ARTLURKER

Untitled (12 Glowing Men), 2008. Still from a single channel video DVD, projection and website. Color and black and white, sound. 4 min 10 sec loop.

Martijn Hendriks is a Dutch contemporary artist who works with found images and video. Selecting from an abundance of defaced and marginalized media he wages a low-key struggle to dissolve the misinformed haze that permeates image searches and suburban videography. By salvaging and promoting a variety of different source material, and through systematic alteration and redistribution of that material, he explores inherent paradoxes in today’s society.

For the purpose of this feature we decided to interview Martijn by committee; to give him not only the chance to write about aspects of his work that interested him most but also the choice not to write about other aspects, which although no where near as interesting as what he has to say, is interesting in itself.

Question (please answer at least one of the following):

1a. Do you have an inkling of what first drove you to make the work you do?

1b. What is it about the world that influences you to make the work you do?

1c. What message, if any, are you trying to convey?

Answer: 1a.

I think a returning drive in much of what I’ve done lately has had to do with a semi-destructive urge, or to put it in other words, perhaps better ones; I’ve wanted to make work that somehow deals with the collapsing of certainty. I’ve been working a lot with appropriation of existing images in many recent pieces, and my interventions in those images are essentially attempts to take away from those images, to disrupt their claims. The biggest claim of images, of course, their truly essential feature, is to show us things, to make things visible and to give them a place, and I’ve kind of been drawn to messing with that. Over the last two years or so I increasingly started looking for ways of not showing things, of negotiating visibility, displacing things, contradictions, interrupting, destabilizing things, negation, repetition, incomplete images, and interventions whose realization somehow contradicts the original purpose of images.
In a way this puts me in a contradictory position; there’s something not quite right about questioning visibility and images through, well, images and visual art. There is something odd about that situation. But somehow this is exactly where I want to be. It’s easier to see this and to put this into words now than when I first started doing this kind of work. I don’t remember when exactly this kind of work started making sense. It’s more that other kinds of work stopped making sense.

Untitled (good party), 2008 Inkjet print upon inkjet print. #1 in a series of double inkjet prints. 39 x 27 inches.

Question (please answer at least one of the following):

2a. Contradiction in this case is unavoidable, and yes, context is important. How do you see your context evolving in the future?

2b. Are your destructive urges representative of a desire to address media conditioning within yourself?

2c. In what ways do your images negotiate our perceptions of them?

Answer: 2b.

Maybe in a certain way they are, although not necessarily with the intent to truly sidestep or withdraw from that conditioning. I’ve always thought that the idea of conditioning makes things sound a little too one-directional and heavy handed. It’s more that most things that I start doing are in some way related to media images, informed by them. They enter my work on many levels such as through references, ideas, concepts, even simply as the material I work with. So yes, I think that this desire is a drive at a basic level of my work. But addressing media and producing a critical perspective on the role they play in my thinking are results rather than intentions. It’s just that when I follow a certain development of a work, it often makes most sense to consider and to unsettle the things I know best, the things that have a strong relation to other things that seem significant to me. Those things largely come from media such as film, video, the Internet and art.

You can have it both and you can have it all (detail), 2008. Three attempts to make found paparazzi photographs of Britney Spears capture the moment better. Three archival inkjet prints. 35 x 37,5 cm, 35 x 38,5 cm, 36 x 55 cm.

Question (please answer at least one of the following):

3a. Can you define what makes an image attractive to you?

3b. Would you consider yourself an iconoclast?

3c. You work within the western construct of art, how do you imagine your projects interacting with non-western ideas?

Answer: 3a.

