LoosenArt shows Solfége Souche video during The Performer exhibition.
15 October – November 2020. Millepiani, Via N.Odero, Rome, Italy.
Advance booking required: info@loosenart.com +39 347 496 2253
Tag: Exhibitions
AFJORDANCE 2019
AFJORDANCE, 2019, single channel video, soundtrack composed by the digital armature joint movements referencing an open source audio library of wind. The video looks at the new complexities emerging in Artificial Intelligence, the ways humans create mirrored structures, and affordances in the notions of Intelligence itself. Exhibited in California, Norway, and Italy.
February 2020, Corwin Pavilion, University of California Santa Barbara for AWMAS Conference.
March 2020, Arteriet, Kvinnekroppen Utstillingen, Kristiansand, Norway.
October-November 2020, LoosenArt at Millepiani, Rome, Italy.
Norwegian: AFJORDANCE, 2019, er i enkeltkanals video, med lydspor komponert av de digitale armaturleddbevegelsene som refererer til et lydbibliotek med åpen kildekode for vind. Videoen ser på de nye kompleksitetene som dukker opp i kunstig intelligens, måtene mennesker lager speilvendte strukturer og overkommelige i forestillingene om intelligens i seg selv. )
Performance & Edit, Rachel Wolfe www.rachelwolfe.com
Affordance Technologist, Harald de Bondt www.movingmaking.com
Videography, Børge Indergaard www.indergaard.net
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FULL TEXT
AFJORDANCE, 2019, Approximate run time 13:50 minutes, single channel video (with audio).
Affordance is what the environment offers the individual, and refers to all action possibilities depending on users’ physical capabilities. For example, a chair “affords” being “sat on,” “thrown,” “stood on,” and a continuing use of probabilities. James J. Gibson, coined the term “affordance.” The video portrays a dance at the fjord as movement research for technology lab-work.The project developed from the Solfège Souche video performance. The relationship between the human body and the natural world remains full of misunderstandings and spaces for insight. As Artificial Intelligence becomes part of human life, and human relations are increasingly dependent on technological screens and interfaces, the question of what is knowing and the way Intelligence is understood comes into question in the video. The wind sound in Afjordance are from open source libraries. The composition is made by refercing the joints in the wire frame armature. This armature positioned antagonistically opposed to the fully covered body. The body becomes a form without much identity other than it shows the proportions of a female body. The wire frame of the body becomes the composer, making a track of wind sounds as an echo of the movements of the body. The feminine as a figure of the earth or “mother nature” in certain instances is faced with the exorcised image of itself which can scarcely mirror the motions from the limited human body. The video is intended to be projected with sound, to create an immersive experience for viewers to consider the themes of technology, the body, nature elements. The experience provides a multi-sensory meditation on the possible meanings and implications of the emergent technology.
ARTISTIC RESEARCH: DRAFT FOR JOURNAL 
CICA Museum
Solfége Souche, Concept 2019 Exhibition, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA), Gyeonggi-do, Korea
CICA Museum
June 28 – July 14, 2019
2019. 6.28 – 7.14
Click this text to view the catalogue.
“Solfége Souche” (2018)
A Solfège Souche is by definition the root of a forgotten connection with nature. In our time of rapid advancement in technology, we stand on a Vantasner Meridian. Is it dangerous if we do not know what we stand to lose? The video works with movements, light, body, sounds reminiscent of a basic fiber of existence: humans are part of nature. In an effort to portray a relationship with nature, instead of a dominance over nature.
Rachel Wolfe was born in Illinois, and trained in dance, piano, and voice. Her meditative works are informed by observation and inquiry into beauty and sensual feeling. A world experienced through synesthesia informs her inquiry into the Vision and Body relationship through themes of water, terrain, sound, and ways of embodied knowing. Value, depth, texture, colour as related to our feeling of intelligence. At times the work appears otherworldly, saturated, sublime, nearly unreal-but the images and installations made are always about aspects deeply tied to reality. Wolfe holds a Master of Fine Art from Otis College of Art and Design, and a Bachelor of Art in Advertising, with studies in Interior Design. Awards and artist residences include Trélex Residency (Switzerland), PRAXIS Oslo ad Praxis festivalen Tricia Brown (Norway), First Place by the Jury, Imagining New Eurasia Exhibition (South Korea), Woelffer Scholarship and Academic Merit Award, Otis College of Art and
Design (USA), Academic Scholarship for Social Psychology (Japan), Historic Pathways, Indiana State University (USA). The Print Ateliér of Montréal, represents images from Human Needs.
