May 2012
3 posts
Berlin/Germany, Week 20, 2012
[Bridges] Mobility What about the movement in [Bridges]? The bridge is an inanimate object. The picture showing a person in front of diverse bridges is an inanimate object. By presenting the pictures in a contemplative space, it does trigger the spectator to move. I like this, that the spectator is free. S/he can move, walk by, go back, go nearer, step back, turn around, squat. This is moving the...
Berlin/Germany, Week 19, 2012
[Bridges] Beam bridge: The function ist verbinden, und zak das creates the bridge. Mooi de simpelheid, het wat en niet het hoe. I wrote in my notebook: Holiday pics are political, I have the libertad para create these. What did I mean? I can make a picture of me in front of bridge. I can’t always make a picture of me in a church, or museum of shopping mall. The bridge is public? But there...
Berlin/Germany, Week 18, 2012
[Bridges]
Even before I was writing about bridges as possible symbols of transition or process, the bridge as a communication ‘helper’ is already in one of my video works. In Bonding on the Backseat (from the Series: Words don’t come easy), 4’40, 2011 we see two women on the backseat of a car driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Pop music is playing and they start reacting to the...
April 2012
4 posts
Malmö/Sweden, Week 17, 2012
[Bridges] Money The person in the picture is on bridges in Europe, the US and India, that means this person has been traveling, and this activity costs money. Not alone that but also requires the freedom to move around. It shows someone who has the ability, health and freedom to travel. In fact I could call myself in Western standards a poor artist, but in contrast I am still able to somehow do...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 15, 2012
For a new project called [Self-portrait] I am collecting statements that are made on me by (temporarily) colleges, friends, family and friends/strangers via Facebook. These I am possibly going to publish in a book with pictures made by myself with the iPhone on times during travels or just when I feel like it. This week I got a nice meant reaction from my dear friend Loïs from Rotterdam, see...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 14, 2012
I have a number, I am not a number I have a lover, I am not his possession I have a country, I am not its prisoner You have your rules, we have to obey You have your ethics, we have to learn You have your borders, we have to try We have our freedom, they want to lock down We have our family, they want to intervene We have our lives, they want to control
Read:
Julian Spalding, Damien Hirsts are...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 13, 2012
In Ywe Jalanders film on Alvar Aalto, it says that he always approached things from the human point out, not from the intellectual point in. I admire that, although it contrast for me with him for not letting his daughter choose her own profession. She wanted to become a nurse or something ‘good’ but it was not academic enough for him. I don’t think that any person is better then any other person...
March 2012
4 posts
Malmö/Sweden, Week 12, 2012
Last week I went to the Malmö Konstmuseum and I saw Carl Fredrik Hill’s: Trädet och flodkröken III (Bois-le-Roi). And I thought to myself how nice if you are a painter. You choose (in this case) a viewpoint of a landscape that you like and start to paint it. Your gaze lasts on and on, on the your self chosen vista. Later I heard that Hills had also periods of illness in his head. And then while I...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 11, 2012
[Bridges] Part VIII Bridges are often overlooked because they seem so obvious in our landscape. So are the tourists making pictures in our (urban) landscape. We see them, but we don’t really see them. Bridges as well people who use the bridges, link areas and countries. The earliest history of bridges goes back to the India of the 3th and 4th century. In epic literature is being told how...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 10, 2012
[Bridges] Part VII This week I went back again to Malmö from the Netherlands. Since I was staying in the south of the Netherlands I needed to take the train for two hours to Schiphol, the Dutch Airport. Just past Eindhoven we got a message that there was a fire alert in the tunnel and the train drove us back to Eindhoven. There was no way to get to Schiphol by train without passing this tunnel....
Netherlands, Week 9, 2012
[Bridges] Part VI My [Bridge] pictures are cooperation with the factual authors who remain anonymous, they are the participants and authors, and I become the participant and the spectator.
What should I call this, a performance, situation, action, event, a game, or better a happening? Maybe I should deconstruct or personalize the meaning to these words for myself to see which one fits best....
February 2012
4 posts
Malmö/Sweden, Week 8, 2012
[Bridges] Part V This week I keep on thinking of the photograph ‘Untitled, 1972’ by Larry Clark, on it he is injecting heroine in his girlfriends arm. And at the same time I have a 80’s song from Human League in my head, and during transcendental meditation I keep pondering about this songs lyrics ‘I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, that much is true ….’ ...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 7, 2012
[Bridges] Part IV What does the bridge symbolizes and why does the bridge matter? Wikipedia tells there 6 main types of bridges; beam bridges, cantilever bridges, arch bridges, suspension bridges, cable-stayed bridges and truss bridges. Structurae, the International Database and Gallery of Structures), tells us that there are thirteen undefined bridge types:
Arch bridge
Cable-net bridge
...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 6, 2012
[Bridges] Part III Question to myself, what does the bridge stands for and why does the bridge matter? The dictionary tells me; a structure carrying a road, path, railroad, or canal across a river, ravine, road, railroad, or other obstacle. Thus a bridge is structure that you can cross over to the other side, which helps you over the obstacle what ever that might me. Of course you can also...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 5, 2012
[Bridges] Part II Question to myself, should I put the round mirror sticker on the face? No; the mystery part does not work for me. I don’t want to put a mirror on the head, because it should be anything but revealing. The more close-up and open, the more intimate and personal and thus stronger and better it becomes in my opinion. This; affecting, individual, private,...
