The Midwest, aquarelle, Y-Blokka, sculpture, on Exhibition through Trondheim Kunstforening this summer. Available for purchase (to bring home after the exhibitions).
The painting was made during the Kjerringøy Land Art residency with guide of Sami-Norwegian painter, Gerd Grimsø. The memory of Colorado and Illinois landscapes merge with new impressions of Nevelsfjord in the abstract aquarelle. The Y-Blokka sculpture was made of a long bar of imported olive oil soap during the ongoing conflict of removing the Y-Blokken at Akersgata 44, 0180 Oslo.The protest for the plan had great public momentum but no effect in saving the city planning changes to raze the building. The idea for the soap sculpture is the relationship to the Y form and the impermanent qualities it has in both genetics and light. The bond between X and Y is dissolved in water, just as the soap will eventually become lesser and lesser when exposed to water. Yttrium and additional elemental qualities are connected to the Y-form.“The structure, the making and demolition, when brought into light with the human relationship with environment seemed evident to me, but wasn’t something people seemed willing to come to terms with. Perhaps only in the intimate moments of grief, do humans reflect on the memory of what their actions cause.” -Rachel W. Please visit this website for complete information: https://yblokka.no
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.
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. )
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.
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.
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.
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 looks at the materiality of digital imaging technology. Informed by tensions in oil and water resources, the sublime iridescence in water forms are highlighted by minuscule film grains amplified after film scanning. The mutable quality of water and beauty is activated by the hypnotic colour palette used in screen technology. The epistemology of water, or ways we come to understand intelligences in water remains an ongoing endeavour. To see what humans are doing with technology, invites and requires extended looking and consideration. By engaging distances in viewing, the ways appearances can obfuscate and reveal, expand and contract, engage the senses of movement and stillness through looking. The images in the series take up elements of oil and water as allegory for technocratic times. Umberto Eco wrote in several books on late modernity including Chronicles of a Liquid Society in nuanced detail, poetically posited in the series: images are read, and embodied cognitive connections and relations are realised as a malleable surfaces.
“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, single-channel video, sound composition and arrangement.
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?
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.”
“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
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?
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”.
“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.
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.
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.
