| What do You Think of Me? | interview with Kika Nicolela

“What do You Think of Me?” developed during  the Sumu art residency, Finland .

Kika Nicolela’s “videos have thickness, are made as fabrics meant to be touched; have texture, density; they seem to be made of cross-stitch or embroidery. Not only the revealed content is rich in significance and layers to be unveiled, but also the aesthetic is like a brush at work. We can perceive a same fingerprint that embraces them all: the body, its verses, reverses and knots, its relation to the urban and organic surroundings.”

I WOULD BELIEVE ONLY IN A GOD WHO COULD DANCE, by Daniella Samad. This essay was conceived to introduce the exhibition KIKA NICOLELA | SELECTED VIDEOS AND PHOTOS, June 12 – July 08 2009, at the 16mm, London, UK.

·      You are working in different directions, how would you describe yourself? Which are the ideas and the concepts underlying your work?

I have been described as filmmaker, videomaker, videoartist, new media artist, multi-media artist, electronic artist… Any of them would be ok, I guess, but I would describe myself as an artist, plain and simple. 
I’m concerned with examining the connections between the camera, subject, author and viewer. I’m interested in issues such as the construction of identity, communication and voyeurism. I also investigate how the relationship between our body and the surrounding world (ie. nature or urban settings and culture) shapes our identity.

·       Can you describe the evolution in your work? What it is the process in the making of your film? How much do you plan in advance and how much do you improvise? For example, do you write scripts for your films?

Each of my films has its specificity, in its concept and also in the creative process. But one thing that they all have in common, is that I think it’s important to prepare for the shooting in detail – I almost always prepare a shot list, which is a kind of blueprint for me during shooting, and sometimes I do some tests with camera or rehearsals with the actors/dancers – but I am very interested in putting my “subjects” and myself in a situation that takes us out of our comfort zone. My videos are really about that: about creating a set up in which me and the subjects are obliged to face a strange or unique situation, and in this process we reveal a lot of ourselves. The “subjects” I am talking about can be actors, dancers, performers or “real” people, in the case of my videos that are closer to documentaries. In some more recent works, I have also been putting myself in front of the camera, as in the video “What do You Think of Me?” developed during my time in Finland at the Sumu art residency. 
Therefore, I do plan a lot in advance, but improvisation plays a major role in my creative process. I never write scripts for my films, not in the classical sense. But I do write a lot about I am going to do, I research about the theme or subject I am approaching, and I create this shooting list that is the base of the shooting. But it differs from a script a lot, because I know that I am going to be open to improvisation during shooting, and later again during editing. So the final result is related to this first shooting script, but not exactly correspondent to it at all.

| Particles of Reality | Rovner in Montreal

Particles of Reality by Michal Rovner.
DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art

May 21, 2009 — September 27, 2009. Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Michal Rovner, solo exhibition at DHC/ART presents sculptures  and a series of video installations that evokes a natural history museum. Michal Rovner’s layered and intentionally ambiguous work touches on the processes of historical documentation, archaeology, science and choreography.

The exhibition features key works including DATA ZONE (2003), a group of long tables embedded with illuminated Petri dishes in which silent clusters of abstracted figures, which form and reform, evoke laboratory cultures. IN STONE (2004) and STONES (2006-2009) merge light with stone, combining the ancient and the modern, where archaeology is animated by quietly moving imagery, recalling hieroglyphs, petroglyphs and cave paintings. Finally, a series of mesmerizing video installations ORDER, MORE and CULTURE PLATE #7 (ALL 2003) featuring emblematic, anonymous figures in patterns, culminates in the monumental TIME LEFT (2002), a grand opera of isolation and connection, in which row upon row of human figures forming a vast wall text in motion, endlessly march across the entire perimeter of a room to an unknowable destination.

| Take Care of Yourself | Calle in São Paulo

Take Care of Yourself  by Sophie Calle.

From July 10 to September 7  on July 10 at SESC Pompeia , Sao Paolo. Promoted by SESC São Paulo and Associação Cultural Videobrasil.

“I received an email telling me it was over.
I didn’t know how to respond.
It was almost as if it hadn’t been meant for me.
It ended with the words, “Take care of yourself.”
And so I did.
I asked 107 women (including two made from wood and one with feathers),
chosen for their profession or skills, to interpret this letter.
To analyze it, comment on it, dance it, sing it.
Dissect it.  Exhaust it.  Understand it for me.
Answer for me.
It was a way of taking the time to break up.
A way of taking care of myself.”

When a boyfriend dumped her by email, French artist Sophie Calle asked 107 women to read it.

Sophie Calle is a French artist who works with photographs and performances, placing herself in situations almost as if she and the people she encounters were fictional. She also imposes elements of her own life onto public places creating a personal narrative where she is both author and character. She has been called a detective and a voyeur and her pieces involve serious investigations as well as natural curiousity.

In this “tour de force of feminine responses… executed in a wild range of media,” Sophie Calle orchestrates a virtual chorus of women’s interpretations and assessments of a breakup letter she received in an email. In photographic portraits, textual analysis, and filmed performances, the show presents a seemingly exhaustive compendium with contributions ranging from a clairvoyant’s response to a scientific study, a children’s fairytale to a Talmudic exegesis, among many others. Examining the conditions and possibilities of human emotions, Take Care of Yourself opens up ideas about love and heartache, gender and intimacy, labour and identity. 107 women (including a parrot) from the realms of anthropology, criminology, philosophy, psychiatry, theatre, opera, soap opera and beyond each take on this letter, reading and re-reading it, performing it, transforming it, and pursuing the emotions it contains and elicits.

Further information.
Also: Subjetividades em Trânsito workshop by Kika Nicolela , 14 – 17 July, Sesc Avenida  Paulista, part of  Olhares sobre o acervo do Videobrasil.

ECVP Volume II at Formverk and Alucine

The 12 videos that comprise the new volume of the project will be finished in July 2009.

Exhibitions have been scheduled at Fromverk, Sweden in September and Alucine, Canada in November 2009.

| Green Pink Caviar | Times Square NY

Chewing Color on MTV’s HD billboard at 44th Street in Times Square Presented by Creative Time, 44 ½. Video Exhibition Curated by Marilyn Minter. Screening extended through May 31.

Green Pink Caviar, a five-minute video by the artist Marilyn Minter

“I wanted to make enamel paintings along the idea of ‘painting with my tongue.” Marilyn Minter

Creative Time, 44 ½, is a series of provocative video works that screen hourly on MTV’s gilded HD screen in Times Square. The first installment, Chewing Color, was curated by artist Marilyn Minter as a means of investigating what she refers to as the “pathology of glamour.” The films include Patty Chang’s Fan Dance, Kate Gilmore’s Star Bright, Star Might, and Minter’s Green Pink Caviar. Onlookers may be thrown off by Minter’s models, which were shot on low definition video swirling and sucking bakery products from beneath a pane of glass — a distinctly different kind of “sexy” than the commercial advertisements plastered all over Times Square.

Still from Green Pink Caviar

Marilyn Minter continues her interest in blurring the boundaries between fine and commercial art. Co-opting advertising genres and related spaces, she takes a new platform to direct her first video. Green Pink Caviar (2009) is a lush and sensual voyeuristic hallucination. Filmed with macro lenses, she captures the most minute movements of female mouths licking candy and cake decoration.

For more on the work, visit Marilyn Minter’s own website.

Marilyn Minter’s Exhibition
Screening schedule may be found on Creative Time’s website.