A Report on Activity supported by the RCA/C.D.Howe Graduation Award

Susanna Barlow

IntroductionIt is with gratitude that I reflect upon my creative research trip to Europe that would not have been possible without the generous support from the RCA/C.D. Howe Graduation Award. From July 1st, to October 10th 2014 I visited Austria, Italy, Spain, Germany, Scotland and England where I engaged deeply with field of visual arts. I participated in group exhibitions and live performances, worked as an artist in resident and visiting artist, had studio visits with practicing artists, visited museums, collections and artist run centers, and met with representatives from multiple universities as a prospective MFA candidate. In this report I aim to provide a window into my experience abroad and the role it played in my growth as an artist by highlighting some key experiences in a chronological fashion.

Austria

Above: Me, in the intaglio printmaking studio at the University of Applied Arts, after a long day of printing.

In Vienna, Austria I worked in the printmaking studios at the University of Applied Arts. This opportunity came about through professor Michael Schneider. We met at the Southern Graphics Conference in San Francisco where I exhibited a selection of my prints at an open portfolio session. He expressed interest in my work. I was in the midst of planning this trip to Europe, so we discussed the possibility of adding a Vienna portion to my itinerary, where I would practice printmaking and get to know the rich art scene there. This is exactly what happened. The printmaking studio at the university was a joy to work at. I got to use historic intaglio presses and other printmaking tools that I had only seen in text books. In printmaking there are many ways of accomplishing the same end result, and each school tends to keep to one system. For example, at the University of Alberta where I was trained, we laminate our photo intaglio plates using a dry process under pressure. At this print studio in Vienna, they use a wet process, which I found, yields more predictable results. Learning different ways of doing things deepens my knowledge of the medium and allows me to work with a greater flexibility. I have since shared this alternative process with my peers that use photo intaglio techniques through social media and providing technical demonstrations. Working in this studio forced me to hone in on my technical skills, which was a necessary

Above: Process work from Viena. Photo-Intaglio prints on Japanese paper.

push in my growth after graduating from an institution with two full time technical staff. Throughout my three weeks in the studio I developed positive working relationships with students. We shared ideas and offered feedback on one another’s work. It was insightful to learn about the European art education system, the ways in which it is different, and how it is transforming with the global trend. It seems that theirs is characterized by independence with the prerogative of learning how to be the best artist one can be, contrary to western models that seem to lead students on a trajectory towards further academia and teaching. Becoming immersed in the contemporary art scene was one of the major contributors to my professional development in Austria. I had been in contact with Georg Lebzelter, artist and president of Künstlerhaus, an exciting Art museum in Vienna. He had visited the university of Alberta earlier that year to exhibit at the University gallery and give an artist talk. He gave me a tour of the museum, and we discussed upcoming projects that I could potentially be apart of. The current exhibition at the time of our tour was a sampling of student work from various art schools in Vienna. I was impressed at their seamless integration of new media and programming, especially at the undergraduate level. The quality of the work reflects the different education system they were raised in as artists.

Above: Detail of one of the historic intaglio presses I used at the University.

My former supervisor connected me with Michael Werger, a successful Austrian artist who I became good friends with throughout my stay. He showed me around Vienna and Salzburg, introducing me to a wide variety of small, more grass roots galleries that I would not have otherwise found on my own. Through this introduction I got to know the fabric of Venetian art in greater depth. I went as his guest to the opening reception and dinner in Salzburg for artists, curators and art writers involved in the production of a major group exhibition he was a art of. I had engaging conversations with curators and artists whom I have since stayed in contact with. Other artitsts at this event include Ai Weiwei, William Kentridge, and Rachael Whiteread, all of whom I have been long interested in their creative practice. I learned about how the European art scene functions outside of academia, and hope to involve myself more with it in the future.

