Samir Knego
Samir Knego shares with us his study on line and text (and a downloadable zine!).
Hi, welcome! Could you tell us about yourself?
Hi! I'm Samir and I'm an abstract artist who is kind of all over the place in terms of medium and style. Painting and drawing have historically formed the core of my visual work, but I also love paper weaving, collage, photography, poetry, and making zines. For my "day job" I work at a public library, which is kind of multidisciplinary in its own way--reference work, tech support, digitization, community history, and of course the physical work of shelving and sorting, among many other things!
I love your series. You mentioned earlier that you create these on the copy machine. What does your process look like? Why the copier?
Thank you! Yes, this series started with several pieces done primarily on a copy machine--I copied over the sheets multiple times with different things in different directions and added lines/dots in pen and ink. I think it's interesting to think through what photocopier art means now versus in the earlier days of it when it was based on photocopying being a new and innovative technology. These days, there are digital methods of doing a lot of these same things, often faster and easier and with cleaner results and so photocopier art feels almost quaint or nostalgic. Personally, I appreciate the ways that some of the limitations of the medium force me to take it more slowly and deliberately. It has opened up ways for me to think about and go about this project that I've really appreciated.
The second part of the series came several months later and was done by scanning some pen and ink drawings and then manipulating them digitally to overlap and echo themselves. I was inspired by the layering and, well, the chaos and weirdness of the photocopier art from the first stage of the series. I can say that overall I think this was the first time I had been motivated primarily to make something really weird and largely set aesthetics aside for a moment in favor of that mission. I ended up being happy with a lot of those pieces for more than just their weirdness, and I also think that a slightly more restrained version of that impulse has made its way into my other work--to good effect!
The textures and lines immediately draw me to nature. If at all, what is the role of nature in your work?
Though my work is about as far from traditional landscapes as you can get, I do consider myself hugely inspired by nature and human interactions with nature--skeletons, maps, and (especially for this project) TREES! Most of my work (both visual art and poetry) is sparked by something mundane that I've seen while going about my day, and since I'm fortunate to live and work in areas with a fair amount of trees that means that trees and leaves are the inspiration for much of my work (though quite how obvious the connection is definitely varies). Because of my disability, many outdoor spaces are inaccessible to me, and so my interactions with nature are most often through the window of my house or car. As far as I'm concerned, this is just as valid a way of experiencing nature as any other, but it does mean that when I think "nature" it's more along the lines of a crunchy brown leaf in a parking lot than a breathtaking view from a mountain I just hiked up.
I also can't seem to shake an intense fascination with topographic maps. Oddly, I don't own any topographic maps, nor have I looked at them remotely recently--I guess it's more the vague idea or memory of topographic maps that inspires me (I'm almost tempted to look one up now just to see if I'm totally off-base with my mental image, but I'm not sure I'm ready for the shock right now).
What is next for the series? Is in continuing to evolve?
I hope so! This project kind of happens in bursts as I have the time/energy/ideas to work on it. I feel like there's so much more to do with these concepts. I want to go back to using the copy machine but honestly, one of the biggest things that has stopped me is that I'm using a public copy machine at the library and every copy costs money! If you look closely at the weaving, you'll see that I even photocopied one of my photocopier receipts into the piece. In some ways, I think there's something kind of cool about the way it attaches a literal cost to each layer--I feel like there's a lot of potential for conceptual stuff there. But while it's not wildly expensive (especially relative to other art supplies) it can add up and feels a bit indulgent at times. There's also an accessibility factor--I'm a wheelchair user and the copy machine is just high enough to be kind of annoying to use, ergonomically speaking.
Thank you for the activity coloring book! I know you also create zines. Can you talk some about your zine practice?
I originally got into zine-making for the community--I saw people trading these awesome zines and wanted to be part of it, so I started making my own! I also really love sending letters and had long been doing (very informal, just for my friends) mail art, which I think is true of a lot of people who swap zines. Though I often make zines that aren't intended for distribution, I generally still show/give them to people and zine-making definitely feels like the most externally-focused type of art I do. With all of my other work there is a strong element of just doing it for myself, at least during the initial stages of the project, whereas with zines I pretty much always have an audience in mind even if it's just one particular friend or even one very specific hypothetical person I've never met. I don't think this is inherently either a good or a bad thing--self-motivation is good but I also appreciate how zine-making/trading/community stops me from getting too self-centered.
My next zine (pretty much finished, but not yet printed) is just one long poem and will be the first time I've done a poetry zine that's an edition of more than maybe three. It's a bit of a weird one in both content and format, and I'm not really sure what people will think of it. That's one of the awesome but also scary things about zines--when you're accustomed to gatekeeping institutions that (if you're lucky/privileged) also serve to validate art as "good" then the do-whatever-the-heck-you-want nature of zines feels comparatively vulnerable. I didn't go to art school (or take art classes beyond the standard/required grade school stuff, for that matter) and in some ways I do feel a bit lost around people who did. And at the same time, I've got a studio and a show in a gallery and with those hallmarks of "real"/"acceptable" art, it feels disingenuous to think of/call myself an outsider. My experience with zinesters is that a lot of people blend high and low art (or institutional and outsider, or however you want to think of it) and I appreciate not feeling like I have to make some big choice about what to be or make.
What have you been listening to, watching, reading lately?
I listen to a lot of different kinds of metal but lately I've been mostly reaching for the doom and death-doom CDs--Candlemass, Switchblade, Khemmis, early Katatonia, etc. I also tend to really like live albums and Bloodbath's "Bloodbath over Bloodstock" is probably one of my most-loved albums ever--and I think what's currently in my car. For reading, this week it's mostly been kid books--if you're looking for picture books, King Baby is a total banger. The Narwhal and Jelly books are super cute as well. I've also been reading some of the old Nancy Drew mysteries.
So yeah, picture books and doom metal. That's the secret.
Download and print this mini-activity book that incorporates elements of the work from Samir's experiments. To get the intended experience, print double-sided and select "flip on short edge," then fold it in half with the title as the cover. Or do whatever else suits you. If you'd like to pick up a free physical copy in-person, stop by Samir's studio at the Eno Arts Mill during open studios this Friday, May 6th from 6-9pm!
