Shi Zheng is a multidisciplinary artist based in Shanghai and New York. Shi Zheng’s works range from audio-visual installations and digital music to live performances. The artist’s body of work explores the overlapping space between the real and the virtual by creating immersive spaces, which resonate as meditative spiritual experiences. In turn, these perceptual experiences created by Shi Zheng open up spaces for deep introspection.
Shi Zheng’s two newly commissioned artworks by Niio expose the artist’s ongoing interest in technology, machine vision, digital voyage and ‘latent time’. Marvelous Cloud #1 and Marvelous Cloud #2 are part of Shi Zheng’s ongoing Nimbus series, which he started working on in 2015. Nimbus is defined as a cloud, an aura, or an atmosphere. In Latin ‘nimbus’ refers to a dark cloud. In Shi Zheng’s works, the clouds are made visible by light, which instills in them a sense of aura of gaseous floating. The Nimbus series represents the artist’s construction of virtual realities where virtual clouds live inside of the screen space, thus setting his viewers into imagined virtual spaces that mimic reality. However, here, the reality is entirely generated from virtual cameras of computer programs and noise algorithms. Ultimately, the viewer is able to experience the virtual landscape that computers share with human eyes.
Shi Zheng’s works have been exhibited at a wide range of galleries, museums and institutions including TANK Shanghai, MOCA Yinchuan, Ars Electronica, and Institute of Contemporary Arts London. In 2013, Shi Zheng, together with Nenghuo, Wang Zhipeng, and Weng Wei, founded the artistic new media art group RMBit.
In your works, through computer technology, you explore the possibility to extend your viewer’s audio and visual experience. Could you elaborate on this process and the anticipated result of the interaction with your artworks?
In my Audio-Visual installations, I’ve always thought that sound and image are the two sides of one being. They are intertwined and can’t be separated from each other. In these works, there is no discernible narrative. I did not intend to let the work convey a specific message or language. Instead, sound and image as two different materials, are presented to create a purely perceptual environment. So in my work, I hope to create an immersive space in which the viewer can generate thoughts through their experience.
Shi Zheng, Marvelous Cloud #1, 2022.
As an artist that creates both electronic music and digital imagery, what is it about these two artistic practices and their association that interests you most?
For me, the most exciting part is the space, where the acoustic field created by the sound and the light diffused from the screen are composed into an immersive space that surrounds the audience. So I often prefer to describe my video works as spatial installations. The audience can resonate with surround sound and projection when facing the visual content. If we imagine the screen as a membrane, this immersive audiovisual experience is an attempt to make the membrane disappear.
“If we imagine the screen as a membrane, this immersive audiovisual experience is an attempt to make the membrane disappear.”
Also, I feel it is very interesting to create sound and video simultaneously, especially when considering them as a whole. It’s like the sound is an echo of the image, or the image is some kind of generator of the sound. For instance, in the work Nimbus, although the work visually portrays an ever-changing “cloud,” the sound embodies another part of it. So in terms of this relationship, as I mentioned earlier, sound and image are two sides of the same being.
Your Marvelous Clouds series display whimsical lights of nature and trace their boundless metamorphosis. Could you dive deeper into the artistic techniques that are involved in the creation of these artworks?
Marvelous Cloud is inspired by the clouds in J.M.W. Turner’s paintings as well as the “sublime” embodied in his work. The images of clouds in his work often appear in different colors under the illumination of light. I often focus on the flow of things rather than the still images, looking at how these dematerialized gaseous objects are shaped by light under flowing motion. So when I simulate virtual clouds in computer software, different modules and algorithms can help me transform the original realistic clouds into more abstract ones. In addition, I can control the distance of the light in the virtual space, which gives me a lot of possibilities in terms of color.
Shi Zheng, Marvelous Cloud #2, 2022.
“Sound and image are the two sides of one being.”
The clusters of clouds and gas which originate from natural light in your Nimbus series can be interpreted as an aura, an ignis, or a fatuus which together generate a meditative almost spiritual experience. Can this experience be interpreted as intentional?
Yes. It was also the first time I tried to create this meditative spiritual experience in my work. During the creation of Nimbus in 2015, I had the opportunity to visit the Rothko room at the TATE Modern. Rothko’s Black on Maroon series was displayed in the dimly lit gallery, which immensely impressed me. When I returned to the studio to continue working on Nimbus, the intense spiritual experience continued to influence me, and I couldn’t help but bring them into my work.
Shi Zheng, Nimbus, 2015.
You have stated that you do not only see yourself as the creator of your artworks, which display computer-generated virtual worlds, but also as a wanderer wanting to share the experience of these lonesome lands with your viewers. Is there an attempt to connect to your viewers through this shared experience?
I have always felt that making art is a sharing experience and that artists have their own way of seeing the world. I started to learn about virtual worlds from Second Life, and since then, my work has always had a sort of “wanderer” perspective. Whenever I create a new work or build a new “world,” I feel like I’m in a “sandbox” environment. Imagining this “sandbox” as a glass container, I can observe the real world through this container and also reflect on ourselves through the mirror reflection. I suppose the superposition of the real and the virtual is what I want to share with the audience through my artwork.
“I started to learn about virtual worlds from Second Life, and since then, my work has always had a sort of “wanderer” perspective.”
With a history that spans more than a century, collage has evolved as an artistic technique from the pieces of newspaper glued to a canvas to a wide array of forms of appropriating content using digital tools. We sat down with Tal Keren, who established the Nico Tone collective and acts as the senior artist, on their use of found images to create digital collages in their latest series of artworks.
This interview is part of a series of three editorial articles that dive deeper into the different software, technicalities, and processes that go into creating digital artworks, in order to offer our readers a deeper understanding of digital art as a medium.
We speak to Nico Tone as part of a collaboration with Render Studio, a collective creative experimentation for a digital reality. Render Studio is inspired by art, design, nature and technology and aims to explore dimensions of virtuality, interactivity and motion.Nico Tone’s series Cornucopia, Vintage Matchbox SeriesandCosmoscapesare all featured on Niio this summer, and were all created for Render Studio.
Towards these series, Nico Tone looked at archives of vintage matchbox illustrations from around the world. Can you please explain the complexity of turning older images into novel digital artworks, and the different technicalities that go into this process?
We were very lucky to find many archives of designs and illustrations of matchboxes that were scanned in a good quality. So it wasn’t a problem to take these images from the server, and to put them into different folders. Each of the folders we create is categorized under a different topic such as animals, flowers and space. We took images of each subject and with the use of Photoshop, we cut the illustrations and then used the program After Effects in which we placed all the cut images. To make these series we needed to create many small animations. I equate this process to Lego: animating each image separately so with each artwork we can use the same animations but in different colors, sizes and placements. We also created many animated GIFs towards the creation of the final artworks. We use between 50-70 illustrations collected by the group from vintage matchboxes to create one coherent artwork. From some matchboxes we just take one element or illustration, and for others we can take all of them. We also looked at the reference of stamps and of vintage bills for the Vintage Matchbox series. The artworks are conceived to be symmetrical at first glance so that the compositions are like mirrors, but then the illustrations break that symmetry.
