Video-artist Kim Engelen

W E E K L Y M U S I N G S
Netherlands->to Spain->to USA->now in Sweden
www.kimengelen.com
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London/UK, week 4, 2012

Question to myself, should I put the round mirror sticker on the face? I have to experiment with it how it will look and what should be the exact size and shape. I am thinking to use in this case black and white for the picture. So that the little mirror will ‘blend in’ to the image. In order that at first you probably don’t see it, but when you take a closer look, you will stare at yourself.
Yes; I want ‘you’ to be there. I want you to be part of the design, so that you are not only spectator but also author and subject at the same time. The sticker will be stuck on the head, it is my head but it becomes hidden. So you can identify easier and see your face in the face of the protagonist. Because you look with your eyes (in your face) and thus see your face when you look into the small mirror. Also it could give an element of mystery to the picture. Who is under the sticker you might wonder. If you look at more then one photo from the series you probably recognize the same figure in the pictures. The mirror could become the bridge between you and me, we become one. We migrate into each other. We are both present at the bridge. Photo’s last on even after death of the portrayed person, but you are alive when you are looking into the little mirror.

Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Tower Bridge No. 4, London, UK, 2012.JPG, 2012

3 days ago

Netherlands, Week 3, 2012

Eyes from a Dutch girl, Neither/Nor, Either/Or
Gender/Genre, Where do we go from here?
What is, what is, what is? A twist in your history.
Tripping over a shadow will be the title.


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Golden Gate Bridge No.3, 2010

1 week ago

Netherlands, Week 2, 2012

Amartya Sen I am down with you. My current mosaic: culture lover, world citizen, daughter, European, Occidental, Swedish resident, student, autonomous artist, Dutchman, friend, language-lover, individualist, thinker, secularist, ex-drugs user, democrat, woman with modern tendencies and conservatively set, liberal minded, progressive, interest in Humanism and Sufi, cosmopolitan, transcendental meditater, sportive; ex-Taekwondo, -swimmer, -jogger, -ballet, -dancer, email addict with a roman catholic background, forgiver, believer in God and unbeliever of religions, believer of love and freedom, third wave feminist supporter, defender of the rights of liberty, Human! 


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Oakland Bay Bridge (known locally as the Bay Bridge), 2010


2 weeks ago

Netherlands, Week 1, 2012

CPS Periodical #1 ,
The vessel, the chamber, On having a studio space (or not),
My ‘contribution’; Word count: 501

Open letter to the CPS group,

There is something that I would like to get of my chest. This could be a bit difficult, since at times there is a form of hostility in our Critical and Pedagogical studies group. So let me first start of by saying that I have respect for you as individuals and artists and that I see something wonderful in each one of you. You are part of my learning experience here at Malmö Art Academy and your remarks and questions and different standpoints during my MFA Critical Studies and Pedagogical studies-classes I highly appreciate. Because it enhances my own point of view and way of looking and in my opinion the more viewpoints the more deep knowledge on a subject/object can go.

What makes me write this letter is the current green paper hanging on the outside of the door, crossing the words ‘Critical Studies’ and now saying ‘Clitoris study buds’. When ‘Clitoris study buds’ was mentioned after one of our feminist classes I in fact also had to laugh, I thought it was a funny word twist. But immediate after I laughed I felt that it was disrespectful to our fellow male peers and (invisibly) I felt ashamed. And now to my dismay this verbal joke has been put as a label on the outside of the door of our shared CPS room, with no names from who(m) it is from. With the result that students, teachers, staff and visitors in the school could think we from CPS are naming ourselves ‘clitoris study buds’. This I personally reject.

Also to me this note is demeaning the MFA Critical Studies and Pedagogical studies that I signed up for. I have to and want to work hard for this Study, and this forced buddy group bonding works aversive for me. Deconstructing this note in my mind I wonder if it could be that this marking is about territory or power? Because then there is something else I want to add. This sign makes me conscious that this common space is  e v e r y b o d i e s  and thus also my working space. In the first semester most of the times I worked in the edit room or at home because I could not concentrate and work in the CPS space.

