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• Marcos Valle, Estrelar from 1983. Sources: ↗︎ YouTube and ↗︎ Spotify. Such a fine collage.

[BODY]

Karmaklubb*: This feels a bit like a blind date. I try to get to know you, through your work ...

Sandra: Why did you pick exactly this exhibition, then?

K*: Actually, we didn’t. You know, we were supposed to do a party and seminar with She Will —

S: Out there, in the exhibition space?

K*: Yes. We had been planning this for months, long before the virus, but did not know which exhibition we would end up with. Then they suggested this one, ‘↗︎ SQUEEZE’. They thought it would fit. I got the ‘curatorial statement’ about a week ago, ↗︎ this flyer with the cat memes, claiming ‘↗︎ cats are liquid’.

S: Liquid bodies, yes.

K*: Then I tried to figure out how you, Ragnhild, Jessica ended up in that frame. I couldn’t see the connection. Of course, I discussed it with them —

S: Cos, I don’t even know. What did they say …?

K*: As far as I understand the whole concept behind the exhibition is to avoid borders, restrictions, limitations. And how do you like ‘squeeze’ and adjust yourself to do your thing without being locked, create your own path. And She Will said the three of you responded well on this ‘lack of concept’ and took part in an organic process intuitively forming the exhibition. A sympathetic, yet vague curatorial approach; at best an utopic idea requiring not only extraordinary people, but also a great deal of luck. — At first this challenge felt hard to grasp from my angle, but it also made this project exciting to me; starting off without a defined idea or clear logic, you must find your own entrance into it, a backdoor. It is a riddle. That is sort of practical way of ‘avoiding the squeeze’, find the way around it. And guess what, after digging into the material — meaning you — well, that kind of started to make sense, after all. Besides, I have been researching you all night — you can see my handwriting is almost impossible to decode, I am not sure we are gonna run through all of it …

S: Yea …

K*: I also know your work from the last ten years or so. But the work that you are showing now in the gallery — well, the petrol station —

S: — the car wash!

K*: Yes. These large panels of yours, with a sun icon on top of a pixelized background … Imagine I’m an alien. If you get one minute, how would you explain this triptych for someone that doesn’t know you?

S: It is an investigation of screen surfaces. Have you ever felt almost sunburned on the skin of your face after working in front of a screen all day? In essence, these screens have become sort of a replacement of daylight. As society gets more and more digital, we spend more time with these screens, we are getting increasingly dependent on them. While we know that we should think and act more environmentally friendly, this development is like really going in the other direction. The ‘sun’ that are in centre of each panel, is from Mac computers. You have quite similar ones at PCs and smartphones, also. I have been studying these icons; the symbol that indicates a change in the level of light from the screen. I have zoomed in on the icon itself. I find it in particularly interesting that it appears like a dark sun, a negative sun — a sun that takes increasingly more energy in form of electricity instead of giving as our other sun.

K*: I think the first time I saw you using this icon in your work was in an exhibition in 2016.

S: This was in ↗︎ Nürnberg, the Kunstverein. And there was also this other icon — the ‘old’ one, from older Mac computers — it was white instead of black. I have photographed it many times, repeated it; bigger and bigger, layers on top of each other. Then I had it in the darkroom developing the photo and at the same time smearing sunscreen on the photo paper, as I’ve done so many times before. Treating photo paper as a skin. And of course, the sunscreen protects the paper from exposure.

S: But then I was like: ‘Oh, here I got these 4–5 almost similar photos, hanging on a row … yea, that was it …’ Then the icon changed. The next couple of years I was looking at it now and again, and last year, in 2019, in ↗︎ was about showing them in Bergen. However, they — the suns — were very different at that time, like colour darkroom photos with sunscreen. I brought them to Oslo for an exhibition at Noplace in 2017 called ‘↗︎ NUDES’, as I was supposed to mix two projects, but I chose another, yet connected work where I let the sun work with different analogue photo papers. The paper is not exposed or developed, just the raw paper. I am doing the opposite of what you are ‘supposed’ to do; taking the paper out in the light. Of course it gets ruined, but they keep on taking in light, continue to develop. They started as white, but then this change into different colours, getting darker and darker, and some of these colours are like brown, pink — cliché skin colours. Others are getting blue. Later they were mounted on aluminium, cut in a way that make them all wiggly, uneven, reminding of some bodily shape. I also used the sun icons in the press release for this show.

K*: Yea!! I remember: No explanatory text whatsoever, just this one large sun as ‘heading’ and perhaps a thousand small ones in the body. A rather unusual press release as opposed to the common exhaustive ones that I usually receive … as I also do work in the press, right — I was like ‘ah, refreshing! Although not saying too much.’

