OPEN STUDIOS
GlogauAIR Resident Artists

DEAR HOME
Project Space Exhibition

23 - 24 June 2017
@ GlogauAIR

Facebook Event

Download Catalog (PDF, 8.5 MB)

Download Press Release (PDF, 3.2 MB)

In the Dear Home collective, we see ourselves and other migrants as members of the huge tribe of people connected with similar experiences. We all are living in a world of shifting homes and while we do so, we carry with these movements feelings of insecurity and homesickness, a need to change, an urge to grow, and even the ability to adapt to our new surroundings. All these can shed light or cloud our very perception of what it feels to be at ‘home’.
This is why we want to forge and deepen the conversation and redefine the identity of what it means to ‘feel home’. By providing experiences where one can become aware of one’s individual position within all the diverse narratives of others, we believe that we are able to realise there are many more realities that we often acknowledge. Hence, we created an interactive art exhibition, where people cannot only listen to the stories of migrants, but as well reflect on their own notions of home in a playful yet deep and engaging way. The project includes photographs, illustration, videos, an audio piece and set of interactive stations based on the input that we have gathered through our work the last months. We believe that art is as much of an experience as an object. By fostering it, we will be able to create deep and meaningful connections that will contribute to a more migration friendly world.

Dear Home formed in 2015 during BalticLab 4.0, a program organised by the Swedish Institute and the Council of Baltic Sea States.

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In collaboration with

Matthew Lloyd
{ I } & Black
Oil and Mixed Media on Wall
Berlin Studio, 2014

Artist Talk

Look me in the I

Art as an act of transference of the self
Matthew Lloyd & Hanneke van der Werf

24.06.2017
16:30 @ GlogauAIR

Facebook event

In frame of the Open Studios June 2017
Humans are both paradoxically and inherently self-isolated and social beings. Bringing to mind the philosopher R.G.Collingwood’s considerations, art can work as a communication tool acting as a mediation process between an intimate secluded self (the expressing I) and the other Is (the viewers)

Every self is a particular construction on its own and of its own. A quantity of elements organized in a peculiar order by which they are governed. And each one of those organizational methods is a characteristic filter through which the exterior world is perceived and according to which the self acts upon its surroundings.

Each human is a capsule, a self contained element. Each human is a self. Each human is an I.

The essential nature of the I seems in fact to be one of isolation with no possible escape, for this is the only possible way of existing in a physical domain. This intricate loneliness everybody is inevitably tight to is a barrier that disconnects. Disconnects and distanciates the existent immense sea of Is from each other. In this way, the self can easily become impenetrable, unreachable, confusing, easily leading to distorted views.

However, at the same time, humans are paradoxically and inherently social beings, quality that leads them to build bridges through communicating, which is the interchange of the expression of different selves, of different Is. It is this act of an attempt to connect, to building bridges that makes them question, that makes them feel a necessity of understanding, of considering, of analyzing, of clarifying. The structure of the I needs deconstruction, needs to be broken down.

Many times art is used as a resource of deconstruction of the self, reminding the 20th century philosopher R.G. Collingwood’s conception of art as an imaginative expression, a creative projection of the self into the social sphere. The secret universe becomes thus exposed; bluntly, honestly. Open to considerations, open to questionings.

Art becomes then a mediation process between the intimate secluded self and the other Is constituted by the viewers. The communication between the intimacy of the artist and the public is made by means of empathy. A transference of individual experiences makes the viewer temporarily inhabit another Self, thus creating a sense of human universality, a common ground, which in the end contributes to a better understanding of an alterity, igniting a process of questioning and deconstruction of the architecture of the I of the spectator.

Matthew Lloyd Lloyd’s method of antithesis’s between art and life when released as an extreme form, act as a main attraction for his work. The approach of this binomial concept is to reveal spectrums whose fundamental role is to become subject of a re-identification of and within themselves. The artists’ works is seen arguably not to exist solely as a material object, but as a vehicle with which to articulate a conceptual idea.