Nico Tone, Vintage Tales I, 2022
In your search for these images, do you have a specific website that you explore or do you start every exploration from scratch using search engines such as Google search?
We tend to use specific links that we are familiar with, and we were very careful about the copyrighting of the images, so even when we found an image that we liked we needed to do a lot of research on the image’s legal copyright conditions.
Do you take these images and try to think about what the different illustrations meant historically, and play with these existing narratives or do you really use these images just as a starting point to create something completely new?
The history of the different illustrations is usually taken into account. It is very important and interesting to know the history of the images. But when we create the artworks, the main focus is on how it looks, and how something new can be created from these materials. It may reference and remind us of the history, but the outcome is not the history itself, it’s something else, a new world that combines everything together. Each design comes from a different culture and country, and we take everything and mix it up into a new narrative. This type of work is similar to the process of globalization, which is experienced everywhere. Keep in mind that the vintage illustrations are very small, so we have to work with a lot of small details. This was also a challenge, to try to think what can be done, and how something new can be created from these small historical illustrations.
“Each design comes from a different culture and country, and we take everything and mix it up into a new narrative. This type of work is similar to the process of globalization, which is experienced everywhere.”
Can you elaborate on the different softwares used in creating this series of works?
As I mentioned, for the creation of these works we use Photoshop and After Effects. I make use of a digital tablet and a pen. For the space series, Wandering Stars, we needed to create the backgrounds, so we used the Ipad with a program called Procreate to create them in high quality.
Nico Tone, Wandering Stars I, 2022
In your works you combine subject matters taken from different cultures and different time periods into one coherent whole. How do advanced technical softwares help in creating these new collated narratives?
The size of the illustrations make the available opportunities very limited, but on the other hand this is also a good thing because this also creates abstract boundaries where we need to be very creative. We try to create everything that is supposed to be alive in real life as breathing. Most of the animations are not fast, but instead are very slow and calm. It is like looking into an aquarium, or like when you’re diving and looking at the fish as a spectator. So the focus is on creating something that will be nice to be with. Even when portraying wild animals, we don’t want to represent them as scary but instead as calm and pleasing. Most of the animations portray movement, where the GIFs are created in a loop of movement. For this process, we take the image, for example the head of the bear, and break it apart into different pieces, and then move these different pieces one by one.
Present in your collage works, there also seems to be little stories or narratives, so that upon closer inspection over time, one can see some particular things happening or maybe even expect some things to happen which were not necessarily visible at first glance.
Yes, the artworks are all created in loops. But within those loops of 1.5-2 minutes there exist even smaller loops. These are created purposefully so that the narrative of the work is constantly changing. We like to create small surprises in the artworks, so that every time you see the work you can see something different. Like the half moon in Shell City that jumps out and back into the coffee cup, or the butterfly in Vintage Tales II that flies and lands on top of the boat. Also, as you mentioned, there are little stories that we create firstly for ourselves, where the viewer needs to see the work a couple of times to notice these. For example, in Shell Flower, there is a turtle that is biting into a plant on top of the car. In general, we think about the movement that you see the first time that you see the work, whereas there are other elements that one would only see after a couple of times that one has seen the work.
Nico Tone, ShellAnimals, 2022
You mentioned that you would like viewers to take the time to see the artworks, or to live with them. What do you think of how we usually consume images which is really the opposite, fast-paced and ephemeral?
I think that because we are confronted daily with many images and videos that nothing really infiltrates us or touches us anymore. I believe that if you take the time and look at one artwork you will start feeling and sensing its power. This is what we try to achieve. We would like viewers to look at our works for a while, and not just a couple of seconds. I am in favor of technology, but I think that the subject matter that we choose to portray is usually more natural. We try to combine technology and nature for a long term relationship as opposed to a short one.
“We like to create small surprises in the artworks, so that every time you see the work you can see something different.”
You don’t use much text in your compositions, is this done purposefully?
We feel that when you incorporate text in the works, it gives it a more radical feeling or meaning which we want to leave more open. We don’t want our viewers to relate an artwork to one culture or to one language, but instead wish for every viewer to have their own take and perception of the artwork.
Your artworks show many references to Art Historical collage practices such as those initiated by Cubist and Dadaist artists from the early Twentieth century. What do you see as the role of the digital artist in this lineage?
When we are presented with a new technology, we have a new opportunity to do new things. So that we are aware of the history, and what the artists did in the past, but now we can do those same things with different techniques and challenges. I don’t like to create political artworks. The use of technological advancements for me comes out in the small nuances, when we say that we can use technology but in a positive way. The collage method and the digital tools give us the opportunity to portray what we are trying to say. Taking elements from history and from different cultures and with that to advance towards something more positive and more colorful, and to show the similarities between these different cultures. I like the idea that when you put different and seemingly opposite things together in a collage, such as a polar bear next to a tiger, suddenly it can make sense to see these two elements presented side by side.
Nico Tone, Wandering Stars III, 2022. The Mondrian Hotel, Seoul.
You present your artworks on very large screens, which are sometimes a couple of stories high. What do you need to consider, digitally, when your art is presented on such large scale?
On very large screens every detail is seen and scrutinized. Everything needs to be meticulous and have meaning. It is like putting all your imperfections out there, enlarged for the world to see. We have to simultaneously consider both the viewer looking at the collosal screen from very close, and one looking from far away. This does not happen on a normal size screen where a viewer must come relatively close to it. The short distance viewer will be very focused in a limited space inside the artwork and must gain value from that spot alone. He or she will see every detail in that limited scope. The viewer looking from afar will see the big picture. We aspire to convey the message or story of the artwork for both these types of viewers. From a technical standpoint, these colossal screens have very irregular formats and colors that we need to consider. We commonly need to make adjustments in the artworks to fit these unique screens. It is both scary and extremely satisfying to present our works on these huge screens.
Snow Yunxue Fu is an artist working primarily with 3D software in a post-photographic framework creating experiences of experimental abstraction for her viewers that translate the concept of liminality into the digital space. She is also a curator and assistant professor at NYU Tisch school of the arts.
Fu’s practice combines historical and philosophical painterly explorations of the universal aesthetic and definitive nature of the techno sublime through topographical computer-generated images and installations
Following the release of two new artworks commissioned by Niio recently featured in our curated artcast Snow Yunxue Fu: Liminalitywe spoke with the artist about her art practice and her exploration of the techno sublime experienced through the digital space.
Your work, Resolution, initially displays a human-like form which turns into a liquid matter and is later shattered into small particles accompanied by a pulsed sound wave. Would you consider the reference to human creation as present in this work?
