{"id":1760,"date":"2015-07-21T16:18:36","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T20:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/?p=1760"},"modified":"2018-05-25T03:19:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T07:19:38","slug":"monika-weiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/monika-weiss\/","title":{"rendered":"Monika Weiss"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--powerpress_player--><div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_9542\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-1760-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interview\/monikaweiss.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interview\/monikaweiss.mp3\">http:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interview\/monikaweiss.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/interviews-by-brainard-carey\/id1468502583?mt=2&amp;ls=1\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_itunes\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe on Apple Podcasts\" rel=\"nofollow\">Apple Podcasts<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/5ZxsN79E1W6VJOjQF9GNuZ\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_spotify\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe on Spotify\" rel=\"nofollow\">Spotify<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/Interviews-by-Brainard-Carey-p1236598\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_tunein\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe on TuneIn\" rel=\"nofollow\">TuneIn<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/feeds.podcastmirror.com\/interviews-by-brainard\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/xSQrKY\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_more\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click here to  join mailing list\" rel=\"nofollow\">Click here to  join mailing list<\/a><\/p><figure id=\"attachment_1761\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1761\" style=\"width: 180px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1761 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/text_IMG_7337_copy.jpg?resize=180%2C270&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"text_IMG_7337_copy\" width=\"180\" height=\"270\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1761\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The artist in her studio in New York, June 2015. Photo: Gretchen Oldelm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Monika_Weiss\" target=\"_blank\">Monika Weiss<\/a>\u00a0is a Polish-American artist based in New York City whose transdisciplinary work investigates relationships between body and history, and evokes ancient rituals of lamentation. Her films\/video, installations, public performances, photographs and drawings combine minimalist and poetic approach with socially engaged and complex narratives. In the words of British art critic Guy Brett, Weiss \u201cprovides an alternative experience of space and time, which is not end-driven but steady and enduring, establishing and deepening a human presence\u201d. Her current work considers aspects of public memory and amnesia as reflected within the physical and political space of a City. Educated originally as a classical musician, Weiss records and composes sound in her films from testimonies, recitations, and musical instruments, including her own piano improvisations, merging diverse narratives together into polyphonic compositions.<\/p>\n<p>An important part of the artist works are public projects, which are ephemeral and site-specific environments. Commissioned by The Drawing Center, her <em>Drawing Lethe<\/em> (2006) took place at the World Financial Center Winter Garden within sight of Ground Zero, where workers were still searching for remains. Passersby lay down and marked their presence onto the enormous canvas covering the floor, which gradually became a drawing-field. In <em>Shrouds-Ca\u0142uny<\/em> (2012), Weiss filmed, from an airplane, local women performing silent gestures of lamentation on the abandoned, forgotten site of the former concentration camp Gruenberg, located in Zielona G\u00f3ra. Introducing the artist&#8217;s performance held as part of the Sensory Media Series at Harvard University (2014), Krzysztof Wodiczko (Harvard&#8217;s Professor in Residence of Art, Design and the Public Domain) said of Weiss: &#8220;Her focus is on postmemory, a new field in which she is one of the most original artistic pioneers. Not being a proper witness, not being a proper survivor, and not being able to recall the very overwhelming events, Monika Weiss indirectly, on the basis of found fragments of images and encountered sites, chooses to inhabit them performatively through her art. She attempts to do so even if, in her words, they &#8216;defy narrative reconstructions and exceed comprehension.&#8217; She does so through lamentation, an original, often public, performative, and collaborative form of her art.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2026The lamentation which this work brings to us is an invitation to consider the mourning process in a more contemporary way: as a transformation whose ultimate result is unknowable. The suffering poetically presented by Monika Weiss shows the lineaments of a history and a political community that are far more complex and demanding than is usually thought, and that are capable of incorporating, rather than segregating, those who have been perennially absent: the victims and the defeated\u201d wrote Adriana Valdes in <em>Lamentation and the Locus of Memory: Monika Weiss\u2019s Sustenazo (Lament II)<\/em> (2012).