Expanded Painting is Grounded in Artistic Research
Artistic-visual practice is able to give a shape, a phenomenon to phenomena that are difficult to verbalize and imagine. Through artistic, material making, the unthinkable becomes visible and discussable. Artistic and design practices are inherently knowledge-oriented. However, this form of knowledge and cognition is first and foremost based on art and aesthetics and is therefore also suitable for research at the interface to other disciplines (Engineering, Natural Science, etc.)
(Oder/Glauer, Artistic Design Research, mit Helge Oder, Lehrstuhl Creative Engineering, Augsburg. Ausschnitt aus Pleasing Machines, veröffentlicht in: "HalfLife - Machines/Organisms – Artistic Positions for Climate Change and Extinction", edited by Kaethe Wenzel and Manfred Blohm,2018)
I began experimenting with painting in human milk in 2009. This proved to be difficult and interesting. I was invited to numerous shows and residencies. , for example as resident artist at The Drawing Center at University of California in San Diego (funded by DAAD) and as associate at Berlin School of Arts and Science (UDK). I chose to focus my artistic research practice on painting and drawing with human milk as art material and to reconsider what this may mean from the perspective of urbanism and medical history and published numerous texts. My practice based approach meant that I would explore what was possible in terms of production with this unusual material, accompanied by research into a potential discursive context for the work.
I reacted to critiques and comments, inviting participation on this level. For example, the critique that the work cheaply exploited the novelty of the weirdness factor, it gained attention because human milk led to all sorts of associations and therefore sidestepped any honest discussion about artistic merit. Künstlerische Qualität, often cited when attempting to push the work of someone particular in - or out, and, it is my experience, seldom precisely contoured when pinned down: "What exactly do you mean by artistic quality - in this case, for example?"
Generally, in the best of cases, and in my experience, something "beyond", universal, an artistic quality immediately apparant to all who know anything, some variant of Kantian "interessloses Wohlgefallen" is meant here. Obviously, and in an extremely oversimplified way, human milk, being marked as somehow connected to human biological motherhood (even though biologically male breasts can also produce milk, albeit not very well) it is no longer "interessenlos". Although...ok, I am stopping here. If interested, please do read my dissertation.
2017 artistic research scholar, Senate for Culture and Europe, Berlin
How can a place of historic significance be examined using drawing as analytical tool?
Borderbodylandscaping is a process of actual and imaginary excavation of what has inscribed itself through time – and has been inscribed by historians - into the ground/material/body to the former border territory, using information from the online Archive of the Institute for History of Medicine and Ethics of Medicine, GedenkOrt.Charité.
2016-2018 artistic research scholar at Gedenk.Ort Charité
As a member of the interdisciplinary group of artists, physicians, medical ethicists and medical historians of Gedenk.Ort Charité I worked on the development of a selection process for an artistic project at the Charité Campus Mitte, close to Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.
One of the goals of the project was to design a memorial, art and memorial pathway on the grounds of the Great Hospital and associated research and education institutions to reflect on the National Socialist past of the medical facility and, in particular, its role in this context.
In the open call, the patriarchal gaze on the female body in gynecology and psychiatry was directly addressed. On my initiative, students of my seminar at the Berlin University of the Arts / Institute of Art in Context re-interpreted the preliminary exploration of the site as an artistic task carried out with artistic means. They developed temporary interventions for the location. Based on this strategic setting, we re-framed the campus of the Charité in Berlin-Mitte as a body that we would explore through anamnesis (as part of my seminar "Touching, smelling, hearing", 2016/17). I was able to secure a space a the nGbK for presenting the results of this artistic research work. The temporary interventions that were the result of this artistic research work referred to the content made available by historians of the GeDenkOrt.Charité and transported it to an artistically interested public through the exhibition.
The memorial was envisioned as a commemorative walk with various stations in public space outside of a complex system of educational, research and medical buildings, The Charité Campus Mitte is geographically located at a central point near the former border between East Berlin and West Berlin, next to the new main train station, the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for the present and the strategically positioned House of the Future, the Futurium, where programmers and artists develop future projections. The project is thus embedded in a closely-knit network of representative urban development, determined by the current political policy and its projections from the past and into the future, so that every action, even the decision for the memorial, carries symbolic meaning. The role assigned to artistic autonomy with this system is very important.
