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.

Interview: Tromarama

Tromarama is a collective including Febie Babyrose (1985 Jakarta, Indonesia,) Herbert Hans Maruli (1984 Jakarta, Indonesia) and Ruddy Alexander Hatumena (1984, Bahrain). Formed in 2004 and based in Bandung and Jakarta, Tromarama has been interested in contemporary urban culture, inserting itself beyond the art scene into the larger cultural fabric of Bandung. I saw their work Serigala Militia (actually a music video for the thrash metal band Seringai) at the 2008 Singapore Biennial. I was captivated by the rawness of the image, a stop-motion animation where the actual process of the carving of the wooden boards is taken as a theme in itself, along with the inking of the boards, exposing the process of woodcut in all of its directness and materiality. Tromarama has since produced other videos in the same technique but not print-related, as well as several editioned multiples.

The following interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

Jose Roca: Why did you choose woodcut as the medium for the video Serigala Militia?

Tromarama: We felt that the woodcut medium suited best to represent the character and attitude of the band, and also the roughness of the music.

JR: Had you worked before with other printing techniques?

T: Nope, this is our first time combining printmaking technique with stop-motion animation.

JR: But you have done multiples and other editioned work, right? Why?

T: We hadn’t done any multiples and other editioned work before the Serigala Militia Video. Serigala Militia was our first video, and it was not a difficult choice for us to use a printmaking technique in it. We did the video while we are studying at Bandung Institute of Technology, Faculty of Visual Art and Design. Studying different majors, Febie was in the printmaking studio. Herbert studied visual communication design, focusing in advertising. Ruddy studied visual communication design, focusing in graphic design. Many printmaking techniques were a part of our daily life at campus. Even though we come from different majors, you just can’t separate graphic design and printmaking. Some people have said that graphic design is applied printmaking. You can’t separate graphic design history from Gutenberg, the father of mass-production printmaking. Printmaking had a big influence in our works not only visually but also in the number of editions for our videos, which are produced in a specific numbered edition -a common thing in printmaking.

JR: How would you describe the current local scene you work in?

T: We studied, live and work in Bandung, a small city full of Do-It-Yourself spirit. This ethos was triggered by the big economic crisis back in 1998. When everything got very expensive, people tried to produce things by themselves. There are many local bands trying to make their own CDs, and many independent record labels supporting the local music industry. Economic crisis drives creativity in this town. We can see the emergence of many local clothing companies, as a result of the crisis. When people can’t afford imported clothes and apparel, they try to produce their own. Bandung is a city well known by the creativity of its people. People here appreciate differences and are very open to all kind of new things happening. Maybe the existence of three art schools in Bandung helps people to be more welcoming with new, creativity-driven events. Video is already quite common in Indonesia as a new media in contemporary art. People can see video art in galleries and also at screenings initiated by art communities, whose intention is to introduce the video art itself to a larger public. Furthermore, this is a way for local artists can develop their art so that it can be enjoyed by many without decreasing the meaning of the work itself.

JR: You were recently invited to the Singapore Biennial. Where you able to establish ties with other artists of the region and beyond?

T: After the Biennale, we did not establish ties with artists from other countries, but some curators contacted us, asking about our work, and possibilities to show our work at their gallery (one of them is you). We are thankful to Pat Binder and Gerhard Haupt from universes-in-universe, for spreading our existence to the world.

JR: What are you planning to do for Philagrafika?

T: We plan to do a stop-motion animation with the etching technique, as well as showing our woodcut video and the whole installation. As with Serigala Militia, the video will also be displayed with all of the etching plates as an installation.

Fresh Pressed

A new enterprise and marketing concept just hit Los Feliz in L.A: a little screen-printing shop called Fresh Pressed that allows its customers to design and print their own Ts, totes, and whatevers. At a whopping $40 for your first item, the idea is still pretty charming, and, for the common doodler, quite alluring... but the potential for dangerously cheesy apparel authored by Hollywood Blvd. residents may dissuade you from fully endorsing the idea. That said, it's a great way to get people thinking about screen-printing, making art, and making it public.

Here's a video that'll give you a bit more sense of what the store is like:

Ready, Squeegee, Go

So here’s yet another Youtube-based entry for all of you out there that have been avidly following Caitlin’s sporadic use of that oh-so-entertaining website!