OSLO ART & FASHION FESTIVAL 2018
Mouvements (Bevegelsene), 2015-2018, film photography, variable sizes
MOUVEMENTS (BEVEGELSENE), 2015-2018, photography, variable sizes. Exhibitions at Vérité, Grundingen 1-3, Aker Brygge, 0250 Oslo, Norway for Oslo Art and Fashion Festival, and Akers Mek in Oslo, Norway, 100 x 140 cm, Epson Archival Ink, mounted on kapa. The exhibition was supported by Epson Europe, Interfoto Oslo, and CopyCat Fine Art in Skøyen.
The Mouvements series reveals nuanced details in digital imaging technology. The images are informed by tensions in oil and water. The materiality of digital imaging technology, distance in viewing, and surreal representations in water forms are highlighted by minuscule film grains amplified after film scanning. The epistemology of water or way we come to learn and understand what water, is an ongoing endeavour. To then know what we are doing with technology, requires extended looking. The way something appears can obfuscate and reveal our relationship to the looking. Oil and water become elemental allegory for technocratic times. As Umberto Eco writes in several books on late modernity, images are read and our connections and relations are realised as a malleable surfaces. The natural beauty of the water is transformed by a hypnotic colour palette tied to screen technology. Viewing distances engage viewers in a sense of movement in stillness.
2018 Interview on Collect Oslo Art and Fashion Website
MOUVEMENTS 2015 – 2018
MOUVEMENTS (BEVEGELSENE), 2015-2018, photography, variable sizes. Exhibitions at Vérité and Akers Mek in Oslo, Norway, 100 x 140 cm, Epson Archival Ink, mounted on kapa.
The Mouvements series reveals nuanced details in digital imaging technology. The images are informed by tensions in oil and water. The materiality of digital imaging technology, distance in viewing, and surreal representations in water forms are highlighted by minuscule film grains amplified after film scanning. The epistemology of water or way we come to learn and understand what water, is an ongoing endeavour. To then know what we are doing with technology, requires extended looking. The way something appears can obfuscate and reveal our relationship to the looking. Oil and water become elemental allegory for technocratic times. As Umberto Eco writes in several books on late modernity, images are read and our connections and relations are realised as a malleable surfaces. The natural beauty of the water is transformed by a hypnotic colour palette tied to screen technology. Viewing distances engage viewers in a sense of movement in stillness.
Exhibition for Oslo Art & Fashion Festival at Vérité and afterwards at Akers Mek. The series is available for printing on metal, vinyl, for limited edition prints, custom facades for public art. The artwork became part of a develop of garment designs and is part of the book: Textures & Movements.
- Mouvements (Bevegelsene), 2015-2018, film photography, variable sizes
Exhibition at Cyan Studio
Exhibition at Cyan Studio, Jen Bjelkes Gate 13A, 0562 Oslo, Norway
Surrealistic Landscape images from a neolithic epoch and theology ideas.
Graal 
Vin 
Ascension
20 år jubilium med temaet “Tid” May 25, 26, 27, 2018
“Et fotografi – en brøkdel av et sekund av et eksisterende øyeblikk. Øyeblikket er gått men likevel bevart en brøkdel av et sekund i 20 år er mange bevarte øyeblikk.”
“A photograph – a fraction of a second of an existing moment. The moment has passed but still preserved a fraction of a second for 20 years are many preserved moments.”
SOLFEGE SOUCHE 2018
SOLFEGE SOUCHE, 2018, single-channel video, sound composition and arrangement.