I am attracted to many images but for different reasons. In general I tend to like images the most when they can’t be seen fully or grasped immediately. When you know that there is something missing from an image. Or when you know it is a copy of another image, a double. I’m attracted to those moments when the status of an image is disputed or unclear. I like images that are incomplete, or images whose original meaning gets turned into its opposite. I guess this is one of the reasons I started working with defaced images that I found on the internet. This was something that at first started as part of my routine of saving images every day from the Internet as reference, or because they have something I was looking for. At a certain point I realized that a kind of focus had slipped into that routine— for a while I was mostly saving images that were somehow turned against themselves. Many of them were images of Saddam or Britney Spears. You could still recognize the people in those images but things were added to them or parts of them had been removed. It was interesting to see how these images had brought iconoclasm some new meaning. For traditional iconoclasts, for example those who turned against Catholic imagery in 1566 in the Netherlands, where I live now, the point was largely to destroy religious images. They had come to stand for a decadent display of wealth and a worshiping of false icons. The iconoclasm of today is still directed against people and institutions whose images have come to stand for their false worshiping. But at the same time, iconoclasm has fundamentally changed now that images travel so much easier through the internet and other media. It seems that now, iconoclasm depends not just on defacing images but on putting the results out there for all to see, copying them and distributing them. For that reason, something is left that keeps part of their original meaning intact, so that the act of violence onto the image is clear. The attraction of those images is that they still show their original subjects even while they’re undermined. There is a conflict in these images, where we don’t really know how to interpret them in a single way.
In my recent works I have found that simple techniques are better than complex interventions to produce the results that I am looking for. The interventions into images that I am most attracted to are often very simple alterations that somehow work in subtle ways with the complexity of the image and visibility, like erasing, hiding, displacing, repeating, cropping, blowing up, re-editing and putting things side by side. And another thing is that I like the concept of taking something all the way, like the video work for which I’m digitally removing every single bird from Hitchcock’s movie The Birds. I still cannot believe that I am doing that piece, it is so much work. But I like that aspect of it. So much of that is about absence; you don’t see the birds, sometimes you hardly see my intervention in the image, but you know about these things.

Still from Untitled (Give us today our daily terror), 2008. Single channel video. Color, sound, 119 minutes – ongoing. Exact copy of Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds from which all birds have been removed.

Question (please answer at least one of the following):

4a. When you talk about taking things all the way, do you mean identifying in and out points for the source material?

4b. By documenting defiled images you are adding a third layer to an already compounded image. Are you suggesting that iconoclasm is actually a way to produce a new meaning.

4c. Do you feel that the reality of intentional absence is stronger than actual presence?

Answer: 4c.

There is something powerful about the act of creating a void or absence when working with found or existing images. Perhaps part of the strength of such absence is that it introduces a disjunction between form and content. In my video piece of The Birds without the birds, the terror of that film is still amazing. But the source of the terror has changed. By taking out the birds, terror isn’t given a form anymore, which instead is something we start doing as viewers. Our refusal of true absence or void is an important aspect for me in working with absence, erasure, hiding, etc. We don’t really accept those things; we start filling the void immediately, imagining what was there or what it is that we’re not seeing. That’s an interesting aspect of absence. It is as if we don’t accept things not to be visible, not to be known or made available. And as such, displacing or hiding things instead of presenting them is also a matter of leaving part of the work to the viewer. With The Birds without the birds, the source of the terror shifts to the viewer. In that sense, working with absence could be compared to telling a good joke. Jokes also depend on a void, something that is left unsaid. The punch of a good joke really comes from the listener who understands that something very particular is left unsaid; a listener who finishes the joke by completing for himself what is left out by the person who tells the joke. And this completing happens on a different level, it could not have been articulated in the same words as the joke was told in. I figure that is why jokes are never funny when they’re explained. They lose their power. Of course the same is true of art works, because all art depends on something that is not completely given yet, not fully present in one way or another. Intentionally working with absence is a way of putting that aspect of art to work.

I feel that erasure in some situations is a very strong form of alteration to work with, but at the same time it is just one way of approaching uncertainty or exploring the possibilities of a disjunction between form and content. In a way, such disjunction or uncertainty was also central to 12 Glowing Men, a video I did which didn’t involve any material erasure. Instead I added another layer: in this case an overtly spectacular layer of digital effects over a key scene of Sidney Lumet’s 1957 film 12 Angry Men. The original movie is in black and white, my addition is in shimmering colors. The original scene deals with guilt, justice, prejudice and doubt, whereas my alteration of the scene is a kind of default digital effect. In a way it is a completely dumb effect, too easy and light to explore the dark subject of the source material. But this dumbness and lightness were an essential part of the material I wanted to work with, it offered another layer of re-appropriation. Using readily available material is not just about appropriating visual material but at least as much about the ways of seeing and reading, the forms of legibility that come with that material. The different dimensions of the work come from completely opposite worlds, and at the same time, once together their dissonance or uneasy combination of a cinematic masterpiece and a canned digital effect starts having its own relevance to how we see that image and how we relate both to visual form and a content (violence, guilt, justice, doubt) that is again very relevant today. So strictly speaking the work is about combination and stacking layers of meaning. But it does rely on a kind of gap, an absence between several levels or interpretations of the work.

