Common Ground: exploring domestic ritual in Kenya

I just did a pre-launch for an indiegogo campaign!! Check out the video, I'm super proud of it!!! And the campaign is now in OFFICIAL LAUNCH MODE.

Help me GET THERE!! Join in the fun by contributing (I have a heirarchy of "perks" set up for monetary donations - you should note that my project is sponsored by Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. So contributions to support Common Ground are tax-deductible!!) and/or spreading the word.

JUST GO CRAZY! and send share this post, post/tag/comment in facebook, tweet about it ...

Other ways you can help is to get the word out there: word of mouth is the best!!

• Visit my website: nicolerademacher.com
• Like me on Facebook: facebook.com/nic.rademacher - if you haven't already ;)
• Tweet about the project and follow me on twitter: @nicrademacher
• Follow this blog: nicolerademacher.blogspot.com (I know, silly to post it here, but just in case)
• Join the my mailing list to stay up-to-date on the progress of the project and my work!

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT!!

6 - 12 November 2011

What a week! Phew, glad it is over and with great results!!

First I want to share my photo contribution for this week to Eyes Everywhere (see link in the side bar or just click the words). Every month there is a new theme to collaborate on - from our separate parts of the world. November is SELF PORTRAIT: IN YOUR USUAL PLACE.

This photo was taken during the third shoot for my promo video for my SOON TO BE LAUNCHED indiegogo.com campaign to help raise funds so that I can GET TO KENYA... (those three dots are so that you know that more info is to come - same bat-time, same bat-channel)

Another exciting news item :  the photo above was taken yesterday at Aguafuerte Taller de Dibujo y Grabado, where I am currently an artist-in-residence - developing a series of lithographs for "Potential Spaces". But this photo is with Chilean artist Mariana Tocornal. I've been invited to participate in an exhibition entitled "Seis=Doce" (Six=Twelve), organized by Paula Cortés, director, Galeria Espora (Santiago de Chile). The prints that Mariana and I will make (printed by master printer and Aguafuerte director Iván Lecaros) will be paired together as a diptych! Paula paired us together even though we didn't know one another before yesterday - of, that is a lie, we met briefly at a dinner party at American artist Melissa Wyman's apartment when she was living in Santiago. Anyhow, I think Paula has great intuition. Mariana and I chatted for a long time yesterday - explaining our work and process to one another. We definitely have a lot in common, even outside of the visual similarities. I'm super excited!! More news about this show to come. P.S. other artist pairings: Melissa Wyman & Iván Lecaros, Felipe Santander & Paulo Toledo.

That's all the update for now - I think... I hope didn't forget anything, I've been doing that a lot recently. Thanks for reading! Woot woot! If you haven't already hit "like" on my facebook page, please do! And tell your friends! Gonna make this residency at Lake Victoria Arts Residency Program in February/March HAPPEN and I am going to need all the help I can get to spread the word!

until next time ...

Taller Clik

VE Global Blog Post
I know, I have to make you work a bit to see it, but in the meantime, I will leave you with some nice imagery made by these super amazingly creative kids that I work with:

Les Amoureux au Ban Public

While in Paris, Matías and I worked with two bicultural couples who are both part of this group for the Potential Spaces piece. One of these couples is featured in this documentary. Please watch.

How to communicate in a digital age with no common language

From a chat conversation with my friend at an artist residency in Beijing.

I asked him how he was getting on communicating himself.

his reply (translated into English) was: 

for example, when I got to eat I take pictures and if I go back ... i them to them.

"por ejemplo cuando voy a comer hago fotos del plato y si vuelvo...se la muestro"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65987575@N03/6011654452/

Last Saturday I went to a march here, in Santiago, in support of stopping the construction of the HydroAysén in Chilean Patagonia. If you don't know what I am talking about I would tell you check out the New York Times, but from what I can tell (way down here) there has been little coverage of it in the States. Instead I'll suggest IPS News; fact there is an article that just came out today.

I took my camera with me, obviously - prepared for the worst. The protests here are usually riddled with destruction ... and tear gas. But surprisingly (and perhaps because so many children attended), it was peaceful (well, that is until night fell and the families left, but still there was less destruction than normal).

For sometime I have always loved playgrounds, taking pictures of playgrounds, cross-processing pictures of playgrounds - empty ones - at night... The other day I started bringing my camera with me to the plaza where I take Fu twice a day. One day this dog showed up and behind came a girl calling him "manchas" (spots). When I thought about what "manchas" are I thought it was really cute and then I thought about the translation and I thought, "well, not original, but at least it sounds more eloquent.

She started climbing on the bars where I was taking decidedly boring photos but enjoying myself nonetheless. We had a long discussion about the monkey bars - one of my favorites as well.

I snapped this at the beginning of our discussion. The colors are rich and it is as if she is in the middle of a kip or perhaps she is just floating.

Yesterday

Just a quick thought about recent global events:

Yesterday I received an email from the US Embassy in Chile, to be more cautious: "the enhanced potential for anti-American violence following recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan.  Given the uncertainty and volatility of the current situation, U.S. citizens in areas where recent events could cause anti-American violence are strongly urged to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations." Ok, granted I don't actually live in a country where "recent events could cause anti-American violence", but it begs the question - why are we celebrating on the streets? what the hell did we win? More fear?