“I love the way the figure is emerges then blends back into its surroundings, it is how I feel in the wild parts of Skye as if I am the landscape. The light is beautiful. It isn’t like Bill Viola’s work, but it has the same emotional effect on me.” -Joan Foye, UK
February 2019, Palazzo Michiel, Strada Nova, 4391, 30121 Campo Santi Apostoli, Venezia, Italy
June 2019, CICA Museum,Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA), Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
October 2020, “The Performer”, LoosenArt, Millipiani, Rome, Italy
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A Solfège Souche is by definition the root of a forgotten connection with nature. In times of rapidly increased use of technology, humans face increased stimulation and variables on age old questions in ethics and morality. In an effort to portray a dynamic relationship with nature, instead of dominance over nature, the Butoh movements recreate ways lifeforms cut down in the forest continually find ways to reach towards light. This space framed in the video presents a body moving amongst an autumnal forest, merging and emerging from light and shadows. The body draws lines through movement; binaural beats compose the soundtrack. The pitches register at markers in time, reminiscent of ear trauma or tinnitus. The Solfège Souche video is situated at the intersection of dance, performance, video art, projection, embodied cognition research, and resonance study. The artistic research and pedagogical development around the project asks the questions: Are our cultural and bodily movements dangerous if we do not understand what we stand to lose? In what ways do sounds move and change forms from within the body and around?
“Ut queant laxīs resonāre fībrīs; Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum; Solve pollūtī labiī reātum, Sancte Iōhannēs.”
The term, Solfège, refers to the music education method developed to teach sight-singing and pitch accuracy. Originating in 11th century, music theorist Guido of Arezzo assigned six syllables: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, now recognized as the major scale. Much later, the “ut” was changed to the open syllable “do”. “Sol” changed to “so”. “Si” later became “ti”, was added for the seventh scale-note, giving rise to the modern solfège. Souche has several meanings; as a stump (of a tree), the Latin word meaning root, simultaneously referring to genealogy. Souche was also a name of an unknown virus claiming the lives of at least twenty people (une souche virale inédite a fait au minimum vingt morts).
The changes and understandings in musical notation, are related to posture and movement. These bodily performances considered intuitive or based on vision, relating Gregorian and Orthodox histories with traditions found in native and pagan rites of passage. Therefore the things themselves, present and projected become the shared ground. The next record in this artistic research is the Afjordance video projection and data based, algorithmic generated sounds based on the term Affordance.
Affordance is what the environment offers the individual, and refers to all action possibilities depending on users’ physical capabilities. For example, a chair not only “affords” being “sat on,” but also “thrown,” “stood on,” and so on. James J. Gibson, coined the term “affordance.”
NORSK: Solfege Souche, 2018, enkelt kanel med lyd, filmet i Maridalen, Oslo, Norway
En Solfège Souche er per definisjon roten til en glemt forbindelse med naturen. I tider med raskt økt bruk av teknologi, møter mennesker økt stimulering og variabler på eldgamle spørsmål innen etikk og moral. I et forsøk på å skildre et dynamisk forhold til naturen, i stedet for dominans over naturen, gjenskaper Butoh-bevegelsene måter livsformer kuttet ned i skogen kontinuerlig finner måter å nå mot lys. Dette rommet innrammet i videoen presenterer en kropp som beveger seg mellom en høstlig skog, smelter sammen og kommer ut fra lys og skygger. Kroppen trekker linjer gjennom bevegelse; binaural beats komponerer lydsporet. Plassene registreres ved markører i tide, og minner om øre traumer eller tinnitus.
Solfège Souche-videoen ligger i skjæringspunktet mellom dans, performance, videokunst, projeksjon, forskning og studier. Den kunstneriske forskningen og den pedagogiske utviklingen stiller spørsmålene: Er våre kulturelle og kroppslige bevegelser farlige hvis vi ikke forstår hva vi taper? På hvilke måter beveger lyd og endrer form fra kroppen og rundt?