In the black of this long night, 2008. Installation view. Attempt to organize Google Image Search results according to defacement tactics Jpeg slideshow transferred to DVD, projection, 15 min 20 secs loop.

Answer: 4a.

What I mean by this is the idea of doing something against all odds as an important dimension of an art work - the art work as the result of a focus or insistence that would seem ridiculous or untenable in any other context than art. I often work with a rule, a concept, a short description for a work - and in realizing that concept, there is something that introduces another layer of meaning for me. In a way the work is given a performative dimension of which the visual work will be a result. And I’ve realized that I like this performative dimension best when it introduces a kind of questionable or unproductive element, so that I really need to believe in something to go through with it. Making an art work is also about believing in something enough to follow it through, to stick with it even when that something lacks all credibility or value.

Untitled (12 Glowing Men), 2008. Still from a single channel video DVD, projection and website. Color and black and white, sound. 4 min 10 sec loop. Part of an online exhibition (clubinternet.org) curated by New York based artist Damon Zucconi, a dedicated website was set up for this work at 12glowingmen.com

Question (please answer at least one of the following):

5a.Your work relies heavily on the premise of the internet, a medium initially developed by the US military.  Is this context considered in your practice?

5b. Your recent use of defiled media images seems symbolic of a deeper moral or societal degradation, is it?

5c. Are you a gleaner or an anarchist?

Answer: 5b.

I don’t necessarily think so. I think the degradation would be much deeper if the original images were completely left alone. In a way I find those images equally moralistic as immoral. I mean that there is a kind of deep conviction about right and wrong in the defiling of these images. Like in the iconoclasm I mentioned, there is something about these images that suggests the people who did the defiling felt strongly about the false claim of the original images that they attacked.
At the same time, they are symbolic of a moral crisis, which shows itself in the fact that people take refuge into the images of popular culture, religion, marketing and state politics to flaunt their discontent. There is little that the defiling of these images will change, and I believe that this frustration of being reduced to just symbolic acts shows in the aggression of many of these defacements. What I like about them, however, is that many of them take pleasure in following specific aesthetic tactics, which is something I tried to trace in my installation ‘In the black of this long night.’ And then after that I started doing a series called ‘Healed Britney,’ in which I attempted, against my own better judgment of course, to digitally heal defaced images of Britney Spears that I had found on the Internet. It’s a series that replicates the same symbolic attempt as the original defacements but turns it around into its opposite gesture by healing, more or less, the image’s defiling.

Healed Britney #10, 2008. From the series ‘Healed Britney’. Archival inkjet print. 20 x 27 inches.

Question (please answer at least one of the following):

6a. Regardless of their positive or negative connotation, where do you place the cult of idol in the zeitgeist?

6b. Have you imagined Saddam Hussein and Britney Spears as some kind of hermaphroditic entity?

6c. Are we in ill times?

Answer: 6c.

That’s a good question. It’s both much too big to answer and at the same time, it’s short and to the point. And it has multiple answers, which is always nice. The obvious answer, of course, would seem to be yes. But on the other hand, things are a lot more complicated than that. Although it’s tempting, it’s too easy to contrast our own moment to previous times and to project onto our moment everything that’s gotten out of hand.

Other times were pretty fucked up as well in their own way. A big difference is that today things move a lot faster and we get to see much more of the shit that goes on through news media or whatever other sources we want. The question is not if things are getting worse, but if so, in what sense, and what that means. I think that one of the issues of our current ill times is not just the obviously serious political, economical or environmental problems that we’re facing (giving particular examples here would feel misguided), but that our perception and knowledge of them through an endless choice of images has become incredibly complex and uncertain, with an almost paralyzing effect. It’s much easier not to face that uncertainty than to actually consider it.

Untitled (12 Glowing Men), 2008. Still from a single channel video DVD, projection and website. Color and black and white, sound. 4 min 10 sec loop.

Answer: 6a.

