Summerish residency: June 2014 in Nida
- Published on Tuesday, 10 June 2014 07:17
“The Beaver Mat and the Fagot Shack” © Helen Reed & Hannah Jickling, 2014
After the Inter-Format Symposium “On Flux of Sand and Aquatic Ecosystems” the majority of NAC Techno–ecology programme residents left, except Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed (CA) who participated actively in the symposium and will stay until end of June. We are happy to host new residents, two from the United States: Daniel Spangler (USA) and Matthew Moore (USA), one from Köln in Germany: Philipp Hamann (DE, Goethe institute Lithuania grantee), and Gintaras Makarevičius from Lithuania.
Helen Reed & Hannah Jickling are based in Vancouver, Canada. They have worked together for the past 7 years on videos, public installations, events, photographs, multiples, and printed matter. In Nida Artist Colony during the symposium they developed a new body of work entitled ‘The Beaver Mat and the Fagot Shack’ which functioned as a queer adaptation of Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters, a text intended for Boy Scouts, written by D.C. Beard in 1914. The idea was incorporated into a temporary gay bar - The Beaver Mat and the Faggot Shack - as part of their ongoing research into landscape and queer ecology.
“The Beaver Mat and the Fagot Shack” © Helen Reed & Hannah Jickling, 2014
http://hannahjickling.com/
http://reheardregalement.com/
Philipp Hamann's general interest lies in how individuals and societies remember and retell themselves within narrative structures. Philipp works in room installations, performances and videos in which he explores these narratives and their relationship to the psychological function of the mind -either in the form of the "I" or with the help of fictional characters. Nida itself seems to him the perfect place for a work about remembering and forgetting: the dunes which have burried entire villages; the black death; the relocation through the Nazis and soviets and finally Thomas Mann sitting in his cottage ("Uncle Tom´s Cabin") recreating a biblical story.
“Er und ich” ©Philipp Hamann, 2013
Matthew Moore (USA) is a video-maker and a photographer. He is very interested in using photography to record the changes that occur in the landscape, rural or urban, due to political upheaval. During the residency, Matthew will be working on two projects. One is an exploration of the post-socialist landscape using photography. The other is a series of video portraits. The portraits, created using a combination of digital and analog techniques, deal with issues memory and desire.
Pedestals, 11x17 ©Matthew Moore, 2013/ East/West project
Daniel Spangler (USA) is a Chicago-based multimedia artist and filmmaker. A former designer for American television networks, he now repurposes and mixes the polished techniques of corporate media with storytelling to build layered narratives about language, geography, and nomadicity. He is currently in Nida writing a work of experimental fiction that will take the form of both a film and a novel.
“A Beginner's Introduction to Ghost Pronouns"” ©Daniel Spangler, 2013
www.lostlift.com
Gintaras Makarevičius (LT) is a Lithuanian artist, set designer and filmmaker. Gintaras Makarevičius is interested in people who live in extreme conditions, whether by choice or necessity. "I understood that one question that concerns me the most is what reasons does it take to perform unpleasant, psychologically difficult and often badly paid occupations", he explains. Life is the very substance of his films. His subjects are his own entourage as well as strangers, whom he follows over long periods of time. An individual and the environment are of the main importance in his creations, as well as the problem of viewing and seeing the relationship between reality and its reflection.
In Nida he decided to return to his previous work: painting.
“Winter parallels” ©Gintaras Makarevicius, 2008, Courtesy Galerie Schleicher+Lange, HD video, sound, 54'
www.schleicherlange.com/gintarasmakarevicius.aspx
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-diRSWBsDQ