Interview: Jenny Schmid

Curse of the Older Man, from the series The Downfall of Young Girls. Lithograph, 22 x 30"

Jenny Schmid is an artist and master printmaker working out of Minneapolis, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and runs Bikini Press International, “the tripped-out print studio of her dreams.” It is from this studio where she produces her prints and plots her performances. Her work is informed by many diverse sources such as comics, rock music, feminist theory, illustration, Japanese woodcuts, medieval engravings and the art of Pieter Bruegel. Schmid deftly mixes these sources with her own signature aesthetics, comprised of a deceptive and improbable mix of cute and dangerous, rosy and troubled. In her intricate tableaux, big-headed characters that barely fit the scenic space of the paper have existential dilemmas while multiple stories unfold in relation to them. Schmid’s works are often informed by gender issues and address social concerns with a joyous, ironic detachment, ripe with humor and satire. In recent years she has started ongoing collaborations with other artists and musicians, animating her drawings in live performances conducted in public spaces.
This interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

The guys at Cannonball Press have stated that you were saved from an oppressive suburbia at 16 by printmaking. Jokes aside, can you expand on the central role of printmaking in your work and the possibilities it enabled in terms of accessibility and dissemination?

Printmaking is a place where I can use both my logical abilities and creative mind. The medium offers a lifetime challenge and as my skills evolve, the technical and aesthetic problems that I set up for myself demand more and more patience and focus. I get addicted to the feeling of total concentration as if it were a drug. I am attracted to how it demands an ability to work through complicated processes, but that you also have to pay close attention and be able to respond to what is happening in the moment, not just follow a rote set of instructions.

That said, I don't like the idea that the medium is the first thing I think of- I just honestly think that for my work, the medium offers me the best expression of my ideas in its ability to reference history, be direct and graphic and have an affinity with contemporary comics. I love the graphic image and have since I was very young. I also dig the tradition of satire in the history of printmaking, of inserting a sneaky jab into what seems like on the surface to be something simply funny.

Floating World, from the series The Downfall of Young Girls. Lithograph and ink-jet chine collé, 22 x 30"

By working in multiples (and sometimes making t-shirts, buttons, etc.) I create work that is more affordable and gets out into the world. I am flattered to be part of the community that Cannonball Press has created where young people can afford some of my work because, after all, they are my main inspiration and subject matter. Teens tend to really respond to my work too, and have asked me some of the best questions! Less obvious might be the possibilities embodied in my current explorations into vector drawings that can easily scale and translate into handmade prints, live projections and animations. I see a lot of democratic potential in this translation and my work in Philagrafika will reflect this new research.

The Charmer, from the series The Sleazy People. Lithograph, 11 x 15"

The live projections you do in collaboration with Ali Momeni and the flash animations you do with Patrick Holbrook are both very complex, each using different media like drawing, computer software, and music. Some of these drawings have, in turn, been blown up and made into linocuts. You seem to oscillate between traditional methods and cutting-edge technology, with various media mutually informing each other. Your large print at The Soap Factory can be read as a storyboard for a complex series of histories. Have you considered developing more narrative short films based on this or other prints?

At this point, I am feeling a little restrained by linear narrative and wanting to find more associative, subconscious links between events and characters to give the work more magnitude. That is why I recently turned to the panorama format for The Wild People and Fountain of Youth and the third in the series of digital and lithography prints, Animalandia. I wanted the panorama to be read in a narrative way AND simultaneously and I liked how the large format inspired both a linear and whole picture viewing of the pieces. But I did see the use of digital and drawn as related to and potentially becoming animations.

Fountain of Youth (2008). Lithograph and archival inkjet, 26 x 90"

The first animation I did with Patrick Holbrook, Minneapolis has a strong narrative and meaning- the corruption of the iconic teenage girl. I wanted to give a very direct, if absurd, explanation as to why my girls' heads are so big. Patrick did all of the animating in that project, as I was unfamiliar with Flash at that time, and Dave Schroeder did the sounds and music. I was using the tablet pen to draw into PhotoShop and learning the trickery of this indirect drawing tool, where you are looking at the screen and drawing on a tablet. This was my first collaboration and it pointed me in some fresh directions. Patrick is a unique person in that he has an interest in technology but such a funny and inventive approach to narrative, where it all has complex meaning but it would never be something you could figure out on the surface. We have these great brainstorming sessions where we make lists of themes rather than making a storyboard. Patrick just says stuff like "interspecies communication" and we laugh hysterically but then it works its way into the project in ways that are surprising.

Video stills from Utopia: In Progress. digital animation.

For the second project, Utopia: In Progress (2007) we tried to free up the narrative and I think, in some ways, it is successfully confusing. For this project, I started drawing directly into Flash and was able to have some involvement in the technology. Patrick is also such a good teacher and I was also working with a graduate student printmaker, Nicholas Conbere, to figure out how Flash would work for us and consider the relationship of printmaking with animation.

I love learning new techniques and animation seemed like such a natural direction for my cartoon-influenced work. I also like thinking how the image can travel and be manifested through different media- sometimes scanning, resizing, copying, hand-tracing, photo-exposing, hand-printing, etc. to move through the full range of technologies from every era. The computer and ink-jet printer and I have grown up and developed together and the people from my generation using digital technology for creative purposes come from an era where we had to teach ourselves or each other. I like to call myself an outsider animator, as my process is ridiculously slow and probably more invested in drawing than animating. The tablet pen has allowed me to free up my drawing style a bit, as editing is so much easier than when dealing with pencil and eraser. I even format my etching compositions by resizing and positioning scanned drawings in the computer and printing them out and then transferring them to the plate with soft ground- kind of a sacrilegious marriage that is a mixture of New World efficiency and Old World labor.

The Eyes and Ears and The Truth Itself: No People Allowed

My live animation performances with Ali Momeni and Minneapolis Art on Wheels have been exciting and challenging. Its invigorating to experiment with someone who is on the forefront of creative technology but who still appreciates drawing and manual animations. Projecting outside to a sometimes unsuspecting audience and working live with a loose narrative as in Battle Scene puts a spin on the sense of control I often have in printmaking. I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity and I hope to continue to work with Ali and MAW.

Jenny Schmid and Ali Momeni performing The Eyes and Ears and The Truth Itself: No People Allowed

The Pathetic end of Machismo. Lithograph, 15 x 20"

Young women are often portrayed in your work. Does your work embody a sort of tongue-in-cheek feminist aesthetic?