Italy I visited the Architectural Biennial in Venice and was inspired by the overlap between this and visual arts, and their shared themes in cultural theory. I also spent time at the Scuola Internazionale Di Grafica, a major print studio and gallery in the heart of Venice. I met with the director and learned about many different ways of being involved, for future reference. I became friends with the international community of artists that surrounds the Scuola. For example, the artist in resident at the time, Majla Zeneli, a Berlin-based artist and gallery owner. We later met up in Berlin and hope to collaborate on a project in the near future. I spent a week in the countryside near Citta Della Pieve with my former supervisor and member of Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, Liz Ingram. This was an important week for me to be able to process what I had been learning in the wake of being introduced to an entirely different art sphere, and what it all meant in terms of my trajectory. It was especially helpful speaking with Liz, as she knows my practice well and is versed in contemporary art on an international scale. We went to classical music concerts in historic stone churches and courtyards, this ambiance inspired me to consider sound in my installation work.

Above: Believing is Seeing #2, #1 (left to right), 2007. 135 x 103 cm each, C-print.By Kyung Chun at Galeria Nuble in Santander, Spain.

Spain

Artist/Art Historian, Sonia Higuera and I met in Santander, Spain. She provided insight into the contemporary situation for artists in light of the economic crisis, which was especially relevant to me as I am motivated to spend more time in Spain in an artistic capacity. The photographic work of Kyungwoo Chun at Galeria Nuble in Santander made a lasting impression on me. He photographs visually impaired subjects with a long exposure, so the faces were blurred to a comparable state of how a blind person might perceive form. The presence of these figures was phenomenal, speaking to the subjects’ identity in reflexive way. In my youth, I went to Spain on a 3-month language exchange through Alberta Learning. My host family and I have remained close. I spent three weeks with them, and took much of this time to read and prepare for my upcoming residency in Germany. My creative research practice explores the ways in which

human identity and relationships shift according to the way people relate to the environment. I draw on my field research, political theory, and anthropology in investigating these themes. One of the writings I spent a lot of time with in Spain, was Vibrant Matter: A political Ecology of things by Political theorist, Jane Bennett. She proposes an ontological shift of non-human matter from passive to actant, which poses a possible theoretical platform to investigate the nature of this affective environmental-human relation that I wish to explore. She highlights the role of matter in public life and gives it voice, promoting a greater awareness and sensitivity in our intervention into this ecology. Theodor Adorno’s method of Negative Dialectics points to the aspect of an object which evades our ability to define it. This undefined residue provides fertile grounds for a creative project to unfold. Both Adorno and Bennett are essential in investigating substance between human and non-human; similarly, I aim to imaginatively articulate this interstitial space. Encountering these writings had a significant impact on artistic projects to follow.

Germany I worked as an Artist in Resident at Museum Köster Bentlage near the town of Rheine in Western Germany. This is a destination place for artists internationally, so we frequently met other artists coming through to exhibit, host a workshop, or do research themselves. I lived and worked with three other artists for one month. We stayed in an old stone building flanked by studios, a gallery in front and a cow pasture behind. It was truly ideal! I went on daily walks for inspiration and reflection through the surrounding forest and farmers fields. The landscape played an important role in the work I produced there. I felt privileged to have my sole task to be creative research. This month was the most creatively fruitful month I have experienced to date. During the first weekend we were there, I met Rob Sweere, a Dutch performance artist and public sculptor. My meeting with him was influential on my methodology throughout the residency to follow. We share similar goals in our work, and I have become a big fan of his. He gave me a critique on my recent works and encouraged me towards a more embodied practice. He stressed the importance of trusting the creative process, my training, and letting the art come first above all else. I attribute much of the freedom I felt in making art there to my inaugural conversation with Sweere.

Above: A still from the video documentation of my performance: Hay Field Trace

Above: An inside perspective of the performance.

I will outline a selection of six projects I worked on during the residency:

1. Ems Line: This project stemmed out of a desire to invite non-human elements as collaborator in my work. Two of my colleagues, Taryn Kneteman and Gabrielle Pare, and I floated down the river on logs, connected had-to-foot in a linear fashion. We remained passive, allowing the force of the water to compose our formation. I had video assistants film the performance from a bridge above. I see our bodies as a line drawn by the water. In a way, this piece, and much of my recent work, asserts a posture of non-dominance over the landscape.