Yes, definitely, I think one of the reasons why I was very interested in working with fluid simulation in 3D was this idea of manipulating water. Water, in the physical world, is such an important element. Relating to this piece, human bodies are made in a high percentage of water, and I think of the way that kind of occupies our veins and our different organs. It is this idea that in everyday life, moving around, we think of the human as one entity. When I was studying oil painting, what was really interesting to me early on was the notion of the figurative as representational instead of abstract. But to me, I think there is so much abstraction, even when we are seeing inside of our body. So the work kind of came out of that, in a way, this idea of forming the human body, which is something that we recognize immediately, but then kind of breaking that into millions of pieces, so to speak, to refer to the number of small components that make up each one of us. That also still changes every day as our cells regenerate. The birth of a human being too is very much that, but conceptually too, even within the physicality of ourselves there is this subliminal quality which is sometimes hard for us to remember.
There is also an element in the work that speaks of the separation between what is nature and what is human-made. Many different cultures maintain this division, but really there is this idea that even our very own atom was once out in the universe. Technologically, in contemporary culture, we feel that we are the center of the world, but in the scale of things we are just a very small part. This matter exchange is definitely also part of the work. The water that we drink was once a part of a river and so forth.
Snow Yunxue Fu, Resolution, 2020.
You have often pointed to the Sublime represented in classical paintings to portray transcendent physical landscapes as a reference in your new media artworks. How do you relate the art historical use of the Sublime to virtual spaces?
I first encountered the idea of the sublime in classical paintings with Caspar David Friedrich, who is this very iconic figure. But then there was also this very personal experience for me, it’s actually something that always interested me, even as a very young person. I come from the inland of China, so I didn’t see or experience the ocean at a young age, as this is a very unique experience for inlanders. So when I finally did there were these moments when I thought that ‘the ocean is so big’. Also, I created a VR piece that I made in 2018 of a cave, that was actually another experience I had when I was five years old, where I went into one of those Karst caves. This is when I realized that all of the rocks are actually made out of calcium and salt accumulations and water again. I had this sort of physical reaction where I was simultaneously fascinated by how beautiful everything was and the kind of concept that this rock existed long before me and will exist long after me, but then I was simultaneously also scared to death as a five year old little girl. I think this combination that anything could fall on me or that water could rise enough so that I couldn’t get out was terrifying. What I was experiencing was a memorable experience of my own mortality. Relating that back to paintings and to art, I kind of picked that up from Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings. In a sense, he already depicted the broadness of the environment, but honestly, the pictorial frame is still very limited. So when I understood that I could do this with VR, I jumped on the opportunity. With a lot of Eastern Chinese landscape paintings, the way that human figures have been depicted, is such tiny scale compared to the vast mountains, which is many times a lot less about the perspective compared to Western oil painting, and more so about our experience and place in the world.
So I drew that connection to these historical gestures of trying to find one’s place in the world or kind of humanity’s place in the world in terms of scale. Earlier I mentioned that technology, especially digital spaces, kind of give me this very strong visual language to be able to kind of depict that vastness. So, I just kind of jumped into that counter effort to push against that idea where online culture makes us feel like we are the central attention of the world. Another group of artists that I relate to is the Land Art Earth Work group of artists from the 1960’s and 70’s. These artists went right out into nature, and created artworks that were kind of ephemeral. Like Andy Goldsworthy, who sometimes brought back natural elements into the gallery museum space as installations. In a sense, I feel like my practice relates to that as well, where the digital space becomes a mirror of the physical world. Even the vast cave that I made is really a very small model, so I think of my digital work being sort of this theater space, of what is happening out in nature. But of course, there is also this imaginary aspect that landscape or water is so hard to control. It takes different technologies and different sorts of machines for us to do this, but at least with simulation, the imagery of it becomes something that we can control such as waterbending. So there is that interactivity which is almost imagined because it only happens in the digital space, but it’s this desire for the fluidity, or a highlight of this underlying connection that we have to the larger world that is already going on. Mentally there is immersion with digital artworks. 3D or digital works can be considered epistemological models of the world. There is so much wealth of knowledge of how things work. Once we gain that knowledge, the question should be ‘how do we coexist in harmony?’ Since we are doing a lot of harm, we should ask ourselves what some of the ways are to live in harmony. That is a main question in my work.
“I drew that connection to these historical gestures of trying to find one’s place in the world or kind of humanity’s place in the world in terms of scale.”
Snow Yunxue Fu, Karst, 2019.
The experience of the Digital Sublime can bring up emotional responses which are either utopian or dystopian. Do you have a preferred response which you wish to relay to the viewers of your artworks?
This question is very efficient in terms of talking about the subject, the setup of utopia and dystopia, and the liminal. For me it’s something in between. I am frequently also asked whether I am in favor of the digital space completely taking over. I am not necessarily for this, the digital space really has vast implications, 3D simulation is a huge part of our life, so what this space can present to us again to me is this kind of mirroring or window-like looking out of what is possible within our immediate understanding. To me that is the reason why I am interested in depicting the Sublime in the digital space, it’s that simultaneity. I have also recently been working on projects where I create web3, Metaverse spaces, but I think that they exist because of the reference or relationship that they have with the physical world. So, technology can be used for very interesting and strong messages, but can possibly also be used to create damages and for these dystopic-like reasons. The way that I want my viewers to experience my work is to understand the simultaneity, it’s kind of a feedback loop of seeing the work, which helps us understand what is physical. So they don’t even necessarily kind of separate these any more, but it’s a fruitful way for us to gain more understanding. Nevertheless, I think there is certainly a huge possibility of dystopic implications.
“The way that I want my viewers to experience my work is to understand the simultaneity, it’s kind of a feedback loop of seeing the work, which helps us understand what is physical.”
Snow Yunxue Fu, Conjoin (Chapter 3), 2020.
Both your works Resolution as well as Conjoin portray to the viewer experiences of deconstruction and reconstruction turning the at once seemingly figurative shapes in the works into abstract elements. Would you consider this to be analogous to the human experience between the physical and the virtual worlds?
Yes, totally. I think maybe another aspect to be brought into this dialogue which we also discussed earlier is the limitation of human perception. So there is a lot going on, whether we kind of study it via science, philosophy or any other sort of discipline. We try to sort of understand that something that is beyond what just meets the eye. As human beings we are really interesting, because we not only understand a concept in our brain but we are sensory beings. We can travel or go somewhere and once we are there we can experience things such as the air, the smell, and everything else, which is crucial. But then simulation is interesting too, especially the direction in which this technology is going. There are actually also simulations of sensory, which is being promised and introduced now. So that it’s not only what meets the eye and the ear, but in the future we will be able to wear gloves and to touch a surface that is for example supposed to be perceptually cold, or hot, or sharp or smooth. So, I think the translation again here is really fruitful and meaningful. This is one of the reasons why it attracts me so much to create works in this space. What I am sort of dreading in a way is that kind of space of open-endedness which gets formulated by big social media companies such as Meta. Right now what one artist can do is still very exploratory. I think that that is valuable, to protect that open space instead of having the Facebook version of what the Metaverse will be, which is probably what we don’t really want.
