S Surface is a Seattle-based curator of art, design and architecture, and the King Street Station Program Lead with ARTS. Previously, Surface was co-curator of The Alice, an artist-run exhibition space and writers’ residency, and Out Of Sight 2017, a regional survey of Pacific Northwest artists. As Program Director at Design in Public, Surface organized the annual city-wide Seattle Design Festival and curated at the Center for Architecture & Design. Trained in graphic design, photography and entrepreneurship at Parsons School of Design, and with a M.Arch from Yale School of Architecture, research coordinator and editor with C-LAB, Volume Architectural Journal, and the Network Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and a teaching fellow in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Yale University. Surface served on the Seattle Arts Commission and on the board of Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility.
Interview
Carol Ann Davis
Carol Ann Davis is a poet, essayist, and author of the poetry collections Psalm (2007) and Atlas Hour (2011), and The Nail in the Tree: Essays on Art, Violence, and Childhood (2020), all available from Tupelo Press.
The daughter of one of the NASA engineers who returned the Apollo 13 crew from the moon, she grew up on the east coast of Florida the youngest of seven children, then studied poetry at Vassar College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A former longtime editor of the literary journal Crazyhorse, she is Professor of English at Fairfield University, where she directs the Low-Residency MFA Program and is founding director of Poetry in Communities, an initiative that brings writing workshops to communities hit by sudden or systemic violence. She lives in Newtown, CT, with her husband and two sons.
Frans van Lent
La Biennale de Momon- about the solidity and continuity of the physical world as opposed to the human temporary presence. July – November, 2020.
The initiative:
La Biennale de Momon project was set up by Frans van Lent, a Dutch artist, based in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. His recent projects include the Unnoticed Art Festival, the ConceptBank and the ParallelShow. There is no clear distinction between his practice as a performance artist and his curatorial projects. He often invites other artists to participate on an equal basis. Frans van Lent studied at MaHKU, Utrecht (MA Fine Arts). He tutors at the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam (since 2000).
The project:
Maumont is a small village in the Perigord in France. It consists of 15 houses, around 30 inhabitants and there is no church, shop, café or other public facility. Only a few original residents are still living in the village; many died over the years, others left to live elsewhere. Today most inhabitants are newcomers and pensioners, often from other countries.
Twenty years ago you could still smell the farms everywhere. Herds of cows and sheep were led through the village every day. The village has changed, from a place where all was related to soil, growth and the seasons, to a place where the inhabitants mainly stroll, relax and dream.
Momon is the old name of the village, no longer in use since the name Maumont was introduced. Momon stands for the village as it exists in the mind. It is no longer physically linked to the location, it is linked to memories and coloured by nostalgia.
La Biennale de Momon starts from the village, but it will only be that starting point. Nothing will be changed but, on the contrary, it will remain the way it is.
The artists:
Eight artists are working in this project:
Sarah Boulton (GB), Marc Buchy (FR/BE), Joan Heemskerk (NL), Susana Mendes Silva (PT), Josh Schwebel (CA/DE), Lisa Skuret (US/GB), Elia Torrecilla (ES) and Frans van Lent (NL).
They all have a certain preference for creating work without a material body, without physical traces. Their ultimate works might consist of texts, scores, images or sounds, everything that can live online without actually touching the physical ground.
Sarah Boulton (GB), Marc Buchy (FR/BE), Joan Heemskerk (NL), Susana Mendes Silva (PT), Josh Schwebel (CA/DE), Lisa Skuret (US/GB), Elia Torrecilla (ES) and Frans van Lent (NL).
They all have a certain preference for creating work without a material body, without physical traces. Their ultimate works might consist of texts, scores, images or sounds, everything that can live online without actually touching the physical ground.
During one week in the first half of this year, every artist will individually stay in a small house in the village. She/he will use this time to get familiair with the village, with its surroundings, its inhabitants. And they will of course prepare and create.
Finally La Biennale de Momon can only be experienced online. The will be no physical traces left in the village to find. The project will officially be presented at LaBiennaleDeMomon.org on July 15, 2020.