2. Hay field Trace: The inception of this project happened on a walk throughout the extensive trails through the forest and farmlands surrounding our residence. I was drawn to the traces of farm machinery on the fields. One hay field in particular caught my attention at a stage in the harvest where the hay had been cut and distributed in neat rectilinear rows, but not yet collected. In the performance, I lay between the cut hay and its roots and inched along on my stomach, tracing the lines sculpted by the machinery. My body was not visible from the outside, so it appeared as a mass of moving hay.

3. The Luma Project: The Luma Project is a publically engaged project consisting of site-specific paintings. I illuminated sections of trees with biodegradable gold paint that I made. I took on the mark making vocabulary of the existing growth (moss, fungi, lichen, insect paths, etc.) in applying the paint. I selected areas of the tree that revealed its interiority, with the vital materialist objective of giving it voice. Hopefully the golden composition would entice pedestrians into spending more time with the qualities of the tree, and become aware of it’s complex structure in a new way.

Opposite, Above and Left: Details from The Luma Project. In the Forested grounds of Museum Klöster Bentlage, Rheine, Germany.

4. Tracing Streams: This is an experimental performance I enacted in a creek that divided a farmer’s field from the forest. I saturated my hair in pure gold pigment and lay down in the creek, as the water slowly washed away the color in a shimmering trail out from my body. I had an assistant video document the piece from above. I found the gold stream to be a conceptually rich pairing with the traces of fertilizers and other chemicals used on the crops that seep into ground water systems and drain out through these waterways.

5. Cow Studies: While in Vienna, I visited video artist Josef Dabernig’s retrospective at MUMOK (Museum of Modern Art). He cinematically navigates spaces in a focused, formalist and thorough way. We have similar compositional tendencies, dislocating the subject by cropping. Dabernig’s films made an imprint on my visual memory, and in part, inspired me to do comprehensive video and photo studies of the cows that grazed in front of my bedroom window for the month. I am interested in how the less we can identify a part of the body in an image, or the specific animal subject, the more we anthropomorphize and relate to it.

Above: Still from the video documentation of the performance: Tracing StreamsOpposite and Following two pages: Photo-based Studies of Cows

6. In to the Woods: In this piece, I buried myself beneath fallen leaves and forest floor mulch beside a popular running/biking trail. I chose a location with a natural depression in order for the presence of my body to only be evident upon movement. I laid, breathed, and moved naturally over the course of an afternoon. While this piece functions as a live performance, I also transposed it into a video installation for an exhibit, Ich Gebe In Den Wald at Klöster Bentlage, Rheine, Germany. For the video installation, I filled a room with dried leaves and projected a looped video document of the performance from the floor up. The leaves were arranged in mounds that both mimicked the landscape within the video and interfered with the projected space. The video document of this performance is viewable on my personal website: www.suzibarlow.ca As a result of the my work in Ich Gebe In Den Wald, Creative Director of Klöster Bentlage, Jans-Cristoph Tonigs invited me to exhibit two print works in an exhibition he was curating Grafik Edition Bentlage, at Arbeitca, entstanden in der Druckwokstatt Bentlage, in Kirn, Germany. When the exhibition comes down in December 2014, the two prints will be accepted into the Museums permanent collection. German artists Daniela Schlüter and Stefan Demming recently received grants from the German government to produce a series of six events under the project name Luurn Bi De Buern. These events brought together artists, politicians, farmers, philosophers, veterinarians and the general public to engage with the question: what will agriculture look like in Germany in 50 years? The timing of these events were critical, as important political discussions were taking place simultaneously concerning the signing of a new trade agreement between the European Union and the United States of America. The two main components to these events were an art exhibition and panel discussion. Half of the events took place on working farms and the other half in art galleries. Schlüter and Demming also held creative workshops on collaboration for students in advance of the events. For example, a class from the Fine Art Academy in Münster, learned about the collaborative process and proceeded to carve a large format woodblock together. My role was to be part of the team who inked up and printed these plates using a tractor at the event. This event was an important one for me to witness at this stage in my career development. I also wish to lead an interdisciplinary politically engaged practice. This event was the first of