I have a background and interest in politics and do a lot of research on feminism as gender liberation. I feel strongly that individuals should be able to define themselves and not be oppressed by gender expectations and that is how I define feminism. I have no idea why some people think feminism is some kind of dirty word- feminists invented free love, which is essentially the idea that you get to love who you want and be with who you love. Feminists invented sex for fun by advocating for birth control. And I love working with young people and seeing how they creatively resist mainstream gender expectations.

Teen Boy Cataclysm, from the series The Teens. Lithograph, 13 x 19"

In my more recent work, I have actually been portraying a lot of boys and they are often lounging around, reading or otherwise functioning as the object of the female gaze. I like flipping traditional roles and also have been portraying girls as skateboarders, drummers, or pirates. I love people who are willing to be themselves and fly their freak flag no matter what, and I am on the lookout for them in my daily life. I also enjoy how humorous images can coax a viewer into the work and maybe into a discussion that they would otherwise shy away from. My most popular print to date has been The Pathetic End of Machismo which employs a style not unlike a turn of the century political cartoon aesthetic to address a future moment of triumph!

Rock Dove; Buffalo Girl's Revenge. Lithograph, 15 x 20"

Letter from Queens

Last Thursday the Philagrafika crew boarded a rented vessel and set sail towards the Corona Park in Queens, where Duke Riley’s Those About to Die Salute You, was going to take place. Riley’s performance extravaganza was fashioned after a Naumachia or Roman live naval battle, which in this case was set as a battle between education staff from museums of the five boroughs of New York who built the ships and manned (womanned) them.

The setting was quite impressive; the grounds of the 1964 World fair and its modernist ruins were more than appropriate for Duke Riley’s festive anachronism. Duke flooded one of the reflecting pools, which had remained dry since the fair happened more than four decades ago, and built inside it a theatrical set that reminded of a Roman Colysseum, which was used as a backdrop for the action. The Unisphere, a hollow steel world globe that could be seen in the background added to a sense of fabricated grandeur.

Rebecca, Caitlin and fellow conspirator Annabelle show off their Roman sandals over the etched granite floor right by the Unisphere.

Toga attire was strictly enforced, and we obliged, sandals and all. When we arrived people were already revved up. Copious free beer and a live band were not unimportant in setting just the right mood. On the sides of the pool and on the bleachers there were boxes with a seal that said “By Royal Decree of the Emperor Do Not Break This Seal Until Instructed by Judas Priest”. They contained ripe tomatoes that, it seems, an intern had spent the whole afternoon microwaving so as to achieve the perfect consistency for throwing at the boats and their crews. But people were impatient, and when the first tomato was hurled there was no holding back and mayhem ensued.

Cases of ammunition...

The Queens crew enters the battleground.

The Queens boat sailed into the scene and was bombarded from all sides; it was a miracle that the boat did not capsize at that intense moment of collective release. Somehow it survived (and went on to ultimately winning the battle!). The other boats soon came in, one by one, engaging in all-against-all chaotic warfare. Crews tore at each other and tried boarding maneuvers, but the public seemed not to take sides and just attacked whoever was closer to them. Many viewers tried out in the flesh what art theoricists (which have probably never eaten an artist-prepared Thai meal) term Relational Esthetics, and waded frantically in the knee-deep pool, taking active part in the battle. Rock music blasted from speakers on one corner of the pool and a live narrator tried without much success to make sense of what was having place, let alone be heard. The last ship to enter the battle was a “Trojan Pig” created by the Museo del Barrio, which sported a water hose that was used as a cannon against the other boats and the public. It seems that -in a reversal of the metaphor- a rival crew entered through the pig’s nose and attacked them from within, because the pig quickly withdrew and hid behind the protection of the backdrop.

Duke Riley is no stranger to naval warfare. In one of his best known projects, After The Battle of Brooklyn (2007), he built a fiberglass and wood mini-submarine which ventured too close to the USS Queen Mary II and was detained by the NYC Coast Guard, who confiscated it.

Libertas Aut Mori (2007). Composite tiles and cast acrylic on wood panel with custom steel frame, 96 x 96"

Duke Riley navigating the Acorn in the Hudson river

After venturing too close to The Queen Mary II, Duke gets busted!

His way to get back to them in retrospect was to build a scale model of the QMII, which was set on fire at the end of the Queens battle. The blazing ship in the middle of the debris-strewn pool was quite a sight, both beautiful and menacing. It turns out it was loaded with fireworks, which started exploding as an appropriate climactic ending moment. But the ship was already capsizing, so the Roman candles were shooting their loads haphazardly in every direction. The crowd ducked as the colored lights blazed right above their heads. Luckily nobody was hurt despite the ardor of the fighting, the tomato-pelting and the fireworks. Everyone wondered how Duke Riley had gotten away with such a complex project, since in America everything happens or does not happen because of liability issues and the fear of getting sued. As critic Jerry Saltz put it, the Queens Museum “either got every type of permit in the book or violated every city code imaginable.” I recently asked Duke, who has said that his work is about “the space where water meets the land, traditionally marking the periphery of urban society, what lies beyond rigid moral constructs, a sense of danger and possibility” how would he further characterize his practice, to which he answered: “Um…, breaking the law?” His demeanor and work prove that his interest in pirates is more than skin-deep, and that this freedom is a result of a genuine way to embrace life, not a pose. The project he is preparing for Philagrafika is no less complex and thorny than the Naumachia and also ridden with pirates, islands, plots and subterfuges, but we do not want to give it away so you will have to stay tuned to the Philagrafika blog and website to find more about it.

The Philagrafika crew.

P.s. check the videos for some live action!!

Interview: Barthélémy Toguo

From the series The New World Climax, 2000. Woodcut.

To say that Barthélemy Toguo is a multi-media artist might be an understatement, since Toguo not only works in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance and installations, but he often mixes them in a single work in which the viewer is immersed.

Born and raised in Cameroon, Toguo moved to Europe to study and ended up living for extended periods in Germany and France, where he ultimately settled. He has exhibited extensively, including the Guangzhou Triennial, China (2008), the Tessaloniki Biennale, Greece (2007), the Seville Biennial (BIACS), Spain (2006), the Busan Biennial, Korea (2002) and the Dakar Biennial, Senegal (1998), among many others. He was also part of the celebrated traveling exhibition Africa Remix.

Toguo has always been socially and politically engaged; he was the only artist that declined participation in the 2007 African pavilion in Venice, on the grounds of the questionable sources of the money behind the Sindika Dokolo Collection: "What guides me is a constantly evolving aesthetic but also a sense of ethics, which makes a difference, and structures my entire approach." In the last years Toguo has been working on a residency project in his native Bandjoun, scheduled to open by the end of 2009.

This interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

The New World Climax, 2000. Installation with wooden seals, table, prints.

