Trânsito, 2015 – 2018, analogue photography printed 140 x 100 cm, Oslo Art and Fashion Festival, supported by Epson Europe, Interfoto Oslo, and CopyCat Fine Art in Skøyen. Variable sizes available. Exhibited at Aker Brygge, Oslo, Norway. The artwork delves into the “reality as stratification of surfaces” through Perniola’s concept of transit.* From this work, limited edition prints, public art installations, and material applications such as wall coverings, mosaics, metal, acrylic and custom panels, facades, projections, textile and garments, and product applications with Kinetic Facades, Artaic Custom Mosaic Tiles, Equitone Fiber Cement Facade, Acrylic or Textile Panels, Metal with substrate installation systems, and Projections follow the images. *Research paper follows the presentation. Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com Download: Transito PDF, Transito Realizations
An iridescent color palette reminiscent of oil and visual surface of water joins in the imaginary realm as a means to consider the implausible, as possible, to create new intelligence defying previous assumed knowledge or reason. Trânsito reflects the heavens in the gentle surface ripples, looking at phenomenological discourses in painting and photography through the ethics of resource usage in technocratic times. The granularity of the analogue, chemical process in photography translated into digitally scalable pixels are emphasized to draw attention to the passage of movement in stillness, paradoxically making viewers feel as if they are moving while standing still. Developed alongside Teknovisuell Experience on the degradation of technology through repetition to find how the perceived problem presents the solution based on distances in viewing. The physiology and psychology of the body viewing, and mechanical apparatus of photography are thus focused on sensorial memories of beauty, love, reason, and enlightenment. Trânsito is part of Virtual Material body of work, exploiting photography while engaging in phenomenological subjects with water, stones, forests, technology, vision, body, perception, ethics. The Virtual Material body of work includes: Trânsito, Teknovisuell Experience, Sonidos, Fleuressence, Relatively Dimensional Still-Life, 1919 in 2017, videos, installations, as prints, projections, wall coverings, acrylic prints, garments. Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com
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Oil and water have been subjects of cognitive and geological conflict, and are presented as allegorical elements for technocratic stories made by conscious and subconscious motivations. The reference to water as a reflective and moving surface invites imagination of the etheric and heavenly realms of the sky present as hovering upon the images themselves. Inspired by Umberto Eco‘s ideas on late modernity, in Chronicles of a Liquid Society, the ways images are read as inverses within embodied cognitive connections, are realised within the viewer as malleable surfaces of memory. The viewing distances engage viewers’ senses (of stillness and movement) and of the ways appearances can obfuscate and reveal, expand or contract.
Making the conceptually impossible, possible always comes with sacrifice and costs that must be deeply considered. Philosophically, the predetermined cost of the digitisation of life itself poses a paradox on notions of intelligence. Ideas and even good intentions can be dangerous, creating larger issues from relative abundance. Therefore the references in my work maintain a relationship to reality. They are carefully framed to generate a sense of acceptance but not complicit compliance. The viewer is realized as the generative agent in self-understanding and action. From the root of serenity and beauty, humans subjectivity moves differently than from motives of confusion or conflation.
Appearance is often cognitively accepted as not the thing itself and yet the awareness of subconscious influences through the flood of images humanity is faced with today. The effects on the afferent nervous system of the body invites viewers into deeper contemplation. In this way Appearances, while often considered superficial or vain, are understood as being within the body. In this way we can relate to the real as a means to reflect on depth from within. The afferent nervous system of the body functions inwardly. Therefore this work is aimed to instead of excite, but calm and inspire contemplation on notions of subjectivity, resources, dominance, supremacy, simpatico, depth and surface.
Discernment between the surface and the depth, reaches an overlap through the imaginary, an in this series, the images which vary subtly, inviting quiet within the viewer. From this deep well of quiet, fantastic colours of resplendence invites awareness. In these works the notions of subjectivity, resources, dominance, supremacy, simpatico, depth and surface come into question. The apparatus of both photography and human sight are realized in a format evoking stillness and movement. Serenity becomes eery, beauty becomes hypnotic, and digital enhancements of film emulsions remind viewers of the symbolism of sand and time through granularity and smoothness. The iridescent wave forms of Oslofjord invite reflection on the relationship humans have with water, imagination, vision, and the sacred. In the image, fantasy can appear real and possible: oil and water mixing, the mutability in reflection, the eternal motive to capture and share. The Trânsito series reaches to understand Eros and screen technology in a pragmatic way. These questions about vision, nature and technology are about our relationships with life. The viewing distances engage viewers’ senses (of stillness and movement) and of the ways appearances can obfuscate and reveal, expand or contract.
The ethics of water, mineral resources, labor and other sacrifices are well documented to have irreversible costs. Through the apparatus of photography and vision, discernment between serenity and subjugation, the hypnotic and active invite openness instead of drawn conclusions. The digital enhancement of the film emulsions evoke granularity of sand, often symbolized relative to time.