Above: Installation view of Into the Woods at Exhibit Ich Gebe In Den Wald at Museum Klöster Bentlage.Below and Opposite: Printing woodblocks at the event: Luurn Bi De Buern in Münster, Germany.

its kind that I have experienced. It certainly opened the door to a new realm of possibilities. Directly following the residency I went to Düsseldorf to see world-renowned print artist, Chris-tian Baumgartner’s exhibit at Museum Kunst Palast. I attended a tour by Baumgartner and was able to speak with her about her process afterwards. Her work had a significant impact on my early print work, so it was an honor to meet her, experience her work in person and gain a new level of insight into her practice. I then spent a week at the rural studio and home of artists Daniela Schlüter and Stefan Demming. There I carved a large scale woodblock of dairy cows, similar compositionally to the photographic cow studies shown earlier in this report. This piece of work is scheduled to show with the rest of their Luurn Bi De Buern events and exhibitions. Stefan Demming is primarily a video artist. He is currently working on a series of documen-tarian style short films surrounding agriculture in Ger-many. During my stay, I worked as his video and sound assistant in documenting the harvest. He knew I

had a keen interest in growing in these two mediums, so he generously taught me about what goes into gathering high quality video and sound from an event. Before leaving Germany, I had the opportunity to stay in Berlin for a few days. One of my highlights was visiting Keystone Editions Studio. This is a profes-sional lithography studio that publishes artists. They are recognized leaders in the medium, known for exper-imentation. The directors, employees, current artist, and I had lunch together and discussed one another’s current projects. I have not had substantial previous exposure to the practice of publishing in printmaking, so it was valuable to gain perspective in that area.

The United KingdomI had eleven days in Scotland and England at the end of my trip. With this time, I had the objective of spending a lot of time absorbing contemporary art, and to get a sense for what it might be like to do my MFA in the UK. I was fortunate to be a guest at a lecture and

studio critique at Goldsmiths University in London, in addition to meeting with current MFA candidates. I met with students and tutors at the Royal College of Art and Design and Chelsea in London, Glasgow School of Art and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD-University of Dundee) in Scotland. By the end of my stay in the UK I was well acquainted with their academic system. I also have an accurate idea of what to expect from these schools, to an extent that I could not have gleaned from a distance. In my opinion, there is no replacement for meeting with people and experiencing a place first hand. I will consider some of these schools as I apply for MFA programs this year, as well as future involvement in other capacities. While in London, I visited the Whitechapel Gallery, TATE Britain, TATE Modern, White Cube Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, ACME, Serpentine Museum, Maureen Paley Gallery, Herald Street Gallery, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Cell Project Space Gallery, The Approach Gallery and Chisenhale Gallery. Seeing a wide breadth of current exhibitions in such an international art centre as London, helps me contextualize my practice in the contemporary moment at large.

In Conclusion This creative research trip provided me the opportunity to apply the skills I had learned during my undergraduate education as well as acquire many new ones. I gained confidence from having to work independently at different studios. I also am more acquainted with how systems work within the European and international art scene, and am starting to figure out how I might involve myself with it. It seems to me this knowledge must be learned through experience. This trip provided ample opportunity for experiential learning. Drawing on different environments affected my artwork substantially. In Germany I began performing outside for the first time. In the past I had constructed environments within studio and gallery spaces. I plan to continue working site specifically within the public sphere. In fact, the proposals I am currently submitting for funding and graduate school applications are a continuation of my creative research abroad. I have an expanded view of what an artistic practice can look like; yet have a more focused idea of where I see myself headed within that. One of the most valuable results of this trip is the relationships I developed everywhere I visited. I now have an international network of artists and art industry professionals who I look forward to staying in contact with and supporting one another through our creative endeavors.

Thank you.