Curator in Residence @ Zero Foundation, Düsseldorf
Sept-Dec 2023
A research on the work of Nanda Vigo through the lens of science fiction
as a curator in residence at the Zero Foundation in Düsseldorf
Artists in the ZERO group base their work on a socio-political awareness of their time and respond to their artistic context and societal reality in radical ways. As mentioned in their manifest, subjects like light, future, and essentialism are central aspects of their thinking. Nanda Vigo’s practice, ideas, and interests fit and add to the collective. Still, she stood out as one of the few women in the Zero group and as a very articulated and active member between 1964 and 1966. Moreover, she fought the categorizations of gender and those of the disciplines of designer, architect, and artist; Vigo claimed to work harder for success than their male colleagues.
In the early ’60s, Vigo wrote the ‘Manifesto Cronotopico,’ describing her ideas about transformation by light and access to a 5th dimension, which they named “a-dimension.” Many of their sculptures and spatial installations embody the ideas in this manifest, activating the chromatic waves in the visible spectrum as gateways to other dimensions of space and time.
Vigo saw a parallel between her work and science fiction. A genre that I particularly appreciate for its ability to speculate and experiment with social and environmental futures. Science fiction can be an ally for the revolt of subversive social classes. Recognition and alienation have a dialectic exchange with each other within the genre. It can force a confrontation with ideas and conventions that seem natural and logical or inescapable in a world based on different premises or conditions. A critical understanding of the underlying structures that create the known and daily life can emerge through this dialectical interaction between the known and the alien.
Through zine making, I have worked through Nanda Vigo’s artistic thinking in the 60ties, with theories of light as a starting point. In the second zine, I have contextualized the aspects of the Italian fascistic regime and “Stunden null” for the ZERO collective in the work and life of the artist. In the third and last zine, strands of cinema, science fiction, othering, and spirituality come together, centralizing Star Trek (TOS) and her favorite spaceship, The Enterprise.
Made possible by Zero Foundation and Mondriaan Fund
Co-Editor with Kristiina Koskentola
Contributions by: Mi Yu, Rick Dolphijn, Müge Yilmaz, Taru Elfving and others
170 mm x 240 mm, 176 Pages
1st Edition: 500 copies, 2nd Edition 1200 copies
Publishing by Onomatopee
Design by Yannick NussPractitioners from diverse fields across Eurasia, from North, South, and West to East Asia and back, gather to explore multidisciplinary ecologies and non-anthropocentric and embodied approaches to collaboration. Through art and dialogue, installations, film, audio, performative, and textual works, we delve into interdependencies of entities and beings and interdisciplinary perspectives to imagine the active and implicated role of humans in complex ecologies.
Enfleshed -
Ecologies of Entities and Beings
KATSURA HITO
Artist Residency @ARCUS Project, Ibaraki, Japan
Sept-Dec 2022Katsura Hito orbits around the Katsura tree. This tree is an elemental spirit of the Japanese landscape in the fall season. As the transformation of Katsura’s colored leaves and their enchanting sweet smell changes the sensorial experience of the environment, they remind us of our connection to the seasons. Its embeddedness in Japanese folklore and traditional storytelling leads us to a yokai supernatural spirit, legend, and gardener: Katsura-Otoko or in Chinese; Wu Gang. His efforts in pruning the Katsura tree on the moon to cause lunar cycles connect cosmology to ecology as a natural part of our earthly existence. The story’s premise serves as an inspiration and starting point for this project.
During the online artist residency in the winter of 2021-2022, I started the research with a small Katsura tree in my garden and collected many different perspectives on the tree. For the onsite residency during the fall of 2022, with the possibility to carry out local research, I decided to follow a selection of strands I had gathered before. By visiting the places and meeting the humans and non-humans I had the ability to dive deeper into the stories, collect materials, and undergo experiences and adventures, becoming part of the self-constructed ecology of the Katsura tree.
To process these experiences I have used a travel and dream diary method as a starting point to create texts that move between historical analysis and multi-sensorial observations and welcome imagination and surreal interpretations. A risographed volume combines the writing with illustrations, exercises, recipes, and an interview with Aizen Katsura.
Graphic design by Yannick Nuss
Printing and Publishing by Hand Saw Press
Photo by Kawashima Ayami
Book launch March 22nd 2023, 19:00-22:00
at Limestone Books, Grote Gracht 63, Maastricht
Lecturer @ Maastricht Institute of Art
I taught research skills for the Communication and Multimedia Design minor 'The Narrative,'.
