WOOLOO'S PICK OF OCTOBER

This week, we are happy to introduce you to the first five artists selected for Wooloo’s Pick of the Mont - the newest addition to Wooloo.org.

Nic Lyons (California, United States). Is an artist and photographer that focuses on industrial landscape and architectural photography. In addition to photography, she is also a conceptual artist who embraces other mediums in order to produce work, such as video, installations, performance and painting.

Stefanie Schairer (Berlin, Germany). Works in different medias from paintings to conceptual art. She loves the change between colors and form, intensive colors and different forms of surfaces are shaping her paintings. Her work invite people to make an exploration of themselves. “Please enter” is her request.

Erin Quinn (Dublin, Ireland). In her work, Erin examines commonalities between people. Her themes usually have international relevance where nationality, age and gender are irrelevant. Here the subjects share common experiences and the viewer can relate to the ideas surrounding the images.

Michael Goodward (Lucerne, Switzerland). Michael investigates diversity of subjects, such as death and existence. His work is far from being scientifically-based and rather relies upon a radically subjective view of him and his surroundings. A deep wish for continued renewal and re-invention is reflected in his activities as an artist.

Igor Toshevski (Skopje/The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). Igor has worked in many different medias. In the early 1980’s he published comics, and from the late 1970's he was a member of several art groups, such as the Zero group. It was here he made his first object painting. During the 1990’s and beyond, the focus of his art become more social and political.

To vote for your favorite artist to become Wooloo Pick of the Month, please go HERE!

Earlier this week we returned from Manifesta 8 in Murcia, Spain, where presented our work "New Life Residency". New Life Residency is the worlds first non-visual residency program for artists and 5 participants have been selected via an open call on Wooloo.org.

The first selected artist for the residency was Helidon Gjergji from Albanian, who for one week lived and worked in a dark space with assistance from Cristina Martínez Roldán - a local, blind woman from Murcia. Together they made an olfactory installation comprised of the spices traditionally cultivated, consumed and relished by the five predominant ethnic groups of the local region.

Artforum's Dawn Chan interviewed us about the work before the opening. Here is what she writes:

"Known for “New Life Copenhagen,” an initiative that paired international visitors with host families during the city’s climate summit last year, the collective Wooloo is currently operating “New Life Residency” as part of Manifesta 8 in Murica, Spain. For this project, the group has invited five artists to live and work entirely in the dark. In addition, each artist has been paired with a visually impaired assistant. Here, cofounders Sixten Kai Nielsen and Martin Rosengaard describe their latest project.

When we were presented with the curatorial investigation by Manifesta and the Chamber of Public Secrets into the history of the visual, we found it worthwhile to consider a broader view of this chronicle. We wanted to explore the impact of visuality on human history as a whole—the effects of society’s seemingly uncontrollable production and consumption of images. How could we imagine something different? What would a nonvisual world be like?
We have also been interested in the artist residency as a form. Especially now, in a financial crisis, as it’s the only way many artists can afford a studio. Yet most contemporary residency programs seem to have a very odd idea of isolating the artistic “genius” for him or her to create work. With “New Life Residency,” we wanted to do it differently––we wanted to create a situation that would not be comfortable or give room for the artists to “be themselves,” but rather the opposite.

In short, these were our initial thoughts when we came to Murcia. Then we encountered the city and began meeting its blind community. Being visually impaired in Murcia means walking through the streets to get things done, or working by selling lottery tickets, for instance, on behalf of ONCE, the local organization for visually impaired people. We began talking to these men and women, asking them if they knew about Manifesta; they didn’t. Actually, it seemed like no one locally had heard about the biennial. We began to think even more about the relation between Murcia and Manifesta. And the more we thought, the more we wanted to do something that didn’t pretend to understand the city or region. Because of course we don’t. We wanted to create a situation in which the artists were lost.

Most of the participating artists normally produce visual work. But the most important reason we selected them is for their interest in experimentation and their proposed collaboration with their assistant, as well as their ability to go beyond simply presenting a fixed work in a dark space. The selected artists all demonstrated awareness of the fact that what they initially proposed will most likely end up being very different due to the process. A lot of applicants seemed to forget that this is a residency program, not an exhibition series.

We found the participating assistants by speaking to them. ONCE has also been a tremendous help in communicating our initial idea. Funnily enough, only women wanted to take part. We spoke to several visually impaired men, but they were not interested. For us, this work is not about a challenge of darkness as much as it is a challenge of collaboration; to leave the visual production behind and see what is left. This project is also a lot about translation and communication. And what can be lost (and gained) in that process: A language barrier is present in some of the collaborations, but no more than is already the case between Manifesta and Murcia. We see this as part of the project and an integrated part of working internationally in a local setting.

