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the red and blue and white, the colors of the flags of the nations. The dictator’s tomb, the alien spaceship. The foreign regime.
The making of Digigrave in Minecraft
The first drawing of the Digigrave
The Digigrave
The Digigrave is a “spaceship”.
A spaceship which offers a different perspective of reviewing ourselves, to escape from those who’s addicted to grand narratives of groups, categories, ethics, or families. It looks like a Taiwanese traditional tomb, and also recalls the memory of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall built during the 1980s. It’s part of the sci-fi story Space Warriors. According to the story setting, Digigrave carries alien species to come and save the earth – or the island under martial law.In East Asia, during the last decade of the Cold War from 1984 to 1987, CTS, one of Taiwan’s only three official TV stations at that time, produced and broadcasted a very rare and weird sci-fi series, Space Warriors. It was basically copied from the Japanese series Super Sentai in late 1970s with modifications. At the same time, it also referenced the Gavan, the follow-up series of Super Sentai, and was mixed with some local elements. CTS eventually discontinued the series due to low ratings, inconsistent production quality, overt criticism from parents, and the import of the Japanese original on VHS and satellite television. Unfortunately, the sci-fi did not open the people’s imaginative thoughts about the universe and the world, but rather, the series, combined with illogical fantasy and Chinese Folktales and even martial arts elements, subtly implied nationalism, Confucianism, patriarchy, and other values, which was a very strange and unique experience during the martial law period.
welcome to my studio ๑(◕‿◕)๑
Hi Hi
Bassam here, and welcome to this space where ill be posting some WIP images of a project I’m developing with˚ʚJennifer Mehiganɞ˚ .me and Jennifer have made a lot of work in the past, some short film works and lightTM Collaborations but this will be the most ambitious of our collaborative works.
we generally use the picture below as our portrait, Jen being the horse and me being the armored figure (time for an update as i think we are now maybe both horses ???)
We made this short film/video a while ago, and its functioned as a precursor to the work we are making together now. The work explored themes of divine retribution, queendom, and climate change through the lens of Catholic iconography, constellations, and Fallopia Japonica (Japanese knotweed). Through out the work you encounter images of embracing horses, highly stylized diagrams, floating eyeballs, a dead horse, a hand growing flowers out of its palm and other convulsing plant life.
I will be using this residency to build the world of the film we are making together, so ill be posting some images of character design, landscape layouts, portraits of computer generated flowers, CG outfits among other things. ❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀
Welcome to Shaima’s studio
Welcome to my studio, where I can share my practices and my experiences.
This space belongs to an emerging Palestinian artist called Shaima Sheikh Ali or “Mohammad Ali”, since the israeli colonial forced us to change the name of our family in the “israeli ID”!
My multimedia art explores the liminal space between the personal and the collective, which is a point of intersection and a point of departure. I use sculpture and video as the main elements in my installation art.
The most common challenge that artists in general and the Palestinian artist in particular, is experiencing challenges of all political, societal and religious censorship that may be imposed by the authority, in which this external censorship gradually turns into self-censorship imposed on the Palestinian self. Internal control requires deception and covering up of information we know about our real issues; this comes from the womb of truth and reality. Access to this information raises the value of freedom of expression and critical thinking.
In addition, there is a scarcity of supporting institutions, and lack of Palestinian artistic platforms, especially in Jerusalem, due to the restrictions and oppression imposed by the colonists. Parents also have power that can limit their children’s progress, and impose their control, which prevents them from taking important steps towards what they want. In addition to these challenges, physical disability also has a place, which I struggle with in particular. It’s the reason why I can’t access some exhibitions and art residencies; a situation that makes the everyday difficult, and makes the difficult impossible.
This residency will give me the platform that I need to expand my experience in order to share it with you. I am excited to be on this residency on Vital Capacities, to develop one of my techniques that I previously developed for one of my artworks.
You are very welcome to take a look around my studio, and if you have something that you want to say or to share with me please feel free to leave a comment.
