{"id":25011,"date":"2016-11-30T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T23:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/?p=25011"},"modified":"2020-12-01T15:00:08","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T14:00:08","slug":"messier-stickier-gooier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/messier-stickier-gooier\/","title":{"rendered":"Messier, Stickier, Gooier"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[451,478,508],"project_type":[725,732],"class_list":["post-25011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-web-residencies","project-suprainfinit-lavenir-redux","project-calls-2016","project_type-formats","project_type-interview"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Hence, here is an interview between writer Steph Kretowicz and Snowe for her See Attachments <\/em>online exhibition, executed via email, then Google Docs \u2013 tools for communication, fired off via hands, movements, synapses, and electrical currents. From the brain to the body; the computer and the fiber optic cable, ideas and emotions are shared and distributed through any number of physical phenomena \u2013 sight and sound travel on electromagnetic waves, energy is a thing <\/em>\u2013 <\/em>thus complicating the artificial dichotomies we hold dear between the analogue and the digital, the physical and the ephemeral, the funny and the serious."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[25015],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[25017],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Steph Kretowicz:<\/strong> I remember your work, Sticky, a proposal for a new play<\/em>, at the White Building (London) there was a zine on display that had been workshopped to have a lot of gross things in it and you were excited by that. What is this fascination with, or fetish for, the \u203aicky\u2039?\r\n\r\nMegan Snowe:<\/strong> I\u2019m fascinated with the combination of attraction and repulsion on a visceral level, as well as an intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic one. The icky is alluring. It can create a moment when judgement meets the senses in an interesting way. I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about how to represent immaterial things such as emotions and interpersonal relationships as substances. The zine, Sticky Business: Notes on Emotions\u2019 Texture, Movement and Capital<\/em>, was a collection of notes and research on this subject. Using substances to annotate the book was an extension of this as well as an experiment in combining the flat surface of printed text with materials that smell, that degrade and mold, that literally sanitize.\r\n\r\nIn The Emotional Labor Union<\/em>, an installation currently on view at EFA Project Space (NYC) as part of Once More, with Feeling<\/em>, I tried this text and liquid combining again. Covering books with vaseline is a quick way to connect the sensual and the intellectual. Don\u2019t forget about your body as you read about emotional labor!\r\n\r\nA personal goal I keep returning to is to make works messier, stickier, and gooier. This is a way for me to push against my personal tendency towards the dry and clean. The visceral impact lasts longer; it leaves a residue."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":false,"img":[25019],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"SK:<\/strong> When one thinks about science, they might imagine a clinical, sterile, controlled environment. It feels like your work complicates this conception, exposing science for what it really is: messy, fleshy, fallible. Is this a fair assumption?\r\n\r\nMS:<\/strong> Absolutely. I\u2019ve been impressed by the amount we don\u2019t know about our bodies and about the physical world. This is true in particular when it comes to how emotions biologically come about. What is fascinating to me at the moment is the messy union of science and paradigm. In the science of emotion first person reports about feelings are as valid as the brain scans showing neural activity. What does that do to the social valuing of feelings? Also, how do brain training programs, psychological and emotional enhancement regimes meant to improve one\u2019s health, perpetuate particular power structures and paradigms?"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":false,"img":[25021],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"In See Attachments<\/em><\/a> I\u2019ve begun to use the language of fluid physics to try and describe social and emotional \u203a<\/strong>physics.\u2039 I\u2019m excited about this new interest because it feeds that research I mentioned earlier, giving mathematical words for how we relate to one another emotionally. I keep returning to the impossible and seductive attempt to apply algorithms to allusive lived experiences.\r\n\r\nSearching for the rules of things, of behaviors and of health, is messy.\r\n\r\nSK:<\/strong> There was a projection in The White Building for Sticky, a proposal for a new play <\/em>of a gluey, white (always white) substance dripping, a simulation. I\u2019m interested in this disconnection, or overlap between notions of tactility and the ephemeral that appears to pervade your work. For example, with the EEA project, you try to give a physical presence to emotional expression, yet the interpretation of said expression is still something intangible. What are you trying to locate within this ambiguity?\r\n\r\nMS:<\/strong> In the past year the visual palate of my projects has increased in subtlety. I can\u2019t quite say why, but the fact that transparency can cause appearance and disappearance seems relevant to mention. Bodily fluids are also worth considering; the excretions of pressure, pleasure and pain.\r\n\r\nThe tactility of the ephemeral is something I\u2019m trying to capture. I don\u2019t know how yet, but I\u2019ll keep trying. In the meantime I\u2019m looking at the ways that people answer the question, \u00bbHow should we live this thing called life?\u00ab because I think that there is a key in that question. I also keep returning to the language of textures to describe impressions of things I don\u2019t quite consciously understand. There are so many ways of understanding \u2013 through the physical senses, through emotional intelligence, through instinct, through repetition. I don\u2019t believe in an optimized, actualized self, but if I did, mine would make the most of all of these ways of knowing."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"img_gallery":false,"img":[25023],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"SK:<\/strong> What role does language play in your work? Obviously you\u2019ve been moving towards using text. I\u2019m curious to know what attracts you to it, as well as its application in a \u203avisual art\u2039 context?\r\n\r\nMS: <\/strong>Text has been a tool to capture that ephemeral, that sensual, that goopy longing, as well as address the near impossibility of doing so. This impossibility of language, or really any form of expression, to convey your reality to another person is nothing new, but I think that this \u203a<\/strong>failure\u2039 is fascinating, and our continued attempts to \u203a<\/strong>overcome\u2039 it even more so. The results of our attempts at communication are what creates social dynamics. Every failure is different.\r\n\r\nUsing text as a material in physical space is a huge challenge for me, partly because I can see how easily it could fall flat. I\u2019ve come at it from an installation background. I\u2019m interested in the space of text \u2013 both the physical manifestations it can take as well, as the mental space it can open up in a reader. I also want to use the implied act of reading as a material. I don\u2019t expect viewers to read all of the text I write for a project. I want to put the texts into situations where elements of the content are communicated simply by how the text object is in relation to other objects, and how the implication of the act of reading something relates to what else one is supposed to do in the space of a work.\r\n\r\nA side note: my writing has been circling in on a genre I\u2019ve dubbed \u00bbsoft-core raunch\u00ab and I am very pleased."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[25025],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"SK:<\/strong> I use \u203avisual art\u2039 in inverted commas because it\u2019s pretty apparent that art, particularly in a postmodern context, goes well beyond the visual. It\u2019s also abstract and conceptual, and there\u2019s performance art, all of which you experiment with in your work. Do you have any thoughts on where the \u203aart\u2039 begins and the \u203avisual\u2039 ends, are there points where they don\u2019t actually intersect?\r\n\r\nMS: <\/strong>I have rarely felt comfortable calling myself a \u203avisual\u2039 artist. I like to play mind games. I like to play emotion games. I like to make people wonder if a fiction is a fact, and vice versa. I also love the synesthetic possibilities in art making. A visually haptic image, an audible smell, etc. I think that the reign of \u203avisual\u2039 is continuing to deteriorate, though I expect I will continue to say, \u00bbI\u2019m going to go see<\/em> that exhibition,\u00ab for a while longer. In short, yes, I think \u203aart\u2039 can be independent from the \u203avisual,\u2039 but in order for it to be even more so, we\u2019ll need to work on our language."}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=25011"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=25011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}