I both painted socially engaged artistic responses within this complex context as well as providing the space for the students in my seminars, conceptualized as research group, to conduct artistic research into this terrain in the form of "anamnesis". Of particular importance was the idea that foregrounding temporary artistic interventions is an excellent means to pre-explore a location dedicated to art and commemoration.
The result of the two year project was published by Gedenk.Ort Charité within the series:
Hefte zur Geschichte der Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
2010 to 2014 DISSERTATION
published 2017 with Mensch und Buch Verlag
What happens in the wold is re-viewed through a coat of human breastmilk? .
Research into the use of human milk as drawing and painting material.
I used milk as »invisible ink« to paint and sketch technical drawings of nuclear power plants found in the magazines for young adults »Hobby« (West Germany) and »Jugend und Technik« (East Germany) from the 1960s and 70s. Through the drawings, I explored how the strong polarisation of nature and culture manifested itself, in particular with regard to the use of atomic energy and the representation of military vehicles, such as submarines and aircraft carriers, while observing the transformation gendered identities underwent on opposite sides of the border between Eastern and Western GermanyI.
I searched for potential shifts in the naturalisation processes based on the binary categories of nature/feminine and culture/masculine, and those who continuously re-establish these categories. A recurring pattern emerged in the reactions of the contemporary audience. First, they react to the highly unusual material with ambivalent emotionality – revulsion and fascination. In a second step they often dismiss the work by reminding themselves that human milk is »actually completely natural (feminine)« (or other, variably: socially engaged art rather than painting, emancipatory rather than true art, political and therefore not of high quality) and thereby relegate it to the sphere of non-art in a process similar to abjection described by Julia Kristeva and more extensively examined by Winfried Menninghaus. How is this exclusionary process built?
Artistic-visual practice is able to give a shape, a phenomenon to phenomena that are difficult to verbalize and imagine. Through artistic, material making, the unthinkable becomes visible and discussable. Artistic and design practices are inherently knowledge-oriented. However, this form of knowledge and cognition is first and foremost based on art and aesthetics and is therefore also suitable for research at the interface to other disciplines (Engineering, Natural Science, etc.)
(Oder/Glauer, Artistic Design Research, mit Helge Oder, Lehrstuhl Creative Engineering, Augsburg. Ausschnitt aus Pleasing Machines, veröffentlicht in: "HalfLife - Machines/Organisms – Artistic Positions for Climate Change and Extinction", edited by Kaethe Wenzel and Manfred Blohm,2018)
I began experimenting with painting in human milk in 2009. This proved to be difficult and interesting. I was invited to numerous shows and residencies. , for example as resident artist at The Drawing Center at University of California in San Diego (funded by DAAD) and as associate at Berlin School of Arts and Science (UDK). I chose to focus my artistic research practice on painting and drawing with human milk as art material and to reconsider what this may mean from the perspective of urbanism and medical history and published numerous texts. My practice based approach meant that I would explore what was possible in terms of production with this unusual material, accompanied by research into a potential discursive context for the work.
I reacted to critiques and comments, inviting participation on this level. For example, the critique that the work cheaply exploited the novelty of the weirdness factor, it gained attention because human milk led to all sorts of associations and therefore sidestepped any honest discussion about artistic merit. Künstlerische Qualität, often cited when attempting to push the work of someone particular in - or out, and, it is my experience, seldom precisely contoured when pinned down: "What exactly do you mean by artistic quality - in this case, for example?"
Generally, in the best of cases, and in my experience, something "beyond", universal, an artistic quality immediately apparant to all who know anything, some variant of Kantian "interessloses Wohlgefallen" is meant here. Obviously, and in an extremely oversimplified way, human milk, being marked as somehow connected to human biological motherhood (even though biologically male breasts can also produce milk, albeit not very well) it is no longer "interessenlos". Although...ok, I am stopping here. If interested, please do read my dissertation.