January 2012
5 posts
London/UK, week 4, 2012
[Bridges] Part I 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...
Netherlands, Week 3, 2012
Eyes from a Dutch girl Neither/Nor, Either/Or Where do we go from here? Presence/absence, Integration/assimilation, slecht/recht (bad/right) Willy-nilly, hither and thither, push/pull Gender/Genre, Analogize/Apologize Endure/Enjoy, Tweetalig/Tweetallig (Bilingual/Binary) Unintelligible/unintelligent What is, that is, what is? We aspire justice not charity. Revolution/Evolution, dignity/Indignity,...
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...
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...
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...
December 2011
4 posts
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...
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...
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...
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; ...
November 2011
4 posts
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...
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,...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 45, 2011
Where the hell is my social life? Has anyone seen it?
Week-input;
Own screenings:
DocLounge, my film ‘Women’ before the ‘Woman Art Revolution’ by Lynn Hershman Leeson
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
Nov 7-11, 2011: CCBH- Belo Horizonte Cultural Center,...
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...
October 2011
6 posts
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...
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;
Read:
Susan Sontag, Regarding the pain of others, 144 p (2003)
Susan Sontag, On Photography, chapter The Heroism of Vision, p 65-89 (1990)
Josiah...
Malmö/Sweden, Week 41, 2011
Foundation in Dialogue called to ask if I wanted to host and join Day of Dialogue in Rotterdam. Day of Dialogue is a yearly initiative for people to come together and be in dialogue. Day of Dialogue usually takes place in over 100 locations in Rotterdam and involves 1000 dialogue speakers. This year is the 10th year and I took Day of Dialogue for the first time outside of Rotterdam. Theme: ‘coming...
Sun. Oct. 9, 2011
Ohnoooo I accidental purposely deleted my posts from http://kimengelen.blogspot.com. What did I doooo?! My memories, my history …all gone…
Naja,…read Lucas Samaras: Another Autointerview (1971), Pdf.» Wikipedia » Bruce Connor, BOMBHEAD, 1989/2002, Pigment on RC photo and Somerset paper, acrylic, 32 x 25 in., Edition of 20 (10 on RC photo, 10 on Somerset)
Fri. Okt. 7, 2011
Foundation in Dialogue called me to ask if I wanted to host and join Day of Dialogue. Day of Dialogue is a yearly initiative for people to come together and be in dialogue. Day of Dialogue usually takes place in over 100 locations in Rotterdam and involves 1000 dialogue speakers. This year is the 10th year and I will take Day of Dialogue for the first time outside of Rotterdam. Theme: ‘coming...
Okt. 4, 2011
Back in Sweden again after a hectic weekend in the Netherlands. In Malmö I went to Julie Ault’s doctoral dissertation in Fine Arts; Remembering and Forgetting in the Archive: Instituting “Group Material” (1979-1996). And we went to the visual part of her dissertation at Gallery Signal and Inter Arts Center. Wikipedia Julie Aults » David Byrne, Tight Spot, 2011...
September 2011
19 posts
Tue. Sept. 27, 2011
It could well be that the course Feminisms is my cup of tea. After yesterday I look forward to the next session on October 12, I already start with the next reading; A room of one’s own (1929) written by Virginia Woolf. And as beautiful bridge from Wollstonecraft to Woolf, given as a hand out by Gertrud Sandqvist: The Common Reader, Second Series, chapter Mary Wollstonecraft by Virginia Woolf....
Sat. Sept. 24, 2011
Also reading for Monday: Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) for the course Feminisms by Gertrud Sandqvist. Gertrud Sandqvist (1955) is professor in the theory and history of ideas of visual art at Lund University, Sweden.
She is board member of the National Foundation for Swedish Culture of the Future since 2003, and chair of Baltic Art Center 2003- 2008. Since...
Monday we have Artistic Research by Professor Joachim Koester. I saw his presentation on the 30th of August, and now I have read his texts; Nanking Restaurant: Tracing Opium in Calcutta (2005), Histories (2005) online », The Kant Walks (2005) and Morning of the Magicians (2005) online ». Yes looking forward to this reading session. Vivian Rehberg on Joachim Koester at Jan Mot,...