All of our work explores new ways of living and working together. This has been our interest since we built wooloo.org, our very first social sculpture, almost ten years ago. Today, the website functions as a working platform for artists and cultural producers, but in the beginning, it was also an experiment in online space—long before Facebook and the social network explosion we see now. Overall, the mission of Wooloo is to explore new ways of living together on this planet. Each of our different projects is, in one way or another, a social experiment in collectivism. The antiglobalization movement has this slogan—“Another World Is Possible.” We agree, but we would like to take another angle: What world is possible? Let’s begin the testing now, please."

Copyright: Artforum/Dawn Chan

You can see the article HERE.

FEATURING AMY THOMAS AND OLIVER IRVINE

This week we are featuring Amy Thomas and Oliver Irvine with their work “Imagined Land”: a theatrical playground in a juxtaposition between an imagined and a real world. The natural and the pre-fabricated.

This is how they describe their work:
The installation, like the imagination, has no boundaries. Viewer becomes artist, artist becomes viewer. The environment seeps out of it’s boundaries and requires the embodiment of both the subconscious mind and the surrounding space. Visitors (4,600) are given a ticket, which is exchanged for a lump of clay at a hole in the gallery wall. Viewers are asked to create objects from the clay that they feel will contribute to the unfolding environment. The visitors ideas are incorporated by the artists, who mould their precious clay objects into the installation. Over time the sculpted and installed objects become conjoined and calcified in paint and in clay, which is continuously applied by the artists in this imaginative land. The work becomes a collaboration; between artist and viewer and acts as a state of raw communication. The ‘imagined land’ detaches itself from reality, and into the subconscious; it highlights a deeper understanding of our imaginative process. The collaborative act and contributions build up to create a large installation, and are designed to provoke the idea of personal creation in order for change and preservation of the current environment. Visitors are not working in competition, but performing the same simple physical act that builds up a mass accumulation of personalized matter. The Installation becomes an evolutionary process as a new relationship has formed between artist, participant, space, material and time to create a cycle of change in an ‘imagined land’ of order and chaos.

You can read more about the artist HERE

This week we are featuring Hatuey Ramos-Fermin and his work “Transmit – Transit”. Hautey Ramos-Fermin is a Domincian-born, Puerto Rican-raised educator and multimedia artist currently based in New York City.

In Transmit – Transit he deconstructs an element of local space to investigate a detail of globalization. Working as an investigate journalist or a documental film maker, he has chosen to focus on taxi drivers and their daily life.

“Over the last several months, I have engaged with the livery cab driver community to learn of its reality, document it and create an engaging portrayal that is both attentive and serious.”, Hatuey Ramos-Fermin says.

“The final outcome of my investigation is a rich installation that attempts to capture the hardship and diversity of the trade. And the encompassing device of the installation is the live radio feed from cab livery dispatches surrounding the gallery. By incorporating the live radio dispatch, I transform the gallery visitor from art viewer to voyeur, listening in on the orders being transmitted all around us.

Radio transmissions that direct one human being to drive a vehicle to a specific site, pick up a passenger, and drive to a new destination.

It happens at all hours of each day; it is a common reality of the urban space and absolutely nothing exceptional. And yet it is fascinating to take a moment, listen and consider the wide implications of these transmissions.

By having people listen, I try to effectively dislocate peoples consciousness into a private space – that radio spaces employed between dispatch and drivers – transmissions that are only privy to when in a cab and even then hardly take note of.

But when these transmissions are re-contextualized within the gallery walls, when we are invited to listen, not as passengers eager to arrive at our destination, but rather as art viewers expecting to engage with creative work, the transmissions gain new depths.”

CLICK HERE to see more of Hatuey Ramos-Fermin's work.

FEATURING IEPE B.T. RUBINGH

This week we are featuring the artist Iepe B.T. Rubingh. Dutch born in 1974, Iepe has been living and working in Berlin since 1997.

Iepe is among other things the founder of “Chessboxing”, but here we would like to focus in his most recent painting work - “Painting Reality”.

On the 25th of April 2010, 500 liters of paint were dumped on Rosenthaler Platz in the center of Berlin Mite – a new color in front of every traffic light. The cars drove over the paint and became the “paint brushes”. The action was executed anonymously and for month’s people were guessing whether this was a “Guerilla Advertising Campaign” or an artwork.