↗︎ ☀

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S: Not saying anything.

K*: Then again, I liked it; it’s a slight sense of humour traceable in there. Even though it is very dry. And that’s also what I like and what got me fascinated … Because you’re obviously not doing ‘queer art’ as such, but you still got sort of a queer eye —

S: — yea …

K*: — on phenomena. For almost ten year, at least seven or eight, you have been working with ‘liquids on screens’. And I try to understand how you deal with that, for so many year … hardcore investigating the photography; up to six layers of operations on top of each other: photo of a screen > darkroom > sunscreen exposure > digitalisation > display on yet another screen, with water on the surface of the computer … then a new photo. Correct?

S: The number of steps depend on the project, but minimum two, but yes. Sometimes these processes are even repeating themselves, especially adding the water on. It’s like building up some sort of painting, but not really, and simultaneously breaking down the surface. Construct an illusion of depth to the surface, a room. This water is really dissolving the stringent pixels, makes them ‘pop up’ like organic shapes, breaking down the grid-structure of this flat thing, the screen; makes it loosen up become more organic.

S: Some believe I’m using Photoshop, that I work with digital art, but I’m really doing quite the opposite.

↓ See all 6 images

K*: On one hand you are stretching the whole concept the photo by running the motive through new analogue and digital operations, over and over again. On the other hand, this repetition makes the photography so filled up by itself it seems about to ‘implode’ … while simultaneously becoming more distant from its origin. What you are doing is very close to abstraction. And as you imply, this is all very performative. I have a question for you. Considering their performative and conceptual character, do you find it necessary transform your work into sculptural objects? To me these are more documentation of processes, events, in which I find the book format very suitable …

S: Like those at She Will at the moment, with liquid on top … they’re on the way to opening up the ‘room’ that I’m looking for — when the motive sort of breaks down and you can see a black room behind the image. You don’t see that if the print is too small. That’s why I am making large prints, to open up spaces in the image; make it related to the body of the spectator, to get into the machine. Get this claustrophobic feeling, ha ha — or an image burst, or both. So, a book will demand more closeups to get this feeling, being small and all. But I really want to do more books, as well! And you are right; my work is first of all very performative, at least for me making them. However, even when I do make my photos into sculptures, they are in fact often results of performative gestures — where I’m laying on top of them with my body, bending and stretching the image in real life. So, maybe it also gets into other formats with time, like full-on Internet art, or film. But right now, I like to make big photos.

K*: You have a book in production right now, too, don’t you?

S: ↗︎ Yea. An artist’s book that collects the big analogue photo project that’s been going on over the last years called Jugs. And I have some ideas going. And I can do that, but for me, it is also about having this physical thing coming out of it. I am thinking a lot through using my body; how the body relate to the screens that I am picturing, but also the physical methods behind creating the actual works; the darkroom, using sunscreen and traces of my own skin and gestures — like laying on top of the works, bending them through my bodily weights, how the analogue photopaper reacts and lives pending on the light …

K*: I think I understand. It’s more like an event. And you’re a material nerd. I totally understand, yea.

S: I am doing many test prints, and I always work to find the ‘right size’ for the work.

K*: One of my personal favourites is Jugs. These are also made by using water, some with rainbows in the drops of liquids. And you have put objects — glass, cups — on the paper while exposing — there’s this term for it …

S: — Photogram. I combine the negative with the photogram, the ‘trace’ or ‘stamp’ of the object. That’s sort of what I do with the sunscreen, too: I smear it on the paper, protecting it from the light. I am using the paper almost as a cloth on a table — putting all this glass and containers on top of it. Arranging a messy still life.

K*: A very dirty cloth. Squirted liquids, rings from the cups …

S: The light hits the glass, creates reflections, drops shadows.

K*: Like when a beam of light breaks through the glass.

S: And this is the last layer. The photographs in the back of these images are of various watery surfaces. I have been documenting and collecting them for a long time, and also collected material — from natural catastrophes, oil spills and such, polluted water … bad stuff have happened, you know, and then this —

K*: — ‘bad stuff happened’ …!

S: — colouring the water in weird colours, or absurd situations. A swan in a yellow lake, or absurd structures appearing in the surface. I also make sure to collect these things when I come across them online. Especially when I read about environmental disasters. Then I ‘paint’ these jugs on top of it all, literally on the screen.

K*: Yea, that’s the best part!! They look sort of naive, childish. Clumpy. But, why? I understand the thing with the water and the glass, the jar and jugs … but why the jugs in the first place?

