nteresting to get question like what is real and what is not. When I saw a video artwork <Hyperlink, or it didn’t happen> by Cécile. B. Evans, I realised that numerous “decaffeins” live and breath in the media more animately than in real life like image of Philip Seymour Hoffman passed away and recreated by high definition graphic in her video. And after his death, that director of the film <Hunger game> wanted to put him by computer graphics for scenes he had not completed, show us arguments between real and un-real is no more useless). If I bring this subject to my work, I don’t think that we are really that real even in real life. quote the film <Ghost in the shell> again.
“There arecertain areas of the plexiglass more or less reflective and this becomes a tool in my arsenal of formal techniques. One of the many paradoxes is that while my description of my techniques here makes my creation of the works sound very intentional and formally rigorous, and in many ways they are, they are also made in a meditative, automatic way, in which I often disregard any rules and attempt to find novel, extremely subtle and discrete formal nuances in the works as I am making them.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
I have to answer this question in quite a literal fashion, for I always felt that I am drowning in a sea of aesthetic images, in texts, in films, poems, political movements, books, histories. Also, their is a literal immersion that I feel that occurs when dealing with my work. The layers of Plexiglass and the light literally pull the viewer into a confrontation with visual space and time. From a very early age I felt I was awash in the seeming infinity of available works of art to see in reproduction or in museums, in the mass of texts available in libraries, in the multitude of films and television shows broadcast or shown on screens everywhere everyday. It has been and remains for me to this day, exactly in response to this deluge of information, that I must create serenity, a solace, a space of repose, a place of meditative quiet in my artworks...I could make a list of artists, authors, film auteurs, philosophers, etc whose works have directly influenced me in my day to day life as well as in my visual formal art making, but that would be a long list. In the Information Age I am a singular node made up of infinite eyes taking in the entirety of our human creative output and responding in the simplest way possible.
One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?
I do think of my artworks as mirrors. Our collective and individual humanity is being reflected and commented upon within each of my works. In a sense I pose an absolutely essential question at every moment in my works being. That question is “Why are ‘we’ here?” or “Why is this our reality and how can we choose to be in this struggle to exist ?”...these are primal existential queries that confront me every moment of every day...I hope that in some basic universal way my act of formalizing this sparks answers and searching in others.
While studying your paintings I couldn’t help but think about a Polish writer, painter,
While talking about his creative process, he stated:
I am, which means that I comment on myself as a creation that I shall never be able to analyze to the end. I am reduced to experiments with the coauthor of my existence, psyche. The form of my thoughts and one day a beautiful death are in store for it. I would like to watch myself in the course of dying when the interpretation of pure, aesthetic sensations, merging into one, reaches full freedom ... I imagine the disappearance of the proportions of my body and the growing devastation of my consciousness. It must be extremely fascinating.
Can you relate to these words in any way?
The quote makes me think that I do see that creating my works of art is like manufacturing objects that will one day replace my body, soul and my psyche thus that when I die they will still exist and I shall be no more. But paradoxically this is a mere illusion. This is a trick of light: of smoke and mirrors. Nothing in the universe is permanent and the only way that my art objects could be said to stand for me in a world where I am no longer is if they are seen by others, either in museums or in peoples private art collections.
less ingredients that makes up the human body and mind. Like all the components that makes me as an individual with my own personality. I have a face and voice to distinguish myself from the others. But my thoughts and memories are unique only to me. And I carry a sense of my own destiny. All of that blends to create a mixture which forms me and gives rise to my conscience.” This line show us limits of science that can’t define living things. In my point of view, the only way to prove myself in the city is “by papers.” We can’t identify ourselves as citizen without ID card, passport or certificated documents. Finally whether in cyberspace or real world, we all exist by text and information and it means these things can be deprived and decaffeinated anytime.
This harsh essence of two different world share gives me a lot of things to think for my work.
Could you tell our readers more about the meaning of your ideas of presenting modern society?
“In the city space, the citizens are registered as information by texts and numbers on paper and we are defined and limited by this information collected.” This is exactly like analogue elements in the material world that are digitalised as signal and symbol by bits and pixels on data and they are controlled and recopied by big data formed.