The original film exposures of the iridescent wave forms appear considerably different than the works presented here. The complete series is to invite reflection on the relationship humans have with water, imagination, vision, and the sacred. By way of the the image, fantasy can appear real and possible: oil and water mixing, the mutability in reflection, the eternal motive to capture and share. The Trânsito series invites understandings of eros and effects of screen technology in a pragmatic way. Our human relationships with the connection to life and each other is what is at stake.
Furthermore, I learned through making these works as well as many others, I understand the field of viewing as holographic and, at least, metaphorically containing woven elements. What is seen is woven by the earth’s spinning, gravity, space, and the time runs through all these as well as our bodies. Therefore the images are also fibers of being, and forever altered the future of my work with the camera. Tactility relates to the senses, and the ability for art to open up the senses and invite remembering, feeling, moving into serenity and beauty brings me continued motivation to realise these works in new mediums and installed at several sites.
2018 Interview from Collective Oslo Q & A:
COL: How old are you and where are you from?
MA: 33 calendar years. I’ve had the good fortune to be from a loving family in Illinois.
COL: What do you do?
MA: In a comprehensive view: studying the proposed divide between the material and metaphysical, the dream and waking landscape. In concrete terms, a process of field recording with photographic exposures, sound, video, material, documenting and editing the documentation, studying history and the scientific properties of the materials, and representing literal translation of materials through sense phenomena through visual an installation art, privileging kinesthetic knowing. I think Descartes got things twisted and there are aspects about reality I want to make sure to emphasize, to bring value to. My goal has always been to make awe, wonder, hope, and beauty in meditative connection present in my work.
COL: How long have you been doing it?
MA: About 20 years. In 1999 I participated in a group field project, working with artists from neighboring towns to create a formal representation, carved with mowers into a field, visible from space. This was the first time I concretized the desire to work with vision, body, space, and landscape.
COL: What’s your first artistic memory?
MA: Tap, jazz, and ballet class in the gymnasium.
COL: What inspired you to pursue a career in art?
MA: Intrinsic motivation. The idea a career is a choice has always seemed like a post-modernist dream. There are things people can do, cannot do, and things we cannot help but do no matter what’s going on. The latter could be described as inspiration, or something else. The something else is a bit closer to the truth. If I could be inspired to be a programmer, electrical engineer, geologist, or medical doctor I would have done that. I’ve succumbed to some kind of motivation beyond a sense of I. It sounds religious, but it’s not. Terrible things happen when life goes out of its flow.
COL: Do you remember your first work of art?
MA: I don’t think I can. I can recall receiving local newspaper coverage as artist-of-the-month for a pseudo-cave drawing I made. Pseudo because it was paper stuffed with paper to create a visual impression of being a rock that I then drew stick human and animal figures and rudimentary shapes on. It was strange experience, because a collaged rendering of an underwater, shopping mall plan with an environmentally friendly, self-supporting ecosystem seemed more artistic than the “cave” renderings. I suppose what other people find interesting became interesting to me then: the sense of questioning “What on earth (is going on)?”
COL: If you could have any piece of art in history, what would you choose?
MA: I am greedy with art, so I would want to own the work of my contemporaries. The work they make boggles my mind. Space would be a primary necessity as my colleagues tend to work in various mediums.
COL: What is your relationship with fashion?
MA: A loving and deep relationship. Fashion has somehow been attributed to all kinds of vapid critique for being shallow. Fashion itself isn’t these things, fashion, of all things touches on life itself-the body, expression, and from a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective, the frequency of colors permeates what we can and cannot see. On a political and economic sense, the power of choice, to support and value labor or to do the easier thing and commodify and code the crap out of slave labor. I took an independent study in freshman year of high school and turned away from fashion because I was a wimp who couldn’t handle these weighty issues, but as the years go by, I am right back in this interest, with a
stronger stomach and more motivation to work through the changes.
COL: What does the word “collective” mean to you as an artist?
MA: For some reason I thought of communication and telegrams. I got to checking out the etymology of the word (one of my favorite things to do), and indeed, there is something about collective that is about transmission of communication for force. Nature has a way of gathering resources to creatively disseminate, and so collective feels wholly functional in terms of art. I’m also part of an international artist group, Ex Nihilo, formed by artists working literally on different continents in different countries. As a collective, we provide the support to each other necessary to keep doing our work.
COL: What is the best and worst thing about being an artist?