Welcome to Sammy’s studio
There is a trinity of subjects I’m currently obsessed with: toilets, boglands, and crossroads. I’m fascinated by toilets and sewers and boglands and crossroads as gateways of egress and ingress to Underworlds where The Outcast Dead may dwell. Historically, those deemed criminals were often buried at crossroads and bogs for the same reason; that their souls may forever be lost and not find their way to salvation. As a trans girl and a witch, I’m in love with the phrase ‘The Outcast Dead’ (as used by Crossbones Graveyard near London Bridge, an unconsecrated Victorian burial site now dedicated to The Outcast Dead).
My work is driven by the politics of the eulogy: who gets to be grieved, how that grieving is allowed to happen, and what kinds of stories are remembered of the dead.
For this residency I’m going to begin developing a project mapping these gateways to the lands of the Outcast Dead, which I’m collecting under the title, ‘Sewer Sonnets’. I’m interested in sonnets as writing born of love and devotion, and I see devotion as being my main research methodology in this project.
I always try to approach the subjects of grief and the dead with a balance of levity and care, because I truly believe grief to be both a transformative, inherently playful/magickal force and utterly world-destroying at the very same time. That being said, grief can be an intense and raw subject, particularly for those of us who have lost someone close to us, so please take care here. I’m always up for talking about this stuff though, so feel free to comment here.
Welcome to Su and XTRUX studio
Hi,
We are a cyber art collective, “Su and XTRUX”. We are Su, the individual artist, and XTRUX, which is a 5-member group. We’re preparing a few exciting projects this year. One of the plans is called The Space Warriors and the Digigrave, an extension of this project is what we plan exploring for the residency. It will be an adaptable “grave”, we called it Digigrave, which is sort of an artist’s last will exhibition. We will use some interesting addons to build it in the world of Minecraft.
The Digigrave is also a “spaceship” . A spaceship which offers a different perspective of reviewing ourselves, to escape from those who are addicted to grand narratives of groups, categories, ethics, or families. It looks like a Taiwanese traditional tomb, and also recalls the memory of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall built during the 1980s. It’s part of Su’s sci-fi story Space Warriors.
According to the story setting, Digigrave carries alien species to come and save the earth – or the island of Taiwan under martial law. In East Asia, during the last decade of the Cold War from 1984 to 1987, CTS, one of Taiwan’s only three official TV stations at that time, produced and broadcasted a very rare and weird sci-fi series, Space Warriors. It was basically copied from the Japanese series Super Sentai in late 1970s with modifications. At the same time, it also referenced the Gavan, the follow-up series of Super Sentai, and was mixed with some local elements. CTS eventually discontinued the series due to low ratings, inconsistent production quality, overt criticism from parents, and the import of the Japanese original on VHS and satellite television.
Unfortunately, the sci-fi did not open the people’s imaginative thoughts about the universe and the world, but rather, the series, combined with illogical fantasy and Chinese Folktales and even martial arts elements, subtly implied nationalism, Confucianism, patriarchy, and other values, which was a very strange and unique experience during the martial law period in Taiwan.
IN LIMBO (ELD explored pt2)
This piece “IN LIMBO” is the second in a series called “Thought Experiment”, a place in the mind similar to a blank page ready to be painted. Where logic is left behind and I simply put pencil to paper and work off instinct till reoccurring themes seem to show up on the page through imagery, telling me what’s on my subconscious mind. The short film I made that documents the process of creating the artwork began to merge with the artwork as the project went on. As both were trying to figure out what the project was about at its core while simultaneously working on them in real time. Realising both were to do with the relationship between images and words was a revelation. And made me realise what I’ve always hated and loved about trying to explain art is that things always feel left unsaid. As I get older I try and embrace this more, realising that explanations always feel incomplete because I see art as a universal visual language that communicates ideas and emotions which words don’t exist for. This project made me realised that I want my artwork to encourage people to stretch their own creativity, similar to a Spot The Difference or Where’s Wolly does for children. I enjoy making the viewer read the drawings and try to see how the images relate and connect using their own creativity. Even if that means seeing interpretations that I didn’t initially mean to be there.