I’ve done a number of works that reworked images of contemporary idols like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and what attracted me in working with them was the paradox that the cult of idol embodies in our culture. On the one hand, of course, there is the idol as perfection, the social figure that is looked up to, larger than life. They are nothing if not a reference point for desire, onto which all kinds of qualities are projected. They seem almost like big iconic structures that tower high above everything else. What interests me is the moment where these iconic, towering figures start to topple, or where a sense of impending collapse is projected onto them. It’s not simply the idolized people who collapse, but the values that are ascribed to them. In that sense, the construction of the idol functions not just as an image where we place the extremes of cultural ambition, success, money, confidence and desire but also, and today it seems even more so, as a place where everything falls apart, where we start imagining the party to end[.]

For more information please visit: www.martijnhendriks.com

Can you feel the next crop? - D.A.S.H. kids celebrate end of school ‘08 at the studio of artist Oliver Sanchez.

Miami’s art scene is comparatively new and being new it is still very much asserting itself just as those within it are still very much finding their voices and the niches for those voices. Miami’s art scene is also very diverse; but have Miami artists have been forced to diversify or are Miami artists naturally diverse? Not wanting to be the same as someone else has obvious advantages for those living in such a small pond but the range of different styles, aesthetics and concepts found within the Miami art scene seem to stem from more than just a desire to be different, perhaps hinting at a deeper, as yet unplumbed depth of cultural intrigue.

There really isn’t anyone in Miami making work that looks like anyone else’s work and even when compared with different cities, Miami stands out as a place of great variety. To explore this further we took two college professors, one from Miami and one from New York and posed them this question. “Are Miami artists especially diverse?” Due to the nature of their jobs we have taken the decision to preserve their anonymity but we can tell you that both professors have intimate experience of Miami. The voice in red is the professor now based in New York.

They’re very diversified, there aren’t two Miami artists that make the same type of work.

Sure they do.

Who, the House kids? Aesthetically it’s all different. Conceptually they’re all similar artists but visually they are very different.

Then who makes really unique work.

Well, there are only a few painters. Leyden Rodriguez could be compared to Jorge Pardo; is it art, is it furniture…

Left: Leyden Rodriguez Casanova, Two Sectionals Creating Closure, 2007. Imitation leather sofas, 12 x 8 feet. Right: Jorge Pardo, Untitled (Cesar and Mima Reyes House), 2006, Medium and Dimensions Variable. Photo: Nikolas Koenig

Well, what does that mean? I mean first of all I don’t really understand the whole goal of trying to make the most unique work that you can make. I mean if somebody’s made it before then…

It’s not about that, everybody’s has made everything before, forget about it. What I am taking about…

But I mean you make what you feel that you connect with.

I agree with you, you start with the last thing that you felt was important but I think if you look at what’s within the western world, if you think about who is actually important in fine art, in that genre, almost always there is some originality there. Even if it’s just some juxtaposition that hasn’t been brought together before as opposed to a culture where there has been a tradition of very similar work, let’s take an obvious example: ancient Egypt. There you have a very similar way of producing work. I think in the western world to say complete uniqueness in every aspect is the goal is ridiculous but I do think, lets say somebody did exactly what Pollock did, for example, or pick any artist would that be…

Well, many people do, but you’re being culturally specific. Bringing it back to Miami art, and authenticity, what makes or causes Miami artists to be so diverse? If in fact they are.

Well, lets think again about who or which prominent Miami artists could be said to be the same. Naomi Fisher and Hernan Bas, I can see similarities there.

Left: Naomi Fisher, Ladies 8/3/2004, 2004. Ink on vellum. 17” x 14”. Right: Hernan Bas, The Hunter, 2004. Mixed media on paper, 19” x 14”.

I’ve seen similarities here Amy Cutler and the guy who does the little G I Joe characters… Marcel something.

But wait, I think that’s the wrong way to approach it. You said it wasn’t culturally specific, that’s a bigger thing. Do you think art making itself shouldn’t have originality?

Well you said western culture.

Well, no no, you said why does it have to be original, I am not saying it should or it shouldn’t I am just wondering where you are coming from, I am not disagreeing, just wondering.

I just think that the idea of “I am going to make something original” is not original, and they teach you to do this in college.

Somewhat, well, nobody ever said that to me, not exactly.

