TNSS - Towards the nomadic studio state - research paper and collection
TNSS is a research paper from 2018, which is contemplating a nomadic approach in artistic practice. It debates the problem of fixed studio space and how this can be avoided. I question the dependency of the practitioner on the studio, from creating artistic content without any physical attachment/form to practices of letting go and questioning the habits of the contemporary artist.
Introduction
In this work I wish to show the way research has helped me find the way Towards the Nomadic Studio State (TNSS), to go deeper, so I could have a sketch of what TNSS means for me and what could mean for others. The structure will be like one of my works, progressive and focused on the actual process.
Everything stated in this work is processed together with the Assemblage(s) Manifesto which is my visual way of filtering the gathered information during my research[e2] [a3]. In fact, my practice was not only contextualized by this theoretical information but rather there was a dialogue, or dialogical encounter between both theory and practice in terms of praxis (Nelson,
My purpose is to reach The Nomadic Studio state, which basically means to give up a fixed, pre-established studio space to have a better understanding of the present (space, environment, and time Ths nomadic studio state, refers more to a ‘way than a purpose in terms of perpetual process and approach in my art practice. In my spontaneous, intuitive practice, I find that fixed space a burden is something that drags me back and a barrier in my everyday practice. I believe that my practice is about finding the “art” in the gaps of everyday life’s habits, objects, spaces, interactions, so I decided to let go of the things that would keep still the flow of events and let my transitory surroundings influence my senses, my body, and my mind.
For introduction I would mention few words of/about some artists who influenced and inspired me to write about The Nomadic Studio State:
“I was interested in how art objects acquire meaning through their context and through travel, what Buren called, something like, “the unbearable compromise of the portable work of art”. So, I wanted to make a work that was specifically organized around its traffic, becoming materially manifest through its movement from one place to another.” – Walead Beshty, about FedEx Series
Mary Mattingly is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work explores issues of sustainability, climate change, and displacement. Mattingly combines photography, performance, portable architecture, and sculptural ecosystems into poetic visions of adaptation and survival. In her work, we encounter nomads laboring under the weight of their possessions. We witness their pilgrimage over parched lands and swollen bodies of water. We see refugees of a tainted past seeking out a sustainable future in the natural world. We watch as they carve out an itinerant existence, embracing simple and adaptable strategies for survival.
“My work proposes a world returned to nomadic roots following a peripatetic population constantly on the move. It expects that soon, much more of the world’s population will be forced to be nomadic. I focus on the creation of wearable environments, and autonomous living/traveling systems, based in engineering and science and fused with fantasy.”
"I am interested in the everyday life. All the materials that surrounded me could be useful, as well as the objects, topics involved in contemporary society. My work speaks about the whole entity of a human being: the physical, the spiritual, the psychological and the political." – Erwin Wurm
Concluding, I would add that as a starting point to my research I used Oscar Wilde’s words “it is not art imitating life, but life imitating art”(the thoughts mentioned before came as enlightening after starting to think about his words). This quote seemed appealing and seemed to reveal the basics of my practice’s concepts. I wanted to produce “lighter” work (mass) that would be easily transported or to give up all the objects after exhibiting them.
Content -Methodology
For my research, I combined different methodologies or approaches. I used archives (collecting items and inserting them into my sketchbook to gather information about certain spaces at a certain time), autoethnography, site-specific orientation and adaptability, reflexive, psychoanalytic thinking, perception, and traveling. As proof of these techniques, my sketchbook is the best example I could refer to.
Even though I am gradually creating my lifestyle and practice in a minimalistic manner and the purpose is about not to collect things, but to let them go. My sketchbook[e4] became my „pocket studio” in terms of replacing my[e5] needs which used to occur in the fixed studio space. This satisfies my visual and conceptual needs, containing paintings, drawings, objects, prints, writing, theory, and personal thoughts.
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Content – Personal Statement
If I am to resume my practice, I couldn’t compress it into only one technique or interest. I would rather say that my practice is about my surroundings, my subjectivity imprinted on them (like how I perceive them), and what kind of marks they leave upon me and vice versa. Is more about an investigation of the mechanism of how things work and perpetually rediscovering the world through different perspectives because in my case, curiosity keeps the world spinning.