Thu. Sept. 22, 2011
SUPER: Course Storytellers on Storytelling by Jeuno JE Kim. Read for the first these two September sessions: 1. From “Power Politics” by Arundhati Roy - Chapter 1 “The Ladies Have Feelings So…Shall We Leave it to the Experts”. 2. From “Exercises in Style” by Raymond Queneau - Litotes, Ignorance, Past, Present, Comedy, Asides, Awkward, Casual, Olfactory,...
Tue. Sept. 20, 2011
Tina Helen went to the Biennial in Istanbul and brought all of us a little artwork back! How fabulous is that; Ruler Coup (mini) by Cevdet Ereke, 2011, edition of 5000. Produced in the context of the Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial).
For tomorrow I start reading from “Power Politics” by Arundhati Roy - Chapter 1 “The Ladies Have Feelings So…Shall We Leave it to the...
Mon. Sept. 19, 2011
Today ‘On artistic research’ led by Frans Jacobi. He is in my opinion an authentic artist which I appreciate. It seems if he just does what he feels like. He is studying for his PhD on activists culture, but in fact it is about his practice. He looks at it as a performative performance. He said an artist has two sides; an artistic side and a research side. Adding the re- in front of...
Sun. Sept. 18, 2011
With one of my roommates Matthias, I went to the Skissernas museum, the museum of sketches, in Lund/Sweden. There was a exhibition called ‘Dubuffet as Architect’. The works shown here made me think of the work of Gaudi. Pictures » Jean Dubuffet, Jardin d’émail, 1974, Parc Kröller-Müller/NL
Wed. Sept. 14, 2011
We got the following papers beforehand of Dr. Sarat Maharaj’s lecture: Edgar Morin, Restricted Complexity, General Complexity. Read » Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari: A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (1. Introduction: Rhizome) William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Read » Ulrich Beck: The Brazilianization of the West: Two Scenarios, One...
Thu. Sept. 13, 2011
The coming 3 days we have a course on multiculturalism and work in post-industrial times by Dr. Sarat Mahara. He is the curator of the Gothenburg Biennial where we were last weekend. With Okwui Enwezor, Sarat was co-curator of Documenta X1 (Kassel. 2002).
Short bio » Professor Sarat Maharaj (1951) was born and educated in South Africa during the Apartheid years. He did his PhD in...
Sun. Sept. 11, 2011
De Witteslagerij, Exposition and projectspace, Opening 4-9 pm, Rakstraat 2-4, Rotterdam/Netherlands, Curated Vera Harmsen, Janna Kool en Theo Huijgens, Manifestos by 50 artists…amongst mine: Michel van Adrichem en Claudia Borges met Occupying Space, Annemarie Stuivenberg met Amber Experience, Hüma Birgül, Ron Blom, Joop van den Bos, Constance van Duinen, Kim Engelen, Fred Ernst, ...
Sat. Sept. 10, 2011
BLAAK10, Gallery & Store, Between 8-11pm, Witte de With straat 7a, Rotterdam/Netherlands. With Wendelien Voogd, Kim Engelen and Daniela de Paulis. Hosted by Lieke Snellen.
Words Don’t Come Easy 5 short video’s by Kim Engelen (9 minutes)
A series of 5 short films examining language as problematic barrier and an instrument of empowerment. During the ‘De Wereld van Witte de...
Fri. Sept. 9, 2011
Today; Friday, Saturday and Sunday we go to the Biennial in Gothenburg. Isaac Julien, “Maiden of Silence (Ten Thousand Waves),” 2010. Endura Ultra photograph, 180 x 240 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Thu. Sept. 8, 2011
Tonight is the opening of All Along the Watchtower. In Duende I will show the first phase of the video-installation YOU. With a complementary text by René Fidel Lazacano. Flyer » Watch here one of the video’s as preview » Kim Engelen, Video-installation ‘YOU’, 8’15, 2011
Wed. Sept. 7, 2011
Today we had our first reading sessions with Maj Hasager. With in my opinion a rather provoking subject…I liked it… I am still on two legs; one leg feels honored to be accepted for the second time for an MFA and invited as one of only 8 participants of the program MFA: Critical and Pedagogical Studies, because I want to bring my artworks to a higher level and I want my skills to...
Tue. Sept. 6, 2011
Last Sunday evening I arrived and settled in in my new ‘home’ for my coming 2 years in SWEDEN. Great it couldn’t fit better with my current project series; ‘Words don’t come easy’. Another new language=code. We already had a quite nice presentation from Joachim Koester on his work and later a delicious Thai welcome dinner. Yesterday we 8 students from the MFA:...
Thu. Sept. 1, 2011
A 7 minute experimental performance at Open Podium at Theatre-werkplaats Werklicht (Worklight). Videotaped by Rolf Versteegh » On stage from left to right: Fred Ernst, René Lazcano, Mariska Stuijt and me: Kim Engelen. The text is taken from and used in the video installation ‘YOU’. On which I am currently working on. This performance I see as form of investigation on this...