A friend called Maks, sent me the site for an artist who creates love interactions, love injections and love related art. It is inspiring.
Streetlove: “Creating an interaction between people and love represented by objects, words or paintings on the streets, in order to make people thing and rethink their relationships, their own situation and love itself.”
In cooperation with photographer Hanse Cora.
| “The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response. Suddenly it is clear what you have to do. For a brief moment it seems wonderfully easy to live and love and create breathtaking things. In this section we have archived some of the work that has commanded us in this way. In a sense, these are assignments — in the same way that the ocean gives the assignment of breathing deeply, and kissing instructs us to stop thinking.” |
“When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.” He is the architect of the notion of “flow” — the creative moment when a person is completely involved in an activity for its own sake.
posed at http://www.greendreammedia.com/2009/09/24/2260/
An interview with Maia Iotzova on the Monday Morning After Show
hosted by Liz Pieries.
My understanding is constantly evolving. Below are some general thoughts on what I have come to learn about my role as an artist.
I think in recent years, Western society has managed ecosystems and media in a similar way. The general trend has been to manage nature/media so it will deliver results that are beneficial for the managers. In TV, success is measured by viewership. In nature management decisions are taken based on what they will yield for humans in terms of natural resources for industry or recreation. It is a management model.
As can be seen in the media world the management model is crumbling and the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. The web has allowed everyone to become a maker and a publisher. Social media has allowed ordinary people to become celebrities.
Recent technological developments have put to question the ‘special’ role of a creator, but have also opened new and exciting possibilities to creating art through community collaboration.
How do I create collaborative art that is not just adding to the digital media noise that is overwhelming all of us? I do feel that an artist has a similar place within a democratized, easily accessible landscape of media as a human has within an ecosystem. She is a steward, but not in a controlling way or a way that makes her more important. Her responsibilities and functions are simply different. The question that a steward asks is not: how can I manage something so it will yield results for me, bring me more viewers, make me more popular, give me commercial success. Not because those questions are not important but because they are not the motivation and the core responsibility of what a steward does. To me they are the byproduct of a good stewardship.
To me the core of good stewardship is listening to the inherent intelligence that already exists within each entity. My actions are not aimed at telling something what to be, but to listening to what it already is, and entering a collaboration, in which my function is to help its essence to blossom.
As a community collaborator, the artist plays a vital role in the society of makers. This collaboration to me has to be a symbiotic relationship that is a conversation between the artist and the community, inspires both of them to grow, and in a way is fluid and ever changing like a dance.
I have been searching for the best ways to apply this approach to my art practice.
The structure I am experimenting with right now is to create an art piece (film or new media) where I have creative freedom to experiment with new perspective and to look at an issue in depth from my point of view. (ie. the documentary Green Dream) I use this art piece to set the tone, spark a discussion and inspire community collaboration. The next stage is where I use my creativity to make a framework that allows for the community to engage in the dialog and carry it further (ie. The Community Mapping Project) In this stage I work in the capacity of a media facilitator of the community dialog.
Green Dream Thank You Card from Maia Iotzova on Vimeo.
I continue on my Green Dream journey and you have been important part of that. Nothing gets done in a vacuum and while at points I have felt like I am alone, in those times something usually happens to remind me that there have been so many people who have helped in direct and not so direct but very important ways. Who when my energy started depleting, have taken the time to encourage and show me they believed in this journey. I would like to Thank You and to remind you that you are part of this and your wonderful energy and enthusiasm, feedback and financial or services support has been intrinsic to this process.
The residency at Banff is almost over.
It was an amazing, inspiring and recharging experience, which I shared with 10 others. We often joked that we are an almost perfect family. It has been an intense month and I am sad to leave.
Almost Perfect Residency at the Banff New Media Institute
I would encourage you to look at the work these people are doing.
From top left to bottom right
Florian Hollerweger – www.flo.mur.at
Maia Iotzova – www.greendreammedia.com
Laura Silver – www.laurasilver.com
Robert Damphousse – www.robertjd.com
Jesse Scott – www.memelab.ca
Amos Latteier – www.latteier.com
Sarah Shamash
Nikki Pugh – www.npugh.co.uk
Andrew Roth - www.aranarproductions.com/main.html
Austin Angelozzi – www.nanochild.ca
Christopher Quine – www.sneakerbike.com
As I was writing this, I had a beautiful view to the sunset behind the mountains.
