Recognition as an act of violence: The disintegration and reconstruction of the soul in digital and non-digital space.
Paper collages and digital installations
I came to the HomeBase LAB with the intent of working on a series of narrative collages in order to storyboard a text I wrote a few years ago. I wanted to examine and reinterpret the text in a new way. I had the impulse to use collage to create a sort of “collage board” in a narrative way. I felt the need to work in a medium that is sensual and tactile. Much of what I am doing is about exploring media and ways to mix media in an effort to unite my disparate impulses in the online and offline world. Life online, has created a need to find things in the physical world to connect to and touch. As a prose writer and filmmaker with an interest in new technological modes of expression… collage seemed a natural outlet for this exploration… as it is in and of itself a mixed media form.
The first few collages I created to explore the text were symbolically rich but aesthetically lacking. After coming across several boxes of old paper from the GDR, some old identity documents and pictures at the Mauer Park Markt, I started to create more abstract works while experimenting with materials and developing a technique and subject matter. I looked at the Dadaist collages by Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Höch and others.
In the subsequent collages I created, I found that I was revealing unexpected, subtle and fractured narratives of the people in the photographs and history of the paper. Looking at art as an archeology of the past and a mystic interpretation of the future is something I would also like to do online with found digital files.
Over the last several weeks as I created more collages, I started to become more aggressive the canvas and began gluing and tearing the paper in a style reminiscent of Jacques Villeglé, an artist whose work another HomeBase LAB resident introduced me to. In Villeglé’s work, narrative elements overtake the abstraction and layers. I am currently exploring layering in collage and seeing what elements break through to create meaning.
I was also very influenced by a brief encounter with Natscha Stellmach at Preview Berlin a few weeks ago. Her collage ‘Stop the Barking Dog’ was on exhibit. In the collage there is a text that I really responded to. Now, I am beginning to go back to my original intention and integrate the text I have written into the collages.
So, for me, the process here at the HomeBase LAB has been delving into the construction, reconstruction, deconstruction and interpretation of narrative through a series of abstract collages, with certain narrative elements that integrate text and move from the physical world of collage into the world of video in an effort to find a mixed media solution to expression. For our open house, I will create an electronic presentation of my collages with random associated excerpts of text.
CABARET
I am also working with other artists at the HomeBase LAB to put together a cabaret (what some might call a collage of performance art) titled Goodbye, New York. It is a reference to Isherwood’s book Goodbye Berlin and is a political piece comparing and contrasting the Weimar era in Berlin and Germany with the post 9/11 world of New York City. The cabaret is an exploration and attempt at integration of my various life and artistic experiences. The cabaret is a work-in-progess and we will be showing excerpts of that, which include the process.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter: I am also working on a half-promotional half-artistic installation on Twitter… creating a Twitter Stream that attempts to look at social media as an art form and as a promotional tool.
SCREENINGS
I have also co-coordinated a screening of short films with Elske Rosenfeld on the topic of home in the Eastern block during the red years. The series has been curated by a Hungarian filmmaker and film enthusiast.