I developed and taught Courses in Art Education for the minors 'Sensorial Learning,' 'Identity and Emancipation,' 'Futures and Imagination,' and 'Multi-species Communities' at the Maastricht Institute of Arts.
Residency @Somalgors74
During a two-week residency at Somalgors in Switzerland, I got fascinated by the local birds and how they create their habitat in local landscapes. A specific interest developed for the Tannenhäher (or nutcracker), a jay related to the crow family, which has a symbiotic relationship with the Swiss Arolla pine. Within this relationship of mutual dependency, the bird collects and plants the pine nuts produced by the tree. Part of the nuts serve as provision, others will form new trees in the future, creating and maintaining ecologies at high altitudes.
The Tannanhäher has thus become a starting point for thinking around the concept of worlding, a generative process that blurs the discrimination between the subject and their environment. Thinking with the work of Daniel Godines Nivon my (to be written) essay wonders and wanders around the role of imagination and dreams experienced by birds in this process of worlding.
Radical care & Feminist Practices
Aug 17 - 18
Re-Assembling Motherhoods is an exhibition, book presentation, and two-day riso workshop with an opening event by two members of the collective Maternal Fantasies @Onomatopee.
Education for Observatorium
@DeDomijnen
Observatorium is an artwork that Stefan Cools made for Museum De Domijnen Contemporary Art. It is a mobile station for field research and on-site landscape management.
I have developed an educational program and activities that activate Observatorium when it visits local sites and events like schools, farmer's markets, theater festivals, or preservation clubs, ranging from short games to afternoon activities and campfire sessions. Equipped to introduce and determine common lichen species, re-appreciate common weeds by botanical observation and play a round of bird-bingo, the fully-loaded field-work-cargo bike invites audiences of all ages and expertise levels to engage with a rich but pressured environment.
Coach
@The Known Artist
Het beeldende kunst platform The known Artist is een talentontwikkelingstraject voor jonge kunstenaars. 5 deelnemers worden binnen het traject door coaches en experts begeleid in hun professionele ontwikkeling
Shallow Waters - Exhibition and Event
Shallow Waters is a presentation that explores two extreme cases of urbanized shallow water territories – Markermeer/IJsselmeer in the heart of the Netherlands and the Venetian Lagoon. This presentation derives from the publication Shallow Waters.
During the performative book launch, ideas and experiences that emerged from the research for the publication were shared. This included encounters with freshwater microorganisms by live projection through the lens of Wim van Egmond’s microscope. Dr. Harm van der Geest (IBED – UvA) and Alice Smits (Zone2Source) had an animated conversation on multispecies empathy with project initiator and editor Lada Hršak and her Bureau LADA colleague architect Ludovica Beltrami. Artist collective De Onkruidenier looked at the relationship between ecologies and economies and shared a tasting of a foam landscape in their performance titled CryptoFoam.
In Notes on Nutmeg, I think and experience with a non-human protagonist, the nutmeg. The video functions as an introduction to my curatorial practice as a framework for storytelling, sensorial observation, and research.
The video builds a visual and verbal narrative that deconstructs the impacts of Dutch colonialism organized around the nutmeg as both object and agent.
Inspired by ecofeminist thinkers, like Donna Haraway and Ursula K. le Guin, I explore embodied ways of knowing to create space for learning and critical reflection.
Notes on Nutmeg
SHAPE
SHAPE is an online tool that maps the rich variety of Art Events and Initiatives in the city of Helsinki.
As a curatorial assistant at PUBLICS, I worked on gathering and selecting the content and the implementation of this online map.
SHAPE is a project initiated by PUBLICS and Kohta Kunsthalle.
Storytelling Festival
Once Upon A Town
As the curator of the 2019 edition of the Bureau Europea initiated Storytelling Festival “Once Upon A Town,” held in Maastricht, I developed a program of exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and dinners paired with stories around the theme of migration. I paid particular attention to inclusivity, diversity, as well as sensitivity in my curatorial process.
The festival similarly addressed a diverse audience and brought people together who may not ordinarily share space in the city.
Lunar Calendar
In the Project Lunar Calendar, I have developed a calendar that connects biodynamic farming to artistic practice as part of the Alternative Education programme at Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania. I was inspired by the biodynamic approach to agriculture that includes spiritual concerns toward the earth, and all actors in the ecological system and the integration of cosmological forces. The project aims to connect cultural producers to rhythms of nature and cosmos and invites them to reflect on wellbeing and work ethics.
The calendar is designed and printed double-sided on A1 format.