Could you elaborate on the concept of liminality in the digital world?
For me, the interest in terms of liminality in the digital world was always there. The way that I was able to corner it in my own practice, was when I looked into the work of Anthropologist Victor Turner. His research of the liminal and the liminoid helped me with the verbal language, to try to paint a faint picture of what I was trying to talk about. Turner defined liminal as change, periods of in-between changes so that you are not where you used to be, but you are not yet where you will be in the future. So, it’s the middle stage of a rite of passage. Liminoid is slightly different, it is a more playful and experimental space, less of a consequence, with the liminal things will change, there is an outcome. But the more you look into it the boundary blurs. For example, one can go about their everyday business, or go to a football game, and cheer, but this will not necessarily change the outcome of the game. The blurring of the lines breaks down very easily also when you are playing a video game, where you step in, play a role, and then you step out. We enable different versions of ourselves online, we choose to reveal as much as we want. The Internet can be an intimate space. But, one could also have a complete other version of themselves online. Most of us are in between both extremes. Liminality to me is that complicated relationship that one has with that. It’s a transformative experience. When we think of a transformative experience, we think of an incident that happens really fast. There is also the way that the internet changes us individually and as a society as a whole. The pandemic catalyzed that even more so. There is that societal change, but what I am interested in, which is not the common narrative that people connect to online spaces, is that this could be an opportunity for us to discuss, dive into, and interact and have a more authentic understanding of the world. A window of opportunity to reveal what cannot be seen by the eye, in this sensory way. This is what liminaility means to me, that back and forth force.
In the physical world there are many cultural and societal rules. The introduction of Zoom was a positive experience for me, as for a while the hierarchies that we were used to seeing in the physical world such as the human body changed. Personally, I am a small person and come off as very young, thus people usually project a certain way of talking to me. But when everyone was meeting online, especially during the pandemic, we all became squares. This disrupted the hierarchy which is very hard to break, which is a positive example of disruption. To reference Resolution, I think that there is so much more communality in humans that we have with each other such as our DNA and our molecules. This fundamental connection helps me to relate to a value system where we should all be treated equally. This possibility of a new configuration arises with the metaverse, that’s why the metaverse is portrayed in a utopian way. The potential of the unknown is what I am interested in, coming back to liminality, it’s not formulated yet, it’s open, we are listening to each other and trying to understand what humanity is all together.
Ask Me Anything is a series of articles in the form of conversations, aiming to clarify certain terms, techniques, and debates related to digital art. Our Senior Curator puts 20 years of expertise in digital art at your service to answer your questions, taking only 5 minutes of your time.
Illustration generated using OpenAI’s DALL-E 2
So, what is digital art?
Digital art is art created with digital technologies, namely computers. It is also art that addresses how digital technologies are changing us humans, our societies, and the environment.
But nowadays everyone uses computers. What is so new about digital art?
Actually, digital art is not new, it is at least 60 years old. It was in the early 1960s that mathematicians, engineers, and visual artists started creating drawings using computers. They wrote algorithms that described a visual composition and had the computer execute them using a plotter drawing machine. Back then, what they did was called “computer art.”
Two drawings from the series P-10, “random walk” (1969) by Manfred Mohr exemplify the use of a computer program to generate endless visual compositions. Source: emohr.com.
So the machine did everything? Where’s the art in that?
The artists wrote the program and set the main instructions that the computer would follow, leaving some space for randomness, and then selected from the outputs of the plotter the compositions that fitted their vision. In digital art, artists often leave part of the control over the appearance or the behavior of the artwork to a computer program, realtime data, and even the viewers’ actions. The machines and systems involved can play a more defining role than, say, a paintbrush or a chisel, but still it is the artist who creates the artwork.
The machines and systems involved in digital art can play a more defining role than a paintbrush or a chisel, but still it is the artist who creates the artwork.
Wait, did you just say “behavior of the artwork”? You mean that a digital artwork “behaves,” like a person or a puppy?
Behavior is a way of saying that the artwork is active. It is not like a painting, a sculpture, or a photograph, which are the end result of a process previously carried out by the artist. Some digital artworks are generative, which means they can create new outputs endlessly, or they are interactive, which is to say that they react to what is in front of them, for instance the presence of a viewer. Also, some are connected to an external source of data, such as the weather forecast in Wyoming or the latest news from CNN. These artworks are not static, they do something. They are constantly changing according to an algorithm, a storm approaching Cheyenne, or the movements of a person who just stepped into the room. Since they are doing something all the time, we can call the way they do it a behavior.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Surface Tension (1992) is an early example of interactive art
Ok, full stop. You started talking about “digital art,” then “computer art,” and now it’s “generative,” “interactive,” and “connected.” Why all these terms? Isn’t it all just art?
Certainly, but keep in mind that digital art has followed the development of digital technologies over the last decades, incorporating new forms of creativity as these technologies became available to artists. The pioneers of computer art in the 1960s were a handful of people who had access to mainframe computers in research centers. Others started creating digital images when they got their hands on the first personal computers. Later on, more joined in creating artworks using websites or video game engines. Nowadays, artists can use artificial intelligence programs, 3D scanners, robots, and all sorts of hardware and software in the making of their artworks.
Each new technology brings with it new ways of creating art, sometimes changing the definition of what an artwork is and what we can do with it. In order to describe and understand these new art forms, and, well, behaviors, we need new terms. However, you can stick to digital art as an overall term and then remember that some artworks are based on a computer program that constantly generates new outputs, or they interact with the viewers, or they use data from anywhere in the world. Actually, some artworks do all three things at once.
Each new technology brings with it new ways of creating art, sometimes changing the definition of what an artwork is and what we can do with it.
I am familiar with contemporary art. How come I’m hearing about this just now?
Although digital art is one of the many branches of contemporary art, it has been ignored in the contemporary art world for decades, and has even found it hard to be considered art at all. When pioneering artists exhibited their algorithmic drawings in the 1960s, some felt threatened by the idea of a machine that could replace human creativity. Computer art was dismissed by many as little more than a curiosity, not a genuine artistic practice. Digital art soon found its place in electronic and media art festivals, as well as in a few museums and galleries, developing a parallel network that seldom crossed paths with the contemporary art world.
During the last decade, the presence of digital art in contemporary art museums, biennials, galleries, and art fairs has grown, while an increasing number of online platforms and marketplaces are providing ways to access art in a digital form. The pandemic and the NFT boom have brought even more awareness about digital art, although not always in a positive way. Additionally, younger generations of artists and collectors now see digital art as the form of creative expression that more closely represents the world we live in. As you said before, now everyone uses computers, so why not integrate digital technologies into our culture?