José Roca: For your installation The New World Climax you made oversized wooden seals that resembled the ones stamped on your passport. Can you talk more about this project?

Barthélémy Toguo: Sometime by the end of the nineties I realized that my passport was completely covered with multiple stamps on every single page, which could be read like an engraved novel-illustrating the difficulties that I encountered in order to obtain a visa, or to cross borders between countries. At that time there was in Europe the beginning of the fear of the stranger, the immigrant, which led to the closure of frontiers and the promulgation of new immigration laws; in short, an obsession with the impending danger of “invaders”. In order to illustrate the difficulties I experienced in embassies, airports and border posts, I decided to create The New World Climax (2000), for which I turned the stamps that I had in my passport into gigantic “rubber seals” in heavy, massive wood. I chose sculpture as a medium because I found it appropriate for a first approach to these issues, since the weight, mass, volume and matter illustrated the heavy burden of this obsession.

Toguo performing The New World Climax, 2001.

With the first public presentation of this sculptural work at the House of the Cultures of the World in Berlin in 2001, I included a performance in which I paid homage to immigrant workers, those who build entire nations with their physical work. Clad in typical worker’s clothes, with a tape that played the music of “Bach of Africa, Lambarena” on my back, I lifted those heavy stamps from the floor with difficulty and then placed them on a large table, causing an enormous noise. Then I made impressions with the stamps directly on paper, a stamp on a passport. This work does not result from a scripted narrative, but rather evolves randomly, like the images of an ever-expanding card game. The issues at play are interpreted as sculptural forms (the stamps), which are then used as a parody of the administrative gesture in order to render a trace, giving the status of the unique object to the resulting documents. The New World Climax is encompasses these three artistic disciplines, sculpture, performance and printmaking.

From the series The New World Climax, 2000. Woodcut.

JR: Some of these prints look like fingerprints, which is striking because in recent years beyond the stamps, you are required to leave an imprint of all your fingers when entering many countries like the U.S. Was this a coincidence?

BT: As an immigrant, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I have realized how deep is the desire to leave, to travel, and discover. Exile is a notion inherent to the human condition regardless of race and cultural provenance, and even more so in the last century since technology has made it easier. Men and women are always potential exiles, driven by the urge to travel, which makes them “displaced beings”. We go from one place to another by different means, carrying our culture and encountering the other. Of course, this encounter can be beautiful or difficult. Travels are enchained by the brakeless rhythm of our society. We are constantly in movement. So, more than ever, this notion of traveling, of being in transit is current, under different forms as society evolves. By the same token, travel is increasingly difficult as administrations everywhere put in place new measures and laws to halt migratory flux; getting a visa and going through a border have gotten increasingly difficult. Having experienced myself these difficulties since I travel so much, I saw early on that the worst was about to come in relation to individual rights, put into question by biometric passports. I could see that powerful countries were putting together a new type of passport, which other countries would be expected to follow. Every human being would have to leave their fingerprints, a photo of the iris of their eyes, or an imprint of the shape of their face… even a blood sample in order to have their ADN information. You see how to travel becomes another story… In short, it was not a coincidence, I could see it coming, you could see it in the nervousness and arrogance of administrative staff everywhere, with their lack of sympathy and courtesy. The last straw was September 11, 2001, which would topple conventional logic and create new codes of “illogical logics”.

View of Heart Beat, 2008. Baltic Art Centre for contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK

JR: Your work Heart Beat consists of a wall of newspapers whose text has been blocked with black ink, leaving only the images to provide the narratives. Were you interested in providing a more intuitive, less narrative approach to the way information is presented?

BT: After I finished my project Conversation with Frau Schenkenberg (1995) done with the aid of a Berlin journal, I understood the place of the image and its importance within a newspaper. But for more than a decade I have seen to what extent information is manipulated in the media, which of course has been happening at least since World War II and the Cold War. For me information is essential: I am always online and listen to the radio all day in my studio, I love newspaper headlines, and like to compare them in regards to the political slant of the media. It is for me a vital urge; I need to be aware of what is happening worldwide.

Heart Beat, 2008. Views of the walls.

This overdose of information, scoops, and scandals, both intoxicates and inspires me. You have to have some critical distance vis-à-vis information, precisely to be able to tell intoxication from information. But “intox” is also a formidable source of inspiration! In 2008 I created Heart Beat at the Baltic Art Centre in Newcastle. I decided to censor all texts of an English journal, with the help of students at Northumbia University in Gateshead. The premise of the piece was to use a marker to black out the articles and leave only the images, proposing a new newspaper that only has the photographs as a direct interpretation of what the viewer is looking at. The spectator not only has to make his/her own newspaper, so to speak, but also enters a sort of universal discourse through photography, and the results are sublimated by the graphic dimension of the ensemble.

Heart Beat, 2008. Detail.

JR: The installation also included drawings, paintings and sculptural elements. What was the purpose of these?

BT: Since Heart Beat is an installation, it automatically becomes an arrangement, my own way of organizing knowledge, a mise en scene like in theater. For me, an installation is a whole environmental proposal, and it has a single goal which is to include the viewer within it. Drawings, sculptures, videos and photos… it all contributes to creating a rhythm, a choreography that rewrites the stories proposed by the newspapers.

View of Bandjoun Station, Bandjoun, Cameroon.

JR: Changing the subject, I learned that you have started a project in Cameroon, slated to open in November 2009, which mixes art and agriculture. Can you talk about that?

BT: The project is titled Bandjoun Station, it is a very personal project sited on the high plains in West Cameroon, what we call the Grassland. There, I have created an art center to celebrate art and culture in all of its forms, a residence for guests (artists, choreographers, cinema directors, ethnologists, historians, doctors, researchers, etc) from all over the world that will come and realize their projects in relation with the locals and their environment.

Bandjoun Station aims to encourage the local population to develop a healthy form of agriculture geared towards local consumption and not towards industrial production in order to attain self-sufficiency. Right alongside this form of agriculture there is a large coffee plantation; ours can be seen as a critical gesture that amplifies the artistic act that denounces what Léopold Sédar Senghol used to term “the deterioration of the terms of exchange”, where the export prices imposed by the West penalize and harshly impoverish our farmers in the south.

Farmer working on the agricultural project, Bandjoun Station.

Interview: Thomas Kilpper

Thomas Kilpper, The Ring, 2000. Woodcut on fabric; view of the floor/matrix.