Ut queant laxīs resonāre fībrīs; Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum; Løs pollūtī labiī reātum, Sancte Iōhannēs.
Begrepet, Solfège, refererer til musikkopplæringsmetoden som er utviklet for å undervise i synge og tonehøyde. Opprinnelsen fra det 11. århundre tildelte musikteoretikeren Guido fra Arezzo seks stavelser: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, nå anerkjent som hovedskala. Mye senere ble “ut” endret til den åpne stavelsen “do”. “Sol” endret til “så”. “Si” ble senere “ti”, ble lagt til for den syvende skala-noten, noe som ga opphav til den moderne solfège. Souche har flere betydninger; som en stubbe (av et tre), det latinske ordet som betyr rot, og refererer samtidig til slektsforskning. Souche var også et navn på et ukjent virus som krevde livet til minst tjue mennesker (une souche virale inédite a fait au minimum vingt morts).
Endringene og forståelsene i musikalsk notasjon, er relatert til holdning og bevegelse. Disse kroppslige forestillingene ble ansett som intuitive eller basert på visjon, og relaterte gregorianske og ortodokse historier med tradisjoner som finnes i innfødte og hedenske overgangsritualer. Derfor blir tingene i seg selv, nåværende og projiserte, den delte bakken. Den neste posten i denne kunstneriske forskningen er Afjordance videoprojeksjon og databaserte, algoritmisk genererte lyder basert på begrepet Affordance.
Overlegenhet er hva miljøet tilbyr individet, og refererer til alle handlingsmuligheter avhengig av brukernes fysiske evner. For eksempel gir en stol ikke bare “å sitte på”, men også “kastet”, “sto på” og så videre. James J. Gibson, laget begrepet “overkommelighet”.
2017: Jul Pop Up
Jul Pop Up Exhibition, 2017, Majorstuen, Oslo, Norway
EX NIHILO 2017
Group Exhibition “Ex Nihilo“, 2017, Video of Exhibition at La Macina di San Cresci , Catalogue
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1
As if out of nothing, after two years of cogitating the possibility of making an exhibition that would speak deeply of our longing for a reconnection of body and spirit, Ex Nihilo comes together embracing difference and individuality. Even though the titled, Ex Nihilo, was chosen two years ago, Pieve di San Cresci, a special place-space emerged out of nothing presenting us with the very same question, which we have thrown in the deepest void vacuum of ideas, and desires that reside nowhere but within us. Building blocks began falling into place until it physically appeared in the most magical way, building our confidences and throwing us back into the unknown. This exhibition was conceived to be a communion and an exchange among those artists, with themselves and with the space that it inhabits. The display of the art objects was designed in harmony with what is, to create what it can be. Creation, therefore, becomes a movement from inside out outside in, in the particularity of everyone’s heart.
– Marcela Gottardo, exhibiting artist, curator, exhibition designer
Ex Nihilo installation is dedicated to putting form to an ongoing dialogue with 5 international, women artists.
In our attempts to make sense of the strength and fragility of human life, we began to speak about how things come together, take form, and from what often appears as out of nowhere from nothing.
Latin for ‘of nothing,’ Ex Nihilo installation focuses on existence, conditions of the body, and the ‘Barely There’ nature found in artwork of women.
Ex Nihilo looks at the emergent qualities of a given situation and the space from which the exchange, like 5 elements of nature, 4 plus void, the appearance of nowhere comes from a combined dynamic.
What artist Rachel Wolfe calls: “la beaux monde creatif,” is the ‘Barely There’ thing that emerges from an ongoing conversation of trust, collaboration, and witness as it forms the basis for making, it’s also an often over looked, because of its immaterial qualities. While immaterial, the ‘thing’ made from emergence is for sure not “no-thing.”
When artist Sweet Samson invented the term: “Nesslessness,” ‘ness’ the essence of something denoting quality and state, -‘less’ “without,” the state of being without state, the essence of empty, what does this feel like? Something so empty, it becomes full, full of possibility.
The question Points of Connection, Ex Nihilo continues to ask: How to make present the sense of mercurial absence, from which life force flows?
