bodies. In this way, the information of our emotions transfers between bodies. The sign also resonates with the shape of a speaker and of sound waves. The egg represents the unknown, a phase before birth, and is a common archetype of life (Orphic Egg). It represents a new potential and the cycle of life. The sound acts as a mediator between all of the elements. It starts as an abstract ambient and slowly develops into a techno track. The sound then moves the candles’ flame to the frequencies and the rhythm. The video is constructed using 3D renders of myself covered with different textures. It represent time lapse, decay, death, life cycle,growth and trauma
IIDA – SSI – Place of birth: finland simmejj@gmail.com www.instagram.com/iidajonsson_/
BIOGRAPHY – iida-ssi is the collaborative practice of iida jonsson and ssi saarinen, finnish artists from the autonomous region åland islands. their work appears through interventions — re-constructions of the corrupt. the interventions are usually taking advantage of cracks: ruptures, unguarded entries, and unmeant outcomes. through these breaches, iida-ssi plays with new political potentialities and their coming to life.
INTERFACE TRILOGY: GLOSSOLALIA – interface trilogy: glossolalia is an intervention with de thomaskerk. over five days repellent images and sounds are rambling through the cracks of the concrete walls. considering glossolalia through conscious confusion and gatekeeping, a chant emerges: a divine service for the secular.
LUDOVIC HADJERAS – Place of birth: Besançon, France bonjour@ludovichadjeras.fr www.ludovichadjeras.fr
BIOGRAPHY – Ludovic Hadjeras was born in Besançon (France). He graduated his first master in June 2020 from No Name department at HEAR Strasbourg. His work focuses on establishing links and relation with his environment, direct and inherited.
CHOOSING THE TITLE IS NOW IN THE FOX’S PAWS – Ludovic Hadjeras recent work focuses on a long term relationship he has established with a couple of foxes living in the foundations of his studio in the industrial harbor of Sloterdijk. Hadjeras traces his attempts to make contact with these foxes, establishing means of interspecies communication through sculptural invitations and reflexive gestures.
NOAH COHEN – Place of birth: Paris noahc5@yahoo.fr
BIOGRAPHY – After a first formation In Sculpture (synthetic materials) at ENSAAMA in Paris, I moved in Amsterdam in 2016 where I joined an artist space named KRUX. In 2017 I studied Video Art in ERG, Bruxelles. In 2018 I came back to Amsterdam to participate in the creation of the Art Space “ISO” And been part of it since.
WHAT GROWS UNDER A GREEN SUN – “What grows under a green sun” is a multi-media installation, composed of a video within a sculptural structure. Partly crafted out of found materials scavenged in the urban environment of Amsterdam « What grows under a green sun » question possible urban spaces, at the border of the real and the dream. In this installation a construction site is imagined as a new hybrid ecosystem. The different sculptures, all connected, form a space that the viewer is invited to navigate in using flashlights. Enlightening the importance of their own look on their surroundings. The installation seems to change from the different focus of the torchlights, As the structure itself is alive and life grows from the multiple intersections of this hybrid structure of flowers and steel. Empathy is key to navigate this space made of reflective materials, as many mirrors of the everchanging self and as a reminder that our environment is an extension of ourself. This installation question the importance of spaces to project imagination and dreams within the urban landscape. As imagination is a tool for the transformation of the real…Under a green sun, the construction site becomes a new urban ecosystem, a possible place of freedom, of queerness, of hybridation and of collective construction.
ELISABETH PREHN – Place of birth: Erfurt elisabethprehn@gmx.de elisabethprehn.com
BIOGRAPHY – Elisabeth Prehn (Erfurt, 1991) is a multimedia artist in Amsterdam with a background in engineering and design. She focuses on the commodification of the self and objects alike. She experiments with the performative aspects of identities, objects and materials. Secretly just another nerd, she recently developed an interest in live action roleplaying (LARPing).
BUREAU BOBAK [TOGETHER WITH WAG5] – We all met at this LARP. But our life from before feels like someone else’s blurry memory. The strong echo of the world of myths and fantasy stick to wherever we go. We never managed to bleed out of character. In order to survive in this economical framework, that now feels outlandishly strange to us, we decided to found a design studio. A documentary film maker visits us on our first day in the office. We try to make it in the human world. This graduation show is a moment for us to display our attemt to the public. You can hire us.
Photography:
©Artun Alaska Arasli
©IIDA – SSI