Blog Archive

30/05/2015

25/05/2015

One, two, three hands. Q and A

 
Contactsheet 2



1.
Drawing (repetitively) after the hand of a painter's model
(with my own hand)
tracing the hand of the painter


2.
Animating the drawing hand of a man
through replacing the sound of his image
with recordings of my own hand mimicking him

 
- What is the similarity of the hands in Hatterman's Hand (1) and the hands in This is about a line that is not there   it has to do with the horizon (2)? 


= There is a particular repetition of gesture in both works; rehearsals that become a kind of meditative practise. The drawings (1) are traces of the movement of the hand. 


- Who's hand?


= First of all they are traces of my own hand. But then, because I am making a lot of them by looking at one particular hand, that of the painter's model, I think I am also tracing the hand of the painter.


- So it could have been anyone's hand then in that painting?


= Well, no. Nola Hatterman had the tendency to exaggerate the African facial features of her black models, in order to confront Amsterdam's art scene with another aesthetics, instead of the usual Western Greek's. 
What I see in the painting is that Nola had more difficulty painting the hand of her model, than she had in painting his head. This makes me wonder if she had less interest in the hand, or less practise, maybe.
By repetitively drawing after the painted hand, my drawings became more and more ‘slick’, just like the painted head is already. Hands are the first thing one touches of another person. But one’s eye touches someone’s face first.
I am not sure where I am going here.. 
(check Nola on film in Documentary 'Hatterman en de konsekwente keuze' by Frank Zichem)


- Do you mean that Hatterman was not interested in making a real portrait of that man? And that she was more interested in confronting the Dutch world with the image we repetitively keep producing of the black body?


= I read a thesis by Lia Ottes from 1999, about Hatterman’s life and work and Ellen de Vries’s Biography of Hatterman from 2008. In their texts there is little mentioning of Hatterman’s reflections on her own Western Perspective, for example during her drawing classes in Surinam. I think if Hatterman had painted the portrait in our time, this confrontation would have been her aim. But because she made it 76 years ago, my guess is that she didn’t realize that she was herself part of the same production of this particular western aesthetics. 


- How about the hands you’ve drawn then, are they also part of that production?


= Even though the hand is never completely reproduced, they are part of it too. But between the many rehearsals, I feel there is something growing outside of that production. I am not only tracing his hand anymore, but I am following her gesture. Revealing this distance that exists between her and her model. The space of looking.

 
Contactsheet 1


- Back to the hand in the video This is about a line (..) horizon. There is a man drawing, but the sound does not belong to the image. What was your aim by animating his hand?


= My aim was to make the paper a kind of meeting place. The man is drawing on this paper surface, which resembles the skin of a drum, highly sensitive for his touch. On the other side of the paper surface his movements are recorded and amplified.


- Is it important for the viewer to know that it is you that is making the sound?


= Yes, I think that after watching the work for a few minutes one understands that everything about the image and the sound is edited: cropped, enlarged, selected and otherwise post-produced. My many rehearsals in Premiere Pro, are never a real repetition that drawing. 




- Here I see a parable with the drawing series Hatterman’s Hand. In both works you reveal the construction, or production of the image of the hand.


= Yes, but how are these hands alike?


- Both the drawn hand (1) and the animated hand (2) are a constructed image. By showing the layers of construction, another hand appears, that draws the image, which would be you.


= Is there a third hand in my video too then?


- If there is a third hand I am doubting if it is Louise Bourgeois's hand, like in Hatterman's hand.




Diego Bianchi- Finger park 2012, Photograph


Small drawing of mine, 2008


17/05/2015

Some advice by herman de vries







 herman de vries – to be all ways to beJean-Hubert Martin a.o. Publisher Valiz and Mondriaan Fonds

From head to hand

A returning question, when analyzing and looking at drawings, is What is drawing today?
As I am not sure yet how to approach this question from my own practise precisely, I will answer this question in parts.

Remembering John Berger's 1987 categories in drawing (perception, communication and memory), I would like to try and describe what happens when drawing is done in plural - or several drawings of the 'same'?

In the Stedelijk Museum I stood many hours in front of the painting Arbeider (Neger) 1939 by Hatterman.



After drawing the man's head a few times, I started to draw his right hand. 
































(I am doubting how to structure the series: on the base of difference, or from sameness)


As you can see these hands are very different. They differ in almost everything.
Not only were context and fingers left out, every drawing is made of a different
size and based on another color.

                                As you can see, these drawings are made of one and the same hand.
                     They are appearing in the same color range and although one sees only parts of the hand, it is clear that the hand is in the same position. 


So then what is it that they all share? What does one expect to see in the next one?
It seems to make more sense to talk on the hands through difference because they are not at all the same.

Looking at something for a long time and more than once, is different from looking at something shortly. Through being together with the painting, my interest moved from head to hand. Drawing the painted head made me feel I was trying to repeat the painter's work.

My attention then went from hand to hand. Because the painted hand seems to be the closest body part in the painting and the painter was clearly having trouble painting it, I figured that there was something in that painted surface that could help me understand the relation between the painter and the model, and the relation between the painting/painter and me.

By repeating to draw the hand, I prolonged the time I was drawing it. After all those hours I got sort of familiar with it's form. But it was not possible to make the same drawing or painting again.

By showing many of the drawings I feel I am showing something that is not visible in only one drawing. The time spent is present in the plurality. Next to that I hope to show that drawing something repeatedly, makes one aware of the similarities one assumes. While the exciting fact is probably that one can never see everything at once.

In making and showing drawings in series I hope to include a sort of remembering. After drawing, there is something that stays behind. A hand remembers. This embodiment of the visual is very relevant now.




04/05/2015

Paper horizon

This refers to a line that is not there     it has to do with the horizon



The paper surface is at this moment, resembling a horizon to me. In my video This refers to a line that is not there    it has to do with the horizon, I realize I am shifting from a back to a front, as two sides of a line, that is both a connectative surface as it is articulating the two bodies and perspectives present. The horizon is sometimes visible, as a screen, as a skin, as a sheet of paper. And sometimes it is invisible, as a sound, as a relation, as a history.

Reading Friday by Michel Tournier, a retelling of the story of Robinson Crusoe, I am inspired to think about the experience of time and the possibility of a world upside down. The tropical island presents us a world underneath the horizon where our lives and constructs are reflected like an animation of the visible, but a complete anotherness is rooted in its surface.

"He had reached this point in his reflections when he felt a movement beneath his hand as it lay palm-down on the earth. He thought at first that it was some insect and explored the surface with his finger tips. But it was the earth itself bursting upward. A field mouse, perhaps, or a mole about to emerge from its digging; and Robinson smiled at the thought of the little creature's terror when it found itself trapped in a prison of flesh instead of reaching open air. The earth moved again and something did emerge, but it was something cold and hard that still remained anchored in the soil. A root!"


Friday by Michel Tournier, translated from french by Norman Denny. Pantheon books New York 1969. French and first version from 1967 by Editions Gallimard Pag. 180 
Image taken from Z! Krant, homeless magazine Amsterdam, May 2015