Thomas Kilpper is a German artist and activist currently based in Berlin. A prolific artist that does drawings, sculptural and performance-based work, he is especially known for his large woodcuts, or “floor cuttings.” Kilpper takes woodcut to another level in terms of scope and scale, so that it becomes site-specific and attains literally architectural proportions. Kilpper carves the entire floors of buildings slated for redevelopment or demolition, often taking inspiration for the images from the history of the building itself. The floors become vast matrices and can sometimes be visited, but often end up being destroyed. The prints, done in fragments on paper or as enormous banners on fabric, are the witnesses to this obliteration of urban history. They are hung on the facades of the buildings as a way to bring the hidden or repressed buildings to the surface, literally exposing them to the public gaze.

Perhaps one of the strongest works to date is State Of Control, currently on view at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Kilpper carved a linoleum floor of the former headquarters of the Stasi, the fearsome secret police of the German Democratic Republic. The building is accessible to the public for the first time, and it seems fitting that prints are the medium for opening up this symbolic Pandora's box of Germany's recent past. The images recall different aspects of German history, intertwined with images from Kilpper’s own biography as well as references to State repression, censorship, and resistance to injustice throughout history.

This interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

José Roca: When did you become interested in woodcuts in particular and printing in general?

Thomas Kilpper: I think it was in 1996 or 97. At that time I was still studying at the Staedel Art School in Frankfurt- where I was doing large-scale charcoal drawings- and I thought it might be good to heighten the resistance of the material, to do cutting rather than drawing to intensify the physical process of my work.

JR: How did your project of engraving the floors of condemned buildings come about?

TK: I learned that a building compound where I had been living got cleared for demolition and I knew there was parquet flooring. I went there and took some 12-15 square meters out. I considered reassembling it in my studio and using it for carving a woodblock and then printing it. But in the studio, becoming aware of how much labor was involved in reassembling all the bits and pieces, I changed my plan and went back to the empty building and started to carve up the floor. It was fairly quickly decided. I did not ask for permission. After four or five days of carving, when I was starting to do a test-print, I was discovered by the contractors. They kicked me out, but not without threatening to charge me for having destroyed the parquet flooring.

The artist carving the parquet floor with a power router and printing with a roller.

The following night I came back with a friend and took a print before the whole building came down. Afterward, I was not quite happy with the result. The image was not adequate for the concept and I decided to search for a building where I could get permission to do a site-related intervention. In 1998 I found such a site, where I was able to cut into the very substance and material of the building. Gordon Matta Clark's “house-splittings” and his other architectural interventions were among my favorite bodies of work when I was a student. I was attracted by the physical process of destroying, of hammering and cutting but creating something new at the same time. But in contrast to Matta Clark I wanted to refer not only to the aesthetic but also to the social and political aspects of the specific site.

I never took any printing course at the academy. I considered this project both a sculptural intervention and installation, and also a printing workshop- tattooing the skin of the building, and turning the architecture, the floors of the building, into a stamp. Maybe the attraction to do so has to do with my relation to my father, who was an architect too.

Thomas Kilpper, The Ring, 2000. View of the banner installed on the facade of the Orbit building, London, a former boxing ring.

Are you questioning a society of planned obsolescence, where things -even large “things” like buildings- are replaced in order to make way for something more economically efficient?

No. I love to take odd looking or smelly derelict houses. In the eighties I did some years of squatting, and it was exactly that same feeling of “conquering” something that is considered worthless for others, but that could mean so much to you. Vacancy is a widespread byproduct of our economy and as such, vacant space somehow becomes semi-public: it is privately-owned, but publicly neglected. At the same time it is an opportunity to get space for free or for cheap. I always find it interesting to do projects aside from the art-institutions. Right away, the projects are not just stuck inside an ivory tower, but instead try to communicate unprotected with people in society who are not museum-goers.

Two prints from The Ring (2000).

A printmaker recently told me that the best way to tell if you are a printer at heart is to check whether you have engraved the image backwards in order for it to read properly while printed, which is the case in all of your monumental projects. Do you consider yourself a printer?

I consider myself an artist and not a printer. An artist using installation, sculpture, drawing, video, photo, graphics and printing... and in the future maybe something else. But not only printers are able to mirror their images or texts- this sounds strange to me. Until now I have realized only two projects using printing and carving, and only after ten years, I am about to come back to it with a third project: a cut into a lino-like PVC flooring.

Thomas Kilpper, State of Control, 2009. Linocut on fabric.

Since the beginning, prints have been instrumental in social and political struggles, helping carry the message to many. Do you regard your work as drawing on the tradition of the politically–engaged print?

Of course I am in touch with this tradition and I can see a line to my floor-carving and printing projects. Nevertheless, I consider my work to be rooted as well in installation and sculpture. There are probably several streams amalgamated in my work.

Preparation of the linoleum floors for carving and final installation view of State of Control at the former Ministry of State Security (Stasi), Berlin, 2009.

Can you speak about your recent project at the former offices of the infamous Stasi police?

It was the first time I made a large scale linocut. The carving and cutting is very different. The ones done on wood have been much harder- you need a beater or toggle to carve, and wood splits off when the chisel is hammered in; it calls more for hard black-and-white contrasts. Linoleum is less resistant and softer, but does not jump or split away. It lends itself better to create gray-tones and details.
The stark history of the building prompted a massive intervention: to take over and try to dominate such a place with your artwork is always a fascinating challenge.

Linocuts printed from the floors at the former Stasi building.

Interview: Gunilla Klingberg

Mantric Mutation, 2006. Screen-printed stickers on walls and floor, laser-cut texts in mirror, surveillance mirrors, light tubes. Installation view at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Detail of Mantric Mutation. Swedish artist Gunilla Klingberg has worked with many types of consumer goods, including their branding and logos, combining them physically or graphically to a point where they lose their individual forms and become altogether new. Klingberg has used paper and plastic bags from supermarkets, cheap rice-paper lamps, surveillance mirrors like the ones used in convenience stores, neon lights, plastic flowers, fans, and in general any product that is readily available in a consumer economy. She often combines logos in geometric patterns so that they become pure form; distinct brands are only recognizable upon close inspection, their communicative role neutralized. Klingberg’s art is a poignant take on the pervasiveness of corporate persuasion in our daily lives, while at the same time it turns consumer products into beautiful, seductive environments that immerse the viewer. This interview was done via email. J. Roca.

Seven Eleven Twist, 1997. Paint on wall, surveillance mirrors.

Jose Roca: In your works you have taken different ready-made forms, patterns, and simple commercial objects, and through repetition you have done all-inclusive sensory environments. Print in its various forms appears to have been instrumental in your work as an iconographic source and also as a medium. Is this a correct appreciation? If so, can you elaborate why and how?

