It is easy to forget that our dear history belongs not only to humans, but the objects of our creation. We are witnessing in this material age the mass simplification of services and functions, where the few versatile devices receive the greatest attention. We are estranged from the presence of crafted objects, and with them, that messy and special human touch. For the artists interviewed this week, their materials are part and parcel of the ambitions and history of the hands that shape them.
Mythmaker and craftsman Takehito Etani watches the heavens and earth with eyes of the future. Part installation, part performance, and part anthropological documentation, Etani’s wearable wooden apparatus simulates the silent footsteps of an invisible giant, patiently observing the activity of the Earth’s surface. Equipped with a camera pointing up and two pointing down, Etani’s living fable suggests an atemporal and unbiased vision of reality that unifies the micro and the macro in the immovable present. Perhaps the unflagging evolution of human civilization is merely a set of concentric circles. Listen to his endearing interview to hear the flipping pages of this apropos parable.
Active and adventurous New York sculptor Will Corwin seeks to reinvigorate the lost tradition of living amongst devotional objects. In the pursuit of permanent mobility, the roving artist has fashioned a practice that inhales symbols and exhales sentences, transforming cultural minutiae into tactile icons. Corwin’s sculpture articulates an existential curiosity that defies the rigidity of its material, evoking the primordial origins of creative thinking. Paying no particular debt to invention, the nomadic sculptor is equally invested in the deformation of an emblem, valuing the spectrum of interpretation that arises from a buckled monument.
Additional interviews include: Ele Carpenter, Jeannie Motherwell, and Neysa Page-Lieberman.
Let us know what you’ve been reading! David Medalla, one of our users, is enraptured by the works of two esteemed Italian poets from very different walks of life, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Mario Luzi. Pasolini, regarded for his legacy of controversial films, and victim of a mysterious death, channeled his penchant for the subversive through poems at once lamenting and biting, inquisitive and accusatory, as if the truths of romances, revolutions, and rituals were as sacred as they were deplorable. Mario Luzi, a more contemplative and conceptual thinker, nursed a quiet academic life in Florence, fancying the often-visited questions of consciousness in lieu of fervent radical declarations.
The Seas and Oceans art competition is mending the adversity between empirical research and artistic expression. Docking at 35 German cities a year, the itinerant exhibition vessel MS Wissenschaft imports the fruits of marine research to the public domain, sporting a variety of interactive displays and participatory demonstrations. Artists are invited to fill the poetic void between reality and education with their creative interpretations of the watery depths, coloring the floating science center with a touch of emotive exploration. Applicants have until December 9th to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity and lenient budget.
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A bird, with its beak, is an architect. A human, with words, builds the nest.
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As always, here are the links to the interview archive and free resources page.