In continuing the work of Ex Nihilo, we 5 artists working together realize and expand themes of work to include ways women-as-seers historically have been made ‘Barely There.’ We take this quality into our forms, and let it inform, in a positive way together.
When we see each other, presence takes shape as an offering, a gift, and the ‘Barely There’ echo of possibility transformed into the something emergent from Ex Nihilo.
– Jamie Grace Davis, exhibiting artist in residency at La Macina di San Cresci
Shroud, 2017
Hand patched silk, mirror, and wig
79 x 56 and 79 x 56 cm
Mimicking the church floor considers the importance of primitivism. The conquering of countries development of their own hegemony, we now call identity. I believe humans are more ritualized than before. Black satin emphasizes mourning we are born with and how a self is in juxtaposition with pedagogy. A mirror beside the satin checkered tile rug symbolizes freedom of the underworld as our ancestors believed, the wig signifying a once lively eternity.
The Bones Sculptures, 2017
Unfired clay and wood sticks
295 x 138 cm
Form and Formless, an abstraction from the core of our bodies, there, but unseen. We all share: “bones.” These are imagined bodiless bones made of clay, turning to dust.
The Garden, 2017
Installation design, co-curation by Marcella Gottardo.
“The Garden” is an exploration in what artist Andre Feliciano calls “Floressiance.” By themselves these paintings are small moments of ‘nothing.’ Together, the whole experience becomes something to take in, all at once, a feast for the senses. The room is heavy in orange fragrance. 🍊
Soudad, 2015-ongoing
Acrylic painting on bed sheet
Queen
“Soudad” An Arabic word, about ‘journey’ loosely translated: “to see from the highest place of your dreams.” I have been taking this painting with me to every location of Points of Connection. It has all the indexical marks from all the other paintings I have made along the way. It’s a registration. The shapes form themselves through layers of time, trust, and highly calculated risk. It’s the thing that’s always underneath all the other paintings, the thing most unseen. It has become the provisional, situational foundation.
“If I take this thing and reposition it, over and over and do things to and put it in different circumstances, when and how will that thing take on that ‘Barely There’ quality? Things that are the most discarded have this. Things that travel a lot have this. What goes into making something that has a magnetic presence no matter how simple it appears?
I’m interested in how an aura is actually formed. What is the mechanism?
Walter Benjamin wrote: “We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual—first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function.”
Ritual is a form of repetition, a way of participation, to build a relationship with, to belong. Ritual is transforming discomfort into comfort, discord into balance and harmony, senselessness into meaning. When I think about this as relates to dance, I think about it in terms of gesture and posture. Gesture, an action repeated over and over and posture, a fixed shape. Posture emerges from the gesture itself, sometimes as a stop, a pause, a wobble, of its own volition. This can be applied to mark making in a painting.
All the pours, casts, imprints and registrations: are from gesture. The fixed appearance of movement, posture.
Between the two things of gesture and posture is something else -something ‘Barely There.’
The Language of the Sun, 2016
Ceramics, plaster, and galvanized iron
430 cm x 320 cm
Soon after moving to Italy, after living twelve years in the United States, I again became an immigrant. The burden of language, it’s limits, beauty, grace, and the continual sense of being misunderstood -even when standing in my own country, Brazil, granddaughter of Italian immigrants. The weight of the stars hit me, crush me, torn me upside-down, inside-out, fired me, freeze me as an un-programmed thermostat. Under yellow orange green brown oak trees, I walk, surrounded by ancient histories and mountains; I ponder the heart of lost civilizations buried beneath my feet. Homeland less, walking this land crushing leaves and bones, smelling blood and crying out, looking up and looking down, my littleness, meaningless existence.
While the morning dew reveals the spider trap among sweet purple flowers, the undisturbed mud beneath the water pond hides death and decadence. An accelerated unsettle heart craves more, beats thunders welcoming what cannot be possible known within words.