Recipe of the Week:
Samir’s "Chill the heck out" Peach Cobbler
This cobbler is pretty easy and doesn't require super precise measuring. It may not be the prettiest but it is incredibly tasty. Some people fuss around a lot with peeling peaches and cutting out the topping and that's all cool but is not part of this particular recipe. This recipe is all about being relaxed and just throwing a bunch of stuff in the oven and eating leftover cobbler for breakfast/snack/dessert for as many days as you can. Enjoy!
Ingredients
filling:
6 large peaches, sliced/cubed according to your preference. You can peel them if you want, though I don't.
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
topping:
1.5 cup flour
1/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup milk (cow, soy, etc--use whatever you have or like. I'd recommend unsweetened if you have it, or go a bit lighter on the sugar if you don't)
Directions
Preheat the oven to 410 degrees F.
Combine all of the filling ingredients in whatever dish you'll be baking the cobbler in. Bake it for 10 minutes without the topping.
Combine the topping ingredients in a bowl. I recommend doing all of the dry ingredients first, then the butter (You can use a fork or your hands to break it up and get it well combined. Some people have fancy implements for this sort of thing but I don't have or know much about them). Add the milk last. The mixture will be fairly dry and you might consider adding another splash of milk, but keep in mind that the consistency is supposed to be dry and it doesn't need to be all stuck together like dough--there will be clumps, dust, etc, and that's all part of the proper experience.
Once the filling is done with its initial time in the oven sans topping, take it out and cobble (hence the name!) the topping over the peaches. Basically, just crumble/clump/distribute the topping over the peaches. Try to not have too drastic of differences in size/height of the topping clumps just so that it bakes well, but keep in mind that it will be a bit uneven, and there may be gaps where the peaches poke through, and that's all fine!
Bake the cobbler for 15-20 minutes or until it seems done (this might vary a bit based on your oven, how deep vs flat your cobbler is, and whether you used butter or margerine). Ideally, the filling will have bubbled up a bit around the edges.
Serve warm, cold, room temp, or however you prefer. It can be nice with a bit of vanilla ice cream too--I think it goes well with coconut milk ice cream, personally.
Caroline Golum
A collage like shrine to Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century Christian mystic who recorded a series of fantastic visions through text while in isolation.
Hi! Welcome to the Casserole Series. I’m happy to have you here :) Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My brief time on this earth has been pretty banal thus far: I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and decamped for New York City when I was 18, and I've been here for a little more than 15 years. Having only lived in the two biggest cities in the country, I consider myself fairly naive and ignorant - I've had the chance to travel elsewhere in the country thanks to film festivals and occasional family vacations, but for the most part my life is pretty circumscribed. I've squandered years on moviegoing, moviemaking, fine clothes, riding my custom bike around. Sprinkled throughout that time, I've had dozens of different precarious media jobs, programmed screenings around the city, written a fair amount, but my raison d'etre has always been filmmaking. It's a very costly enterprise, so my credits are regrettably light, but I'm proud of what little I've done.
My first feature, A Feast of Man, was born of a rather sudden and frustrated impulse. I had just finished shooting a mid-length film (50ish minutes) called Getting Away With It, about a pair of lesbian cat burglars undergoing a breakup. I shot it at friends' apartments, using the lead actress' minivan as our picture car and main mode of transport, and the film ultimately fell apart in post. Born of this frustration and failure, I co-wrote A Feast of Man with my writing partner, Dylan Pasture, and within a few months we were in proper pre-production gearing up to shoot the film at an Air BnB in Hudson. For a first feature, it has a lot going for it - not a perfect picture, but watchable, which I consider an accomplishment. If all of this sounds rather retiring, or a little self-effacing, that's entirely deliberate. Referring to oneself as a naive, ignorant, even humble narrator is a trope of medieval writing, which is a perfect segue to the meat of this interview!
You mentioned you’re working on a feature film about Julian. Can you tell us more?
Keeping with disappointment as a driving force in my work, I got hip to Julian sometime in the spring of 2017 - A Feast of Man was finished, and had yet to secure a premiere (it did a few months later, at the Sidewalk Film Festival, FYI). I spent years on this film and had nowhere to screen it, I felt like an utter failure, the election had just happened, I hated my job, etc. Suffice to say, I was in a very bad place, and my then-roommate - Feast star Laurence Bond - was working on his masters in medieval history at Columbia. He had written a paper about Julian, and one afternoon when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself he asked if he could read me his paper. It was the first I'd ever heard of Julian, and her story changed me. I was shocked to learn that no one had made a film about her, and initially I'd asked Laurence if he would lend his academic expertise as a historic consultant. Our collaboration eventually evolved to a more traditional co-writer relationship, and his contributions to this script have been invaluable.
When the pandemic began in March 2020, I had been making considerable headway on the film for a few years. I'd cast my childhood friend, the great Shakespearean actress Tessa Strain as Julian, and my favorite working actor, Theodore Bouloukos as Father Ambrose, her confessor. I'd been collaborating with my DP, Gabe Elder, and production designer, Grace Sloan, for more than a year. It felt like the whole thing could really come together, but we all know how that went. So by the summertime, when I started working on Sixteen Showings, I'd been sitting with this indefinitely halted production for a few months.
Speaking of March 2020, I was struck by the line, “Winter, summer, spring, fall. The moments in-between were hers to enjoy of her own volition but always in solitude. With nothing but her work and her thoughts year after year.” During lockdown I wished for that kind of peace in solitude, with my work and my thoughts, but never quite got there. I have a new understanding now of the internal work that is demanded of us in forced (or in Julian’s case chosen) solitude. I know you started working on this film before the pandemic. If at all, how has your relationship to Julian’s story shifted or evolved since March 2020?
There was a noticeable revived interest in Julian's writing specifically, and the medieval era more generally, as people attempted to make sense of the one-two plague-and-uprising punch. For most of 2020, I was working from home (fortunately) in a street-facing apartment. My days consisted entirely of Zoom meetings and sprints to complete some task or other, punctuated by wailing sirens and wasteful police helicopters. My then-partner and I were spending our spare time on mutual aid runs or at demonstrations, and all the while I kept worrying about if I'd ever make this film. It was hard to make any kind of work within a very visible, widespread malstrom of public suffering - not only concentrating on the work at hand, but justifying its creation.