Since we revolve around the issue of communication this time, we have one more question: in yur opinion, can art change the future for inter human communication? How can art help us make sense of these complex histories?
As I mentioned above, I think the most important and powerful feature of art is “to make people think.” Today in the modern society we are all exposed by overflowing information and medias. we say that internet culture is interactional but most of overflowing information in cyber network has already ‘answer’.And the one-way relationship between this ‘fixed answer’ and ‘accepting us’ is violent itself.
Art doesn’t have the answer. It’s publics role to find it. And if each one can have different answer, it means there will be a room to communicate. I believe that this uncertainty and obscurity of art can improve diversity of thinking and communicating and make the place not only for interaction but also interhuman communication.
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Darip. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
Urbanoiz is a project of making a “culture” not just for artworks. I’m interested in various fields like fashion, music and merchandising…etc. And if it’s story about our life in the city, I always hop on to work on this project regardless of any creation form. Recently I’m preparing for really interesting project, so that people can interact with my art work more closely in the city. I will make more efforts to let people find this “urban noise’ everywhere in the city. This is going to be very hard, but I am thrilled to continue this project.
t all started at the Academy of Fine Arts in Trondheim, Norway, in the mid 90's and with my research in Video Art and the History of Video Art. During that period, I experimented with the cameras available at the time, such as Hi8, Super-8, and DV. I learned how to edit using Avid and produced numerous small experimental art films. Conceptually, I was inspired by video artists such as Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, and Bruce Naumann amongst many others. I used effects and experimental sound in my films. It was a very exciting time for my development, and I explored all kinds of filmic work, from 80's video art to more experimental directors of the time, such as Peter Greenaway, Jim Jarmusch, and Hal Hartley as well as the greats such as Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, and Jean-Luc Godard. So my work was shaped by this strange hybrid of influences: everything from animated MTV shorts to deeply conceptual post modernistic cinema.
Later on, I started to build video installations, combined with photography, objects and performance. From this, I started to become involved with stage art and independent dance and theatre. Several directors have given me the time and space to experiment using multiple video projectors, and my work has become an active element onstage, sometimes interacting with the performers. Every project has been useful in some way for exploring and refining my ideas. Now in my capacity as film director, I'm able to call upon my experiences gained from working as a cross disciplinary artist.
Your artworks are revolving around the problem of social identity and cultural affiliations. Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?
I belong to a minority group in society and that identity is always a part of me and my work. I don’t believe my artworks are changing due to unstable times but that I'm working my way through a theme and a method over time. The content of my work is becoming more and more personal and I think that is because I dare to be more honest with myself. What I find interesting to work with is in my immediate presence. When I collaborate with stageartists, we often focus on a current political theme. In these collaborations I work more as an art activist and have a broader openess for the aesthetics. My work is then more experimental with research on different ways to develop live presentations in the space.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race
and ethnic identity in visual culture?
“Revolted by the Thought of Known Places… Sweeney Astray” by Joan Jonas was one of the first performance installations that really made a huge impact on me. I was living in Paris during this time, in the early 90s, with a lot of influences from different cultures. It became the starting point of my own work. Joan Jonas practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas continues to find new layers of meanings in themes and questions of gender and identity that have fueled her art for over thirty years. She is a great inspiration still today.
It is impossible to avoid the topic of body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity that we see in your practice. What is the function of the identity appearing in your artworks – is it a canvas used to present your ideas or rather the subject of the art? What inspired you to use this as a theme in your practice?
I have been developing my visual imagery since I began studying art and film - from conceptual thinking, composition, using light and colour in different ways, through all the different techniques I've utilised over the years in my work and in my collaborations with stage artists such as dancers, musicians and actors. My approach is always developing through exploring these things. Visual imagery in essence is your way of experiencing what you see and transforming it. This is my world that I want to share and express through my art. The body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity is part of this visual imagery, the emotional essence in my practice. Always present and always developing in different themes and projects.
Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of
which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.