“I can’t imagine ARTFORUM ever doing a special issue on electronics or computers in art”, stated editor Philip Leider in 1967. The magazine has seldom published reviews about digital art in the last 55 years.
So everything will be digital from now on? Is this the death of painting?
Absolutely not. Digital art is not about replacing traditional forms of art making, but rather expanding them. Many digital artists are as interested in drawing, painting, and sculpture as they are in pixels, circuit boards, and coding. Some paint with robots and drones, others create sculptures out of 3D models rendered in a computer, and many create installations combining interactive, screen-based artworks with physical objects. Even artists selling NFTs are adding to their blockchain-certified digital artworks unique prints and 3D-printed sculptures. Therefore, artistic creation is now more rich than ever, thanks to the possibilities brought by digital technologies.
Many digital artists are as interested in drawing, painting, and sculpture as they are in pixels, circuit boards, and coding
In the coming years, we will see even more new forms of artistic creativity developed with artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology, and innovative ways of distributing and displaying digital art, in virtual and augmented reality, and on any screen.
I see. Well, thanks! Just one more thing: Wyoming? What is there?
TheBerlin Biennale is celebrating its 12th edition with a program of exhibitions and events that take place in six venues around the city, until September 18th. The four main exhibitions are hosted by the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Hamburger Bahnhof, and the spaces of the Akademie der Künste atHanseatenweg and Pariser Platz with a total of nearly 90 artworks by more than a hundred artists. Titled Still Present!, this year’s Biennale is curated by artist Kader Attia, with the support of an artistic team composed by Ana Teixeira Pinto, Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Helene Pereira, Noam Segal, and Rasha Salti.
View of the exhibition at Akademie der Künste (Hanseatenweg)
The main theme addressed by the current edition of the Biennale is the effect of colonization, in land and history as well as in bodies, people’s lives, identities, and mindsets. This subject touches cultural institutions too, by pointing out the presence of looted artifacts and forms of presenting colonized cultures that only contribute to open the wounds of a history of colonial abuse. In a text written for the catalogue, Kader Attia denounces the hatred of others (whether foreigners, people from nomadic cultures, those experiencing marginalization and anyone not submitting to heteronormative patriarchy) and the invisibility of the wounds that inequality and exploitation have caused:
“Invisibility is discourse’s preferred weapon of control: always in denial of the crime, the enunciator claims victory while disavowing all responsibility.”
Kader Attia, Still Present! Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (Kunst-Werke Berlin, 2022), p.24
The concepts of wound and reparation are key to Attia’s work, and he finds in the processes of decolonization and the way in which Western societies have sought to build an image of a perfectly homogeneous modernity, in itself blind to the wounds it has created, an ideal framework in which to suggest forms of reparation through art. Art, he claims, can resist political and religious obscurantism precisely because it is unpredictable and constantly aims to reclaim people’s attention. He also states that artists seek to capture the present at a time when algorithmic governance collects data from our past actions in order to predict our future behavior. Trapped in this calculation of probabilities, the present no longer belongs to us, stresses Attia, and for this reason it must be recovered by means of the experience of art:
“Standing before a work of art, the spectator is plunged into another temporality, radically different from that of their environment, inaccessible to the insatiable appetite of algorithmic governance. […] art deconstructs so that it may repair and evolve, generating new forms of interpreting the present.”
Kader Attia, Still Present!, p.34,40
Center for Spatial Technologies & Forensic Architecture, Russian Strike on the Kyiv TV Tower (2022)
Being present
The artworks exhibited at the Berlin Biennale show that artists increasingly use video, 3D animation and data visualization in their portrayal of the present. Reality is captured through live footage, digital images, and all sorts of visual documentation. The exhibition spaces are filled with screens and projectors, sometimes extending their presence in the room with objects and imposing installations. The rooms at the Akademie der Künste, the Hamburger Bahnhof, and the KW Institute are dimly lit and labyrinthine, with displays creating areas of attention, that lend each artwork a space of its own, secluded in itself and rarely enabling a dialogue with nearby pieces. The documentary nature of most artworks also forces viewers to read the descriptions on the wall labels and concentrate on the story that each artist is telling. In this sense, as Kader Attia suggests, the artworks succeed in plunging viewers into a different temporality and making them fully present.
Artists increasingly use video, 3D animation and data visualization in their portrayal of the present
This temporality is both created and controlled by the artwork: as philosopher Boris Groys points out, video and time-based arts determine the time of contemplation. Through moving image and sound, notably the voice of a narrator, the artworks capture the viewer’s attention and force her to remain attentive while the story unfolds. This creates a particular pace for the visitor that demands more time and less distractions: these are not instagrammable exhibitions, in which to portray oneself in front of a tremendously huge object or a fiercely immersive installation, but rather spaces of discussion filled with the voices of the unheard. The enormous amount of footage to watch, the complexity of the narratives and the information one is required to process may seem overwhelming to a regular visitor. However, it is worth taking the time to patiently examine the artists’ exhibits, both in the sense of their public presentation and in the sense of producing evidence in a fictional court.
View of the exhibition at Akademie der Künste (Hanseatenweg)
Visual records, both images and videos, have been considered irrefutable evidence of a fact until digital technologies and fake news finally put every image into question. Obviously, the depiction of historical events has always been subject to the interpretation of the victors, with visual artists being complicit in the creation of a narrative dictated by those in power. Today, artists addressing social, environmental and political issues are well aware of how images and messages are constantly manipulated, and therefore tend to avoid a position of authority, providing instead bare data, appropriated or filmed footage, witness recollections, and the stories told by those who ask to be heard. In this manner, the artist acquires an aura of neutrality, an actor who exposes facts with fair intentions in the form of a cultural product that, as the space that hosts it, is far removed from the complexities of real life. While this may seem to neutralize the political involvement of the artists and the educational (or indoctrinating) power of the artworks, it is actually the contrary. Art exhibitions enable a space where politics and society can be observed with detachment, as though one was reading a fictional story, and this allows one to confront other voices, other mindsets and realities that would otherwise be quickly ignored or dismissed. Being present thus also means being receptive, and willing to, at least, accept the existence of realities other than those we have created for ourselves.
Fragments of a reality
Fragmentation is a salient feature in many artworks, which rely on a variety of elements such as photos, maps, written documents and found objects. In 24°3′55″N 5°3′23″E (2012/2017/2022), Ammar Bouras addresses the consequences of the so-called Béryl incident, an explosion that occurred on May 1, 1962 while the French carried out underground nuclear tests near In Ekker in the Algerian desert. He creates a photographic montage and a video piece that explore both the geological layers of the area and the long-term consequences for the land through the testimonies of its inhabitants. The multiplicity of perspectives described both by the photographs and the video footage question the official history, which buried this event, and the possibility of an objective truth.