GK: Before studying art I was a graphic designer. The logos I use for my patterns are all taken from cut-price supermarkets or gas-stations around the corner and are not glamorous- they represent brands we do not identify with, brands that are instead a part of our everyday doings and rituals. The logos, as well as the shops, are big chains that look more or less the same all over in the Western world, and often even have the same owners. Printing as reproduction is then a natural choice since both content and technique/medium have the same socioeconomic reference.

Brand New View, 2003. Laser-cut adhesive vinyl.

JR: In your installations, one is drawn in and seduced by the visual beauty of the ensemble, but on close inspection one discovers a more troubling matter in the form of logos of corporations and companies. Is this intended to provide a reflection on consumerism or globalization, or are you interested more in the loss of the communicative power of these images once they are subsumed within a larger composition?

GK: Both, I would say. I experience a lack of essential symbols in my own culture. In some cultures ancient symbols and images still play a vital role and I am interested in images used for spiritual guidance, like the Buddhist/Hindu mandala, a cosmological diagram used in meditation. My forms and patterns consist of the Western street iconography, and become images of how our daily rhythm of commonplace doings blends with the advertising and enters deep down into our lives, homes and minds. They are a link between our public and private spheres, maybe even to the collective unconscious. I work with the distant and the close details: the patterns fluctuate between the abstract and the recognizable, and the images almost dissolve. One could get lost in the patterns.

Cheap High, 2000-2003 (with Peter Geschwind). Plastic bags, tape, electric fans.

JR: Your work is an ironic commentary on the role of advertising (faith-enhancing, form-based strategies), underlining the pervasiveness of branding while breaking down the communicative clarity of the individual logo?

GK: In a way yes, but I think that pictorial language and color works in an archetypal way as well, where the actual message could be secondary. Many brands have a seductive and even psychedelic potential that I use to generate a clash.

JR: Coming back to the mandala forms, I know that you visited India and were struck by how many Westerners are traveling there seeking a form of spirituality, while at the same time Western companies are furiously peddling their brands to enhance consumption in one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. How did your trip to India affect your artistic output or your view of the world?

GK: It seemed evident that India is a place where spirituality and commercialism, rich and poor, old and new come together and merge in an almost brutal way. These travels were a starting point for the works I am doing now where the function of contradictions is often essential.

Cosmic Matter, 2007. Printed packing-tape, polished metal. Installation view at the 10th Istanbul Biennial.

What ideas do you have for Philagrafika 2010?

GK: I am planning to collect material on-site. In some way, the work will reflect part of the city environment.

Interview: Eric Avery

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Doctor, 1974. Black and white photograph.

Some of us who work with art, when confronted with a difficult situation, force ourselves to realize that, despite the magnitude of the problem, there are more crucial things in the larger scheme of life. Art is important, but it does not save lives.

Well, sometimes it does: Eric Avery's is one of those rare cases in which an art practice is intimately linked with a life-defining situation. While often artists have another profession, it is rather unusal to have a practicing doctor that works with equal passion on art-making. In Eric Avery’s work, two professions that appear to be radically different come together naturally within the same practice. Trained as a doctor in a rather difficult time in American history, Avery started early to use his artistic output as a way to raise awareness towards pressing health issues. Ignorance can equal death, as one of the eary mottos by Act Up warned. Or, as he put it in a print done about a refugee camp in Somalia, “Food is medicine.” Some of his prints have a distinct political purpose. As we all know, the official treatment of disease is informed by political agendas that vary in relation to the social group that is endangered. Since the late seventies, Avery has been an active printmaker. In the last few decades he has done performances in art settings in which he tests visitors for HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, and other diseases. His prints hark back to the history of printmaking as a way to spread a message and to reach a larger audience in public space. His long career can be looked up on his aptly titled blog, DocArt.com.

This interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

Amnesty International Poster, Laredo, Texas. Xerox, 16" x 11"

Jose Roca: You studied Medicine and are a practicing doctor. How did you become interested in art? When did you start making artworks and participating in exhibitions?

Eric Avery: I was cutting linoleum blocks in Pecos, Texas when I was 13, printing note cards that were sold in a yarn shop on Highway 80. I'm still cutting linoleum 47 years later. Printmaking has been a curse. I majored in art at the University of Arizona. I had a terrific printmaking teacher/mentor Andrew Rush. This was the Vietnam War time. My draft number was 7, so I would have gone to the war if I hadn't figured out how to continue my education. Andy said I always talked about being a doctor. He suggested I give it a try. I didn't think it was possible because I was an artist. Andy said I would always make prints and suggested I go have an interesting life and that my prints would fall like dandruff on my trail.

I took some science classes. I loved Biology and didn't have to take Calculus. I did good enough to get into medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. This was during the early days in the development of Medical Humanities in the United States. I made prints all through my medical school years in Texas and then in New York City during my psychiatry residency training. In 1972, I silkscreened all 700 of my medical school's yearbook covers. My first exhibition was after medical school in 1974.

Las Dure Refugee Camp Certificate, 1980. Woodcut, 12" x 16" edition: unique.

My first real woodcuts were made in Somalia, in a big refugee death camp in 1979 and 1980. If I didn't make prints in that place, I think I would have cracked. When I returned to Texas, I left the practice of medicine. I worked through all the death with my printmaking and had an important exhibit, "Images of Life and Death," in 1982. During this time, I added papermaking so I could print from three-dimensional wooden templates.

I've been making prints and paper and exhibiting regularly since 1982. In 1992, I returned to practicing medicine and became a psychiatrist specializing in caring for people with HIV/AIDS. I would have cracked during the really bad AIDS times if I didn't make prints. Cutting wood and linoleum, hand-rubbed printing, beating paper pulp from my work shirts, pressing paper with my hydraulic press- all of these physical acts move trauma from the brain out through the body. Printmaking is good medicine if you've got a lot of distress and emotional pain. The prints can be hard to look at and live with. They are almost impossible to sell. I've made a lot of prints related to HIV/AIDS. A bunch of my medical-related prints are in the ARS MEDICA Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They are a part of the print history of the AIDS pandemic.

Healing Before Art: Public HIV Testing Action

Installation at Mary Ryan Gallery, New York City, 1994

A clinical art space to be used for the public HIV testing of art world representatives (artists, art dealers, collectors, curators).

Here, artist Sue Coe’s blood is drawn by Phil Muskin, M.D.

JR: Your work is often performance-based, doing medical tests in the context of an art gallery. Is the main intention of the work primarily to raise awareness of pressing health issues?

EA: I've used a lot of the print forms but I was always working to get the prints off the walls and connected to the life I was witnessing and living. After working in Somalia, I quit practicing medicine and didn't see patients for eleven years. I lived on the Texas-Mexico border and worked to help Central American and Haitian refugees fleeing for their lives. Their human rights were being abused by U.S. immigration policy. I made some really good prints about the war in Central America and about how I felt about my country.