MARK OF MY DEPARTURE
All work on my profile is orbiting this piece right here
These are the opening liner notes for MOMD. There are two images. They both share the same style; a black roti-textured background with bright pink text. On the first image, the text cascades down and reads ‘mark of my departure’ with each word in a different font. In the middle, across the cascade are the letters MOMD emblazoned large.
The second image has the same large MOMD across the middle. Above it is the track list. Which reads as follows:
mark one: water
mark two: melanogenesis
mark three: in the bazaar
mark four: ilford lane
mark five: be you
Underneath is a body of text that reads as follows:
MOMD produced, arranged and entirely composed by Allah SWT
features include Nusrat and company, the Chapparrals, whoever recorded that tabla loop, some random heads, Mufti Menk and that hilarious kid, Hamza Mohammed Beg and everyone who has ever interacted with us.
In the name of Allah the gracious and the merciful
I am greeted at the archway of my own work, stepping into it for the first time, hearing my voice drowned in the divine. All voices are dripping with it.
MOMD is a parting letter but I do not know to whom nor do I know where I am leaving to.
Those whom you guide none can misguide and those whom you misguide none can guide.
All of my research, writing and creative work for this program is trying to understand and expand on this that tumbled out of me >>>>>
When sunspots and clouds look like nuclear missiles
Over the past couple of years I’ve been thinking a lot about how computers see the world – through machine vision technologies and various data analysis systems – and how this shapes our lives.
Facial recognition technologies used by police are found to falsely identify and criminalise people (cases of mistaken identity are as high as 93% and in another study were 81%). CV-sorting and hiring algorithms are given the power to select and choose job candidates (Amazon’s tool became biased against female candidates, and HireVue’s claimed to make predictions based on the candidate’s tone of voice and facial movements. But my favourite example is one that decided the ideal candidate would be called Jared and would play Lacrosse…)
There are algorithms that will automatically move you further down a medical waiting list, those that decide whether you have access to housing or a loan, and countless more examples.
The decisions that computers make are hugely consequential; they can’t be assumed to be accurate or infallible.
That’s why I was fascinated when I came across the 1983 story of Stanislav Petrov and how his questioning of what the computer claimed to see averted a nuclear missile strike capable of killing 50% of the US population. In this case, it was sunspots reflecting off high-altitude clouds that looked to the computer like an incoming missile attack. The system reported a high confidence reading that this was a definite attack, with no uncertainty.
The sun and clouds at the Autumn equinox became an act of war, in the eyes of the machine.
[Image attribution: Bass Photo Co Collection, Indiana Historical Society]
Intro
Hey, I’m Hamza welcome to my studio. I’m a self-taught multimedia artist and researcher. I’m an able-bodied male-conditioned, postcolonial person. My work is informed by continuous conversations with the people I love as much as any reading, listening and observing.
I’m using this residency to resume an investigation I started some time ago (before getting distracted by another project). Mark of My Departure (MOMD) is preoccupied with the South Asian diasporic experience. The centerpiece of the work is a 7 minute visual collage set to an original composition.
I will use the time afforded to me in the residency to continue the collection and tessellation of related postcolonial images and ideas. I am aiming to produce a supporting body of work so that the video is held within an expanded context.
When you step into my studio, you should smell my aunties homemade garam masala slowly infusing into fried onions on the stovetop. Poke around the work you find and if you have any questions or comments do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section.
Sending love,
Hamza
A Holy Place
I am Amaqhawekazi Emafini Malamlela(She/They), a Ghanaian-South African multidisciplinary Artist. Welcome to my shrine. As an artist, what influences my work is the deep sense of spirituality, identity and sexuality.
Dance, Theatre, Performance Art, visual art and sound previously shaped the artwork I created. I am currently interested in exploring ideas of Space-Time and what it is to have a body and ritual as a process of creating sacred spaces. This residency is the opportunity to further experiment with film and how to translate sacred space onto digital platforms.
