C&C

Curate & Critique is one of the theory assessments this year, where we create our own imaginary exhibition. Five artists (including ourselves) and a exhibiting space need to be chosen, and talked about in a ten minute seminar with a powerpoint presentation.

Whilst researching for possible works to analyse in my seminar I came across Argentinian  collaborative artists Laura Nieves and Flopa Garcia. This piece is called Enteslantentes, in english Breathing Beings, a floor installation composed of electronics and paper. In Laura Nieve’s words -

 ‘Beings that breath and beat constantly. The synchronization being an almost uncomfortable rhythmic perfection, threatening to tear at any moment.’

 The encounter at that given time between audience and work may be to question breath or the everyday due to their repetitive similarities. Breathing Beings seems at first to focus on unchanging routine, however as each paper ‘being’ fills with air and then crumbles back down they discreetly show constant change when new cracks and folds appear on the surface.

#11 "Entes Latentes" - telefe from arteBA on Vimeo.


The other four other works I chose are Gabriel Orozco's Breath On a Piano, Mike Parr's 100 Breaths,  Alicia Frankovich's Slow Dance and my own Synchronise Me.

 Slow Dance. Alicia Frankovich. (2011).

 Engineered mechanism with motor, string and wood.

      Each breath is in ways the same, yet it is changed, whether from physical activity, emotion, health or necessity. There is difference in each breath, and that difference transforms with every new encounter. Alicia Frankovich’s Slow Dance depicts that changing repetition as it rises up and down in a never-ending motion. In constant dialogue with the spectator, not one moment is identical to the last. Slow Dance could be understood as a heavy metaphor of life with its ups and downs, as breaths or as a simple demonstration of movement. That’s what makes it successful when speaking of the encounter between piece and audience, its basic composition allows for almost any context to be applied to it and therefore any person to have an experience with it.

Here are a few images I made to give an idea of what the exhibition I created would look like. The space I chose is El Mirador Gallery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A non-profit space with is primary focus surrounding contemporary art. 
On the image on the left I have place, Mike Parr's 100 Breaths on the far left wall, Laura Nieves & Flopa Garcias Enteslantentes on the floor space, and my own Synchronise Me in the corner by the stairs. 

 

Synchronise Me
Josie Do Nizza

On the second floor of the gallery I place Alicia Frankovich's Slow Dance (left) and Gabriel Orozco's Breath On a Piano (right). I did this so they would contrast one another Frankovich exploring constant action and Orozco capturing a moment in time, creating a dialogue between presence and absence.

Synchronise Me

This is a documentation of my final work for the drawing II paper. Synchronise me emerged from an extensive conversation surrounding movement and sound in order to explore ideas around breath. My intention was to capture the essence of breath and with it alter a space, in order to create consciousness in respect to breathing. I was looking into emphasizing that continuous action that marks each day into personalized seconds. To at least for a moment make way for awareness in the audiences experience with their own breathing and simultaneously fall in sync with the work. By modifying a space where the audience could be a part of rather than look from the outside in on, I opened the doors into a deeper experience. Where not noticing the air entering and leaving their bodies becomes almost impossible, and the choice of breathing together or alone rises before them. 

Josie Do Nizza. Synchronise Me (2012).

 Light and sound projection from roof to floor in a dark room.

Pass Way

Here is another little experiment, a follow up attempt at capturing breath. Using the camera lens as the surface. I really love the way my breath blurs the imagery, softening the colours and lines. I wanted to focus on the two passages breath takes as it goes in and out, and as my face was so close to the camera, almost the same air was being used over again. 

Josie Do Nizza. Untitled (2012). Video recording.

Nikos Navridis

Nikos Navridis practice has involved many works using balloons and breath, the two videos  below are documentations of pieces including both. I found his work in a website/blog containing large amount of works related to breathing, it was a very happy day for me since I was having a hard time finding artists that were interested in breath or balloons - what I was interested in at the time. Check the website out here 
www.artbreath.wordpress.com 

Nikos Navridis - Snow Balloons video

I found Snow Balloons interesting because the work was depending on the audience's breath to become. Although this is important in most art practices today, it is especially evident in Snow Balloons since if the audience did not blow up the balloons, no one would. The audience literally leaves a part of themselves inside the work, and subsequently they are united with everyone else's. I see it as a sort of re-encarnation, each balloon a metaphor for each person. Each person, blowing life into the balloon. The only thing I found distracting was that when each balloon was blown up it looked like a breast, a population of breasts. I wonder if it was intentional or not... probably not. 


Nikos Navridis - Looking for a place video

It can be said that in Looking for a place Navridis moves up a step, and 'pushes' the person blowing the balloon, into it. Resulting in a group of people (not the audience) wondering around the room aimlessly as their senses become muted. With their heads inside the balloon, every sense becomes a blur, except for their own breathing and breath surrounding their heads. I was attracted by this work because of that deprivation of senses, cutting everything out except for the air around and inside the person. Nothing else to focus on but it. 

Drawing mid year assessment

Since my drawing and studio work have come together I thought I should also publish the drawing mid year assessment piece, however, I lost that work with my last computer. The work was made when I was using balloons as my main material, and with them, trying to create an inanimate object seem alive or like it was breathing. I am still interested and fascinated by balloons, simply because they are able to hold and keep breath inside. This is the unedited version of the final piece. The latter was forwarded and rewinded to create a breathing motion. 

Josie Do Nizza. Untitled (2012). Gesso on balloon video recording.

Lise Autogena

"The act of breathing is a rhythm of the body that links our existence with everything else. In a shared experience, an exchange, we inhale and filter through our internal systems the expired air from others' breath. Breathing, therefore, constitutes a dialogue between interior and exterior movements, and a way of passing through the world."

This is a quote taken from Lise Autogena's 1996 'breathing productions' - "the first exploration into the act of breathing as a cultural phenomena, and the umbrella name for a series of events and investigations into the most fundamental condition for human life."

When looking through the documentation of the project, I had skimmed through the first quote and had not thought much of it. A couple weeks later I found myself remembering it and trying too figure out where the hell I had seen it. From then on I have gone back to it over again, as I feel it truly relates to my work. I see that 'shared experience' as the encounter that takes place when the work and the audiences 'breath' come together, interior and exterior. 

http://www.autogena.org/Breathing/home.html

At the bottom of this same webpage, there is another quote I have attached myself to -

"We are estranged from that with which we are most familiar" (Hiraclitus, Fifth century BC) 

Breath, in my case is the one subject I want to accentuate at least for a moment and create an experience with. 

Breath on a... Window

Exploring catching breath on a surface. I chose this background since nature is what provides that air which we breath in. It alone, captures my ideas on the air around us supporting life. 

Josie Do Nizza. Untitled (2012). Video recording.