Aesthetic Apparatus - the guys that brought us the latest Burger King crown design as well as countless Modest Mouse, The Black Keys, and Mountain Goats concert posters (not to mention the Walk the Line movie poster!) - have created a humorous and semi-educational video about their screenprinting practice:

Although it’s hard to imagine them being prolific and still having that much fun, you can also check out their huge website of products here.

If you’re interested in starting up your own screenprinting studio, the Philly-based Print Liberation collectivejust released a beautiful and playful-looking “primer” on how to get that going. While you’re on their website, you should also check out some of the really neat artwork they’ve been doing around the city.

But Aesthetic Apparatus and Print Liberation aren’t the only ones keeping busy with screenprinting these days.

In fact, Philadelphia is currently hosting a couple noteworthy exhibits that feature screenprint artists:

Taller Puertorriqueño
Miguel Luciano
May 9 - July 19, 2008

Miguel Luciano's work addresses playful and painful exchanges between Puerto Rico and the United States, questioning a colonial
relationship that exists to the present and problematizing the space between both cultures. His work organizes popular, historic, and consumer iconography into fluctuating new hierarchies to describe the complexity of contemporary belief systems.

Galería Lorenzo Homar
2721 N 5th Street, 2nd floor
Philadelphia, PA 19133
Taller Puertorriqueño website

Space 1026

Out of the Shell of the Old
Opening: July 4, 2008 at 6 pm

Running throughout July 2008 at Space 1026, will be a unique collaborative installation/exhibition from members of the radical artists' cooperative Justseeds. Based on the theme of "a new world rising out of the shell of the old", this show will incorporate built environments, video installation, and printed work to explore both the dark and troubling times we now live in, as well as our hopes for a better, brighter world. Members of Justseeds will be traveling to Philadelphia from across the country to collaboratively create a unique and exciting body of work.

Justseeds website
Space 1026 website

- Jacob Carroll

Snap, Click and Yodel

"Photography has meaning only if it exhausts all possible images."

The March/April issue of Art on Paper contained a wonderful treasure, a fictional story called The Adventure of a Photographer by Italo Calvino.* The editors chose to reprint this fictional story on its 50th anniversary. It is a cleverly insightful text on photography within a fictional story.

The main character, a skeptic Antonino Paraggi--attempts to capture and create the perfect photograph. He questions the pursuit of the perfect photograph by his friends and family, that snapshot capturing the perfect moments, rather than the often sticky, dirty unflattering moments of daily life.

Calvino reflects that "Photographed reality immediately takes on a nostalgic character, of joy fled on the wings of time, a commemorative quality, even if the picture was taken the day before yesterday. And the life that you live in order to photograph it is already, at the outset, a commemoration of itself."

Last week, I was amused to read an article by Michelle Slatalla in the New York Times, Lights, Camera, Inaction - which shows that human nature's need to capture images hasn't changed, while the technology with which to do so has. The new Flip video camera - allows seamlessly simple video capture, which truly is just about idiot proof. Take out of box, push record button, plug into computer - voila, you're you-tubing down the video stream.

I find myself wondering, while family videos of Slatalla's article seem to have the same nostalgic quality as Calvino's snapshots, does the new and constant stream of public voyeurism wash it away? The DIY look from the quality to the abrupt editing of this endless supply of video doesn't feel nostalgic to me. I love to feed my gluttonous appetite--spending hours clicking from images of hula-hooping to yodeling french bulldog puppies to screen print demonstrations. (This also contributes to my ever-increasing attention deficit disorder.)

Taken one step further, my studiomates at Space 1026 have started communicating in emails with YouTube links - video streams are becoming a vernacular. It can feel quite peculiar, but also brilliant if you have patience. Whole jokes are told through an email message thread simply through video links. I wonder, could we develop a new way language for communicating based on a constant metaphorical form video stream?

Phew, forgive me for the digression into a metaphysical utopia of technology. I need to look at more puppies.

Goodbye for now,
Caitlin

*I encourage you to support Art on Paper magazine, but the story is also readily available on the internet through google searches.

PS: I'm starting to feel like this puppy... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw0Yu76rb-4