I was struggling to stay "in touch" with the material when my friend Grace Kredell, who is a mystic in her own right and a dear friend for 20 years, suggested I make an altar to Julian. Initially, it seemed like a nice way to "distract" myself from everything going on outside. Julian worked in isolation for years - we don't know when she wrote her book, how long it took, only that she wrote it while living as an anchoress and that she wrote it in two phases: there's a "short text," which is a very top-level summary of her visionary experience, and an expanded "long text" which goes into greater detail. As I started putting together little items for the altar - a hand, a hazelnut, fabrics, cut-outs of medieval people - the idea occurred to me that I could use this as a little miniature "proving ground" for my feature.
Aw yes! I love the imagery in the film. Each shot feels like a small altar or miniature shrine to Julian. How did you land on this collage-like approach?
I began to treat Sixteen Shewings as my own version of Julian's "short text": a very broad, beat-by-beat account of her visions, without any of the biographical detail I added to the feature script. It was a welcome challenge, figuring out how to distill her visions to their most basic, symbolic elements. Keeping with the idea of being "anchored" to a place, I incorporated found materials I had at home, combined with a set of color gels I bought from Adorama. Without the ability to make a traditional film, with actors on a set, directing performances and placements, I found a canny workaround. Right before the pandemic, I'd taken these photos of Tessa at Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, one of my absolute favorite places, and used those photos to "cast" Tessa as Julian in the film. I rendered them in black-and-white so they would contrast with the color scheme I'd assigned to the visionary tableaux. The historical background about the plague and the Peasants' Revolt were a must-have, not only because they informed her work itself but because they connected her story to our lived present. I'd gotten back into watercolor painting early in the pandemic, so the time-lapse watercolor was the quickest and easiest way I could think of to add "movement" and depth to the piece.
It should be noted here that when I'd finished the film, I once again was struggling to find the right exhibition context. I didn't want to park it on Vimeo indefinitely, I was proud of this work and wanted to share it with the world. It's hard to make a movie under any circumstances, let alone in your 10ft x. 10ft office space at the height of a pandemic. A few months after I'd finished it, I saw a call-for-entries from curator Inney Prakash for Prismatic Ground, a new festival he'd put together for experimental documentaries. I submitted the film, he graciously accepted it, and in April 2021 it had a virtual premiere at the festival - quite possibly the only premiere I could've secured, given how niche this film is. And to Inney's credit, that festival was a total joy for all involved: the filmmakers, the audience, and the curator I'm sure. I even wrote about it for MUBI, my first such outing writing festival coverage from the filmmaker's point of view. It was such a lucky break, and I remain grateful to this day that he gave me the opportunity.
What have you been listening to, watching, reading lately?
I really gorged myself on medieval period films while I was researching this film, and I'm still making headway through a rather lengthy list of titles, but with this great resurfacing going on here in NYC - everyone is vaxx'd, relaxed, and fresh out of fucks to give, it seems - I've gotten back into moviegoing for pleasure's sake. Last weekend I saw five out of six films in a mystery Hong Kong movie marathon, I saw the new Michael Bay film AmbuLAnce at a mall in Queens, I took a date to see Buster Keaton's The General recently. It's been all about scratching the itch and following whatever pleasure-seeking impulse guides me to pick a movie on any given evening. My reading has fallen off since I stopped commuting, but I just finished Dana Stevens' exceptional Buster Keaton biography, "Camera Man," and it's given me a lot of perspective as I gear up to make my feature, Revelations of Divine Love. Our approach to the film is not unlike early silent moviemaking: lots of built sets, shooting MOS, expressive acting, so reading about Keaton's methods in-depth have been helpful. And listening-wise, for my money you can't beat the Screen Slate podcast, of which I am a frequent guest.
Please check out Caroline’s first feature on Tubi, A Feast of Man.
And donate to the making of Caroline Golum’s feature on Julian of Norwich here! Ty
Caroline Golum is a filmmaker, writer, and programmer in New York City. When she isn't working for the man, she is either making, watching, or writing about a movie.
Recipe of the Week:
Caroline’s Grandmother’s Flank Steak
Saif Alsaegh
Bitter with a Shy Taste of Sweetness entangles the past and present, dreams and reality, in a surreal visual experience that leaves the viewer wondering if the narrator ever really made it to their destination.
Hi! Welcome :) Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
SA: I’m an experimental filmmaker that works in different cinematic modes. Much of my work deals with the contrast between the landscape of my youth in Baghdad growing up as part of the Chaldean minority in the nineties and early 2000s, and the U.S. landscape where I currently live. I try to draw from my memory of Iraq and my present in the US to find those kinds of harsh or romantic moments, and contrast them with the strangely calm and uncertain life I have in the US or let them stand as pleasant memories like antiques in a museum. Creating such cinematic poetry is the most satisfying part of making films.
With the use of “you”, the viewer is immediately wrapped up in the disorientation of the narrator. The narrator seems to be talking to their past self, unsure if that self followed them to where they are now. In other moments, the viewer is almost guided as a stand-in for the past self of the narrator.
SA: The second person distances the narrator from their past--and even their present--self. I am looking back on a time that is bleak to remember but also inescapable, part of me. Second person also brings the viewer in to make them part of the experience, to ask them to share the disorientation of these worlds splintering and colliding.
The lopsided images complement this narrative of disorientation. At the first image of the ocean, we know we are in California..but have we really made it?
SA: Visually I wanted to represent California through non-traditional modes of cinematic expression where my current landscape becomes foreign yet familiar, disrupted by my childhood memories. The camera tilts or spins, making the beautiful Southern California beaches and mountains jarring while the sound distorts the bright colors of the landscape. Through second-person writing and shrilling visuals, the film aims to make the viewer feel off-balance, disoriented, and estranged from the landscape and content, offering them the dislocating feeling of survival and immigration.