Through time I developed a particular relationship with the material (not only a defined object). I started listening to it, use it in as many ways as it dictated me, and embrace its particularities. For a better visual understanding of my practice, I would picture the relationship between me and material like a joyful child playing in the mud. As one can see its joy, excitement, and pure pleasure of interacting with its own environment, this is how I feel when I am in direct connection with the material. I like to be there, in that space at that moment, totally into it, intense and raw. Besides this comparison, I also take advantage of the power to transform its qualities, to redefine its basic, classic understanding for arousing the senses. So that’s why getting in touch directly with the material and having a raw and spontaneous interaction with it is a pattern in my practice (until now at least). I give quite an importance to its physical qualities (sight, smell, taste, touch, sound), because the materiality is what makes our conscious world feel real and as long as we, as humans possess a body too, a material, this is the most accessible and used quality of ours, just as sight is for senses.
So, I can say that I am trying to create a link between my body and my surroundings and I am always open to new experiments and provocations. That being said, I combine my everyday life with my art practice because they include one another – art practice as in both theoretical (thinking, ideas, concepts, reading) and practical. Any object, experience, interaction, basically any surrounding has the potential of becoming inspirational.
[e5] robin nelson describes the idea of ‘thinking doing’ of the art-practice-as researcher to explain the interconnection between practice and thoughts as an ongoing process. He uses the notion of praxis: the process of using a theory or something that you have learned practically.
Finally, I could say that Robin Nelson’s words deeply influenced my practice and this research specifically: “artistic research demonstrates that knowledge is derived from doing and from the senses.”
Content – Hows and Whys
How? – A deeper look into my methodologies[e6]
“Any prediction in advance of what it will (or should) do is alien to it, and equally, any attempt to fully account for it, whether through the apparatus of criticism or that of the market is doomed to be incomplete.” – Robin Nelson
I am not searching for an outcome and definitely don’t want to spoil the surprise with a promised „final” piece, because first, there’s no such thing as the final piece and second, for me, everything is a process, a perpetual flow of happenings. My purpose is to have no purpose and to be able to observe the things that influence me and be as aware as possible of them. This kind of profound awareness you achieve when one loses himself in the present and only in the present. By picturing and building a „final piece” I am spoiling my own practice and defying my beliefs in nowness. I am altering the moment, by forgetting about what it has to offer and shove it into the past, without even acknowledging its existence. So a “final piece ”, for me is just a limitation, as Kakuza Okakura says in The Book of Tea „Definition is always limitation—the “fixed” and “unchangeless” are but terms expressive of a stoppage of growth.”
As his book is about the Wabi-Sabi way, without specifying anything about this, I would include a short description of its philosophy. Wabi-Sabi is Imperfect, Incomplete and Impermanent, in my work seen as – III
The definition of this term states that“ Wabi originally referred to the loneliness of living in nature, remote from society; sabi meant "chill", "lean" or "withered".(…). Wabi now connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.” A good way to exemplify Wabi-Sabi in artistic practices is the Japanese traditional pottery called Kintsugi, the technique of repairing broken pottery with gold. Showzi Tsukamoto is a good example of a contemporary Kintsugi artist who’s still producing this kind of pot.”
The principles of Wabi-Sabi as shown in Leonard Koren’sbook Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers ( Koren )
Going back to how my practice, as I wanted to make my works be more of a part of myself than just another “project”, I started to understand that I actually am “being together” (Dasein – Martin Heidegger) surroundings[e7]. Even though I wouldn’t realize it, they would have influenced my work anyway, but in a more hidden way. I want to give up any objects, ideas, thoughts, concepts that might undermine the relationship between me and the present (as a practice), so I could say I tend to a minimalistic lifestyle and (as I’m trying to identify my lifestyle with my practice) a minimalistic practice. Minimalism becomes a necessity to continue my journey Towards the Nomadic Studio. It offers me lightness, the flexibility of movement, and travel, so I can say it becomes one of my methodologies in the process of letting go.
As in his book, Fumio Sasaki says “…open areas are incredibly useful. They bring us a sense of freedom and keep our minds open to the more important things in life…”, so I am trying to contextualize blank spaces in my work. (“Goodbye, things”- Fumio Sasaki, pg.99)
The emptiness of space sets one’s place to breathe, to meditate, to contemplate about the possibility of filling it with anything. Only as long as that space is filled with all those thoughts, ideas, freedom of possibilities (non-materiality and abstraction), but not with actual, palpable objects (concrete), it keeps that emptiness full of anyone’s fantasies, perceptions, desires. It becomes a space of infinite possibilities concerning the spectator and his relationship/engagement with the work. I would also refer to Kakuza Okakura`s words to support my judgment and observation written above: „In art, the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea and thus a great masterpiece irre-sistably rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to enter and fill up the full measure of your aesthetic emotion.”