And now having holidays and being back in the Netherlands and being around loved ones I see it more clear. This is voluntary adult education, I see you as my peers, which I want to respect and learn something from. My suggestion for our common workspace would be that we create a shared room where everyone respects each other. That means if you want to put signs, marks, communication or other forms of communication on the outside of the door the sign it with your own name(s).

You can call me if you want to talk about it, my skype is; kimengelen

Thank you for your attention.

Kind regards,
Kim


0100101110101101.org, Life Sharing, 2000-2003

3 weeks ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 52, 2011

I see my art as music. Not in the sense that art is music (although it can be). But in the sense that music has no boundaries. Is has no limits to the receivers. The texts and sounds may go wherever you allow them to go. And physically it may go everywhere where it can be received the best possible way, and this can be for example in an artist studio, a museum, a catalog, magazine, internet or on the streets. Whoever likes the music or wants to hear the music is welcomed by the musician to listen to their music. This is how I see my art as well, my art can be experienced by everybody who wants this. Around me I hear that some artists want their art to be judged by ‘star’ artists or art connoisseurs, or that they make art for people who have read the same books. No, I want to believe that art has no rules and is free. To me it is a wonderful experience when art touches the heart, and at the same time stimulates the mind. I guess the artist unique way of looking at the world and their soul is what makes art special (to me).


Lydia Anne McCarthy, ‘Self’ from the Shadows and Reflections series, 48x60”, Digital C-print, 2011

1 month ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 51, 2011

Intellectual doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent, intelligent doesn’t necessarily mean knowledgeable, knowledgeable doesn’t necessarily mean hardworking, hardworking doesn’t necessarily mean obedient, obedient doesn’t necessarily mean honest, honest doesn’t necessarily mean good, good doesn’t necessarily mean happy, happy doesn’t necessarily mean great, great doesn’t necessarily mean strong, strong doesn’t necessarily mean positive, positive doesn’t necessarily mean love, love doesn’t necessarily mean faultlessness, faultlessness doesn’t necessarily mean wise, wise doesn’t necessarily mean ideal, ideal doesn’t necessarily mean emotional, emotional doesn’t necessarily mean weak, weak doesn’t necessarily mean defenselessness, defenselessness doesn’t necessarily mean peacefulness, peacefulness doesn’t necessarily mean free, free doesn’t necessarily mean calm, calm doesn’t necessarily mean interesting, interesting doesn’t necessarily mean doesn’t necessarily mean doesn’t necessarily mean…


Bernhard Willhelm & Jutta Kraus, exposition Groninger Museum, 2010

1 month ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 50, 2011 

Oh Sophy! Why must you be so illegible sometimes?
You are raised by your patrilineage history….
Where is your feminine side?…
You are not just mind, but also body…
Was Philo either loving or hating you and therefore?…
I am still getting to know you bit by bit…
You are reality and you exist, but isn’t your knowledge one-sided maybe?…
You give me the light in my eyes at times…
You come from such rich bloodline, can you fecund my soil please?…
You told me that when I hear myself thinking it must mean I exist….
Oh speculum you, today I am the other…?


Luis Soriano Bohorquez, Biblioburro, La Gloria, Colombia

1 month ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 49, 2011

888888889
‘This is an interesting number’ said Marc Herbst. ‘Why 8?’

8 people, eight voices, 8 x 1/8 form one group. The 8 is graphically shaped as two rounds vertically on top of each other, and depending on the typography 2 round shapes perfectly mirrored to each other, echoing each other. The 8 on its side looks like the sign for infinity.

8 tilted on the side can also be seen as a looking glass, an optical instrument for good seeing. This instrument is a kind of frame or viewfinder that enables the viewer to concentrate on one object. To make it more clear. Through this instrument usually two eyes are watching, which make a perfect convergence.

8 is in Christianity the number of Beatitudes. Each Beatitude consists of two phrases: the condition and the result. The rounds on top of each other don’t have to be symmetrically the same. One round can be a bit smaller on top of the other usually bigger round part. Is it a coincidence, CPS now consists of four men, four women?  It is if this number need the other round to exist or either it is zero, nothing. Or is it 0 as in one, the self, the I?