Hanneke van der Werf Hanneke explores the experience of the emerging wholeness of life and how communicate it. She wishes to report, to share a sense of a fluid universe.With everything she has and is, she looks around her. The constant flow of information makes an amalgation with everything she had and was. She builds images from this fluid point, so she can share how touching and beautiful, huge, painful, entertaining, packed and silence she experiences life. For her, expanding observation goes equally with the expanding of freedom

Interview

Meet the artist - Roxanne Nesbitt

Roxanne Nesbitt

MEET THE ARTIST is a series of short interviews given by GlogauAIRs resident artists. The aim is to provide the public with the opportunity of getting to know the artist behind the art as well as to get a glimpse of the creation process that can rarely be seen.

This time we are presenting Roxanne Nesbitt. Her work is inspired by the subtlety and specificity of timbre, attempting to balance blunt and obvious cues to listen, with ambiguous and ineffable shifts. The investigations are deliberately acoustic, tactile and tangible, focused on exploring the sonic potentials of both materials and detailing.


You are both a musician and trained as an architect. Your artistic work is very much based on
the intersection of these two apparently very different fields. When and how did you first
become aware of the possibility of overlapping them?

I started to think about space and its relationship to sound during my music undergrad. I remember
starting to listen for the way my voice changed in different rooms. I studied in this massive concrete
building. It was visually heavy and oppressive but allowed the body to be heard in interesting ways. I
have some really naïve early drawings of instruments that are a whole room. This came out of a
intensive study that I did of the design of traditional string instruments and starting to think about
how it would feel to be inside a string instrument. I got to test some ideas about large scale spatial
instruments at the Banf centre during a residency in 2009. I suspend a viola in this reverberate
stairwell in a way that facilitated playing both the instrument and the surrounding enclosure. That's
where the idea of studying architecture started to germinate for me.

At GlogauAIR you have been focusing on creating instruments for the pedestrian body. Can
you brief describe the project?

I have been working on a series of tuned concrete tiles that make up an installation called
Augmented 5th. They are supported similarly to traditional idiophone instruments ie. Xylophone,
marimba and resonate when stepped on. You experience a huge range of sound and vibration based
on the gesture of your step, where it's placed on the tile and what kind of shoe you are wearing. I'm
really interested in those subtle changes and the idea that your sonic impact on a space could be so
different based on these factors. I started developing the tuned tile design during my architecture
thesis. I was exploring strategies the body could create and experience sound in public space, and
ways that spaces to be designed to encourage listening.

What is your usual creative and working process?

I have different processes for different types of work. I also write a lot of music and make videos,
the processes are all constantly evolving. For the project at glogauAIR, I started with drawing, trying
to anticipate and solve as many problems as possible. I then looked for materials and did some
testing at full scale with recording. I focused on the sound for a while at this point writing phrases of
notes for specific paths on the tiles. I used the phrases to construct a platform and then a full-scale
mock-up of the Installation.

Sight is probably the most dominant of our five senses in our time. However, when we talk
about sound the word soundscape is often used. This concept implies the possibility of
mapping a space by only recurring to the existing sounds in that same place. How visual do
you think sound can be? Or does sound give us a whole different way of perceiving the
world?

For me, sound is so powerful because it takes us beyond the eye. It bleeds and surrounds in a way
that sight can't. Our other senses can be more powerful in many ways because they aren't targeted
as aggressively by marketing and spectacle. I rarely remember the images I see in the u-bahn
stations but if I hear or smell something different, it stays with me.

Every space has its own soundscape, like a sonorous identity. They have been naturally
changing depending on historical periods. How would you describe our time’s soundscape?
And how would you describe Berlin’s soundscape?

Soundscapes are really different from place to place. There is also a sameness between the
ones I've experienced. The similarities are in some ways as interesting as the differences.
The cars in Berlin are really similar to the ones driven in Canada so in many ways the traft
sounds the same, unless the cars are driving on cobble stone and then it sounds totally
different. I wonder about how globalization effects the soundscape, with the availability of
similar products and music globally -do we lose a bit of our sonic identity?
I'm staying in a apartment with a courtyard right now, so I have this beautiful moment every
time I enter the building where I totally leave the street behind and experience this quiet
that is hard to find in Canadian urban environments. Because I don't know much German,
the hum of people talking transforms from language to sound field. It's so different from
building to building and neighborhood to neighborhood, I don't know if I can summarize
Berlin, I can only say what I heard here.