In contradiction with the statement of minimalism, comes consumerism with its variety of products. One keeps buying products that rarely are useful and falls into this cycle of consuming more and more, getting confused by possibilities. Having many options makes the human mind confused, postponing the actual act of buying and he ends up being unhappy and skeptical about his choice because his offering too much time and interest towards a useless object. Buying stuff leads to buying stuff, objects lead to more objects and objects come with responsibilities and a need for space. A material space, but also mental space. As our body gets buried in objects, our mind gets buried by them as well.
This is how consumerism keeps us stuck in one place by burdening our everyday lives with objects that we don’t need and useless concerns related to this clutter that we permanently carry. For this precise reason, I am mentioning Karl Marx, who has a compact and straightforward observation, which proofs my point regarding the detachment and letting go of objects: “All that’s solid melts into the air”. In the end, the possession of objects doesn’t matter and has no real use, except for one’s desire to show off and demonstrate, shape its personality, by hanging on its belongings.
A visual artist that I would mention is Satoshi Murakami, who also sustains my views in practice and concludes my chapter: “I think what I do really challenges people and makes them aware of how attached they are to what they own,” says Murakami. “Everyone assumes that their property is permanent and inviolable. What I do is make a nuisance that hopefully lets them see that they can't completely isolate their own part of the world.” – Satoshi Murakami
Source:http://atpeacewithpink.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_7.html
Why like this?
To go further, I would say we all are a mix of influences, and regarding the approaching and the fact that everything has been said, one way or another, I find it useless to use my own words to describe (translate) my research. Instead, by letting the viewer see the links I made while researching, make him understand my particular way of thinking, a.k.a. my choices, for example, why did I choose a certain paragraph, why did I linked one quote with another or why did I erased some information, make him a question and understand the connections as my way of research in practice.
I will let my interpretation manifest through visual language, this being my way of understanding my research, translating it, and sharing it further. The connections that I make, turn into visual effects instantaneously, with no linguistic filter. The information gathered is transformed in my actual practice and has a direct effect upon it. That’s what I want to share with the receptor/public/audience/YOU.
Why buy something new, when you already have everything? Use what you already got! I am using the words I already have gathered during my research, that describe my practice and left a direct impact on my work. They all create an assemblage manifesto that describes with other’s words my personal view applied.
I dare to say we are all expression as an assemblage of our memory, experiences, cultural and educational environment. Our form is shaped by experience.
The assemblage manifesto is the way I am using research directly in my practice and I paraphrase my own way of understanding. I want to show the viewer the actual process of gathering the information.
Why should I use the same language, translating words to words, when I can translate words in visuals? That’s the way the information is processed in my mind, I work with images.
Throughout this essay, I want to make a parallel between the assemblage manifesto and Towards NSS to conclude, compress the given information and use it in my ongoing process of going Towards the Nomadic Studio State.
The assemblage(s) manifesto is an under-layer of TNSS. Is what supports its autonomy and shows TNSS’s origins. I find it necessary to keep them all together as a perpetual source of inspiration and guidance. Also, the way Assemblage(s) Manifesto (AM) is presented, with various fragments using various methods like computer print-screens, mobile print-screens, underlined paragraphs all copied from their original content, supports the idea behind TNSS, because shows my mobility, easiness, and adaptability to a changing space (from physical books, ebooks to websites like Scribd and blogs/internet information). In the pictures taken with the phone can be seen that the light, the angle of writing varies as they were instant photos during journeys or different environments, so they have that moment’s personality. So my dependence on a fixed space disappears and all I am left with, is the information, archive chosen at a certain time in a certain space.
Conclusion – TNSS Manifesto
The Nomadic Studio State is a way, not something that can be fully reached.
The Nomadic Studio State is not a project.
The Nomadic Studio State has no finality.
The Nomadic Studios State is about lightness, but not always.
If it wouldn’t be also about heaviness I wouldn’t have let go of anything.
The Nomadic Studio State is about freedom and awareness.
The Nomadic Studio State listens and embraces change.
The Nomadic Studio State is intuitive and spontaneous.
The Nomadic Studio State is forgetting, but not Alzheimer.