8-ball is a popular international pool game with numerous variations; crazy eight, rotation eight ball, soft eight. The ultimate object of the 8-ball game is to legally pocket the eight ball in a called pocket, which can only be done after all of the balls from a player’s assigned group have been cleared from the table.

8 looks like a small present wrapped with a bow. The bow in the middle decorates the one-ness and makes it appear as an 8. In case the ‘present’, the essence is the nothing, the zero or the self, then the bow has no other function then to strangle the self in order to become an 8. Or in the most fortunate sense becoming a girdle that makes the self-uncomfortable.

8 nevertheless looks like one body; such as the head on the torso, which are uncompromisingly connected to each other. The head as the smaller part of the body is nonetheless the ruling force. The body needs to follow the head. Or could it be the other way around? First there were was nothing, and now there are 8. Was there really first nothing, or was there an other 0, transforming into 8 and dividing becoming 2 separated 0-s, like mutating art-cells in an onwards multiplying process.

8 entangled from its graphical form and geographical notion and thinking back to the 8 units in its natural essence as number. The CPS consists of 8 individuals, people, parts, which form 8 spikes, that could well be the 8-spoked Dharmacakra wheel represents the Noble Eightfold Path. As well as in particle physics, the eightfold way is used to classify sub-atomic particles. As well as in 8 the atomic number of oxygen, which should give me 1/8 op CPS a bit of breading room. To become more zero, self, whole.

8 is in China and Japan considered a lucky number. There are 7 continents - Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. No luck at the moment, 6 forms of voices gone completely missing in CPS. I think we may be ready for a unit extra so the eight gets transformed into a 9. Next semester we get a new voice in our group: Stephen Dupon from Australia.

  • Current screening: 
  • Fonlad - the On Line Festival for Digital Arts, presents at the Non Biennale twelve videos hand made by phones, my video ‘I am in your Hands’, curator: José Vieira, view»
  • Upcoming exhibition/performance/screening:
  • Dec 1-30, 2011: PS1 Public Space One, Elsewhere, Iowa/USA
  • Dec 14-18, 2011: Sazmanab Project I Mohsen Gallery, curators Larry Caveney and Sohrab Kashani, Tehran/Iran
  • Dec 17, 2011: LE SUD, curator Gilbert van Drunen, Rotterdam/Netherlands 
  • Jan 6, 2012: Dozen Dozen, curator Constantijn Smit, Rotterdam/Netherlands
  • Read:  
  • Jeanne Rathbone, Where are the stroppy, vocal women Humanists? (2010), read online»
  • Humanist Manifesto II, read online»
  • Lecures, reading-sessions, presentations:
  • Shuruq Harb, open lecture about ArtTerritories
  • Dr Matts Leiderstam, on artistic research 
  • Christian Andersson, guest lecturer
  • Swedish: Language course-A1 Beginners: Teacher Sandy Akerblom, last lesson nr. 16
  • Gallery-visits:  
  • Moderna Museet Malmö, Fredrik Roos Art Prize; Oskar Mörnerud and Change of Scenes, see pics»
  • Most inspiring feed: Matts Leiderstam: ‘Seeing is never a direct experience, for a direct experience assumes that all motivations, aspects and associations would be erased from the act of seeing.’


Simon Faithfull, Still from Escape Vehicle No 6 (2004)

1 month ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 48, 2011

The voice, a voice, any voice; it is what it is, a voice. We have our own independent body with its mind and heart, which we can follow. I am a truthful woman from the land of the windmills. Can you hear the song resonating? And I will hopefully only follow my-self, since I know what I know. I feel what I feel and see what I see.

Italo Calvino wrote in Six Memos for the Next Millenium; ‘Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles and every…’


Christian Marclay, Video Quartet, 14’, 2002

2 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 47, 2011

Mécontent de tous et mécontent de moi, You gave me your mud and I have turned it to gold.

fortifiez-moi, soutenez-moi, You gave me your gold, and I have turned it into mud.

et vous, Seigneur mon Dieu! I gave you my mud and you have turned it to gold.

accordez-moi la grâce de produire quelques beaux vers, I gave you my mud and you have turned it to gold.

qui me prouvent à moi-même que je ne suis pas le dernier des homes, You gave me your gold and I have turned it to mud.

que je ne suis pas inférieur à ceux que je méprise!, You gave me your mud and I have turned it to gold.

