May 25, 2016 Wednesday
I am in Neuenhaus, Germany. I installed a video recording in the Kunstverein here and the opening was two days ago. I am here with Jasmine, Nooshin, Chris and John. Several, many, numerous things have happened and I am afraid I will forget them. So I will try to cover as many as I can here.
First of all, installation was a lot of work. I chose to record in the space. I had a mural on one of the walls from a Syrian artist. I could decide if I was going to record with or without the mural and I decided to do it with. It was a big risk. I used someone else's work in my work, and this is always risky. I recorded one side the mural, the other was the empty chair. Then I instructed Jasmine to push a light back and forth while I pushed Nooshin on a wheelie-chair, as she held a flashlight. We did it for 10 minutes. One camera recorded our movements, the other recorded the reflected light on the chair/wall. The two recordings are projected on the same surface, a screen that we built here, and it is suspended in the middle of the space. My friend, Nooshin brought some Syrian men into the exhibition and showed them the work. They said they really liked it, because they felt like that chair. And I thought, Oh, that is the best thing I could have ever hoped for.
Then, I met some people at the opening. There was Denise and Robin, Denise is from Berlin and we went to play pool that night with Robin and Chris and Jasmine. She likes Jameson whisky. I also met Willem Kind. He, amazingly, is from Rotterdam originally
First of all, installation was a lot of work. I chose to record in the space. I had a mural on one of the walls from a Syrian artist. I could decide if I was going to record with or without the mural and I decided to do it with. It was a big risk. I used someone else's work in my work, and this is always risky. I recorded one side the mural, the other was the empty chair. Then I instructed Jasmine to push a light back and forth while I pushed Nooshin on a wheelie-chair, as she held a flashlight. We did it for 10 minutes. One camera recorded our movements, the other recorded the reflected light on the chair/wall. The two recordings are projected on the same surface, a screen that we built here, and it is suspended in the middle of the space. My friend, Nooshin brought some Syrian men into the exhibition and showed them the work. They said they really liked it, because they felt like that chair. And I thought, Oh, that is the best thing I could have ever hoped for.
Then, I met some people at the opening. There was Denise and Robin, Denise is from Berlin and we went to play pool that night with Robin and Chris and Jasmine. She likes Jameson whisky. I also met Willem Kind. He, amazingly, is from Rotterdam originally