I love the ending of the film with the manicured streets and upbeat music. An embrace of the weird, uncertain, and odd future.
SA: I really enjoyed ending this film in a strange, whimsical way. There is something jarring to me but also wonderful about the shift from the dark ways that the past, that suffering can tangle with the present. Even the suffering I have tried to leave behind I can’t put down, and in some way it’s present for everyone, the dialectic paradox of all the horrible and amazing things that share space. But I wanted in the last moments of the film to shift from this paradox as a sort of haunting to this paradox as a strange wonder, something that creates a surreal moment that is bright and holds the possibility and the ridiculousness of redemption, of a new life.
What have you been listening to, watching, reading lately?
SA: I have been listening to Gnawa Diffusion, Riff Cohen, Chopin, and Mozart. I went record
shopping and found some great classical music in the $5 bin!
Saif Alsaegh is a United States-based filmmaker from Baghdad.
Recipe of the Week:
Saif Alsaegh’s Family Recipe Maqluba
Ingredients:
2 Medium size eggplants Ingredients:
2 Medium size eggplants
1 Large onion
1 Large tomato
1 Green pepper (the above should be cut into rings)
2 ½ cups Basmati rice (washed and soaked for 30 minutes)
2 tbsp Tomato paste
2 tbsp Olive oil
2 ts Salt
1 ts Black pepper
1ts Paprika
1 ts Crushed red pepper
½ ts Cinnamon
1 ts Onion powder
1 ts Garlic powder
Prep:
1- Heat oven to 450F.
2- In an oven pan covered by parchment paper add the (eggplant, onion, and green peppers) and brush/spray it with oil and a pinch of salt, cook them in the oven for 45 minutes or until they look crispy and golden. When done, take them out and put them aside.
3- In a large pot, add the olive oil and let it heat, then add the tomato paste and all the spices, cook them for a couple of minutes.
4- Add the tomato rings.
5- Layer in this order: eggplant, green pepper, onions and the rice
6- Add water 2 ⅔ cups of water and cook on high heat for 30 minutes and low heat for 15 minutes.
7- When done, flip the pot on a tray, garnish it with some chopped parsley and fried pine nuts (optional).
Grace Herndon
Grace Herndon shares with us her work with the archive, both real and imagined.
Mixtape Zine
Welcome to The Casserole Series! I love when friends of friends join us. Can you tell us who you are?
GH: Hi, I’m so excited I was introduced to The Casserole Series by my friend Katie. My name is Grace and I’m a designer and photographer. I recently graduated from NC State with a master in graphic design and am not working at a design studio called Studio Science.
I often scroll through the Prelinger Archive and the Library of Congress Archive for fun. I was excited to see how you reworked the archival footage into a modern mode - the gif.
GH: I do this as well! Libraries are such an interesting overlap between collective memory and public access….there is really endless inspiration there. Online archives like the Library of Congress website are also such a weird and fun way to interact with the past.
The Wingdings in these images, an archival piece in and of itself and the precursor of emojis, oscillates between warning and censoring. I am thinking specifically of the couple dancing paired with the bomb and the tree trimmer with the solid circle.
GH: The symbols definitely walk that line. What I love about these little “repurposings” is that there are a few layers to read: the nostalgic imagery, the symbol, and the motion itself, all coupled with the made-for-instagram formatting which begs to be interpreted and consumed quickly and by many. Your interpretation of the bomb and the couple as a warning, maybe ominous, draws on the collective understanding of this pairing. I hadn’t thought of these symbols as censoring the clip behind them but it’s a really interesting thought...sort of a question of what you are missing vs. what you are being told. I like that.
The Mixtape Zine is such an incredible project! How did these collaborations come about?
Thank you! The best part about Mixtape is how organic it came to be. I started keeping a list on my phone of band names that came up in conversation...like when you’re trying on your friend’s ring and you say, “damn, it doesn’t fit because I have a chunky knuckle…” and it just hits you that “Chunky Knuckle” is the greatest two words ever put together and you have to write it down. A few months into the pandemic I realized I had a pretty long list of band names and that using them as design-prompts could be a really cool way to collaborate remotely and encourage people to make something!
What I find fascinating about the pairing of the two works, the gif and the zine, is your play with the archive: one real and one imagined.
I think it’s so great that you naturally saw a thread of “the archive” between these projects because I think it’s a thread that is present in most of my work that I don’t always even see myself. These projects sort of represent my personal push and pull relationship with the collective. First pulling and repurposing and then being able to collect and contribute. Haha, like I am always working somewhere between an old photograph and a homemade zine.
Recipe of the Week :
Great-Aunt Ruth Meredith’s Apricot Cheeseball
“From my grandmother, Jackie, from her sister, my great-aunt, Ruth Meredith. In her handwriting.” - Grace
Left Hand Rotation Collective
Left Hand Rotation Collective shares with us, Janela.
A visual exploration of the tension between private and public space.
Janela by Left Hand Rotation Collective
Welcome! This is the first time we’ve had an artist collective on The Casserole Series. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are?
LHRC: The collective is not associated with any individual/creator, it is structured as an anonymous and impersonal entity. Each new project is done under the auspice that the community in audience is not a spectator, but an active and essential part in the transformation of social reality. The willingness of the communities to give testimony of their particular situations helps in making the articulated action possible.
There is a strong awareness in every action by the collective of how important the audiovisual record is, both in terms of capturing it in a raw, uncut form, and the value that has, and in each videoclip’s potential to transform into units of language where combinations and manipulations [of these units] allow for complex messages to be transmitted by way of small everyday details. The camera cannot but register the specific context in which it is situated. It is through these localized captures that the collective is able to reflect upon a complex global system.
I was transfixed by this film, especially by the separation between public and private. The private spills out into the public (ex: the camera onto the street, the fixed on a subject completely daily tasks on their balcony). This was clearly shot pre-pandemic. It feels like you knew what was coming!
LHRC: The truth is that yes, filming this for three years right before the pandemic was a huge coincidence. The idea behind “JANELA (WINDOW)” is precisely that tension between the private and the public, and it gives off that quarantine feeling if we think about it now. We are interested in that friction that comes up when observing the outside from a “safe” and “hidden” place, from our homes—similar to a “voyeur.” We are constantly wondering if, at that same moment that we’re filming, there will be someone filming us.