S: It’s a long time since I started doing them, and I love it, so I just continued … I don’t remember exactly what I thought the first time I sat there with a brush, trying to paint a jug. I kept on coming back to this sketch that I did years ago. ‘Hm … there’s something there that is so weird …’ For me it’s also a symbol of societal structures, and an act of sharing — that to make it work in a collective or society of any sort, you have to share the resources.

K*: So, this is one of the rainbowy ones. That’s oil, I’ll guess?

S: Yes, floating on the surface. And this jug is painted on top of the computer screen, creating this pixelated rainbow kind of structure inside the water.

K*: God, that’s so cool …

S: It’s funny because it’s a jug, but the contour of the jug is water, and its empty inside, creating this opposite: it’s function is to contain liquid for sharing. And of course: The analogy to breasts that I like. This very ‘feminine’ and basic function.

K*: I got to ask you. So-called hydrofeminism …

[OK, OK. PAUSE.]

• So, hydrofeminism; how to explain that in an easy way. This term seems to be everywhere nowadays, and it has been for approximately 7–8 years, too — in feminist discourse, ecology and antropocene discourse, and of course art discourse. The word first appeared in Astrida Neimanis’ pre-publication of an essay in 2012 called ↗︎ “Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water”. Neimanis is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sidney, Australia, ↗︎ introducing herself as someone most interested in, quote: ‘posthuman feminism, […], water, climate change, environmental humanities [and] justice, embodiment, (bio)colonicality, biotechnologies and feminist STS [and in particular] in the common and queer intersections of these things.’ A quick search further give us the following enlightenment: ‘Almost 80 percent of the human body is water. We are practically a kind of jellyfish. At any rate, we have more in common with the jellyfish and every other more or less watery species and forms of matter on our blue planet than most of us tend to believe.’ This is the first part of ↗︎ an article published at ↗︎ Kunstkritikk.com, a platform for art and criticism, and written by Danish artist Maria Bordorff. The occasion is a book on the subject hydrofeminism, including a translation of Neimanis’ already mentioned gospel. Behind the anthology is ↗︎ Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, ‘a platform for planetary becoming’ as well as a publishing house and curatorial platform. Bordorff does an attempt: ‘Keeping it short and sweet: what is hydrofeminism?’ Two of the members of the laboratory, Elena Lundquist Ortíz and Dea Antonsen answers: ‘Hydrofeminism is about solidarity across watery selves, across bodies of water. […] Hydrofeminism shows us that we are all involved in […] watery interactions and circulations. Water flows through bodies, species and materialities, connecting them for better or worse. Today, planetary thinking is feminist thinking. […] It’s not that abstract, really. You take a sip of water, and that water will flow through you and onwards out into the world. Understanding that interconnectedness gives rise to a new kind of ethical obligation. Suddenly, something very distant and remote feels up close and intimate. Just imagine: you share the water you drink with someone on the other side of the world. This introduces a whole new way of seeing and understanding your own interconnected body. Water is transnational, trans-species and trans-corporeal.’ Yes. OK. One of the most recent initiatives is perhaps at the ↗︎ bb11, this year’s Berlin Biennale, through Danish artists Dina El Kaisy Friemuth and Anita Beikpour from ↗︎ FCCN — Feminist Collective With No Name forming a trio with Neda Sanai called D.N.A. They have made the digital platform ↗︎ Hydrocapsules.love (2020). In short: ‘WELCOME TO THE CRISIS’. And if you want to into the details, find Neimanis’ text ↗︎ here, for free — or, below in the beautiful shape of a properly scanned PDF received by Jessica Warboys (GBR) — as the sixth chapter of the anthology Undutiful Daughters : New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice, edited by Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni, and Fanny Söderback in 2012 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) as part of the ‘Breaking Feminist Waves’:

K*: It seems to be a very trendy thing. Time specific, crucial feminist ideas morphing into eco-friendly thinking, collective thought, being nice — all golden standards. But I have the impression that in some instances it unfortunately floats in this blurry field of a vague ‘new spirituality’ — in lack of better words — or, at worst a radical adaption (or possibly even misinterpretation) of feminist ideas that is not that much centred about principles of equality anymore, but confirming binary mindsets rather than thinking outside the boxes … But as with every tendency, ideology, tool or technology; it could be used to build, or destroy … (And it depends if you’re used to resistance and fight, then the rhetorical wrapping, vocabulary and behaviour will reflect that — resulting in some duller, others more hardcore.) Like your jug; it is very useful for serving water, but you could also kill somebody by hitting them in the head with a real one. And it gets useless if it lacks substance, got cracks or no hole to pour from … — Still, I read your jugs as a subtle critique, although a sense of playful duality, as we touched upon earlier, both in how the layers play together and the almost clumsy representation. They end up being a bit schizophrenic, two-faced; both very loose and generous and methodical, conceptual, strict, dry … and they speak a language that demands a certain knowledge about context, such as the icon of the sun, and awareness of the impact of digital tools and usage — all whilst ↗︎ the crisis happens …