Youre supposed to make something, or something’s supposed to come and look like it’s from outer fucking space or something

Well, if they encourage that then that’s weird. I do think that originality should be considered

You should just make what you connect with

Yes, but sometimes the people who think like that come in [to college] without being open to the idea that they could be wrong or teach themselves. Lets say they love drawing Pokémon “I love drawing Pokémon” that’s all they’re going to know if you don’t show them or encourage them to draw other stuff.  You know what I am saying? If you were to say “just do what you love” then that’s fine but does that make it important or art or anything. It could still be awful and you could still love doing these pictures of Pikachu eating corn and that’s cool but it may or may not…you know what I am saying? Because you love doing it I don’t think there is anyone that would say don’t do it but if you’re going to make something or say something that other people are going to be interested in then it might be another question.

I understand that but then you’re really thinking too much about the connection of the viewer, like “what would this person think” or “how will this work be received.”

So you don’t really care about the viewer? The context is not important? Let’s say you were a writer and you wanted to make a paragraph about walking down a long flight of stairs but instead you wrote about how a bottle fell on the ground. If you didn’t communicate it, if you don’t care about that, I mean you may think you communicated one thing but if somebody else got a completely different thing out of it then you failed. If you don’t consider how your art relates then you risk that.

Its important to communicate, it is, I agree but you don’t want to get into that whole thinking about wow you’re making a painting thinking about the viewer because then its going to effect the way you’re making it. Lets say for example that you really wanted to say something but you thought it’s wasn’t important enough, then whether its gibberish or not doesn’t matter, if its really important or not it doesn’t matter, it’s a shame if someone is afraid to enter into that world.

Well, almost by default I think if you’ve taught yourself and you’re being honest with yourself, you’re moving, you’re doing something interesting, you’re going to have to communicate to other people.

And what about the part that the buyer plays in the decision making process?

I think it almost happens by default, because communication is part of it. And I think if you were completely honest with yourself then you’ll accept that its not like your making art only for you, someone is bound to see them. Even if that wasn’t the goal in the first place you rationalize that. You are bound to think about that anyway. So I think that you being moved by yourself is important. The other stuff becomes a secondary issue; stuff like “are you communicating”, “is that important” and “if so are you doing that.” Its all something you can ask but I think that you can still get a pure enjoyment from making it.

Something I was never interested in when making art was whether I could say something in a new way, I’ve never cared about that, its not even toward the bottom of my list of concerns or things I am trying to achieve. And I feel like a good artist wouldn’t even think that way but they teach you to.

Well, I have to disagree because I do think that you could say the corniest thing, like gender issues, a lot of work these days, at least student work, student concepts, is about gender issues. Its obvious, I mean you could say something like “racism is bad’, obvious, but said in a new interesting way it can make you stop and think “fuck, it is important” So I do think that saying something in an original way is important because you could say something so corny like “this is bad” “look both ways to cross the street” “sharing is important” whatever, its obvious; but presented in an interesting way, a new way that explores a relationship or a juxtaposition between this and that and then suddenly its like “fuck, sharing is important” even though its so clear to begin with. It’s like when people tell you “it’s about sexual issues” and I think to myself “OK, I get that but science does it better; sociology and psychology writes about it better”. Often people make something in a very open way to express an idea but I want to be moved in a specific art way. I can get ideas elsewhere but my question to an artist who deals with ‘common’ themes is are you going to move me in a specific way to visual art – that’s important. And I’m not dismissing or down grading a piece just because it deals with a sexual issue, that could be a great piece, but just because it’s about a gender issue - or even a great idea - doesn’t make it fucking interesting.

No, it doesn’t. You still have to ask yourself the question “Is this still something I want to look at and experience. The trouble is at that level all the student wants and all the tutor wants is to make someone who is capable of being an artist. They train them to perform in the career. Everyone is geared to the production of a successful artist and that compromises the learning, or it can.

But I do think that saying something in a new/effective way should be an issue. And I think its something that’s going to happen eventually, whether it happens by default or by striking gold early on but it is something I think about and if it wasn’t then I would just make regular landscapes and I’d be like, “I love these landscapes, I don’t care if its original” but I feel that that conflict of saying I don’t want it to be something that I’ve seen before that is an inherent question for all makers.

Its not even about what you don’t want to see, its about what you do want to see.

No, but it is. I say “I don’t want to see this typical painting” so that does force me to push to say something in a different way and make something hopefully more interesting.

I usually make something I want to see.  At least I hope I do.

But part of that is not wanting to look fucking typical.

Sure[.]