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, OH SHINING STAR TESTIFY (2019/22)
Using CCTV footage of an Israeli military surveillance camera, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme tell in OH SHINING STAR TESTIFY (2019/22) the story of 14-year-old Yusef Al-Shawamreh, who on March 19, 2014 crossed the Israeli separation wall to pick akkoub (an edible plant important in Palestinian cuisine) and was shot dead by Israeli forces. This footage, which circulated online and was later removed, is projected onto a series of wooden panels that capture, distort and hide the projected image in their shadows, as other filmed and appropriated sequences enrich the context of the grainy scene and its crude depiction of the facts. Fragmentation in this case conveys the multiple layers of this event, framing it in a wider social and political context while avoiding the obscene spectacle of death that media outlets have made of drone footage since the Gulf War.
Poison Soluble. Scènes de l’occupation américaine à Bagdad (2013) by Jean-Jacques Lebel, dives into this morbid spectacle by collecting and enlarging the snapshots taken by US military personnel while torturing and humiliating prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. With these magnified pictures, the artist builds a labyrinthine installation in which the visitor gets lost, surrounded by horrifyingly graphic depictions of violence and sadism, and the no less upsetting portraits of the proud torturers, smiling at the camera. The artist sought to force an involvement of the viewers, but the harshness of these massively distributed images also calls into question whether Lebel has not created yet another spectacle, this time for an art audience. Such criticism was raised by Iraqi curator Rijin Sahakian shortly after the opening of the Biennale and has finally led artists Layth Kareem, Raed Mutar, and Sajad Abbas to withdraw their work from the exhibition in protest.
CCTV and drone footage have been used by the media in sensationalist reporting, to a point where their value as evidence is replaced by their effect on the audience
This controversy illustrates the power of the photographic image as both evidence and raw material subject to manipulation. This is particularly true for digital photography. The low resolution snapshots from Abu Ghraib, with their pixelated, badly compressed textures, can be immediately identified as a private record of an event, not meant to be seen outside a closed circle. CCTV and drone footage also belong to this category of images that have been continuously used by the media in sensationalist reporting, to a point where their value as evidence is replaced by their effect on the audience.
Data speaks for itself
In contrast to the first-hand, visual testimony found in grainy digital footage from CCTV, drone, and smartphone cameras, data analysis and visualization provides a much more detached and abstract, but equally telling, presentation of evidence. Photographs and video clips remain important, but generally as a complement of graphs, simulations, and diagrams mapping the collected data in a meaningful way.
David Chavalarias, Shifting Collectives (2022)
David Chavalarias’ Shifting Collectives (2022) exemplifies this turn towards data visualization in a detailed observation of the French political landscape. A researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, Chavalarias explores the degradation of democratic values and the trivialization of xenophobia and ethnic nationalism through a timeline extending the long of a wall accompanied by a series of graphs, images, video and sound. The display of information aims to disentangle the complex interplay between political candidates, ideologists, social and workers groups, and the media, in order to provide quantifiable evidence of the rise of populism and right-wing extremism. Again there is here a collage of fragmented documentation, although it is presented under a unifying graph and the authoritative voice of science: the orderly display of facts, names, and numbers builds the narrative by itself.
Forensic Architecture, Cloud Studies (2021)
The collective Forensic Architectureis well known for their detailed research of cases of state violence through the analysis of architectural spaces and materials, using simulation techniques and information collected from witnesses. In Cloud Studies (2021) they address a type of aggression that, unlike bullet holes and broken glass, leaves no visible trace but causes permanent damage: the toxic clouds created by tear gas, airborne chemicals and petrochemical emissions. Fused in a single video, the collected documentation including video footage, 3D animations, fluid dynamics simulations, and countless photographs analyzed using machine learning techniques, is presented in a linear narrative in the form of a lecture that nevertheless includes certain dramatization. As in Chavalarias’ work, the display of information speaks for itself although here it is more scripted and lends itself to aesthetic concerns that confer the video its own identity as an artwork.
In both artworks the presence of video and computer generated images denote the central role that this kind of imagery has adopted in the depiction of events by news outlets, at a time when the dominating perspective of a satellite or drone view and the tidy simplicity of a computer simulation can provide a much clearer and seemingly indisputable perspective than any number of witnesses’ accounts.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, THIS UNDREAMT OF SAIL IS WATERED BY THE WHITE WIND OF THE ABYSS, 2022
Eyewitnesses
The voices of those who were there, the victims, the passersby, also the perpetrators, the plotters and the followers, tell stories that contain their own truths and commonly share the authenticity of a firsthand account. Every person describes their experiences with a mixture of truth and fiction, as a result of their interpretation of reality mediated by their beliefs. Thus, in every witness account there is a margin of doubt, an uncertainty that artists can explore in the depiction of their stories.
Omer Fast’s A Place Which Is Ripe (2020) presents the testimonies of two former London police officers who explain the ubiquitous presence of surveillance cameras in Great Britain in connection with the murders of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993 and fourteen-year-old Alice Gross in 2014, two notorious crimes that were solved thanks to CCTV footage. The footage showing Bulger taking the hand of one of his murderers was in turn widely distributed by the media and contributed to popularize the notion of the surveillance camera as a reliable witness. Fast films the officers from behind, to protect their identities, and combines their interviews with Google image searches based on their words, all displayed in three smartphones placed inside a drawer. The Google searches illustrate the officer’s accounts with a detachment that echoes the monotone sound of their voices and produces an eerie effect of repetition and normalization. The automated selection of the images also points to the development of surveillance cameras managed no longer by people, but by artificial intelligence programs. The terrible images that have transitioned from unquestionable evidence to morbid spectacle now become simple indexers of events for a computer to identify them.
In every witness account there is a margin of doubt, an uncertainty that artists can explore in the depiction of their stories.
View of the exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art
A different form of indexing can be found in Elske Rosenfeld’s AN ARCHIVE OF GESTURES (2012–22), an exploration of the revolutions and revolts of 1989/90 surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany. Through the notion of “gestures,” she proposes a blueprint for understanding how these uprisings lead to collective action and how the events are recorded and told. Again, the witness is a camera. The gesture of “interrupting” is analyzed by editing a video recording of the first session of the Central Round Table of the GDR, in which members of the new political groups and citizens movements and of the established parties came together to discuss the role of the Round Table in aiding the democratic transformation of the country. Rosenfeld focuses on a moment in which the meeting was interrupted by the voices of protesters out in the street. Going back and forth through the footage, she divides the scene in two, repeats certain gestures of the participants, captures their reactions and hesitation upon being told what is happening outside. As with Fast’s film, editing is a key element in building the narrative. Both artists, as interpreters of the witnesses’ accounts, make the story their own.