Sixteen years ago, when my friends began to die in Houston from AIDS, my life turned back to the practice of medicine at my old medical school, The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. I've worked as a psychiatrist in the HIV Clinic and on the medical wards since then and my prints, print actions and installations have been about health matters.

At UTMB, the Institute for Medical Humanities had developed into a multidisciplinary humanities program. I'm the visual artist on the faculty. One day of my week has been protected for me to work on the connection between visual art and medicine- to reflect upon what I do in my clinical practice.

JR: A practice that involves art and medicine would seem a sleight of hand, but it seems to have come naturally to you.

EA: It might be so now, but it wasn't thirty years ago. I've always thought that the relationship had something to do with space. I used photography to look at the literal spaces of healing. As my artistic and medical practices grew, I was able to ask art museums wanting to exhibit my work if I could create healing spaces in their museums. I flipped functions. Printmakers are always working with reversals. Several anthropologist friends helped me understand liminality and the neither/nor.

Allen Kaprow's blurring of the relationship between art and life was an inspiration. Warhol did it. It's an old story. I just blurred the line between visual art and medicine. I used my prints in clinical art spaces where medicine was practiced in the aesthetic dimension. Doctors practicing medicine in an art museum- it's a subversive practice in liminal space. Each art/medicine action has had an educational and instrumental purpose. A number have been done on World AIDS Day. They also raise conceptual questions about the relationship between visual art and medicine. I'm really proud of the questions my art/medicine actions have raised about the function of art museum and gallery spaces. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you went to an art museum for health care? I have only a small audience, but the print form, historically connected to social content and information dissemination, works for what I've tried to do with art/medicine.

JR: Speaking of dissemination, we are on the verge of the first pandemic in the new millenium. What are your ideas for Philagrafika 2010?

EA: Your blog posting of the Poli/gráfica de San Juan was an inspiration. Miler Lagos’ woodcuts on tree stumps led me to propose text woodcuts on The Print Center toilet seats (that would imprint bottoms) perhaps something related to HIV risk reduction. Jose Carlos Martinot’s printers in palm trees- why not health-related information on toilet paper, or printed wallpaper in front of the urinals?

I'm also excited about my proposal of prints depicting wounded Adam and Eve on the wall of The Print Center. These 3'x6' linocuts of Adam and Eve (via Durer, Cranach's first couple) will have them being attacked by vectors and modes of transmission of Emerging Infectious Diseases. The snake will be coughing Avian Flu. Title of my piece might be: "So Who Needs The Snake In Our Garden Of Eden." From these key index images I'll have other printed and photographic images that relate to the various infectious diseases.

And I am trying to conceptualize a small booklet or pamphlet that will work with the prints. When I last wrote to you I remember writing that we were just one mutation away from a pandemic. Recently the World Health Organization officially moved H1N1 to Level 6 pandemic status. By next winter's flu season, we are afraid that H1N1 will return in a more virulent form. The worst fear of Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, is that H1N1 will mix with H5N1 (avian flu, but anything can happen with the influenza virus).

I'm trying to connect my prints to Philadelphia and infectious disease. In 1792, the Yellow Fever was so bad in Philadelphia that the United States Capital moved to Washington D.C. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson fled the city. One of the first water treatment plants was built in Philadelphia in 1811 on the Schuykill River. I've got a great photo of this federal building with the Philadelphia Museum looming in the background. I don't know if the water treatment plant still exists. There is an inverse relation between amount of water flowing through a house and infectious diseases.

Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2000. 2-color lithograph with linoleum block print on mulberry paper collaged into molded paper (made from used surgical green towels) woodcut frame. 44" x 31" edition: 10.

Philagrafika 2010 will be happening during flu season. There should be a vaccine by then. But I want my piece for The Print Center to do something to educate about flu protection- something as simple as cover up each cough and sneeze or you will spread disease, or about the importance of hand washing. I was amazed in my HIV Clinic that my undereducated patients don't know what a virus (HIV) is, so I made a printed book to educate them. I might make a book about the influenza virus.

JR: It could be said that you are countering the dissemination of a contagious disease with the dissemination of information.

EA: You write so eloquently about printmaking as form. I think my work has something to do with what Philagrafika is about. As a psychodynamic psychiatrist, there is a natural connection between the unconscious and disease. Getting better involves connecting what's under to what's out. With prints, I'm thinking about Goya's Disasters as access to the worst in humans and his prints' dispersal and dissemination as connected to healing. A social worker gave me a line I use with my patients, "Getting real is the only way to heal." Emerging infections are a real problem. Avian flu is killing children in Egypt today. We are a mutation away from a global pandemic. As a printmaker I know a lot about the graphic and as a psychiatrist, I know a fair amount about the unconscious. Art as medicine: Why not?

Johnny Garrett is Dead. 1992. Woodcut on machine-made Okawara paper. 36" x 48" Edition: 10

Johnny Frank Garrett was just seventeen years old when he committed the brutal murder that sent him to death row. He was chronically psychotic then, a victim himself of unspeakable brutality throughout his childhood and formative years. Treated like an animal for most of his young life, he responded by behaving in the only way he had ever known- violently. Society should not be surprised; the priorities are all too clear. There is little money available to help abused children but plenty available to punish or kill them when they, in turn, offend by doing violence to others.

Now, the poor, damaged, confused life of Johnny Garrett was drawing to its end. What was he thinking, with just ten minutes’ existence left? What goes through a person’s mind at a time such as this?

We were some twenty Amnesty International members and other opponents of the death penalty gathered together. I like to think we were a dignified group with our simple handwritten signs, making our witness and our protest. Rain-filled clouds scudded by overhead and we huddled together for warmth, our candles flickering points of light in the gloomy night.

A few minutes before midnight, “they” arrived. A rowdy crowd of about 80 college students, mainly white youths in baseball caps. They had come to celebrate the death, to gloat over Johnny’s fate, and to taunt us. They taunted us because we cared, because we care about a man’s broken life and a bigger principle: that governments have no right to use the power we bestow on them to kill us.

“Kill the freak.” “Fry him.” “Remember the nun.” Their ignorance was extensive. Texas kills by lethal injection, not electrocution. They did not know Johnny’s history. And they did not know that the murdered nun’s convent community (together with the Pope and all Texas’ bishops) have appealed vociferously for clemency. They wanted their beloved Sister Tadea Benz to be remembered not with another murder, but with forgiveness and mercy. Their pleas for compassion went unheeded.

We stood in thoughtful silence under a stop sign. The mob roared its approval of Johnny’s murder under a dead tree. They counted down to midnight and the moment of execution. Voyeurs in the night, cheering as the hour struck.