This is a sacred space where I will reinvigorate my creative practice, taking a leap on new concepts and digging deeper with research. I will share with you Trumu Fetish, an artwork dedicated to bringing forth a Transgender deity. Trumu Fetish is a multidisciplinary artwork building a world of faithfulness. Visual art is key to the longevity of the belief and the castration of patriarchal symbols. Durational Performance Art: through the body summon the spirit of the deity. And through literature give rise to intimate comprehension.
Please, take a moment and join me as I unpack my creative process with you. You can expect video, text, images and weekly updates throughout this residency. You are welcome to leave comments and questions. Again, welcome to my shrine.
DBS STUDIO WELCOME
Hi my name is Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Welcome to my studio of tech goodness. I would definitely consider myself someone that is lost in the sea of tech often trying to discover how to use the mediums within technology to record the lives of people like me.
Interactive art is my thing, I like to make the audience have to work in order to get into the art. For the work to give something to them, they will have to give a part of themselves. So all things gaming to code to different ways of interaction seem to draw me into a web of ideas that often begin a project.
My practice began on seeing a poster of a woman called Mary Jones, in which she was labeled the “MAN MONSTER”. This violence in the archiving of someone we would now call Trans motivated me to use my practice as a means of Archiving those in my community that are here in the present.
So if you’re interested to see the tech nerd palace i am building please have a look around here.
Title
Tongues
If I told you that my name should be spelt Istabraq but that at the borders of this country, those deciding the status of my family using a language which struggles to identify it, didn’t have patience enough to actually say.my.name…
Would you believe me?
Estabrak. It’s official. I mean, English tongues can say it.
Iss-tub-bruq is how it’s pronounced. And A rough silk only found in heaven is it’s meaning.
IN LIMBO FILM (pt1 freestyle doodling)
Dreaming Tomorrow
Sometimes I dream of ancient worlds where fruit and bombs have never mixed. Where family, love and freedom co-exist.
Where blurred lines of nourishment and destruction do not need to exist.
Where culture no longer negates safety. Sometimes, I dream of this.
Image info:
Estabrak // Ummi (meaning My Mother in Arabic) 2021/22 // Archival print under Acrylic Glass, mounted on Aluminum Dibond // Edition of 3
ABOUT: Another offering I’d like to share is of one of my most recent underwater images. It’s a self portrait, and one which was taken in a time of deep isolation and a work which also translates into other works I am currently exploring.
I’ve so much to say about pomegranates, their heritage and the importance of them in West Asia. The significance of it’s name and the body in which it expresses. There’s so much beauty and passion in this fruit, yet so much destruction attached to it.
For years I’ve noticed it’s presence in West Asian arts, yet it’s only been in isolation with internal conversations where I’ve found my relationship to it develop from one of a human eating fruit into a life lesson in history, language, colonisation and love.
Pomegranates have origins all over West and South West Asia, although it can specifically be traced back to Iran. Iran has huge significance to me as it was the place I was born, in exile after my family were forced to flee Iraq.
I’m going to go in more detail about the significance of pomegranates in a separate post which you can find in the research section of my studio, but for now I hope this offering can plant a seed of thought for you as much as it has for me.
