unmakings

one true story of silvie deutsch : i interviewed myself

in 2008 i was lucky to be the studio assistant to artist anne wilson. i always felt like her work was the work i wish i made, i was jealously inspired of it. she uses similar concepts, finding the places where labor and industry join the intimate with the larger sociological. she uses textiles but in ways that obliterate ideas of 'fiber arts' -- its equally about the power of installation and concept, as it is about material and form. she does a lot of research (historical, critical) in the process of making a work, which is similar to my process.

i dont really think of myself within the context of the contemporary art world/scene. i want to make work that challenges the divides between 'scenes' and media, and i find i work more honestly and passionately when i dont think about what people are doing in new york.

i like the interdisciplinary. the emphasis on the concept driving the work. i feel myself at a point where my work could really grow and change into something else. i've been out of school 3 years now and i really miss a serious dialogue about artwork with other people who are as serious about it as i am.

i am interested in how environments teem with labor, history, and potential. i try to bring it out so others can see. i revert objects to their beginning stages of instruction and then destroy and rebuild them, a process i call unmaking. by unmaking, i am addressing the process of making. i use maps, instructions, structures, patterns as systems to rework in a meticulous, ritualized way. i most recently have been creating environments and installations that incorporate these ideas but also themselves are very formal and become drawings. my philosophy on what drawing is is very broad-- my work engages with line, line not limited to that on paper.

sigalit landau. janine antoni. anne wilson. pippilotti rist, william kentridge.

i respond to work in which the concept is clear but leave room for audience interpretation.

i've always had the impulse to make. it helps to get inspired. go to poetry readings and museums. i want to be making art. surrounded by an engaging community of people.

i like when crits dive into the ideas behind the work and how those structure decision making, as opposed to 'this is wrong' or 'this should be like this.'

i want to challenge what art is. in theater, i am collaborating, and feeding off of people and and ideas around me. what happens when i get back to my own ideas, where i am the director?

rauschenberg. i love how i imagine him at work when viewing his combines. i imagine him scouring the dumpsters on the streets of new york and then thoughtfully combining everything. i like work that forces you to imagine its making.

i read a lot of contemporary fiction. its a good way to imagining what its like to be someone else.

i designed sets for an interdisciplinary theater/dance piece in san francisco. i created a huge net out of papery ribbon and wire that enveloped the performers. it is malleable, they change its shape with their bodies, with a pulley system i devised, by blowing fans on it. they are captured in a net that they can manipulate. i worked with a lighting designer who made the work come alive even further. it was really exciting to move my installation work into a place where it is played with by people and actually used.

for unmakings, i used commercial clothing patterns first following directions and then departing from the and inventing new systems to follow. i created an environment with this material, reinterpreting it as an architectural space. i projected stop motion animations of unraveling knitted systems onto the wall making it appear alive. the installation had two elements, both spoke to similar themes about clothing making that became formal, overwhelming and a bit spooky.

in amending, i projected similar videos depicting materials building and receding onto an abandoned building. moving these videos outdoors, changing the canvas onto which they were projected, made the conversation more sociological. the unraveling and rebuilding of the materials became a metaphor for the destroying and rebuilding of new orleans. each stitch made up the textile, each brick contributed to the building. both were in a state of crumbling. i added field recordings of water from the mississippi river -- i like having 2 elements communicating with each other in an installation. i liked that people kept walking by and watching. people that don't typically view art and have different points of view. i started recording their responses because it was really interesting.

sigalit landau - dead see (2005) : filmed from above, there is this spiral of what look like beads and a tiny figure that slowly unravel into line that leaves the frame. the camera comes in for a closer look and you realize the beads are watermelons floating on a sea. the figure is the artist teaching and bobbing with them. i like how this piece is formal, about drawing and line but also poetic and conceptual once the materials are revealed.

richard serra's drawing show at sfmoma : i responded to how he created powerful spaces with simple black inky shapes on the wall. and at the end of the exhibit was a room where you could see his notebooks, and it was exciting to be let into his intimate drawings and how he processes the world, and also how his drawings and sculptures are part of the same inquiry.

i've been seriously making work in my room, in my parents' garage, at a few residencies. and then i've been involved in jobs to suppliment my art practice. right when i graduated i worked for a theater company for a year creating costumes for experimental plays. i have applied a lot that i learned through that experience to my work. clothing construction techniques, structures of collaboration. working towards a show. then i did an apprenticeship residency at the fabric workshop and museum. there i was an apprentice to joan jonas, jim drain, and others, and also had space and time to make my own work. they have amazing screen printing facilities which i had never done before. so i experimented with that. i found a job working for an architect in sf where i learned about urban planning, built environments. i thought a lot about the way these plans dictate the way people encounter spaces. then i got the production design job, where i made the aesthetic choices for the theatre company. all the while i have been letting these experiences inform my art work.

i am empathetic and care deeply about others. i like to bring humor into my day to day. i am hard on myself about my work but outwardly don't get too stressed or upset.

i bring a unique point of view as i am coming at art from a place where a lot of different disciplines are colliding. theater, architecture, emotion, industry. the way things are made -- industrial practices. the fashion industry, globalization, the changing technologies change the way we perceive our world. the building and receding of landscapes.

{1 anne wilson's topologies, 2 william kentridge's tide table, 3 janine antoni's loving care, 4 pippilotti rist, 5 robert rauschenberg combine, 6 & 7 my own unmakings and amending, 8 sigalit landau's dead see, 9 richard serra found here}