As it has been mentioned before, you are a trained orchestral musician. This means that you
used to work with music, which one can say that are sounds produced by a regular
instrument, ordered in a very specific, classical manner. However, you are working with
sounds which you cannot really fully control. Do you tend to order them or you just accept
their roughness and randomness? How do you manage these two very different
approaches?

I like surprises and I like mistakes, so in general I embrace the chaos. I use a organized logic to design
my work, like ordering the tiles in my Augmented 5th installation based on musical phrases. In the
piece itself so little of that logic comes through. That's interesting to me, that there might be a 10%
chance that anyone hears what I wrote into the piece. Other interesting things happened as well,
like once I was working with dancers the tiles started to break. They never broke when I had been
testing them on my own. For me it added an extra level of excitement, it wasn't a failure, just a
different outcome. I was happy to let go of the rigidity of the classical practice. I appreciate amount
of concentration and discipline that goes into traditional music but that's not what I have to offer to
the world. Most of the classical music that is performed today is historical. There is a place for that.
I'm more interested in new music and new instruments for a current context. It's important for me
to question why you play a specific instrument or piece of music and not just do something because
that's the standard for someone somewhere else. Music as an industry and practice is still saturated
in misogyny. I'm interested in making new instruments as an exploration of timbre and ways of
generating sound but I'm also interested in breaking from this really male dominated practice, and
making something divorced from that tradition.

Probably your background in architecture made you particularly conscious about all the
different peculiarities and details necessary to dealing with different materials. You have
been designing and creating your own instruments. We can see some of them in your
performative installations Tuned Concrete Tiles (2017) , Mutual Instruments for Movement and Sound (2016-ongoing) and in Self and Self-Portraits (2013). At the same time it seems that you have been distancing yourself from what can be traditionally called ‘instruments’, which were still strongly present in your first works Score Sketch B (2009) , Distaf Sketch B(2010) and Solo viola and the behave well (2009). How would you interpret this shift in your artistic practice?

The new works are from after and during my study of architecture. Before I studied architecture, I
was modifying instruments, adding strings to them, changing them slightly. After I studied
architecture I had more skills to make and draw other ways to create sound. I also did a directed
study about acoustics and sound art in 2013 that really opened-up my idea of what an instrument
could be because I understood how sound worked on a much deeper level.

You have been a resident artist at GlogauAIR for three months. In which way do you
consider that Berlin has influenced or contributed to your work?

The different materials that I was able to find here definitely influenced what I made. For example, I
used aerated concrete tiles in my installation which are not readily available in Canada. The lifestyle
is different than Vancouver. It seems that more artists are working full-time on there craft, so if you
want to collaborate with someone, everything can come together quickly. I also met so many people
who are making instruments here, it feels for me that the practice is really alive and well here, which
is inspiring, for me.

Drawing sessions

GLOGAUAKT

Body and Habitat

Facebook event

Glogauakt is also in Summer mode! As a continuation of our weekly drawing gatherings, Body and Habitat is a four-module open-air figure drawing session, happening in GlogauAIR's garden all June long!

In Body and Habitat we will explore the human body when surrounded by different settings, so to challenge our usual way of seeing and spark creativity.

June's drawing sessions will be divided in two segments:

Everyday objects and Nature - 1st and 3rd sessions

You are invited to contribute to the final design of our figure drawing field by bringing different objects. Together we are going to create a thematic scenography-like setting for the human body. Our goal will be to explore the relation of shapes, composition and body in context, in search of harmony in eclecticism. The topics are Everyday objects and Nature.

Movement and Light - 2nd and 4th sessions

We will be exploring volume, gesture and proportion in fast changing poses, tracking movement with fast sketches. We will also investigate change of shapes with the change of light, stressing on detail, with longer poses to work from.

The workshop is moderated and suitable for both beginners and advanced artists.

We kindly ask you to bring your own drawing materials.
Drawing boards, ice tea and biscuits will be provided for you.