We like to say that this film is one that was “shot outdoors,” but “without leaving home,” taking the zoom as far as it will go. We are also lucky in that we have this window offering a very diverse view of the neighborhood, of the sea, of a train station where things and situations are constantly happening, not only at different levels but also regarding the very intimacy of the neighbors.
Lisbon is a city in constant transformation, and we wanted to reflect that in the film. But after finishing it, the pandemic began, and the situation there changed even more. Now (in this compulsory time), in perceiving and valuing more than ever what it is like to make an audiovisual piece without leaving home, we decided to make a second part to the film (this time, made during the 2020 quarantine) called “THE INTIMATE RESISTANCE,” where the camera goes from filming the outside to filming ourselves inside. You can watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/416902707
The spectator can never hear clearly what is being said on the streets. Because of this, the viewer’s focus shifts onto the body. How one moves in public spaces and how the body changes when interacting in work, at play, while waiting, with friends, and with strangers.
LHRC: So as to create that relationship and highlight those tensions between the external and the internal, between the public and the private, we wanted to define those continuous dualities (INSIDE-OUTSIDE). A very simple way of doing it is to take advantage of what, at the visual level, the camera is capable of filming (which we can trick or manipulate with the zoom, bringing things that we cannot hear, and that are very far away closer). The sound we record at that moment always corresponds to intimacy or to privacy, to a horror movie we are watching, or the music emanating from our homes while we do yoga, or to a radio broadcast advertising to consumer society. This non-diegetic sound penetrates the entire film and allows us to create new narratives: filming a ship with its lights on at night, which using sounds coming from some action scene within our domestic environments, looks like a spaceship in flight.
The film shot entirely from above creates a tension between inhabitant and environment - people waiting for the train, people walking below cranes, and a ship waiting for passengers to depart. The structures seem to engulf the subjects and dictate their movements.
LHRC: It’s exactly that contrast between the exterior and the interior. It is always this play between domestic sounds and those more or less everyday situations that are being filmed. These sounds come to spectacularize some of those daily actions, turning that apparent normality, or reality, into a spectacle (mixing together the sound of a Hollywood movie with a daily record of someone waiting for a train, or a neighbor). We have a friend who said to us “this is not a film about public and private space. It leaves that dichotomy behind. And yes, it is recorded out of a private window (this becomes clear, I think, with the opening shot), but it also moves, drawing a space that, in being ‘public,’ is pierced by forms and energies very different from those that make up the traditional public/private division.”
We also have the question of how to represent fragmented space: we try and construct a geography out of fractured spaces but ones that intersect, or are connected, in various ways (for example, narratives created by neighbors at their windows, narratives that attend to the daily actions of other workers—some graffiti artist at work while others are cleaning graffiti off a wall, or tourists taking photographs of a neighbor’s daily actions from a boat). And finally, the film also functions as a three-year audiovisual diary of getting up every morning with a camera in hand, opening the window.
What is the collective working on now?
LHRC: We are preparing a workshop on gentrification – for which we have already visited 16 cities in 9 countries – in Argentina and a documentary in southern Chile (Patagonia), though we have to wait for restrictions to lift to be able to travel, probably in 2022. We are also working on a documentary on social movements here in Lisbon, an attempt to motivate people to take to the streets, to continue to fight for their rights using images of the pandemic’s empty streets, and contrasting that with audio from anti-racists demonstrations, women’s marches, demonstrations on housing laws, or climate change. Filmed between 2019 and 2020, it’s entitled RUA (STREET). You can watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/524858008
Recipe of the Week: MIGAS EXTREMEÑAS
Left Hand Rotation Writes, “This is a dish that shepherds and rural folk would eat after many hours working in the fields. With very little budget and means, they would make recipes out of whatever foods were readily available to them on any given day. In this case: day-old bread, garlic, oil, and chorizo sausage.”
Ingredients
Day-old bread - 500 g (~ 1 lb.), crumbled
Chorizo - 200 g (~ 0.4 lbs.), sliced
Garlic - 4 cloves, unpeeled
Assorted peppers- 4 long peppers (like Anaheim or Banana) or 2-3 Bell peppers, cut into strips.
Paprika - 1 tablespoon
Extra virgin olive oil - 120 ml (~1/2 cup)
Salt to taste
Break bread into small pieces and wrap crumbs inside a damp kitchen cloth. Place that to the side while you heat olive oil in a pan. When the oil is hot, add the garlic (without peeling it!), then fry the peppers for a couple of minutes before adding in the sliced chorizo. Next, add the breadcrumbs to the pan, stirring all the ingredients together. The bread will absorb all the juices from the chorizo, oil, and garlic. Cook for five minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally. Turn off the heat and let rest for another five minutes. Taste and adjust for salt. In southern Spain, this dish is often eaten for breakfast, “the most important meal of the day.”
Spanish / English translation by Camila Moreiras and Rachel Jessen.
Masha Vlasova
“The Imaginary Kaleidoscope is a meditation on voyeurism and the performative quality of public-facing private displays, and on the desire to reintegrate animals into our life. ”
Hi! Welcome :) Can you introduce yourself?
MV: Hi, thanks for having me! My name is Masha Vlasova and I’m an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker, currently living in South Carolina, where I teach video art to college students.
I appreciate the opportunity to share my new piece “The Imaginary Kaleidoscope.” I started working on the piece in the early weeks of the pandemic, so it feels meaningful to show it now, a year into it, as there is (hopefully) an end in sight. Connecting to a larger arts community has been keeping me grounded in this time of isolation. Thank you.
I love kitsch and I find lawn ornaments really endearing. But there is a shift in your film when the viewer is forced to inspect the little creatures. I quickly became unnerved as they smiled back at me. The images suggest they know something.
MV: I love that that has been your experience with the piece! The yard sculptures are banal, recognizable objects. For me, they exist in the liminal space between the public and private. They’re usually on private lawns, expressing the private desires and tastes of whoever places them there. Yet they face out onto the street into the public realm. And when we observe these private(-ish) objects, it is usually in passing. I wanted to use the camera’s ability to frame tightly and to excise context to suggest portraiture. We encounter these animals at their eye level, as equals. And as such, they look back at us.