A peak into my process.
The way I work is by creating diagrams that help me conceptualize what is important to me and the ideas that are central to the project. I usually tape them to my wall and start working out my process from them. I though it might be interesting for some of you to follow that paper trail. Here are snippets of the thoughts and ideas behind the Community Media project called I know a place..., which is still in development.
The first stage of it will be released soon at the open studios in the Banff Centre, JPL 212 this Thursday, November 27, 3-7pm.
And let’s not forget my two major inspirations in the last month.
Have you ever biked down the street during the autumn months, feeling immersed in the beautiful colours of the overarching trees. You look up and your eyes bathe in the warm pallet of the passing leafs, which contrast the cool blue sky. If you have, you will understand why I wanted to capture this feeling on camera.
But as I have discussed in previous posts, experiencing nature in real life is very different than filming it and translating that feeling to the viewer.
I needed a bike cam, an improv one, that I can put on my higher quality beater bike and roll through the streets capturing the serenity of the passing trees in the city landscape.
I went down to my local video rental store ProVision, who have always been great and very responsive to my impulsive experimental urges. I was just looking for advice on the gear I might need.
But, Steven one of the owners of ProVision, was intrigued by the idea of finding the best way to mount the camera on my bike. So he offered to help me during the weekend, do some practical tests with me, and take pictures for future reference.
Sorry folks Geek Out Alert
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. We spent more then 3 hrs. rigging the camera on different spots of the bike and testing to see how much shake we got.
The camera mounted on the back of the bike. This option made it hard for me to sit. Not so ideal, because it takes away from your comfort and stability and stresses you out about trashing your expensive camera.
Mounting the camera on the back rack. The rack is not very stable and the footage was quite shaky.
This one, probably worked the best. Though the contraption got in the way of the handle bars a bit, and steering was tricky. The shake was minimal and the image was pretty good.
This was another version that worked well. It had an arm to support the camara. I ended up using this rig and pushing the bike instead of riding it for some of the shots. It gave me almost a dolly cart stability.
I thought I would share my Art Philosophy, especially in the light of Steven Harper’s comments on his government’s cuts to the arts.
Art like everything else does not exist in a vacuum. One of my favorite quotes is of a famous American painter and humanist Robert Hentry ‘Art when really understood is the province of every human being, it is not an outside extra thing. It is simply a question of doing anything well.’ (The Art Spirit, Robert Henry)
In our modern culture and social ecology we have compartmentalized art. Similar to our interactions with nature we have put fences around it, isolated it, trimmed it and controlled it. We often see it as a separate entity that an educated echelon can discuss and understand and do not see it existing as an integral part of our everyday social ecology. (This kind of attitude is quite evident when we hear comments like the recent one made by Canada’s Prime Minister Steven Harper)
Or there is another scenario; we appreciate art for the purpose it serves to us. We want it to have a function in our society, want it to be a tool, carry a message, be propaganda. We are not concerned with the art and its quality on its own. It only serves a function that we can rationalize.
In a way art like a tree exists for its own sake. But in that process the tree is not separate, on the contrary it is an inseparable part of an ecosystem. A good art peace is like a strong well-developed tree. It radiates a healthy quality of artistic achievement and it is inseparable part of the social ecology and its existence contributes to the processes in the forest and all beings in it.
Often the benefits and function of art are perceived, but once we start rationalizing them we inevitably simplify and compartmentalize them. That is why we search for the purpose in art, what is the point of it? We know as much as we know the point in anything else that exists. We can only guess. We might revere and enjoy a forest without ever be educated in ecology and the scientific processes that take place in it. We cannot rationalize and assign a purpose to everything, when it works, purpose becomes superfluous.
The problem is that our governments and social understanding right now work based on rationalizing and seeing purpose in a scientific way. So how do you justify something that has more elusive purpose? I will just tell you this: When we learn about the past, the dawn of man, the dark ages, the height of civilization, what do we study? What do we use as examples of those times? … Art. Since the beginning of our existence art has been what has distinguished us as humans, as cultures and as societies.
Why does our society value Art’s function in the past but completely devalue it in the present?