Revenge is ugly. At least one death penalty supporter was so appalled at finding himself part of the grotesque display that he crossed the road and silently joined us. AI recruited new members that night.

Cameras flashed and snapped as the media came and went among us, seeking the usual superficial stories, bereft of depth or insight. I was asked what I thought of the circus under the dead tree. I said it epitomized so much that’s wrong with the death penalty. Executions encourage our most primitive instincts; they set a brutal and dangerous example to society. In short, they bring out the worst in people. The world is sick enough already, I told the reporter. Shouldn’t we be striving for a better way?

From "Witness to an Execution: Thoughts on the Killing of Johnny Garrett", by Mandy Bath ( A.I. International Secretariat, London, 1992.)

Interview: Carl Pope

A Celebration of Blackness, 2006. Letterpress poster.

Carl Pope, an American artist working out of Cleveland, understands the power of art as a tool for social change- his whole body of work deals with social issues, including but not limited to race and class. Because posters allow immediate access to the public sphere and enable conversation with a broader audience, he often chooses this medium for his work. Pope uses letterpress posters as both single images and large, visually striking installations. His interest in addressing the community has also led him to use billboards in public space: A Celebration Of Blackness, commissioned by the Mobile Art Museum in Mobile, Alabama, is one such project. Pope began by asking local individuals, “What do you think when you think about blackness?” Ten of the more than 300 answers ended up as single posters; five were selected for a city-wide billboard campaign.

Billboard for the Mobile Art Museum, 2006.

Poster for the Black Is Black Ain't exhibition, 2008. Letterpress poster, 24 x 18 inches.

Pope has also done more intimate work, like performances where he marks his own body. Last year, Pope produced the poster for the “Black is Black Ain’t” exhibition at the Renaissance Society in Chicago which, in the tradition of his previous work, deals with charged subject matter by downplaying it with a bit of sarcastic humor. Nicholas Mirzoeff has stated that Carl Pope is “doing the hard work of imagining a future for the United States at one of the bleakest times in its history. His work is at once a form of geography, reimagining and imaging the forgotten histories, people, and places in America and a new psychology, creating a state of mind capable of sustaining the shocks of the present. It's soul food for the mind, in sharp contrast to the quick hit of consumer pleasure that dominates the art market, and it's all the more important for that.”

This interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

The Bad Air Smelled of Roses, 2005 (ongoing). Letterpress poster installation, dimensions variable.

Jose Roca: In works like Palimpsest and The Bad Air Smelled of Roses you use diverse forms of imprinting to address very personal issues. Can you describe those works for me?

Carl Pope: What do you mean by imprinting?

JR: I use imprinting instead of print to refer to a mark (potentially repeatable) that is made by a matrix on a support. In the case of Palimpsest, the imprinted surface was the body, whereas in The Bad Air a commercial form of printmaking (letterpress posters) is used to address personal questions. I just wanted to know more about the impetus behind two works, which, although apparently very different, I find profoundly related.

CP: Oh ok…

My attraction to text began as a child artist in photography. As a child growing up in the 1960’s, television, advertising and news media had an unparalleled effect on me in those formative years. As a result, text has been the only formal aspect present in the entire body of my work. Working as a commercial photographer for many years added to my understanding as to how to incorporate text with imagery or to form imagery with text. I realized after doing a number of projects that I am basically a storyteller, and that realization led me to consider many of my artworks as writing projects. Other things occurred in my practice in the late 1990’s; I split my practice into public art projects and private projects as I began to become more interested in text and narrative structure.

Palimpsest (1999) was my first private writing project where I used my body as a surface of writing and a contested space in terms of black history and identity. I wrote on the surface of my body using branding, surgical cutting and tattooing. I was and continue to be interested in why people in the West chose to construct and/or reconstruct their identities through body modification/writing. I felt it strange that black artists exploring identity in the 1990’s did very little work that used the body and I wanted to open the conversation up by returning to the body. Well, that piece came at a conservative, post-black moment where “identity” was dead and [for] black artists, using the body was “out-of date” and forbidden.

The Bad Air Smelled of Roses (2005 until now) is my second private writing project where the text provides the image. I was introduced to letterpress printing by Amos Kennedy and spent a year in York, Alabama making posters for this installation. Each poster is an answer to the question, “What do I think of when I think of Blackness?” The answers I printed referenced a variety of sources from Freud, Lacan, Ellison, Reed, etc. I wanted to make a “forest of signs” that articulated the concepts of Blackness much like stars articulate the blackness of outer space. The Bad Air has a narrative structure created from answers to a question [accompanied by] footnotes.

A Celebration Of Blackness, 2006. Series of 10 letterpress posters, 24 x 18 inches each.

JR: You are planning to do a project for Philagrafika that could be described as a branding strategy for cottage industries. Can you expand on this?

CP: I have titled it “The Philadelphia Cottage Industry Association Ad Campaign Project” (PCIA). President Obama’s administration has plenty of plans: The Economic Stimulus Plan, The Energy Plan, The Medicare Plan, The Environmental Plan, and the list goes on. There is an expanding network of interconnecting plans centered on a basic plan for economic recovery. While Americans are waiting for these plans to succeed, what can be done to inspire grass-roots economic vitality right now? What can be done to create and promote products and services in order to keep money circulating within neighborhoods and small communities? A revival of cottage industries may provide some solutions to the mounting challenges many are facing in this economic crisis.

A cottage industry is a small business where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. Many people operate cottage industries in addition to full time jobs or depend on it as their main source of income because of the current recession. Home-based businesses can create stability in their neighborhoods since their income is usually derived from the communities in which they reside. Communal bonds are strengthened and trust is established through successful and affirming business transitions between members within a community. As a result, the circulation of money and resources will revitalize and support those living in the neighborhood.

The Philadelphia Cottage Industry Association Ad Campaign Project will consist of a series of billboards of various cottage industries in two areas of Philadelphia. An outdoor installation of them will be displayed in each side of town to promote home-based businesses in that area. An indoor [installation] will be exhibited at the Tyler School of Art.

The goal of the PCIA Ad Campaign is to heighten the public visibility of the city’s cottage industries, to generate new customers, and to create a trend to support home-based businesses as a way to strengthen the economic and communal vitality of a neighborhood, town, or a city.

JR: This dovetails beautifully with the ideas put forward by the founder of Temple University, Dr. Russell Conwell, who in his famous speech “Acres of Diamonds” said that you need not have to look for opportunities or resources far or abroad, but rather realize that they can be found in your own community. His famous motto was "dig in your own back-yard!" Were you aware that the original intent of Temple University was to educate primarily the working class, and was located in the North Philly district as a philanthropic strategy to revitalize that part of the city?