2017 artistic research scholar, Senate for Culture and Europe, Berlin
How can a place of historic significance be examined using drawing as analytical tool?
Borderbodylandscaping is a process of actual and imaginary excavation of what has inscribed itself through time – and has been inscribed by historians - into the ground/material/body to the former border territory, using information from the online Archive of the Institute for History of Medicine and Ethics of Medicine, GedenkOrt.Charité.
2016-2018 artistic research scholar at Gedenk.Ort Charité
As a member of the interdisciplinary group of artists, physicians, medical ethicists and medical historians of Gedenk.Ort Charité I worked on the development of a selection process for an artistic project at the Charité Campus Mitte, close to Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.
One of the goals of the project was to design a memorial, art and memorial pathway on the grounds of the Great Hospital and associated research and education institutions to reflect on the National Socialist past of the medical facility and, in particular, its role in this context.
In the open call, the patriarchal gaze on the female body in gynecology and psychiatry was directly addressed. On my initiative, students of my seminar at the Berlin University of the Arts / Institute of Art in Context re-interpreted the preliminary exploration of the site as an artistic task carried out with artistic means. They developed temporary interventions for the location. Based on this strategic setting, we re-framed the campus of the Charité in Berlin-Mitte as a body that we would explore through anamnesis (as part of my seminar "Touching, smelling, hearing", 2016/17). I was able to secure a space a the nGbK for presenting the results of this artistic research work. The temporary interventions that were the result of this artistic research work referred to the content made available by historians of the GeDenkOrt.Charité and transported it to an artistically interested public through the exhibition.
The memorial was envisioned as a commemorative walk with various stations in public space outside of a complex system of educational, research and medical buildings, The Charité Campus Mitte is geographically located at a central point near the former border between East Berlin and West Berlin, next to the new main train station, the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for the present and the strategically positioned House of the Future, the Futurium, where programmers and artists develop future projections. The project is thus embedded in a closely-knit network of representative urban development, determined by the current political policy and its projections from the past and into the future, so that every action, even the decision for the memorial, carries symbolic meaning. The role assigned to artistic autonomy with this system is very important.
I both painted socially engaged artistic responses within this complex context as well as providing the space for the students in my seminars, conceptualized as research group, to conduct artistic research into this terrain in the form of "anamnesis". Of particular importance was the idea that foregrounding temporary artistic interventions is an excellent means to pre-explore a location dedicated to art and commemoration.
The result of the two year project was published by Gedenk.Ort Charité within the series:
Hefte zur Geschichte der Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
2010 to 2014 DISSERTATION
published 2017 with Mensch und Buch Verlag
What happens in the wold is re-viewed through a coat of human breastmilk? .
Research into the use of human milk as drawing and painting material.
I used milk as »invisible ink« to paint and sketch technical drawings of nuclear power plants found in the magazines for young adults »Hobby« (West Germany) and »Jugend und Technik« (East Germany) from the 1960s and 70s. Through the drawings, I explored how the strong polarisation of nature and culture manifested itself, in particular with regard to the use of atomic energy and the representation of military vehicles, such as submarines and aircraft carriers, while observing the transformation gendered identities underwent on opposite sides of the border between Eastern and Western GermanyI.
I searched for potential shifts in the naturalisation processes based on the binary categories of nature/feminine and culture/masculine, and those who continuously re-establish these categories. A recurring pattern emerged in the reactions of the contemporary audience. First, they react to the highly unusual material with ambivalent emotionality – revulsion and fascination. In a second step they often dismiss the work by reminding themselves that human milk is »actually completely natural (feminine)« (or other, variably: socially engaged art rather than painting, emancipatory rather than true art, political and therefore not of high quality) and thereby relegate it to the sphere of non-art in a process similar to abjection described by Julia Kristeva and more extensively examined by Winfried Menninghaus. How is this exclusionary process built?
The white on white drawings are made visible by burning them.
I buy human milk online from the border region San Diego/Tijuana, mechanizing the visibility producing aspect of heating the milk by attaching a rotary iron and ultimately, externalizing the image selection and production method as far as possible.