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.