The Nomadic Studio State is
The Nomadic Studio State is about letting go, but not only.
The Nomadic Studio State has a face for everyone, but none.
The Nomadic Studio State is ecstatic.
The Nomadic Studio State is Wabi-Sabi – Imperfect, Impermanent, Incomplete – III
The Nomadic Studio State is empiric
The Nomadic Studio State is mystic
The Nomadic Studio State is not what you can see.
The Nomadic Studio State is abstract
The Nomadic Studio State is within Me for sharing with You, using gaps, but not only.
The Nomadic Studio State is gaps
The Nomadic Studio State is fluidity.
The Nomadic Studio State is emptiness.
The Nomadic Studio State has more states:
- State of awareness
- State of letting go
- State of minimalism
- State of adaptability
- State of “whatever happens happen”
- State of emptiness
Like Zen, but not really.
They are not temporal states.
The Nomadic Studio State is art by its own meaning
??!??????The Nomadic Studio State created itself by the necessity of being.??!!???
The Nomadic Studio State is something I don’t know anything about.
The Nomadic Studio State comes from everyone and me feeling it, discovering it, naming it, makes it exists, but does it exist?
Oh My, I created a religion!!!!
(Q)Why do people create Gods out of nothing? – Are they asked by Institutions, Universities? ;)
(AA)They are asked by society.
(AA) = Ana’s Answer
They gather what they think they are defined by and build Gods out of the definitions.
And everybody has gods and fight for their Gods.
We don’t need no definitions! We don’t need no thoughts control!
Well, this is not The Nomadic Studio State.
Is obscene to write about NSS! Is like shovelling my hand under his skirt and trying to find the pussy.
We don’t need to write about the things that are not supposed to be written about. We don’t want to say it that way!
I SEE
References:
Beshty, W. 2017. Artist Walead Beshty Shipped Glass Boxes Inside FedEx Boxes to Produce Shattered Sculptures
Source: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/01/fedex-works-walead-beshty/
Mattingly, M. http://www.artworksforchange.org/portfolio/mary-mattingly/
Wurm, E. http://lostpictures.co.uk/?page_id=229
Nelson, R. 1996. Art-practice-as research and the problem of knowledge. Academic Press, London. 314 pp.
Bourriaud. N. 2002. Relational Aesthetics. Les presses du reel. Dijon, France
Koren, L. 1994. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. Stone Bridge Press Berkeley, California, USA
Okakura, K. 2016. The Book of Tea, Penguin Books Ltd, London
Sasaki, F. 2017. Goodbye Things: On Minimalist Living. Penguin, London. pp.99
Marx, K. & Engels, F. 2004, The Communist manifesto, Bantam Classic, New York, N.Y.
Heidegger, M. 2011. Originea Operei de Arta. Humanitas. Bucharest, Romania
Murakami, S. 2015. A human snail crosses Japan with the house on the back. http://atpeacewithpink.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_7.html
For Assemblage(s) Manifesto:
Danchev, A. 2011. 100 Artists’ Manifestos From the Futurists to the Stuckists. Penguin. London
M88. Baselitz, G. 1985. Painters’ Equipment
M1. Marinetti, F. T. 1909. The Foundation of Futurism
M60. Arp, J. A. 1942. Concrete Manifesto
M61. Fontana, L. 1946. White Manifesto
M66. Yoshihara, J. 1956. The Gutai Manifesto
M70. Debord, G. 1960. Situationist Manifesto
M67. Tinguely, J. 1959. For Static
M66. Yoshihara, J. 1956. The Gutai Manifesto
M82. Neagu, P. 1969. Palpable Art Manifesto
M58. Karoly, C. S., and others. 1936. Dimensionist Manifesto
M17. Lewis, W., and others. 1914. Manifesto
M47. Murayama, T. 1923. Mavo Manifesto
Sol LeWitt – Wall Drawings
Sol LeWitt – Writings of Conceptual Art
Angela Della Cruz
Karl Marx
Bachelard, M. 2014. The Poetics of Space. Penguin Books. New York, USA
Guides:
TNSS = Towards the Nomadic Studio State
NSS = Nomadic Studio State
TNS = Towards the Nomadic Studio
AM = Assemblage(s) Manifesto
“Water and/or steam.
Hot, cold, and in between.
Nakedness.
Quietude.
Illumination.”
Source: https://designobserver.com/feature/making-wet-the-magazine-of-gourmet-bathing/36558