MA: The best thing is being honest-about everything and doing what’s in my heart to be done, working through the ideas, understanding where symphonies come from, reading texts and wasting very few moments if any on luxuries such as boredom. The worst thing is thinking I can ever explain how much work is involved and reminding people the value of labor. The rise of the human as an ideological individual perpetuates an archaic myth of lifestyle, which is about a flimsy narrative that somehow manages to perpetuate the ages. I still find this a “best part” in that being honest serves a performative role of describing. Describing work and life is really something that doesn’t have working hours.
COL: Who do you admire?
MA: This is an incredibly long list to start, and one I honestly should ask people if they mind if I bring up their names. My parents have worked hard and loved nonstop, 40 years married. I admire that. Most of my friends have moved countries, at least once, and that is considerable effort-admire that. Architects, designers, painters, people who keep doing what they do and say what’s on their mind no matter what is popular or not, I admire. Since things have gotten a bit extreme, I’ll say I admire that, save for the folk who have really gone nasty with ideological agendas. I don’t admire dogma but I don’t find heresy in times of radical political correctness to be a major offense. Authors are some of those I admire a great deal. Words are a tough medium to work in, and to attribute the ideas to their name, courageous. Sorry for dodging the question in the most direct sense, but I also want to respect the privacy of the people I admire-for I do admire them in ways words will fail anyway.
COL: What can we expect to see at this year’s festival?
MA: A lot of work pulled of elegantly. One of the striking features I’ve noticed in the Oslo Art and Fashion Festival is how much effort is made, how much beauty and value is given, and how enjoyable the entire experience is. The kind of effortlessness appearance always involves the most amount of work. I think if people can’t see it, they can feel it somehow by looking. Or at least I can. I can’t wait to see the rest of the festival.
COL: Who are you excited to see?
MA: The artists! I read their histories, see their work-but as hinted, artists are working all the time. It’s a rare occasion to actually get to see the artists themselves, and express the appreciation for their work. And, my friends. So many fun evenings and relationships are neglected from working. The festival is a chance to see awesome people I’ve missed for
weeks or months.
COL: How important is the ability to expose your art to you and your creative field?
MA: Essential. Making for myself is about as interesting, to me, as eating alone. An activity done out of survival necessity, but really the joy is connection. From a sense of survival in the time of value/commodity exchange.
STOP BATH, 2017, multimedia installation, images from Memoria Technica, single-channel video, audio composition. The film is part of the larger body of work: Virtual Material exploiting several aspects of photography while engaging in phenomenological subjects with water, stones, forests, technology, vision, body, perception, ethics, joy, and care. The Virtual Material body of work includes: Trânsito, Teknovisuell Experience, Sonidos, Fleuressence, Relatively Dimensional Still-Life, 1919 in 2017, videos, installations, as prints, projections, wall coverings, acrylic prints, garments. Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com Stop Bath looks at Lacan’s concepts of flickering and screen memories, and the structures of narrative through the elements of nature and a digitally cast coloured vision. This video and those found on this website are included in the Videokunstarkivet, administered by the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, Norway.
October 2017: Thursday, 12 Oct & Friday 13 Oct: kl. 17 – 20 Saturday 14 Oct kl. 12 – 20
Lekter’n, Stranden 3, Aker Brygge 0250 Oslo, Norway. kart/map
Exhibition supported by Epson & Interfoto Norge
Interview from Collective Oslo Fashion
Mari Amman (b. 1984) is an American-born artist and photographer, living in Norway since 2015. Her work is realized in mediums of images, installation, drawing, painting, video, performance, and traveling objects.
Rooted in disciplines of dance, painting, drawing, piano, voice, Amman has been making solo and group projects, working with land, space, light, and photography since 1999. Theories in Chinese medicine influence her work navigating themes of beauty, sense, feeling.
Awards and scholarships include: 2015 First place by the jury, Imagining New Eurasia exhibition in Gwangju, South Korea. 2015 Woelffer scholarship and 2014 academic merit award from Otis College of Art and Design, 2013 Academic scholarship for social psychology study in Matsuyama Japan, 2009 Historic Pathways winner from Indiana State University.
Question Answer:
U: Who are you and what do you do?
MA: I am Mari Amman; I make art considering the site and utilizing materials and images of photography, including light, video, sound, and performance of body.
U: What characterizes your work?
MA: Sensory dynamics in the nature of desire. Human, felt experiences are important in a bottom-up approach to understanding versus a concept-to-completion mode of working. Beauty services the process in various forms as elements of nature are always in the work.
U: How would you describe your personal style?
MA: Based on what I am learned about style I would say everything must always be in service of dynamic movement.
U: How do your own experiences influence your work?
MA: Synesthesia is something I thought everyone has but later came to find out, they certainly do not. I use my sensory sensitivities and route them through a process of omission relative to the site, and to a history I am interested in daisy chaining with.
U: What will you be showing at the uncontaminated festival?
MA: I’ll be exposing ways of gazing upon a horizon to consider the perception of motion through time. This sense of temporality as a form of continuous movement and how that relates to bodily senses.