One of the basic pleasures of cinema is looking at people without being seen. Perhaps the animal sculptures unsettled you because they both look at us and don’t see us? We know intellectually that they’re inanimate objects, yet the camera’s ability to animate anything it frames suggests otherwise.
Could you talk a little about the voice over? It flows so well as an introspective narrative but you had written that it is a compilation of quotes?
MV: I’m glad that it reads as a singular voice. I aimed to create a collective poetic voice that inhabits an animal’s perspective. Unlike the visuals, the voiceover text came together very quickly and organically. I’d been collecting videos of animal yard sculptures for a few years. I couldn’t tell you why. I just was compelled by them, their liminality, their industrial materiality intended to endure outside, their uncanny gaze. When I began editing the video in March 2020, I wanted to meditate on the gaze of the sculptures. Around that time, I was reading a brilliant essay by the art critic John Berger, “Why Look at Animals” from 1972, which became a big inspiration for the film. In it, he traces the role of animals as subjects in art from cave paintings to divine symbols to reminders of our own alienation. Berger argues that, under capitalism, animals have been marginalized from our lives. They’ve become something to look at (think: zoo or circus) but impossible to see. Berger doesn’t mention yard art animal sculpture specifically, but what he says about representations of animals in our culture applies to these objects. I began looking for other instances in literature where authors attempted to adapt the animal voice or gaze and I found so much material! It turns out that we’re obsessed with inhabiting the animal voice. I guess it’s a very human thing to want to know what the other animals are thinking, and we’ve done a lot of that imagining through literature. The rest was just the process of elimination and editing (much like I would edit video). I wanted some of it to be more recognizable, like Franz Kafka’s famous “A Report to an Academy,” where he inhabits the voice of an ape, but some to be a bit more obscure, like Leo Tolstoy’s “Kholstomer” (sometimes translated as “Strider”), where he narrates a story through the eyes of a horse.
Americans have a tendency to anthropomorphize their pets. (I have three animals and I am definitely guilty!). The voice over points to this. Many of the lawn ornaments are in human poses, some even wearing clothing. Is the draw towards lawn ornaments motivated by the same desire to see our pets as human members of the family? Are we filling a void?
MV: If we follow Berger, then yes. And he’d probably add that since animals are no longer fundamental participants in our daily lives (i.e. we neither hunt them, nor depend on their labor for survival, nor sacrifice them to our gods), the only way animals can inhabit our world is as anthropomorphized, neutered, and isolated pets, or as a spectacle. Interpreted in this way, bunnies frozen in play, ducks, frogs, and racoons in human poses placed among flowers and on a manicured lawn are a kind of monument to our alienation, desire, and ultimate inability to reintegrate animals back into our lives.
In terms of pets, I don’t know if I agree Berger entirely. Right before the pandemic started, I adopted my dog Azul. I didn’t grow up with dogs so the experience of living with an animal was incredibly illuminating and humbling. I wrote elsewhere about watching Azul watch an experimental film with me and have an experience of the film, as if it was made for her (the film is about huskies and there is no human dialogue but lots and lots of barking and howling). I certainly anthropomorphize her, narrate her, imagine her thoughts, and read into her actions. Sometimes I feel like I can predict her moods and interpret her behavior completely. But at other times Azul surprises me and I’m left with my own human limited gaze reflected back at me.
What have you been listening to / reading / watching lately?
MV: I recently read three very different novels by three very different writers: The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell; Children’s Bach by Helen Garner; and Beloved by Toni Morrison (as a fan of Morrison’s writing, I’m embarrassed to admit that this was my first time reading her most famous novel)…and now that I’m in between novels I’ve been reading a lot of horoscopes—Happy New Moon in Aries, everyone!
Recipe of the Week: Vinegret (a Russian beat salad!)
“This was one of my favorite "salads" growing up and my grandfather's version was particularly good because he used sauerkraut of his own making. Hope you enjoy it” - Masha Vlasova
Ingredients
3 (ish) medium potatoes washed, peeled and boiled.
2 (ish) large carrots washed, peeled and boiled (or baked in aluminum foil)
1 large beat (or 4 small beats) washed, peeled and boiled (or baked in aluminum foil)
about a cup of sauerkraut or more if you like sauerkraut
2 large/medium pickles or more if you love pickles
1 small yellow onion
a can of sweet peas (optional)
salt, pepper to taste
a couple tablespoons of olive or veg oil
Method: Cut all boiled veggies and the pickles into half-inch squares. Mince onions. Mix all together with the sauerkraut and green peas if using. Add salt, pepper, and olive oil. Mix very very well and enjoy! OR chill for an hour and serve as a side dish.
Birgit Rathsmann
Birgit Rathsmann’s characters find support, post trauma,
in photographed images of abandoned half built structures.
Place is the Space Gallery Tour
Hi! Can you introduce yourself?
BR: I'm an artist and an animator. For the past few years, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how my work relates to its audience, how it finds its audience and what it wants to do with the audience when it finds it. It is an interest that grew out of having been transplanted to a very different culture when I was a kid. I had to re-orient myself around this new culture and think about my role in it. Later on, I decided to transplant myself to New York where I get to play many different roles, which is something I love.
The base of your drawings are photographs of abandoned structures (more specifically abandoned half built structures in Mexico). The characters are then drawn on top of the photograph. You wrote recently that the characters represent individuals recovering from trauma. I love the idea of the abandoned and the hurt are leaning into one another to create stability.
I just put about 10 of the drawings up in a pizza place that went out of business over the past year. The exhibit is about rebuilding and erasure. Everything from the pizza place is still there: the ovens, the sacks of flour, the display vitrine. Classic Manhattan pizza place without the pizza and drawings instead. What you pointed out is exactly I loved hanging them in the abandoned pizza place!