You can of course always choose to visit the location, but do not expect to see something different than what it always was: just a small village in the Perigord.
You can of course always choose to visit the location, but do not expect to see something different than what it always was: just a small village in the Perigord.
And finally:
In November 2020 we will organise a public conference in the Dordrechts Museum in Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
In this conference all artists will talk about the meaning of this project and about their works.
There will also be other speakers with a professional relation to the subject: actors, journalists, scientists.
Financing the project:
We are very happy that the city of Dordrecht, the Netherlands, funded part of this project. It ensures us of the means to realise many aspects as intended.
One of the things that is still missing is a fee for the artists. The project is very much dependent of their efforts and I would really want to value this by offering them a fair fee.
To realize that we set up the crowdfunding.
To realize that we set up the crowdfunding.
The book mentioned in the interview is Underland of Robert Macfarlane.
Sarah Stolar
Sarah Stolar (b. 1974, Chicago, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Working from a vast technical perspective, the breadth of her work includes painting, drawing, multi-media installation, film, video and performance art. Rooted in a 20-year investigation of the female psychological narrative, common threads in her work include coming of age, loss of innocence, sexuality, beauty, power, death, spirituality, and identity. Sarah is the daughter of artist and educator Merlene Schain, and in the family lineage of 19th-century German painter Adolph von Menzel and Rookwood Pottery master potter John von Menzel of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. She grew up in her mother’s art studio and award-winning art school Schain Studios in Cincinnati, OH, received a BFA in Painting from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. Sarah’s visual art, performance, and collaborative work have exhibited across the United States and in Argentina, Spain, Germany, Austria, Finland, Italy, and Cuba with solo exhibitions at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Harwood Museum of Art, and BGMoCA in Montevideo, Uruguay as well as awards and honors from international film festivals, et al. Her work has been featured in multiple publications including The Nation Magazine, LandEscape Art Review, Nomos Journal, and Hyperallergic. A committed educator for over fifteen years, Sarah Stolar serves on multiple boards and academic committees, and is currently the Chair of the Art Department at the University of New Mexico – Taos.
The book mentioned in the interview was The Power by Naomi Alderman.
Mireia c. Saladrigues
Mireia c. Saladrigues (Terrassa, 1978) is a researcher and visual artist at the Doctoral Program of the Finnish Art Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.
Via her research Behaving Unconventionally in Gallery Settings. Alteration in Cultural Practices for Rearticulating Relations among Makers, Objects, Audiences, and (Virtual) Museums, she documents and fosters human and non-human cases of alteration and strangeness in cultural practices by proposing an artistic and theoretical re-reading of nonconformity. It also experiments with implementing occasions for misrepresented behaviours that, within the (conceptual) architecture of display, are considered traditionally unacceptable. The research is being supervised by Jan Kaila, Julie Harboe and punctually by Hito Steyerl.
Her work participated the 2nd Research Pavilion in occasion of the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). She has also exhibited at: Espai 13 in Joan Miró Foundation (2011), Antoni Tàpies Foundation (2014), La BF15 in Lyon (2014), Centre d’Art Le Lait in Albi (2015), Videonale.13 in Bonn (2011), Centre Cultural Caja Madrid (2011), National Museum of Photography in Copenhaguen (2010), Kiasma Museum in Helsinki (2009), DIA Art Foundation (2008), Art Museum in Pori (2008), Onomatopee in Eindhoven (2015 i 2012), Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis (2010).
She has lectured at the 9th Annual Conference of the Society of Artistic Research in Plymouth, 104th Annual Conference by CAA in Washington DC, the EARN Symposium at GradCAM@DIT in Dublin, KuVA Research Days in Helsinki, as much as others.
She has received numerous awards, which the most recent are KuVA Research Position (2020-2021), Kone Publication Grant (2020), Kone Foundation Research and Art Production Grant (2016-2019), KuVA Grants (2019-2014), ETAC – Artistic Research Residency (2014), OSIC- Research and creation grant (2012).