There is no tutoring, but in case you need some, we are glad to provide directions, help and to give some feedback. Each session will always end with a group discussion and analysis.


We would ask you to confirm your participation at least one day before each session to info@glogauair.net .
At least 8 participants are required to run the sessions.

Each session: 9 / 7 euro (student discount)
4 sessions: 30 / 25 euro

Workshop

Touchdesigner and Projection Mapping Techniques

Petko Tanchev + Kalma Lab

17.06.2017
@ GlogauAIR

Facebook event

Introduction to TouchDesigner - a visual programming software for interactive design, live music visuals, media systems and prototypes. Practical skill on projection mapping and individually created projects with the program.

First part of the workshop will be focused on the interface and the structure, work with operators, parameters and Python scripting. The workshop will also cover some of the concepts for developing artistic projects – operator families, converted data, time dependency, work with video source, 2D and 3D interactive art.

The second part will be devoted to how to use TouchDesigner in order to create specific architectural projection mapping. The instructor will discuss some of the workflows that he has been developing in his own projects. At the end of the day the participants will create their own mapping content for projection on provided 3D surface.


WORKSHOP STRUCTURE:
• 11:00–11:30 - Introduction to TouchDesigner
• 11:30-13:00 - Interface and structure: work with operators, export parameters, write expressions and scripts in Python.
• 13:00-14:00 – Lunch break
• 14:00-15:30 - Artistic concepts: more about operator families, how to convert data between different operator types, use time dependency, create custom motion data, work with video files, generate 2D images, model 3D geometry, add visual effects and post-processing, compositing, build complex networks
• 15:30-17:00 - Projection mapping techniques: demonstration of specific techniques and workflows, walk-through a projection mapping example, overview how to prepare our network
• 17:00-19:00 - Create art with TouchDesigner: practical work for a projection mapping installation on 3D object, the instructor will help to the participants to create and use their own content

REGISTRATION:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1joMuqPtD_Ay6jWm92mrLLN1GCUUYGDIryGRxVO9lga8/edit

CAPACITY: 15 people

COST: 70 Euro

SYSTEM/SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:
All participants should bring a personal laptop, PC or Mac with the latest version of TouchDesigner 088 or 099 installed. In case you don't have it please download it from: https://www.derivative.ca/088/Downloads/

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Petko Tanchev is a visual artist and scenographer based in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. In 2008, he graduated from National Academy of Art, Sofia with a bachelor’s in Scenography and continued with a master’s in Original Visual Performance Design. He has worked as a stage designer, with a keen focus on incorporating video installations in live theatrical performances. He also did numerous art projects that have been featured in festivals and museums both nationals and internationally.

In 2013, Petko co-founded Melformator, a creative collective specializing in event management, interactive design, and audiovisual performances. In 2016, he became the curator of Creative Media Lab, the digital arts department for The Night of Museums and Galleries in Plovdiv. Petko nurtures the talents of rising artists as a lecturer of Tools for Visual Programming for the MA Digital Arts programme at the National Academy of Art, Sofia.

Petko’s current work focuses on the creation of real-time media content for projection mapping and interactive installations by combining hardware devices and visual programming software. He often develops site-specific projects, drawing inspiration from and revealing a location’s context. He creates virtual worlds, which challenge our accepted perceptions of a physical reality we think we know. With an experimental approach, Petko welcomes exploring new tools and the ever-changing technologies in order to develop cutting-edge creations.

Blog: http://www.petkotanchev.wordpress.com
Video archive: http://www.vimeo.com/petkotanchev

In collaboration with

Interview

Meet the Artist

Caroline Lundblad

MEET THE ARTIST is a series of short interviews given by GlogauAIR's resident artists. The aim is to provide the public with the opportunity of getting to know the artist behind the art as well as to get a glimpse of the creation process that can rarely be seen.

Meet the Artist: Caroline Lundbland on Vimeo

Caroline Lundblad, with artist name Frauke, is a choreographer with a focus on butoh and performance. She is based in Gothenburg, Sweden, but also does work internationally. She has created her own genre of Butoh where her works are site specific and unique. Frauke often works with other artists from different artistic disciplines and her performances are inspired by contemporary art and contemporary choreography.