S: I am familiar with those ideas but cannot say I have been studying the term thoroughly. But I think I have read many of the writers it’s referring too, and done my own research — or, deep dive — into water. I remember I was into the ‘↗︎ The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, a 1986s essay by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the many times I was photographing these jug-works. That is probably in this, too. The essay questions how we consider the importance of technology as in dominance over nature or the concept of an enemy, and highlights 'the vessel' and 'carrier bag' as one of the most important tools ever, for collecting, transporting, sharing. ‘If […] one avoids the linear, progressive, Time's-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic, and redefines technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination, one pleasent side effect is that science fiction can be seen as a far less rigid, narrow field […]. It is strange realism, but it is a strange reality.’ (↗︎ Page 153–154)

• Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author in particularly known for speculative fiction, even fantasy and sci-fi with her own imagined universes. She published for more than half a century — books, novels (100s!), poetry, children’s books, and other forms of written works. Social and political themes, including race, gender, sexuality, and coming of age were prominent in her writing, also thinking utopias. Highly recommended, even for those that are not that much into eco or thinking other realities — Le Guin will for sure not make you dumber. She writes in a very accessible and warm way, too. ↗︎ More on Le Guin here. Find an old library scan of Le Guin’s article below (from The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology [1996], edited by Glotfelty, Cheryll and Fromm, Harold. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, page 149–154.)

S: Also, I think I am much more interested in where the materials leads me, how they adapt according to what I am trying to express when I am in a process. But, two of my main interests are the impact of screen culture, technology, and pollution, yes.

K*: You are a hydrofeminist …

[K*/S: Laughter]

S: We hide behind the digital doings … It connects, but also numbs us.

K*: But you use it yourself, right …?

S: Of course, a lot. Everyone does.

K*: Perhaps it’s there you’ve got the critique; the awareness and reflection of impact and presence.

S: I mean, this is probably the biggest change we will ever experience. And I’m an artist living now, this is something that affects me and that I think is interesting to explore further — what it does to us and affect our thinking and behaviour. Even though it’s scary. I think that is why I keep on repeating this investigation, because there’s something there that I’m still trying to grasp … in an artificial way separating us from the rest of the living world. — Water and computers — these are two of the most basic resources that we got in society today. Still, they don’t go so well together.

K*: You were watering your computer?

S: In the beginning I was breaking a few Macs, painting and spraying them with water, yes. Forcing these two things that are not supposed to be together to merge. I remember trying to have a cloth under the screen to absorb the water, but they got soggy, got into the keyboard. Now they’ve made them waterproof — lucky me.

K*: You recently did a solo show at Kunsthall Stavanger, ↗︎ an exhibition called ‘Suge’, or in English suck.

S: A word with slightly negative connotations, in both languages, yes.

K*: Here you had a series of enormous photo panels on display, showing womxn folding their lips around straws [Thirst, 2019], apparently drinking. The photos are cropping their faces, having the lips in centre, and of course small drops of water all over, and as the other works made through several layers. Besides the sucking mouths, the other main work are from yet another series of layered analogue works: abstract sunscreen drawings apparently made by fingers and hands, groping or even fighting, rubbing, spilling … Assumingly these traces of bodily movement are expressions of either affection, loss of control, desperation … or, some kind of boredom, or more precisely apathy — all on top of those soft pastel towels. It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, but to me these are quite ambivalent. And on the floor, you got a few ‘towel rolls’ — blue and orange one can also be seen at She Will as we speak — that most of all reminds of gym requisites. Tell me, what’s up with the towels and the drinks.

S: The whole show is taking form as a beach holiday seen through a digital and consumerist lens. These rolls are in fact 5–8 metres long and approximately 1.5 metres wide made of terrycloth, towel fabrics [Suck, 2019]. They could remind of protective heavyweight ‘belts’ that are often used for floods or dam breaks, or to protect water from oil spill or garbage, but at the same time not unfamiliar from red carpets. On towels you usually have some embroidery, such as the name of a brand, so do these, but instead words like WET WET WET, SUCK, and FLUIDITY. They change in how they are interpreted pending on the room and context and reveal as something else when you look closer. I like that they are ‘in between’. A towel that could be used by a whole bunch of people, or as a protective emergency prop.

