unlocation, Vol. 1, pt. 1 | mixed media on postcards, 21.10. – 30.10.2016
unlocation is an ongoing series that was started in the Chance in Art & Design class, taught by Kirstin Arndt (the one where I also made the glitch video). It’s a series of daily drawings that try to access the subconscious by working with chance and sidestepping our all-too conscious efforts.
The prompt the project started with was to create a little piece first thing after waking up, in the bathroom. The process also needed to include an aspect of chance. I decided to work with photographs of Iceland, taken from several postcard calendars I have owned (as a result, I have dozens of these postcards lying around). The plan was to draw on these cards, manipulating and smothering the landscape at hand. Those are places that existed, but can’t exist anymore, hence the title. But all of that wasn’t enough, the idea still kinda bored me, so I asked a friend who studies Ancient Greek to give me a bunch of vocab to provide me with titles. The good thing is that I don’t speak Greek, I can’t even read the characters, so it was impossible for me to be biased while creating the pictures.
So here’s the process: Every piece was created first thing after waking up, while my mind was still sleepy. I would randomly pick a postcard and a title out of the huge pile and start drawing on it. I tried out different things, like stepping on it, drawing with my eyes closed, letting the paint flow wherever and just generally being open to what the piece demanded from me. Sometimes I completely sidestepped my sense of composition, sometimes I let it add to the mixture. After I was done (which was mostly after 10-15 minutes at most), I translated the title. After that it was done and I wasn’t allowed to work on it any further.
The random background, the time limitations, the loose approach to composition, and especially the synthesis between the title and the finished artwork, which, by design, was not forseeable, made this a very exiting and fruitful project. And although it started as a school project, it quickly developed a life of its own. As of right now, I have no intention to stop - I’m eager to see where it might take me.
These are the first ten pieces, in chronological order:
ἀπόλλυμι - perish | 21.10.2016
εὐτυχία - luck | 22.10.2016
βουλή - plan | 24.10.2016
τυφλòς - invisible, blind | 25.10.2016
Ναυσικάα - Nausicaa | 26.10.2016
αὐτίκα - immidiately | 28.10.2016
ἀσκέω - practise | 29.10.2016
δέρμα - skin | 30.10.2016
Please note: the English translations are rough. The words were taken out of a German-Greek dictionary, and I translated the German meaning to English the best I could. It’s probably not 100% accurate though.
Hope you enjoy the project as much as I did making it because I sure had a blast and I’m quite happy with how playful the final product ended up being.
unlocation Vol. 1 (pt. 1, pt. 2) | unlocation Vol. 2 | unlocation Vol. 3 (pt. 1, pt. 2)