When I first spoke to you about the work, you mentioned you were setting up meetings via FaceTime with random participants. You would show each participant your stack of drawings and ask them to choose 8 to 10 drawings that you would then keep (I am guessing you discarded the rest?) I love the shift the participant makes from observer to curator. Our enjoyment in art or our preference towards individual pieces within a series rarely has weight in the future of the piece or series.
BR: Yes, it's a really great experience to let different people reflect back to you what speaks to them. I asked about 20 people to make selections. There was quite a bit of variation, but there was also a lot of overlap of what people liked, which drawings worked and why.
The use of language here reminds me of the language we associate with memes or quick quips on Twitter. They are not used to explain the image but more precisely they use the image as a tool to communicate bigger ideas, opinions, critiques of current culture. Would you say that’s accurate in your images also?
BR: I think of the lines as something the characters in the drawings might have stuck in their head, maybe it's phrase that pops in their head when they wake up, or when their blood sugar is low.
What have you been listening to / reading / watching / enjoying lately?
I just discovered Caron Wheeler's album Beach of the War Goddess, and I love it.
Recipe of the Week: Mixed Indonesian Salad
Shared out of Birgit’s recipe book
Emily Hobgood Thomas
Transient Places, Future Nostalgia explores North Carolina coastal towns impacted by tourism. More specifically, the impact tourists have on place when they decide not to return.
Hi! Can you tell us who you are?
EHT: Hi there! My name is Emily Hobgood Thomas. I'm an artist living and working in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
You work with place and time focusing on abandoned tourism. What I find most fascinating in your photographs is the attention to texture, more specifically texture that is shattered.
EHT: To me, photography is a lot about being in the right place at the right time. That sounds a bit facetious, but to me, photography deals with light and time. For some of my locations, if not all of them, I've scouted them before even going to shoot. I think the shattered texture goes hand and hand with what I do with these photos during the editing process. Not only am I taking photographs often with the conditions I've idealized for them, I'm usually shattering them in the editing process by taking them apart and putting a new whole together. These effects parallel each other in a fascinating way that further drives the issues that surround the work-the disintegration of place over time.
Both your collages and your photographs are devoid of humans but focus entirely on structures built by humans or places strewn with the remnants of human life. What moves you towards the object and away from the body?
EHT: This actually goes back to one of the most important lessons I think I ever had. I was in a Painting class with Jen Meanley at UNC Greensboro and I was making this really awful painting that sparked the process for where I am now. As I was explaining what it was about to my professor, she responded with something to the effect of "Why do you need a figure to tell this story?". Something in me clicked at that point and I realized that even though I was dealing with the effects of humans/being human, I did not need a human to show the narrative. Ever since, my work has been devoid of humans even though the human presence can be felt in these dilapidated structures and forgotten objects. It's the absence of the human presence that speaks to the urgency of these issues for me and my agency as an artist.
You wrote in your artist statement on your website, “When I make photocollages, I allow damage visible in the photographic image to be revealed within the confines of the collage. When placed on top of each other, the pieces I use create a hierarchy of layers. During the digital editing process, additions are allowed subtlety, thus reviving the landscape and revealing a responsibility or possibility for the place that is ahead of its time.” This is compelling. In the act of deconstructing an image only to then reconstruct an image you say it gives the piece “a possibility for the place that is ahead of its time”. This relationship with the image, a hopeful looking forward, is a contrast to your photographs where you often point to what was, what is left, or what ceases to exist.
EHT: I'd like to think in my investigation, I'm hopeful for a brighter future than the present I'm revealing. The title of the body of work in full is actually Transient Places, Future Nostalgia and not just Transient Places, which is often what I end up shortening it as. The quote you mention speaks largely to the duality of my practice-physical and digital work. The tiny polaroid collages are visceral in the cutting process-I find cutting an image to be a very violent action. The digital college process does not really cut into anything physical, therefore becoming a more delicate process that feels like I'm healing rather than showing destruction.
Going back to my project title, the term "Future Nostalgia" really speaks to this hopefulness that I have for these tourism based communities. I know that especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, my home's socioeconomic status has really taken a hit. I have this hope that the landscapes can be revived in some capacity for a brighter future. In remaking a landscape, I have to wonder if showing the damage, the abandonment, the emptiness could convince us to reconsider our responsibilities to the places in which we become tourists.
What have you been listening to, reading, or watching lately that contributes to your work?
EHT: Recently, I've really enjoyed the Artist/Mother Podcast, even though as a woman with no kids, I'm not the target audience. I find the content thoroughly relatable though in my journey as a young woman and an artist. I also love reading anything by Lucy Lippard, she's my favorite author when it comes to the art I make. Right now, I'm about to reread "UNDERMINING" since it's been about three years since I last read it and I find new gems each time I come back to it with fresh eyes.
Recipe of the Week:
Emily Hobgood Thomas Family Rum Cake Recipe
a) 1 yellow butter cake mix
b) 1 box of vanilla instant pudding in a 3oz box
c) 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
d) 1/2 cup of water
e) 1/2 cup of white rum.
Take all of those ingredients and mix them on a high setting for 2 minutes.
Once mixed, you will preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray a bundt cake pan with cooking oil. After, you will add 1/2 cup of chopped pecans in the bottom of the pan. Then you will pour the batter in and bake it for about one hour.
Before the cake is done, take:
a) 1/4 cup of rum
b) one stick of butter
c) 1/4 cup of water
d) 1 cup of sugar
Heat the mixture until melted/mixed and pour over the cake after it has been taken out of the oven (keep it in the cake pan during the process so that the mixture cools in the cake).
Let mixture soak in the cake for at least thirty minutes before turning the cake out of the pan and serving.
Alejandro “Dro” Watson
Dro Watson shares with us Self Portrait in a Red Jumpsuit (2020). The work explores how one is seen and understood.
Hi! Welcome to The Casserole Series :) Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
DW: Of course! My name is Dro, and I just love to make, I love to create things! For a long time I was focused just on getting into filmmaking, but in the past few years my practice has really expanded to sort of include any medium I can get my hands on. You see my focus is the representation of underrepresented minorities and experiences, that includes identity, and mental health, and stuff like that, and what I've found is that it's much easier to get my message across when I go with the medium that is going to best encapsulate the message being conveyed.