===

One of the 3 woman from my video Woman (2007), quotes the above French lines from À une heure du matin by Charles Baudelaire. View video»

1. Discontented with everything and discontented with myself
2. Fortify me, sustain me
3. And you, Lord God!
4. Grant me the grace to produce some beautiful verses
5. Which will prove to me that I am not the last among men
6. That I am not inferior to those I scorn!

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet, critic and translator.’You gave me your mud and I have turned it to gold’, was his famous line from Les Fleurs du Mal ‘Epilogue’ (1861) 

The 6 vertical lines are a mirror from each other. So the outer sentences are the same, going back inside. We help and we destroy. We suffer and we learn. The horizontal lines are double and mirrored referring to the the dialogue with our self, or in case of this writing exercise with the one who has written on my work. Free man, you will always cherish the sea. French and English lines referring to communication and the codes that it exists of, and linking it back to the video-work again and one of my interests; language. Which is then wieder [again] a link to my new(er) interest immigration. In which language is an important onderdeel [section].


Kim Engelen, performance/experiment YOU, videotaped by Rolf Versteegh, 7’20, 2011

2 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 46, 2011 

Let me be a true-to-life artist. Don’t corrupt me with your group dynamics. Give me your personal opinions and I will give you mine. Academic or empirical, both, historical, scientifically, psychological, sociological, urban, whatever what sort of voice, yes all I want to hear. My friend is the empirical, but let us view all sides and thus let us hear every-bodies voice. Not just one or two, all voices. Each with their beautiful, horrible, direct, shy, strong, pathetic, pragmatic, imaginary color. Yet independent and full of life.


Marina Abramovic, Relation in Space (with Ulay), 1976
Performance, 58 min., Venice Bienale

2 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 45, 2011

Where the hell is my social life? Has anyone seen it?

Week-input; 


Moyra Davey, Canadian, 32 Photographs from Paris, 2009, chromogenic print, postage, tape, each 30.5 x 45.7 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Murray Guy, New York.

2 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 44, 2011

My art is not political art, …is it? My personal quote: Art is Life! Is it my personal quote? After googling it, I bump into Oscar Wilde, who held in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”.  Hmmm.

We artists are part of life and producers of art. We are critical thinkers. We read philosophers and have reading sessions and talk about philosophy. And politics is part of life. Giorgio Agamben writes in Form-of-Life about “Naked Life”. And re-thinking radical feminist Carol Hanisch slogan “The personal is political”, if think that my translation would be that we owe it to life to be engaged in politics, to have the freedom to elect and the right to rebellion. I woke up this morning I thought about the dreadful sentences I read in Haunted Images by Libby Saxton which form their own life and images in my head.
Are we artists political engaged? Am I? After reflecting on the readings of the post-colonialism workshop, the holocaust discourse, Hanah Arendt last read chapter on truth and politics, I sense that even if we want we know we cannot escape the world of war, colonialism, politics and lies. How do I as an artist deal with this? Or maybe I don’t want to deal with it. But I want to find out first, to know if it is important for our art discourse. Can I stay with my meaning or idea that my art is NOT about politics?

Week-input;


Marijke van Warmerdam, Another Day, 2011  Unique screen print on paper, framed 110 x 80 cm

2 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 43, 2011

Who is to decide anything? Which point of view do we take for “real”? Is it the one with the clever mind; is his/her opinion more valuable then the next person? Or is it the one who is the physically the strongest, the one who is the richest, or the one with the most power relations? In my opinion as an artist, I feel that all opinions are equal valuable and they add to our spectrum of understanding.

Week-input;

Kusum Normoyle, S.I.T.E (Screaming in the Everyday: Ljubljana), performance, 2011 

3 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 42, 2011

Are my artworks experiments? Or is my working-method experimental? What is experimental? I prefer to see my works as ideas, reflections. They can be sparks, or re-ac-curing ideas. Like ponderings that come again and again in your head.

Week-input;


Tejal Shah (in collaboration with Varsha Nair), “Encounter(s) VI,” 2006

3 months ago
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