Beyond fiction
Our perception of the present is clearly mediated by the eye of a camera, but not only a photographic or surveillance camera. The virtual camera of a simulated environment in a video game or a 3D animation also creates a reality of its own, that can be experienced as intensely as our physical surroundings. Video game worlds, with their endless possibilities, can also hold a hyperbolical mirror to our reality, making visible those aspects that are hidden or ignored.
Maithu Bùi, Mathuật – MMRBX (2022)
Maithu Bùi’s Mathuật –MMRBX (2022) is a video installation based on a virtual reality game that addresses the Vietnamese diaspora through mythology and magic rituals for communicating with the dead. The virtual space here allows for a suspension of disbelief and the assimilation of a set of cultural codes that belong to the artist’s personal memory and the country’s collective history. The video installation occupies the room in a way that invites to perceive the projected images as a real space and immerse oneself in the narrative that the artist has created.
Zach Blas goes one step further in this direction by creating a theatrical setup in PROFUNDIOR (LACHRYPHAGIC TRANSMUTATION DEUS-MOTUS-DATA NETWORK) (2022). An ambitious installation composed of eight screens and two projections, the piece presents a fictional AI god that feeds on the emotional tears of simulated humans. The tears are transformed into text, images, and sound, in what is seemingly an autopoietic system that seeks to compute human emotion. Continuing his exploration of the politics and imaginaries surrounding facial recognition and predictive policing based on artificial intelligence algorithms, Blas creates a dystopian world in which humans have been replaced by their avatars and emotions have become data. While this overtly fictional story seems to be far removed from the reality depicted by Bouras, Abbas and Abou-Rahme, or Lebel, it is nevertheless deeply rooted in our present. Blas’ subject matter requires a different form of expression, which is more effective as an extravagant fiction than it would be as a collection of documents and people’s accounts.
Media art has often been described as the “art of the future,” but as these works show, it is an art of the radical present.
This selective vision of the artworks on display at the Berlin Biennale aims to point out how artists address the present through moving images, appropriated footage that was leaked online, witnesses’ accounts recorded on smartphones, simulated environments and 3D-rendered fictions. These contents, and the way they are presented, allow in turn to create a different temporality, as stressed by Kader Attia, that leads the viewer to a state of presence. If, as the artist and curator suggests, we must be “still present,” this can only be achieved through art that does not claim to be atemporal, but that is time-based. Media art has often been described as the “art of the future,” but as these works show, it is an art of the radical present.
Marina Zurkow’s work explores the relationship between nature, culture, and society, focusing on what she describes as “wicked problems,” those issues that reveal our abusive interactions with the natural environment and our difficulty to understand it beyond our human-centric, capitalist-driven views of the world around us.
A transdisciplinary artist, she works with experts from different fields to create a wide range of artistic practices that includes video art, installations, and public participatory projects. Currently, she is working on the tensions between maritime ecology and the ocean’s primary human use as a capitalist Pangea.
Her work has been exhibited at numerous international art museums, as well as galleries, including Chronus Art Center, Shanghai, bitforms gallery, NY, FACT, Liverpool, SF MoMA, Walker Art Center; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Wave Hill, NY, and the National Museum for Women in the Arts. Zurkow is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and received grants from NYFA, NYSCA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Creative Capital. She is represented by bitforms gallery, and a fellow for Fall 2022 at Princeton University.
Following the release oftwo new artworks commissioned by Niio, we spoke with the artist about her latest work and her commitment to raise environmental concerns through her art.
Marina Zurkow, OOzy#2: Like Oil and Water, 2022
Many of your artworks, including OOzy2 and OOzy3, specifically allude to water as the main protagonist, and particularly the sea, which you have described as a “capitalist Pangea”. Sea life is both fascinating and mostly unknown to us urbanites. How do you use representations of the sea and sea creatures to address concerns about environmental issues?
First of all, I would say that one can think of the ocean in two ways: as a surface, and as a volume. The surface, which is what we mostly encounter as humans, has two functions: on the one hand, it is a surface on which we play; and on the other, it is a surface on which we transport goods, and this is what turns the ocean into a capitalist Pangea.
This is a diagram of the ocean shipping routes. When I first saw this, it became extremely clear to me that this surface is actually a very solid plane of transaction, namely capitalist transaction. So that’s where the phrase “Capitalist Pangea” came from. Billions of years ago, in the Mesozoic era, there was one sea, called Panthalassa, and the land was a single landmass called Pangea.
The other slide I wanted to share, which relates to the idea of the “Capitalist Pangea” is one I made for a talk on oceans, showing all the ways in which we see the ocean. We are capable of holding all of these buckets in our minds at once, and they remain in their silos to a great extent. The differences between thinking of the ocean as a site of plastic pollution, our fantasies of adventure, and 10 hour recordings of ocean waves you can find on YouTube to relax— those are all simultaneous identities that we assign to the ocean.
This is my last slide to share: it is an image created by Donella Meadows, the systems thinker who devoted her life to ecology and is one of the authors of the reportThe Limits to Growth that nobody wanted to pay attention to in the 1970s and 80s, and that clearly showed that the planet can’t take unlimited growth, which is the fundamental tenet of capitalism. She was interested in using systems thinking to look beneath the surface, and offered this iceberg model in order to talk about change-making. As you can see, what is visible (and therefore above the surface is tiny. The hardest thing to change is at the very bottom, the mental models. That’s the hardest place to get to. And honestly, I feel like if we can’t have an emotional relationship to the material of our planet that is at great risk, we can’t change the way we think about the world. And so anything like “don’t take a plastic bag,” or “get an electric car,” all the moral imperatives that are put on us, if they don’t come from the heart, they’re not going to stick, they’ll just be gone in the next election cycle –at least, in the United States.
And so what I am committed to do with my work is to create emotional connections to this material and the ocean. Why the ocean in particular? Because it is so important! It covers 80% of this planet. And just the fact that we’ve named this planet “Earth” tells you something about human self-centeredness. Really, we are a planet of water. And even if it is such a cliche, it is true that we are made of almost the exact same composition as the ocean itself.
“There are many roles that artists occupy in terms of addressing environmental atrocities. I don’t feel like any one tactic is any better than any other. It’s all crucial.”
How would you describe the role of the artist in raising important concerns about climate change and environmental atrocities? Do you see a difficulty in balancing severe global concerns and aesthetics?
I would like to unpack this and say, there are many roles that artists occupy in terms of addressing environmental atrocities, ecocide, grief, climate change, and environmental connection-making. These roles range from explicit activism—getting people charged up to make change, to the subtler concerns that I was talking about: changing affect, changing the way we feel, changing the paradigm and the values in which we live. So for instance, it may sound oblique, but thinking about kinship across species is such a radical paradigm shift for most people. And that, to me, is one of the fundamental motivators for caring for the earth. So there’s room for everyone at this table, to participate in connecting people to the world in which we are interwoven. And I don’t feel like any one tactic is any better than any other. It’s all crucial.