I was struck by your self portraits. They hover between still and moving image.
DW: Yeah! I really love photography, and have a little bit of a background in it, and I also really love this filmmaker named Chantal Akerman who works with really long, uninterrupted shots, I figured it might be interesting to combine those to sort of make these moving photographs almost, that contain little moments but not full stories.
Oh! I am also a Chantal Akerman fan :)
The one minute time frame of each portrait reminds me of the limitations put on the user by tech companies (ie: twitter, instagram, etc). Because of this, I find myself wanting to interact with the image - ‘like’, comment, retweet. The reaction is so engrained it was surprising to me that without this option I actually wanted to stay with the image longer. It forced me to engage with the image itself, not with my response.
DW: That's so interesting because these were specifically designed to live on instagram initially! I really like to place limitations on myself when I work because it helps me to focus a bit more, so when I started this project I said to myself "shoot it in a 1:1 ratio, and one minute long at the most". It's so interesting that both you and I were compelled by the social media "aesthetic"! Me, in my creation, and you, in your response!
I love the self portrait in all of its forms. From van Gogh’s self portrait to more contemporary artists like Andy Warhol and Vivian Maier to the self portrait of the everyday citizen - the selfie. We seem to be in an ever evolving exploration of how we are seen / experienced out in the world.
DW: Oh absolutely, and that exploration of how we are seen really drives my work! Like I said earlier my focus is the representation of underrepresented minorities and experiences, well this is really because I belong to a lot of groups that are misunderstood/hated and I want to really put a different image of those groups out there, a more human one.
These self portraits are dated 2020. Were these all made during quarantine? Is that what motivated turning the camera back in on yourself?
DW: These were all made during quarantine! Turning the camera on myself has really been something that I've been doing for a long while though. I really want to tell raw personal stories about people, I like to really get personal, and at some point I figured who do I have the most access to in the world? Myself! I'm sure to the outside observer this seems absolutely narcissistic, but it really goes back to the representation thing. I'm a queer, mentally ill, multiracial, fat person, all of those things are often misrepresented and badly represented for the sake of sensationalization, I want to show that I am just a human trying to get by, and everyone like me is the same. I make "hypervulnerable" work in the hopes that people like me will feel seen, and people who aren't like me will understand others a little better.
This Week’s Casserole: Chicken Divan
Chicken Divan is a favorite of the artist. Enjoy!
Ingredients
2 pkgs frozen Broccoli
2 cups of sliced cooked chicken
2 cans of cream of chicken soup
1 cup of mayo
1 teaspoon of lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of curry
1/2 cup shredded cheese
1/2 cup of soft bread crumbs
1 tablespoon on melted butter
Recipe
Cook Broccoli until tender
Arrange Broccoli in 9x13 baking dish
Place chicken on top
Combine soup, mayo, lemon, and curry. Pour over Chicken.
Sprinkle with cheese.
Combine crumbs and butter. Sprinkle over entire dish
Sarah McCoy
Disillusioned by the iPhone image, Sarah McCoy uses oil on canvas to recreate intimate moments in splashes of color.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Sarah. I'm a millennial government attorney. I help people without attorneys navigate the municipal court in my city - Columbus, Ohio. I'm 100% obsessed with cats, hoard anything related to music, and try to stay relatively sane (I mean, who isn't trying to stay sane at this point?). I married a little over a year ago, which is something I thought I'd NEVER do, and now I'm even considering kids. Love legitimately makes people stupid, but here I am. My best painting is one of my husband spread-eagle in our basement library, so I guess it's working. Anyone and everyone is welcome to try and slap some sense into me!
I love your work! You mentioned that you have only been painting since 2018. What drew you to pick up a brush? Were you coming from another art medium?
I used to practice piano every day, but a progressive connective tissue disease is destroying my joints and has left my hands very stiff and painful. I still play, but I've accepted the fact I won't be advancing my skills anymore when it comes to piano. I had some free time in 2018 as I was recovering from a nervous breakdown and took a job shipping and receiving at a local bike shop. I'd been getting into snapping self-portraits with my crappy old iphone and the thought popped into my head that I would prefer to recreate my photos in brighter colors. I got on YouTube, and the rest is history.
There is a domesticity, a haunting familiarity to the images. The subjects feel intimate to the viewer. Almost like they are paintings of my partner or roommates or friends.
You would be exactly right there! All of the subjects are very intimate to me. I'm completely estranged from my biological family, so I've built my own family of friends, animals, and loved ones. Everyone I've painted to this point, including myself, suffers from severe mental illness and/or self-esteem issues. I strive to make everyone feel beautiful. I'm severely sentimental to the point I collect my husband's hair and cats' discarded nails. I even have some of my best friend's baby teeth. I don't (or at least haven't yet) take commissions or sell my work. I just don't have any motivation to create art for someone else. I already work 40+ hours a week for others, so this is mine. When I part with my work, it will go to people who are truly moved by it rather than those who simply want to collect something cool for their walls. That being said, my work is literally piling up, so if you are in fact moved by it, let me know - I'm always interested in making a swap or sending my love off to others who feel it!
The texture, shading and colors remind me of the pop art of the 1960s in particular Leslie Kerr’s work. What draws you to this style?
I'm honestly not sure how I came up with my style. I've always demanded more out of the colors I see. I'm covered in loud tattoos and often wear the brightest clothes I can find, mixing everything I've heard should never be mixed. Most of my style resulted from defiance. I watched YouTube a lot at the beginning to make sure I didn't start a fire in my home (I paint with oils), but after a few weeks of trying to watch various videos on techniques and "rules," I just said fuck it. I don't follow anyone's rules, so I wasn't about to start here. I dry brush almost everything because I love muddy colors and blurry pastels. I use brushes not intended for oils, q-tips, trash canvas, paint in poor lighting and forgot about "fat-over-lean" about thirty seconds after I heard the term.
Sarah McCoy is an artist based in Columbus, Ohio. She is inspired by femininity, mental health, and her pets and loved ones.
Creamy Spinach & Artichoke Salmon
My sister made this for her husband and four children. They all loved it. I’d say that’s a win.
from Half Baked Harvest blog