What I didn't have time for, but really wish I had.

Olafur Eliasson
Documentation of the exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2010

Earth Rotations

As many of you know I have been collaborating with a collective photo project since July 2009: Eyes Everywhere // Ojos por todos lados. It was started in January 2007, by Elizabeth Ross (Mexican artist) and Ayanna Jolivet McCloud (American artist); they invited other women artists, spread through out the globe, to participate: to dialogue each week through images. Every week the artists post images from their location. Every month the theme changes. The project has involved artists from Mexico, USA, Spain, Uruguay, Malaysia, Argentina, the Netherlands, Dubai, Austria, Norway and France.
The image here is my post for this week (it's a sneak preview - do you feel lucky?? it will be officially posted on Saturday). The theme this month is "Earth rotations": We normally say that the sun sets up and down. I [Agnes, the artist who proposed the theme for April] say the horizon sets up and down. Can you [the other artists who participate] with your pictures let us see how the earth rotates by the means of simple observations?
What a challenge. The first week I posted a thoughtful, yet rather boring photo. Last week .... um I was a very bad collaborator and I didn't send my image in on time. But this week, this is my image and I think it says a lot about earth rotations, life movements, and how nature affects us.
Obviously in nature itself you can see this evidence (hence the photo), but this photo - or this theme, rather - has led me to delve a bit further and question where this is evident in my own personal work. Small things/events, gesture - considering gesture as a supposedly insignificant thing, or perhaps better stated "unnoticed". My research is about the unnoticed, but nevertheless perceived/received.
Gosh, I don't know if I really have a point, but I wanted to share this - this week's EYES photo and my thoughts about my image, with you. Maybe this logic only makes sense to me ...
I hope that you can take some time to think about the unnoticed changes that you have experienced recently - or long ago.

Where am I?

extra sound for Verano

Apparently I am now a once a month post-er. Slack, I know. There has been lots of action here in the skinny country next to Argentina.

Summer came in a threw me into "action-mode", and I will soon have my acting debut - ha! I was an extra in the next film by José Luis Torres Leiva, called Verano.

Nevertheless, juices started flowing and I have picked up speed on several projects and added a few others in case I get bored.

Along with working comes writing and reflection. The bicultural couples piece (as you can see from the image) is turning into prints - very much in process, but I like where they are going. The lost files and then recovered corrupt ones - from my images in Cuba, opened me up (because sometimes you forget about all the possibilities) to new thoughts and ideas with this material.

in-process BiCultural 

While many of the images were recovered without damages there were several that were corrupt. They weren't just corrupt, they were mixed with other images found on the drive. Obviously this led me to think of this mixing and colliding in the bicultural couples piece (I really need a better title, suggestions welcome). So, manually, I have been going through the photos, finding moments - similar to the moments I looked for in the You are a Perpetual Tourist video series. But now I am stripping away and collaging. Like I said, these are in-process, so the stripping away part is what has got me hung up a bit. What am I stripping away? I haven't figured out why I've turned to that method. Anyhow, the image below is one of the "inspiration" images from Cuba and some-other-photo.

corruption inspiration

Meanwhile in the land of Nicole, which sometimes becomes a fantastic land of looking for new and interesting ways to procrastinate, I have started a food blog - you will notice the new link on the left. It is aptly called "FOOD". Currently it is hosted by Wordpress, because at first it was just a distraction, but I am now taking it seriously and improving my food fotography skills.

food fotography

I am planning on moving it to a sub-domain of my website (and this blog too), which do you prefer: food.nicolerademacher.com or kitchen.nicolerademacher.com? The crappy thing is that Wordpress makes you pay to redirect your blog to a subdomain, so I guess I am just going to have to reconstruct it - good thing I just started it.

Ok, so I can't guarantee that I will be posting every day (such a love/hate relationship with you, blog-o-mine) or every week, but I will be posting more often.

Using improv as material

Originally I was writing a post about process, in particular my process, meanwhile I would take breaks - since I can never focus and just do one thing anymore - to work on this new piece. Actually, I am not so sure it is a piece as an investigation. 

Do you ever do that? I think it is kind of like tinkering, right? You find something interesting so you have to take it apart part by part and play around with different combinations - to keep the creative juices flowing. So that is just what I started doing. The video is by no means complete - as with all the videos/work I post here, but again it is a thought, a way of tinkering. 

It all started when I began to help my friend prepare a DVD portfolio (the friend in the video). As I was asked to do something traditional with an improvisation, I began to realize that as the camera-girl I not only needed to do something traditional, but also improvise. So, we made the traditional video for her portfolio and now I am re-examining the work, looking, tinkering with her movements. It is an exploration of movement and gesture as an explicit symbol, not as an unconscious, yet deliberate, communication. 

(don't mind the interlaced-ness) I am thinking about the relationship of dance to pedestrian movement, the ideas that dancers and choreographers use interpreting themes, concepts, ideas as movement and the relationship that these ideas have to quotidian movements - as a viewer, as image, as moving image. 

Rather than consistently resisting traditional practices and opting for experimental, this work is accepting of a more linear way of thinking. I see this as another branch, an extension, of my work. I hope that it will organically open itself to ideas of a more experimental nature in due course.