Chema Alvargonzalez

Visions of Berlin

Alvargonzález, Plensa, Miralda and Bernardó
Galeria Senda

23.05.2017 - 27.05.2017
@ LAB 36 - Galeria Senda (Barcelona, Spain)

GlogauAIR and La Memoria Artística de Chema Alvargonzalez are pleased to inform you that works by GlogaAIR's founder, Chema Alvargonzalez, will be exhibited in LAB 36 the new space of Galería Senda, Barcelona, Spain.

The group show Visions de Berlin: Plensa, Miralda, Bernardó i Alvargonzález (or Visions of Berlin: Plensa, Miralda, Bernardó i Alvargonzález) offers an insight on how the German capital deeply influenced creatively and intimately these four artists.

This show is part of the activities surrounding LOOP Barcelona videoart festival 2017.

Jérôme Havre, Anthropology de l’image, 2012. Laser print 21 X 28 inches.

Artist Talk

It's not me. It's you

Contemporary complexities of post-colonial identities
Jérôme Havre & Ilyn Wong

25.05.2017
18:30 @ GlogauAIR

Facebook event

European Colonialism (from the 16th century until the 20th century) around the world was a geopolitical move primarily motivated by economical purposes. The aim was very simple: to make the metropolis (and its elites) richer. This plan was put into practice at the expenses of the locals of these same colonized regions through an intense and ruthless practice of violence, exploitation and manipulation.

The white European heterosexual man's point of view dictated the norms, shaped the Truth. Any other possible perspectives were thoroughly silenced, brutally repressed. Only one version of the story could be told. Only one could be acknowledged. The highly patriarchal Eurocentric ideology was essentially based on the dichotomic idea of a developed, civilized, superior and powerful Europe in opposition to a shapeless mass consisting of all the non-European barbaric, naive and weak lands and its peoples.

This extremely simplistic and fabricated division of the world was largely widespread, not only in the main lands and among the colonialists, but also in the colonies and among the locals. This re-education or - more bluntly and unacademically- brainwashing was often carried out by the destruction and dissolution of the local collective identity (for instance, local languages were forbidden, monuments were destroyed, traditions were suppressed) in favor of the dominating class' episteme.

These behaviors and knowledge were learnt, spread and reproduced for years in politics, in arts... They infiltrated the flow of Language, they infiltrated the ordinary daily life, and they became part of people's collective and private identities. And so this hegemonic narrative became self-sustained and normalized. It became a dogma. It became what we call History.

However, in the 70s, along with feminist and environmental activist movements, anti-colonialist movements surfaced. With it came an awareness of their condition as subalterns and the drive to regain their own identity.

Yet, the prolonged and efficient bleaching performed by colonialism made this task difficult and controversial. The problem is that in fact, colonies integrated the imperialists' side of history as their own and even took part in it, in helping it expand and flourish. At some point, the perpetrators’ and the victims’ stories overlap and can hardly become indisociable from one another.

Here fundamentally lies the complexity of post-colonial identities: is it then possible for them to get to know themselves without it being through the identity that an external entity has created for them and forced upon them? Can we speak about post-colonial identities without falling into an essentialist fallacy? How are these identity complexities managed and how are they reflect-ed in the contemporary world?

Jérôme Havre - His art practice has concentrated on issues of identity, communities and territories that affect him personally. As a French/Canadian Queer man of African descent, his work interrogates the place of culture and identity and investigates the political, sociological and identity processes of contemporary life on themes related to nationalism in France and in Canada. His multidisciplinary practice is focused on defining how to make tangible these conditions of identity in settings that favor social transformation. Jérôme is currently a resident at GlogauAIR.

Ilyn Wong – Ilyn constructs physical, emotional, and conceptual spaces to investigate the intersection between history, memory, and fiction. Her work often oscillates between large historical narratives and intimately personal ones. The space created by these seeming dichotomies is also one where conceptual rigor can co-exist with personal and emotive impulses – where the tongue-in-cheek is also utterly sincere. Ilyn was a resident artist at GlogauAIR in Winter 2017.