<\/p>\n<p>The artist&#8217;s work has been shown in over twenty solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions internationally and is represented by Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montr\u00e9al and Hyphen-Hub, New York, and in public collections and publications worldwide. In 2005, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York, organized and published a survey of the artist\u2019s work to date, <em>Five Rivers<\/em>, which was reviewed in The New York Times. Her work has been featured at Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation CIFO, Miami (<em>Forms of Classification: Alternative Knowledge and Contemporary Art<\/em>, 2007; <em>The Prisoner\u2019s Dilemma: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection<\/em>, 2009) and she was part of Prague\u2019s Muzeum Montanelli (MuMo)\u2019s inaugural show in 2010. Her traveling exhibition <em>Sustenazo<\/em>, originally commissioned by the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2010), was subsequently shown at Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago (2012-2013); Patricia &amp; Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami (2014); and Goethe Institut New Delhi (2015). Weiss&#8217; writings have appeared in publications such as <em>New Realities: Being Syncretic<\/em> (Springer, Wien\/New York) and <em>Technoetic Arts<\/em> (Intellect, London). Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1964 the artist is based in New York City since 1999. Since 2011 she divides her time between New York and St. Louis, where she is currently Associate Professor in Sam Fox School of Design &amp; Visual Arts.<\/p>\n<p>About her new experimental film <em>Wrath<\/em> (2015), which was recently on view during the Armory Week in New York, the artist wrote: \u201cI invite others to inhabit my films, sound compositions and performances to join me in the space of lamentation, understood as a public gesture. In <em>Wrath<\/em> my protagonist remains nameless yet is also powerfully present. My work relies on this immediacy of encounter but also on poetry and beauty as a form of language containing a possibility towards political, social and ethical transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Learn more on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.monika-weiss.com\" target=\"_blank\">her website here.<\/a><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1769\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1769\" style=\"width: 625px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1769 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS-SHROUDS-2012.jpeg?resize=625%2C417&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"MONIKA WEISS SHROUDS 2012\" width=\"625\" height=\"417\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS-SHROUDS-2012.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS-SHROUDS-2012.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS-SHROUDS-2012.jpeg?resize=624%2C416&amp;ssl=1 624w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS-SHROUDS-2012.jpeg?w=1350&amp;ssl=1 1350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1769\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Monika Weiss, Shrouds (Ca\u0142uny), 2012 Public project, aerial photography, experimental film, and performance with participation of local women on the site of Gruenberg (Zielona G\u00f3ra)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1796\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1796\" style=\"width: 625px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1796 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO-DE-LA-MEMORIA.jpg?resize=625%2C419&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"MONIKA WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO DE LA MEMORIA\" width=\"625\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO-DE-LA-MEMORIA.jpg?resize=1024%2C687&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO-DE-LA-MEMORIA.jpg?resize=300%2C201&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO-DE-LA-MEMORIA.jpg?resize=624%2C419&amp;ssl=1 624w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO-DE-LA-MEMORIA.jpg?w=1392&amp;ssl=1 1392w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO-DE-LA-MEMORIA.jpg?w=2088&amp;ssl=1 2088w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1796\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sustenazo (Lament II) View of the exhibition at Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile, December 2012 &#8211; April 2013.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interview\/monikaweiss.mp3Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | Click here to join mailing listMonika Weiss\u00a0is a Polish-American artist based in New York City whose transdisciplinary work investigates relationships between body and history, and evokes ancient rituals of lamentation. Her films\/video, installations, public performances, photographs and drawings combine minimalist and poetic approach with socially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[67,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-1760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artists","8":"tag-new-york-city","9":"tag-us"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MONIKA-WEISS_SUSTENAZO_MUSEO-DE-LA-MEMORIA.jpg?fit=3500%2C2349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p47FRq-so","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1798,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions\/1798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/museumofnonvisibleart.com\/interviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}