The photograph and text were shared earliar this year via the Emeargeast exhibition ‘Dreaming Tomorrow’. And the image Ummi belongs to a current and ongoing multidisciplinary project called Letters To Ummi (Ummi meaning My Mother in Arabic). It is the first image in this series.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
Often before starting a piece I’ll do a rough sketch with notes of ideas for it. Looking through these rough sketches I felt the end piece always lost some sincere venerableness that the early sketches had, as if I was uninhibited knowing no one would ever see these rough takes. I wondered what a balance between the sincere sketches and polished final artwork would look like. Which is where the sketchy erratic almost unfinished feel to the piece came from. This piece is like a visual diary, a live stream of my thoughts at the time, even going as far as including the tools I used to create the piece, as if this was a blank canvas I was projecting my thoughts on to. While creating this piece I felt off balance, thinking back to regrets of the past, or worrying about the future instead of being balanced in the present moment. being a self employed artist comes with many pros and cons which I explored in this piece. The main type of commission I work on are album artworks for musicians, these artworks need to be the perfect square to fit the size of the album cover, I started to feel boxed in my this same type of canvas with fears of repeating myself, using up my creativity on others work, losing love for what I do, but needing to make money. Even with my personal artworks, I wondered if I was creating as a distraction so I didn’t have to stop, be still and just think. I felt I was in a never ending cycle with all these different versions of myself (the freelancer, the artist, past and future) all colliding in an anxiety filled mess. despite this piece being personal, I felt drawing myself would instantly make the piece about one thing. me. But I wanted anyone to be able to project themselves onto these figures, which is why I often leave faces quite abstract to detach any one identity. Identity was another thing I was thinking a lot about, and how being a POC growing up in England is a kind of psychological obstacle everyone has to go through. Growing up being taught to love and respect a culture that doesn’t do the same back, and how it can create inner conflict from early ages. Despite going to some fairly dark and painful places with this piece, It still has a fun childish energy about it. Often when I’m working I feel I’m doing a balancing act between my inner child who’s the artist and my inner adult who’s the editor that cuts the fat and gives the piece more intention. So I think this childish optimistic feel comes from me naturally not taking myself too seriously, wanting to create art to be fun, enjoyed and give the viewer the feeling of being a child looking at something with curious wide eyes. Despite art being tired up with all these different aspects of my life like my work, passion, self worth, identity. Creating this piece reminded me to just enjoy/embrace the process and have fun with it.
Welcomes & Reflections
If you’ve landed here, I guess we may have something in common.. I too am curious to see what will come of this time and space spent with VITAL CAPACITIES.
Over the past couple years, so much has happened, is happening and about to bloom. For me and my practice, it’s been a phenomenally complex, difficult yet generous time of experimentation, of silence and of deeply personal work.
For anyone that knows me or of my practice, you’ll know that I’m intensely connected to understanding the ever evolving complexities of our human conditions. How it relates to our individual selves, to each other and in turn – to our environments.
Oh and I love water.
As I try to navigate the nuances of the vulnerability needed in my current line of work, the conflicting complexities of what to share and what to keep, I’d like to welcome those into this space with a small offering I wrote last year. One which carries the weight of so many other seeds planted across the diversity of my multi-sensory works and explorations.
The above text and image Dear Reader are from a series of works I have been exploring during & since lockdown called A Passing Place. This work was published in 0ct 2021 through Future Venture’s Radical Arts Handbook, Issue 03 – Radical Futures.
Thank you for spending some time here.
Studio Intro
Hello! My name is Aileen and welcome to my studio. I’m an interdisciplinary artist, meaning I dabble with different mediums – filmmaking, decolonial research, visual art, and social activism. I’ve always been fascinated with unravelling power dynamics and the concept of ‘diasporas’ by exploring the meanings of reimagined / ‘imported’ heritage, practices, and culture. This also links to my research practice where I examine wider social infrastructures and ideologies that proliferate discriminatory practices.
This residency is exciting as this gives me space to combine research, philosophy, and art into one format. An idea I’ve been wanting to explore is confronting the human fascination of archiving and digital death (or ‘immortality’). Maybe it’s paradoxical that this will remain within its own ‘digital archive’, but I’m not aiming to provide an absolute answer. Through a decolonial framework, I’ll look at how technology controls and negotiates the ‘display’ of one’s death (as we are merely curating that ‘archive’), and how this power affects traditional practices and emotions. Perhaps this is also a way of confronting a topic I’ve always been afraid of.
Please feel welcome to look around my studio, at the work I’ve posted up – there are images, videos and text. You are welcome to leave a comment or questions for me in the comments section.
Hope you enjoy your visit 🙂
Aileen