CP: I understand that Temple University is a socially engaged institution and Philly has a long history of commitment to humanitarian causes, but I didn't know about Dr. Russell Conwell specifically.

The dedication of individuals like Dr. Conwell can influence a community for generations. In one of his last lectures, the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida announced that 9/11 marked the beginning of the Age of the Individual. Our ability to affect the world has increased, as evidenced by the horror of the destruction of the World Trade Center. If we are living in the "Age of the Individual" where small groups or an individual can wage war with an empire, then a small group or an individual can usher in tremendous healing and transformation, right? One of the goals in my recent work is to inspire and challenge those individuals whose destiny is to be an effective catalyst at this time in history like Dr. Conwell was in his...

To "dig in one's own backyard" has become a necessity for Americans since the economic collapse has signaled the decline of the American Empire. The corporate consumer mindset made Americans believe that we want the same things in the same way, no matter where we live. Digging in our backyard will cause us to discover our uniqueness. It leads us to experiences of authenticity and to our true selves instead of being unidentified cogs in an imperial/corporate machine. The current economic collapse is influencing people to create new relationships and alliances in their local community that are rebuilding [the community's] institutions. America has experienced the freedom and independence that money can bring, but our humanity suffered because it caused us to conduct our relationships with people and the cosmos with a market-driven, consumer/manufacturer consciousness. This creates misfortune because human relationships and communities are built through an active gift economy and not through viewing people as consumer items. It's no wonder why divorce is so high in Western countries. Therefore, this new trend of "digging in one's backyard” fills me up with gladness and despair. On one hand, I've seen communities improve and people recognizing the need to work together while breaking through historical boundaries of separation. On the other hand, the predatory elements in big business and government have turned their eye from world domination to a surreal post-post-post-colonial/disaster capitalist vision of bankrupting the national treasury. If Dr. Conwell was here to today, I am sure he would be surprised at the web well of meaning and complexity his famous slogan has accrued by those who are for and against his vision of social justice and balance.

Interview: Christiane Baumgartner

Skyline, 2007. Woodcut on Kozo paper, 57 x 73 inches

Christiane Baumgartner has garnered international attention with her large-scale woodcuts which are done entirely by hand, and which often attain spectacular proportions. Transall (2002-04), one of the better-known works, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and was one of the highlights of their 2006 “Eye on Europe” exhibition (listen to an audio file of the artist talking about this particular work)

Transall, 2002. Woodcut on Kozo paper, 61 x 171 inches

Born and raised in Leipzig before the reunification, Baumgartner studied traditional printing techniques at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. She earned a Master’s degree in Printmaking at the Royal College in London, and soon started to work in video. Coming back to Leipzig afterwords, she decided to merge two apparently incompatible mediums, video and woodcuts, effectively mixing two types of “cutting edge” technologies, that of the gouge and the computer. In her extremely labor-intensive works (a single print can take as much as a year to be completed), Baumgartner achieves a slowing down of process that imbues her haunting images with an aura of concentrated presence. It’s no wonder that her preferred subjects are speed, movement, and translation, literal or metaphorical.

This interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

Deutscher Wald, 2007. Woodcut on Kozo paper, 28 x 35 inches


Jose Roca: You were trained as a printer in several traditional techniques. What attracted you specifically to woodcut?

Christiane Baumgartner: I was attracted to woodcut based on a conceptual reason and not just on the love of the material. 10 years ago I was working nearly exclusively in digital media. This was the time I was studying at the Royal College of Art in London. When I went back to Leipzig it struck me how far I had come from the tradition I was born out of. I wanted to find a way to reconcile these two traditions.

Compared to nature, the digital system is a calculable system. Digital information provides the means by which to order and to simplify and enables the production of endless identical images in different mediums.

Woodcut is the earliest technique to reproduce an image. It is very simple and you don't need more then a sharp knife and a piece of wood -which could even be a kitchen board. And in a way, digital video is the quickest, latest, and most developed reproduction technique.

For me it seemed only logical to combine those two techniques. By creating woodcuts of digital video stills I simulate this standardized information by cutting a line grain by hand on a plate of wood. I am interested in the hand-made aspect in the work, with all its inaccuracies and mistakes. A further important aspect of the work is the relation between materiality and immateriality. The "original" image is one of several thousand digital images, not yet defined in size, color and frequency of the screen. Through my selection and transformation I create a unique woodcut.

JR: In video (at least before the advent of the digital format) the image is formed by parallel lines. When and how did you make the connection with xylography?

CB: Actually I did not use the existing monitor lines for my woodcuts, although many people do think this is the case. I created my own raster.
I was looking for a possibility, how to print a grayscale photograph just in two components, in black and white, and so I came to use the line grid.

JR: Oh, I did think that the images were based on the lines from video stills. Someone told me that you don’t use the usual tools to carve the boards, and that you make one line at a time in a continuous gesture. Can
you describe some technical aspects of your work?

CB: The actual creative part is the choosing of the image, size and frequency. This all happens on the computer. Until then the image exists only virtually. Then I transfer a computer print on to the wood plate.
The cutting process is more something like a meditation, where I am concentrated but still have my mind open. I use an old specially sharpened kitchen knife.

View of the artist's tools in her studio

Lisbon II, 2001. Woodcut on Kozo paper (see video)

JR: The depiction of movement and ways of communication seem to be a constant in your work: planes, windmills, roads, tunnels, or the walks you proposed in your artist book Detour; why this interest in velocity?

CB: I was reading Paul Virilio and thought about how we live in a time when things speed up so much. There is so much more movement in our physical lives than 20 years ago. But also the time of information and communication has sped up in an extreme way. Because we are expecting such quick responses to our communications we miss the time for the thinking process and also to really prioritize.

Installation view of Fahrt II, 2004. Series of 8 woodcuts on Kozo paper, 57 x 73 inches each

Windräder II, 2003. Woodcut on Kozo paper, 57 x 73 inches

JR: So your prints, which take a long time to make, effectively slow down time by extending the moment of the constitution of the image from a brief second (the video frame) to entire months…

CB: Yes, this is one aspect of my work.

Luftbild (ed: under consideration), 2008-2009, Woodcut on Kozo paper, 102.4 x 137.8 inches

JR: On one of your last prints, titled Luftbild, there is an interesting pattern that resembles a moiré effect...

CB: The moiré at Luftbild is in the work. It happened when I filmed the TV screen with the video camera and has to do with the interference of those two medias. Here some additional images, which show the proof-printing in two parts and the final print on one sheet of paper.