Memoria Technica, 2015
Series of 5 monolithic photographs
90,64 x 180 cm
Teknovisuell Experience, detail of detail #5, 2015-2016
34 x 134 cm Photograph on vinyl
Memoria Technica is a series of 5 monolithic film exposures realized as seasons, axiomatically marking the vertical landscape in relationship with the human body in magnetic resonance imaging. The monolithic image as marker in the sense and perception of passage through time.
Works in Ex Nihilo: Summer, a caustic season; Spring, a vernal pour; Autumn, a hieratic vessel.
Teknovisuell Experience is a series of 7 images. Dimensions vary relative to Architecture. Images of water emphasize ethereal qualities of digital imaging technology and engage viewers in a physical relationship with the image/vision and body/space.
Not almost nothing, 2016
Acrylic and carbon fiber on canvas
43 x 43 cm each
Ester, 2017
Aqua resin, acrylic and carbon fiber
7 x 8 cm
In the Art nothing is for sure until an attempt is accomplished. Although, nothing is for sure thereafter as well.
OSLO ART AND FASHION FESTIVAL 2017
STOP BATH, 2017, multimedia installation, images from Memoria Technica, single-channel video, audio composition, at Lekter’n. View Stop-Bath video at FilmEssay.com Interview on Oslo Fashion and Art Festival. Exhibition supported by Epson & Interfoto Norge.
LEKTER`N, Stranden 3, Aker Brygge 0250 Oslo, Norway kart/map
THURSDAY Oct 12th FRIDAY Oct 13th 2017 – kl. 17:00 – 20:00 SATURDAY Oct 14th 2017 – kl. 12:00 – 20:00
Interview from Oslo Fashion and Art Festival Website:
Rachel Wolfe (b. 1984) is an American-born artist and photographer, living in Norway since 2015. Her work is realized in mediums of images, installation, drawing, painting, video, performance, and traveling objects. The Print Atelier represents images from Human Needs.
Rooted in disciplines of dance, painting, drawing, piano, voice, Wolfe has been making solo and group projects, working with land, space, light, and photography since 1999. Theories in Chinese medicine influence her work navigating themes of beauty, sense, feeling.
Awards and scholarships include: 2015 First place by the jury, Imagining New Eurasia exhibition in Gwangju, South Korea. 2015 Woelffer scholarship and 2014 academic merit award from Otis College of Art and Design, 2013 Academic scholarship for social psychology study in Matsuyama Japan, 2009 Historic Pathways winner from Indiana State University.
Question Answer:
U: Who are you and what do you do? RW: I am Rachel Wolfe I make art considering the site and utilizing materials and images of photography, including light, video, sound, and performance of body.
U: What characterizes your work? RW: Sensory dynamics in the nature of desire. Human, felt experiences are important in a bottom-up approach to understanding versus a concept-to-completion mode of working. Beauty services the process in various forms as elements of nature are always in the work.
U: How would you describe your personal style? RW: Based on what I am learned about style I would say everything must always be in service of dynamic movement.
U: How do your own experiences influence your work? RW: Synesthesia is something I thought everyone has but later came to find out, they certainly do not. I use my sensory sensitivities and route them through a process of omission relative to the site, and to a history I am interested in daisy chaining with.
U: What will you be showing at the uncontaminated festival? RW: I’ll be exposing ways of gazing upon a horizon to consider the perception of motion through time. This sense of temporality as a form of continuous movement and how that relates to bodily senses.
U: What do you want to communicate through your work? RW: Reverence as an important tool in agency. Trade economics are sometimes spoken of as a force in opposition of life, and in the sense of hurriedness or performance anxiety, one could certainly become at odds with their lives and relationships. My work is demanding in a subtle way of slowing down, that most to gain by giving in to what is working through choices with what’s there. My hope is locating an orientation of intrinsic desire and value-to go forward from an aesthetic experience with an embodied sense of wholeness.
U: Do artists of today have some kind of social responsibility? RW: Responsibility is such a rich space for conversation. Artists have the responsibility to keep making work, and to start talking with people in a way that doesn’t create an intellectual paywall.