We spoke to the artists and asked him some questions:

- Is “Iepe” your real name?

Yes it is. Actually my full name is Iepe Benne Tee Rubingh. Big Iepe, Ben and Theo were the three best friends of my father. Iepe in Dutch means elm tree.


- Is it true that you wore wooden glasses back in the days?

That's also true. In fact my father made them, as he was a carpenter. In the eighties he had a carpentry with his partner Rein. At a certain point, Rein decided to leave society and go to the outskirts of it; Iceland. My father ran the business by himself and got so caught up in it, that he never managed to visit his old working partner.

Finally after 10 years he packed his suitcase and flew to Reykjavik. Rein picked him up with his car and they drove instantly to his house on the countryside. Rein first showed my father his little carpentry next to the house and gave him a present. It was a little trunk of a tree my father had never seen before.

'What kind of tree is this?', my father asked.

'It is the trunk of a tree that only grows on Iceland', Rein answered. 'You should check the quality, it's amazing!'

My father spend a week on Iceland having a great time with Rein and enjoying the impressive landscape before flying back to Rotterdam.

Just a few days after he had returned, I visited my parents. My father took me into the carpentry and showed me the little trunk. We started testing its quality by cutting of a piece, bending it, making it wet, heating it as well. It was enormously strong and flexible. The reason must have been that it had grown very slowly due to the very harsh climate. Then we thought what to make out of it.

'Glasses! We will make you a new pair of glasses! As the wood is so strong and flexible it will suit perfectly for the purpose of glasses!'

During testing we found out that the wood expended while heating it, which would be perfect putting the glasses in.

So my father started working on it. I helped him a bit grinding a part or two, but my father really putted a lot of effort and all his experience in it. At the end one could really say it was his masterpiece. We ordered the glasses. Using a hairdryer we heated the frame, putted the glasses in and plopp finished! I was the proud owner of father made wooden glasses and couldn’t stop telling the story for weeks.

Now there is one particular part of he story that I forgot to tell. This tree doesn't only grow on Iceland; it also grows only in the weekends. Somehow I always felt a certain energy in my head during the weekends at the time I wore those glasses...

- What does this story have to do with your latest work 'Painting Reality'?

Nothing. Except that one should enjoy life and create stories!

- Thank you Iepe.

You can see the Video for “Painted Reality” HERE.

You can read more about the artist HERE.

FEATURING NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN

This week we would like to update you on one of our own works - “NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN” - which is currently being shown at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Denmark. The exhibition is called “MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME” and features ten artists and artists groups from around the world, addressing the notion of hospitality.

Wooloo was invited to take part in the exhibition with our ongoing hospitality experiment NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN. The project connects foreign visitors coming to Copenhagen with local Danes who like to host interesting guests. Using these meetings as our platform, we invite our participants to live together – and to live in new ways.

The experiment began last year, when we secured accommodation for more than 3,000 activists and other visitors during the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Among the many Danish hosts for this event was a woman, who hosted a Brazilian man. She became pregnant during their stay together and has recently given birth here in Copenhagen.

Wooloo was invited to attend the birth of the world's first New Life Baby (it is a girl!).

In "MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME”, we present an image of the mothers placenta we took at the birth, notes from the mother (host) and father (guest) of their original meeting, as well as sign-up sheets for new hosts who would like to join NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN.

You can read more HERE

FEATURING CAROLINE BOILEAU

This week we are featuring the artist Caroline Boileau, and her work “A VERY PERFOMATIVE STRUCTURE”. Since 1995 she has been using installation, video, and performance, to examine the connections between the body and its environment and also question the body as a social construct. In her research she addressed the influence of medicine (historic, popular, and scientific) on the construction and understanding of what constitutes us as human beings.

This is what she says about her work:

“A Very Performative Structure is a mobile piece of furniture, a transformable structure waiting to be unfolded and interacted with. In shape and colour, it references a glass bookcase, a hospital cart or a large toy. It is a space where futile and important objects coexist and are displayed, sorted out and made sense of. It is first and foremost a performative structure, a teaching tool used to present the blurring of my social roles. This Very Performative Structure hovers somewhere between the cigarette girl, the femme orchestra and the bag lady’s cart. It is contaminated by its context and always on the verge of formal and conceptual re-configuration. Objects are added and removed. I can talk from behind it, show videos within it, and serve tea from inside it. In and around it, I am both subject and object, surveyor and surveyed, analyst and analyzed subject, doctor and patient, waiting to interact.”

You read more about her work HERE.