darts and spice

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

while my mother and her friends are baking chilibread in nuernberg, i have been considering and re-considering the planned performance on the hauptmarkt. after speaking with the manager in charge of events on the hauptmarkt, and her advice about the permanent windy conditions there after the demolition of one of the buildings at the square, i needed to think over the idea of a layer of spice covering the cobblestones. a small tent or kiosk, filled with the aroma of spices resulting from burning or boiling and laying out ginger, chili, cinnamon, etc., will be the stage of the installation. recorded stories about the hauptmarkt will be playing and there will be a recording station outside the tent for visitors to add to the story collection. i will give out spice samples and ask my audience to prepare a dish with these spices. i'll invite them to come back the next day and let me try the dish. 

in the meantime i have been concerned with the issue of dispersing the spice aroma. while at sideshow in brooklyn i'd like to release aroma in the gallery. explosion as a means to disperse the spices seems a feasible option. i developed a spice game by attaching spice-filled balloons to a wall and trying to hit the targets with darts. at the moment of impact the balloons explode and spread the spice and its aroma across a small space in the gallery.

no new york

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

witnessing america - recording america (new york) in photographs (nicolas: concept of 'no' in avant-garde) - i attempt with these photographs of my american environment to not draw attention to any specific motif/concept/object but to simply describe and thus witness the place where i live - this has been extremely difficult as it is the nature of photography to document, to draw attention to a specific object or event, and to archive. is it essential, significant, meaningful to take these pictures and print/copy/multiply/publish them?

remembering my grandmother's america - in super 8. i have been filming: new york, beacon, myself.

zarah's legacy

 

  

  

cindy sherman was motivated to compose her film stills by her memories of watching b/w films from the '50s and '60s. my super 8 clips simulate my grandmother's posing for her husband's, and later, my uncle's camera - in 1960s and '70s california. i am appropriating my grandmother's poses, her waving for the camera (to us?), her posing like a silent movie star (she adored zarah leander). when i was a child, over the years, my parents received a number of super 8 films from my grandmother in california. i have not seen these films for many years, but i am re-enacting what i remember in front of the camera: my grandmother being proud of her new life in america. i rely on my memory to recall the poses etc, but i am also adding my own movements, my own poses. i always wondered about the reason of my grandmother's extroverted and suggestive poses - whom was she posing for? for us? for the filmmaker?

film stills

 

  

  

  

  

stills from super 8 footage filming 'home' - in beacon and in new york.

migrating between a (art) and r (research)

in my current art practice i find myself mentally migrating back to nuremberg quite frequently to anticipate the process and reactions of collaborators as well as other participants in flüstergewürz. the painter judith tucker’s discussion of the concept of home and sigmund freud’s explanation of the uncanny, the un-homely (unheimlich), resonate insofar as my own concernment with the concept of home has been dissolved somewhere along my migratory paths. i truly do not feel “at home” anywhere, but i also do not miss the sense of belonging to a geographically determined location. i am quite comfortable with the idea of establishing my own narrative, whether associated with germany, the u.s., or the migratory activity in between. i give credit for this sentiment to the contemporary situation to attain permission to travel freely whenever and wherever one desires. this is a fortunate circumstance, and i am always astonished to witness travelers ending up stranded for hours, sometimes days, in an airport, caused by a weather-related delay. the sense of entitlement of the contemporary traveler related to the certainty to migrate freely takes the relative ease and comfort of modern travel for granted.

i don't consider my artistic process as an attempt to establish a sense of home for myself, but i realize that connecting with familiar and unfamiliar people in nuremberg possesses some kind of therapeutical bearing for me. in this sense, the aesthetic and psychological impact of my project on its witnesses (including myself) could be considered as an internal migration between safety and uncertainty, between the heimisch (domestic) and the unheimlich. 

examining germany as the place of my origin and relating its idiosyncrasies to my voluntary migration is taking on a significant role in my art practice.

german version

i finally finished translating this blog into german: http://amfa2deutsch.blogspot.com/

more mementos

visuals -----

hauptmarkt model

chilibread masonry

it's funny how deceiving this video turned out - i wasn't attaching the cobblestones to the wall but the way i had set up the camera made it seem that way. i made a model of the town square, and cobblestones there are on the ground - this could be a gallery wall though....

sand/spice

1/4 tsp of ea: cinnamon, allspice, ginger, chili - extra 1/4 tsp of chili - 1 full tsp chili

covering the square with spices might turn out to be a rather costly enterprise. i'm considering mixing spices with sand and pigments. in my studio i've been combining spices and sand: the aroma is delightful, my studio has never smelled better.

mementos

these are the marks on the countertop after i removed the cut-out chilibread squares to put them on a baking sheet. unexpected ephemera.

more baking

i baked another batch of cobblestones, this time i managed to cut out smaller pieces. i intend to build a model of nuernberg's hauptmarkt to play out the scenario i envision covering a small area on the square with spices.

spice trade

in new york's murray hill district is a small cluster of stores selling mainly indian groceries. one of them has an immense array of spices. i bought cinnamon, chili, allspice, and ginger. paprika's intense and subtly nuanced reds certainly are tempting.