Regarding the second part of that question, yes I see a tremendous difficulty in balancing severe global concerns and aesthetics. Because the same things that make visuality potent, also make visuality impotent. The brain wants to categorize what it receives and put in boxes and dismiss those ideas that seem dangerous, depressing or disturbingly radical. Presenting an audience with an impactful idea will attract their attention, but it may also lead them to reject the idea because it is too disturbing and just move on. Our brains want to take a nap, and have a difficult time dealing with uncertainty. Yet, what we have at present is the tremendous force of geoplanetary uncertainty that, in many ways, we have produced. In this context, is visual art the right tool? I think there’s a lot of room at the table for these experiments. And you would have to be out of your mind to think that you, as a single individual, can change anything. We all have to contribute to making incremental changes. And this is very hard, because artists, myself included, have a big ego and want to feel like “yes, I am a changemaker.” But instead, I have to say, I am committed to change making, and I want to participate in that in whatever little ways I can.
“I see a tremendous difficulty in balancing severe global concerns and aesthetics. Because the same things that make visuality potent, also make visuality impotent.”
I have been working in audio more, I just finished collaborating on a 30 minute immersive audio piece about the ocean, that is a radically different kind of experience. The audio sneaks into your psyche. And because nowadays we are used to audio guides, I can use this technique to pretty great effect. This has been an instructive piece for me to think about other ways to invite people into these complex, difficult conversations and to go places where the human body can’t go, like deep into the ocean, or doing things that are impossible for us, such as dissolving into little bits and getting eaten by a whale.
As an artist working in many different mediums from new media art to performance to collage, how do you see the role of video artworks differing from other artistic practices?
I would add that I also work with food, for instance, that asks you to put things in your body as a way of experiencing the world. Each encounter between public and material can be thought of as “ways of knowing” (or epistemologies), and my job as a collaborator, thinker, and maker is to work with people who understand their own media like technology or cooking in such ways that we can do the most we can with those media to connect people to concepts and experiences.
Marina Zurkow, Making the Best of It: Jellyfish (2016)
As for video art works, the way to connect with the audience is obviously through the visual (and aural) quality of the piece, its scale and its context. The images produce all kinds of relations that your brain is trying to make sense of. Some images remind you of others, or spark certain feelings. All of this process is happening neurologically, and because we’re such visual creatures and pattern recognizers, the invitation of looking is built in and seductive. In that sense I am particularly interested in the humorous, the quirky, because it disarms the viewer. The viewer leaves their defenses behind when they see something really enchanting, or funny. So in my animated films I often use elements that are somewhat funny or seem naïve, but they point to issues that are not funny at all.
“I am particularly interested in the humorous, the quirky, because it disarms the viewer.”
Another aspect that is important for me in connecting with people happens when the artwork lives in people’s homes. I like work that people live with, and get to spend long times with. Some of my works are really long, they go on for hundreds of hours, sometimes unfolding over the course of a year, so that when someone has the artwork at home they can spend a lot of time with them and see how they change. Even if the work is not very long, about three minutes, I think about the density and add many layers, so that the story is told in depth and not in length.
Marina Zurkow, OOzy #3, 2022
Do you think that people react better to something they’re more actively involved in, or can they also have a profound experience of a visual artwork that they see at a certain distance?
These experiences are really different, and can be memorable for an audience in different ways. The food projects can suffer from exactly the same problems as the visual projects, which is the production of spectacle. I have only really been able to do one very successful public food project that was not elitist in costliness: a jellyfish jerky pop up shack on the UCLA campus that attracted 300 people to eat and talk. We provided a night market stall atmosphere, where people could sit and eat, and we interviewed many eaters in what was a really rich, two way exchange. For us as artists— my collaborators Henry Fisher, Anna Rose Hopkins and myself— this was a chance to have a real-time exchange and to create an offering that condensed into a snack some of the components of the tremendous risk of sea level rise. The video work does not have the same kind of immediacy: I don’t know what is happening with the work in terms of people’s reception. It’s a much more distanced experience for me. And at this point, I hesitate to understand what is so compelling about the work, or if the work really does move the mind at all. I really don’t know.
Your extensive career, among many other things includes your teachings as faculty member of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Could you elaborate on your views of the artist as educator?
I don’t think you have to educate inside of academic institutions, I think you can educate in many ways, which goes back to my statement about “ways of knowing.” Art is always political, and it is also always educational. What I mean is that art will be teaching you something whether it intends to or not: it might be teaching you that art is decorative, it might be teaching you that art has cultural vitality, it might be teaching you that the oceans are polluted. Art is always engaged in communication, and communication is, essentially, the transfer of information. This information accumulates and sometimes opens up a new way people can think about things. And that itself is a form of pedagogy. I teach that way. I was lucky to teach in a program that was very “anti-lecture,” very participatory and dialogic. This methodology pushes you to think about ways in which you teach and how to facilitate hands-on, engaged learning.
“Art is always political, and it is also always educational”
Your commissioned works show a tension in the relationship between the natural world and humanity with a specific focus on consumer culture and technological advancements. Do your works also suggest a solution for this probing question?
I don’t have any solutions. The first thing you learn in systems thinking is, there’s no such thing as a solution, because the solution will only beget further problems. When you think you’ve solved something you go to sleep, you don’t worry about that anymore. So I’d rather have the opposite: opening up new ways of thinking about these difficult entanglements and producing more questions rather than answers. Questions persist in your brain, they haunt you a little bit. And then maybe they drive your inquiries into the everyday. So what if making people conscious is the most I can do? What happens then? I have been going through tremendous doubt of the efficacy of artmaking in the last couple of years, and I am not on the other side of that yet, but I’ve been thinking a lot more about modest offerings of what change looks like and ways in which we can open up the world. A world of more inclusive ethics that would drive us to make better ecological and interpersonal decisions.
“I can only claim to do a small bit and then it is up to everyone to change their mindsets and act.”
Still, as an environmental artist, you are expected to solve things. There’s a group of artists and scientists who say, “If we don’t make work that addresses really tangible ways of changing things, we are useless. How do you measure that? We don’t want to talk about metaphors. We don’t want to talk about mindsets, we want to make change, we’re in a crisis.” But I would also say, sometimes you have to slow down to move fast. Interestingly, the Rising Seas Jellyfish Jerky Snack Shack showed me the contradictions in this way of thinking about solutions. People who participated and thought of themselves as environmentally active students, who were doing environmental studies, still went downstairs to the vending machine and bought single serve plastic wrap snacks. It was like the snacks were a blind spot in their whole system of thinking about the world. So I can only claim to do a small bit and then it is up to everyone to change their mindsets and act.