K*: Where did you get fabrics this large …?

S: Eh … I want crazy at this textile engross shop in Berlin. It’s the exact same fabrics as you make normal towels from. They have a lot of different colours, you know …

K*: They seem so comforting.

S: I have been photographing towels for years. These at ‘Suck’ are also made in and out of the darkroom, smearing myself with sunscreen in total darkness, moving around there, on top of this paper … and then developing and exhibiting it. I don’t know, this towel-thing … I’ve been thinking, ‘yea, why towels?’

S/K*: It’s so weird!

S: And I am fascinated about how this material transport moist … I think this has something to do with it. Yea, it’s connected to the body, something you wrap around yourself when you’re wet: it absorbs the moist and bring it into this everyday object.

K*: Do you remember how you felt about towels as a child?

S: … I really liked to bath. And to swim. Beaches. A towel is something that you have close to your body. Do you?

K*: The very first experience is hard to remember. But I have a strong sensory memory of towels as huge compared to my little body, and heavy. They were so soft when as new … I miss that feeling of being small. Of new towels. The last thing could easily be fixed, though. — And then it’s this scent I associate with towels: sunscreen from the 1980s and 1990s. I think they were quite toxic, still a nice association.

S: I once ↗︎ covered the whole exhibition space with sunscreen, the walls and windows [UV wall, 2016 at ‘Gestures of Tomorrow’, Kunstverein Nürnberg, and a mural at ↗︎ ‘NUDES’, Noplace in 2017].

K*: Which one?

S: Piz Buin.

K*: Of course. The best.

S: The classic.

S: And it’s the water itself as an analogy to Internet; so fluid, and physically or through our senses transformed in and out of our bodies. We drink a soda, pee it out — pee becoming a cloud in another country some weeks later, who knows.

K*: Morphing liquids; traveling forms … Hydrofem.

S: I just like the idea that it’s so free.

K*: But we should have met at the beach today. But it’s too cold now. Besides, the wind would have destroyed the recording. But this roof terrace is not that bad, either.

S: It’s almost as pretty as a beach. The city is the sea. Or, in a pool or something. I want to exhibit my work at beaches.

K*: Next step.

S: But before that I am looking forward to dance again. I love going to ↗︎ Berghain. Sundays at daytime. No drugs, nothing, just dance.

K*: Me too.

• Estrelar could roughly be translated to ‘a star’ or ‘to fry [something]’. Marcos Valle’s song Estrelar, from 1983, tells about beach life, bodybuilding and workout, stretch and push. How to shine. ↗︎ On the cover he got the drinks (7 of them), the pastels, the naïve touch of the 80s, and a soft blurry star filter as top stroke. And the irony that comes with age. Even the beach and outdoor screens — beach cinema. It could all be sweet, or very uncanny. Somehow it all just made sense.

Four unpolished conversations on context sensibilities, frames and routines, and avoid being squeezed. Plasticity as a way of resistance. Listen and reflect with us. Medio September we will drop them, one after another, during the exhibition periode of ‘↗︎ SQUEEZE’ at one of our true favourite art spots: She Will (NOR). First out is Sandra. This conversation was done IRL at a roof top, some of the others will cross virtual space, and rounded off with a ‘thought & pleasure’ session in the exhibition itself — at the petrol station in the central suburbia of Ski, inside the abandoned car wash — with Liv and Maren, the eminent founders. And a couple of bottles natural wine. More on ‘↗︎ SQUEEZE’ and ↗︎ She Will here.

Sandra, born in 1980, Stavanger, Norway is based in Berlin, Germany and Stavanger. We know her best for her so-called sunscreen paintings using, yes, sunscreen and her photo montages. But we also have seen her ↗︎ glass blown (!) jugs. She is educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art and Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and has since exhibited many places, we can mention Kunsthall Stavanger (2019); KINDL — Zentrum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2018); Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City (through MELK, Oslo; 2017–2018); Stavanger Kunstmuseum (2017); Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (2017); Noplace, Oslo (2017); and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2016). She also ran the art space TOVES, Copenhagen for several years (2011–2017). Besides this, Sandra has done a few outdoor pieces and public commissions as well. At the moment, too, actually; a permanent sculpture for the City of Oslo. And a book ↗︎ will be published shortly by Heavy Books, with a special focus on the long-term project Jugs.