U: What does uncontaminated mean for you? RW: Uncontaminated is an idea about an ideal. For example, the idea of blue blood or a form of purity that in reality is an impossibility. For example, mud is still always dirt. That kind of aspirational dreamstate feels a lot like a mental space one could achieve through traditional forms of meditation.
U: What is the most important thing in your life? RW: Being alive.
U: How do you feel right now? RW: I feel like having a proper bath. Where are all the bathtubs here (in Oslo)?
U: If you could change one thing in the world today, what would it be? RW: Remind people the generative quality of cooperation and the value of a well-considered no.
U: What are the main reasons you are joining us for the festival this year? RW: I am interested in art and fashion and want to connect with people to learn about what they desire-what brings people out of their homes to connect with each other in public spaces.
U: Who or what do you value as a great inspiration for you creatively? RW: Opposing points of view from books, family, and friends. Paying more attention to noticing phenomena in nature. How many different ways can something I think I’ve seen a million times reveal something new about itself?
U: Can you elaborate on an important moment in your life where you experienced a big change, chose to make one or another event which altered your way of thinking or your approach to creativity? RW: Deciding to be the author of my time, which is a never ending dance I still trip over my own footing with. After decades of training, the red thread is making something out of the desire to make and create value in the satisfaction of the making process.
U: How does digital and social media affect or inspire your life and creations?
RW: Being prone to affective disorders, I really try to keep an arms distance with the broadcast version of life. I wonder a lot about the ways in which the intimacy of viewing a distant life up close affects psychology and if there could be some kind of epigenetic change relative to the emotional change in media technology.
U: What do you define art? RW: Art requires discipline, something that is worked on by an artist and through a diligent practice and vision work is made. Is Duchamp’s urinal art today? No, that was an artefact as a testament of a notion that somehow art is one thing or another-that art is about ideas or feelings or one thing or the other. Art is art. To conflate art as anything other than the word itself services rhetoric or belief-both of which I am interested in being free from. I have a great faith in people and the ability to know. Art and artefact can have a close relationship but they are different. I as one among many people practicing art today may be in a practice of making artefacts more than art, and that’s something I’m always looking closely at within my work as well. Does this diminish what artists are making; I don’t think so. I do find the conversation valuable moving forward.
U: What is your definition of artistic freedom? RW: Discipline. Having gone through a phase of coming undone, and going in many directions, I’m in a process of refining.
U: Is there a difference for you between art and commercial/commissioned work? RW: Commissioned work has always been easier for me, to work in a dialogue. Making art for myself entails far more responsibility which then requires a lot more time. A few months at a residency can accomplish a lot, but it is still not the same as having years to work on art.
U: Do you struggle to find artistic freedom in the span between commissioned work and your personal needs to express yourself? RW: Personal expression is not an area I struggle with or work with in my art.
U: What do you aspire to? In the near future? In life in general? RW: Aspire is a great word. I wouldn’t go panting after doing I do though. The question I’m often asking myself now is what is truly essential and can I live with today, tomorrow, and 50 years from now.
U: How do you feel art and fashion intervene? RW: Aesthetics and function. The formal qualities of how something looks conveys a great deal of ideas. Aesthetics as signs of ethical choices isn’t a new concept. There’s a lot of value in considering what aesthetic choices are relative to fashion, and then wondering the function, does this work. And if it doesn’t work, ie can the body stay warm, does the systems circulate healthfully, this kind of questions have a lot to do with the intersection of art and fashion. The head and body need not be severed from the other, you know?
U: What is a great example of a fashion art collaboration in your view? RW: I cannot look at fashion and not see art. When I see art, I have a desire to somehow become the art I see. I have seen so much incredible and daring fashion and art these past years, I am afraid I can’t call out anything specific right now.
U: Where do you think art and fashion is heading in our digital age? RW: People are demanding more from each of their purchases. Less is not more now. More in fewer items is the thing. A lot of the digital future is already available today but not yet on a wider scale. Someone once advised me to invest in black clothing, that this pigment would become rare in the future. For some reason this stuck with me.