U: What do you want to communicate through your work?
MA: Reverence as an important tool in agency. Trade economics are sometimes spoken of as a force in opposition of life, and in the sense of hurriedness or performance anxiety, one could certainly become at odds with their lives and relationships. My work is demanding in a subtle way of slowing down, that most to gain by giving in to what is working through choices with what’s there. My hope is locating an orientation of intrinsic desire and value-to go forward from an aesthetic experience with an embodied sense of wholeness.
U: Do artists of today have some kind of social responsibility?
MA: Responsibility is such a rich space for conversation. Artists have the responsibility to keep making work, and to start talking with people in a way that doesn’t create an intellectual paywall.
U: What does uncontaminated mean for you?
MA: Uncontaminated is an idea about an ideal. For example, the idea of blue blood or a form of purity that in reality is an impossibility. For example, mud is still always dirt. That kind of aspirational dreamstate feels a lot like a mental space one could achieve through traditional forms of meditation.
U: What is the most important thing in your life?
MA: Being alive.
U: How do you feel right now?
MA: I feel like having a proper bath. Where are all the bathtubs here (in Oslo)?
U: If you could change one thing in the world today, what would it be?
MA: Remind people the generative quality of cooperation and the value of a well-considered no.
U: What are the main reasons you are joining us for the festival this year?
MA: I am interested in art and fashion and want to connect with people to learn about what they desire-what brings people out of their homes to connect with each other in public spaces.
U: Who or what do you value as a great inspiration for you creatively?
MA: Opposing points of view from books, family, and friends. Paying more attention to noticing phenomena in nature. How many different ways can something I think I’ve seen a million times reveal something new about itself?
U: Can you elaborate on an important moment in your life where you experienced a big change, chose to make one or another event which altered your way of thinking or your approach to creativity?
MA: Deciding to be the author of my time, which is a never ending dance I still trip over my own footing with. After decades of training, the red thread is making something out of the desire to make and create value in the satisfaction of the making process.
U: How does digital and social media affect or inspire your life and creations?
MA: Being prone to affective disorders, I really try to keep an arms distance with the broadcast version of life. I wonder a lot about the ways in which the intimacy of viewing a distant life up close affects psychology and if there could be some kind of epigenetic change relative to the emotional change in media technology.
U: What do you define art?
MA: Art requires discipline, something that is worked on by an artist and through a diligent practice and vision work is made. Is Duchamp’s urinal art today? No, that was an artefact as a testament of a notion that somehow art is one thing or another-that art is about ideas or feelings or one thing or the other. Art is art. To conflate art as anything other than the word itself services rhetoric or belief-both of which I am interested in being free from. I have a great faith in people and the ability to know. Art and artefact can have a close relationship but they are different. I as one among many people practicing art today may be in a practice of making artefacts more than art, and that’s something I’m always looking closely at within my work as well. Does this diminish what artists are making; I don’t think so. I do find the conversation valuable moving forward.
U: What is your definition of artistic freedom?
MA: Discipline. Having gone through a phase of coming undone, and going in many directions, I’m in a process of refining.
U: Is there a difference for you between art and commercial/commissioned work?
MA: Commissioned work has always been easier for me, to work in a dialogue. Making art for myself entails far more responsibility which then requires a lot more time. A few months at a residency can accomplish a lot, but it is still not the same as having years to work on art.
U: Do you struggle to find artistic freedom in the span between commissioned work and your personal needs to express yourself?
MA: Personal expression is not an area I struggle with or work with in my art.
U: What do you aspire to? In the near future? In life in general?
MA: Aspire is a great word. I wouldn’t go panting after doing what I do though. The question I’m often asking myself now is what is truly essential and can I live with today, tomorrow, and 50 years from now.
U: How do you feel art and fashion intervene?
MA: Aesthetics and function. The formal qualities of how something looks conveys a great deal of ideas. Aesthetics as signs of ethical choices isn’t a new concept. There’s a lot of value in considering what aesthetic choices are relative to fashion, and then wondering the function, does this work. And if it doesn’t work, ie can the body stay warm, does the systems circulate healthfully, this kind of questions have a lot to do with the intersection of art and fashion. The head and body need not be severed from the other, you know?
U: What is a great example of a fashion art collaboration in your view?
MA: I cannot look at fashion and not see art. When I see art, I have a desire to somehow become the art I see. I have seen so much incredible and daring fashion and art these past years, I am afraid I can’t call out anything specific right now.
U: Where do you think art and fashion is heading in our digital age?
MA: People are demanding more from each of their purchases. Less is not more now. More in fewer items is the thing. A lot of the digital future is already available today but not yet on a wider scale. Someone once advised me to invest in black clothing, that this pigment would become rare in the future. For some reason this stuck with me.