ARTISTS TALKING

# 27 [12 June 2007]

...it is not all doom... actually......I just remembered where my project took it's roots and actually it is more than it appeared in it's latest re-incarnation.

It all started when I looked at Plato's cave 4 years ago... (The origin of drawing being the incentive back then..) Then I searched for the origin of knowledge which is obviously a stupid thing to do, but very interesting to arrive in Babylonia and Alexandria and in southern Spain with the Muslims who saved knowledge that would have been eaten by the rats otherwise... (..none of this in this order..)

Remember they transformed southern Spain into the hub of education when most of Northern Europe lay in the dark ages...

This all was where it started.

Thank heaven's my work is not as flat as I suddenly thought it is...

Now give me funding.

# 26 [11 June 2007]

Venetian Infusion !
Well steeped, strong and no additives.

Just a quick note to announce my return from the place of black squid sauce and stripy blue and white sweat-shirts..

More about these Biennale Pre-view days when I have got used to that I am no longer travelling everywhere by boat or blister inducing ally-way walks...

# 25 [6 June 2007]

12 more hours and I will be flaneuring along the canals of Venice...

The most romantic city in the world, allegedly... (However, the reality may just be a city that casts a sharp eye on it's many visiting artists, travelling accross the globe to find themselves in fiece competition, eye-to-eye-races to impress the next bigger and better and more emminent persons of rank and influence..) Nevertheless, I will soon be viewing all kinds of art, some wonderful, some less so, in exquisite location..Marvelous!

Should one bring the laptop and harddrive to get on with some work while there, or just give up on that altogether...? Take a book instead...? It has been such a long time since I have been detached from my laptop.. Such a long time since I have just had the indulgence of immersing myself in the print of a book...

Since it will be my 3rd visit to Venice, I may be less in awe of the location and perhaps more able to focus on work..? It would require another 5kg of gear to carry around... Will I really have time..?

Perhaps just the pen and paper and there will undoubtedly be at least one book that will find it's way accross a till counter and into my bag.. Maybe it is a rare opportunity to leave the laptop-film-editing work behind and embrace the time to think, let the muse come by and kiss me thoroughly...

Yes, it shall be a pen and paper and daydream kind of trip. That is that... decided..

(Oh, but the laptop looks me in the eye and says: " Are you really sure about that...? Think about the deadlines speeding closer and closer...")

# 24 [6 June 2007]

The Real Thing at the Tate....
contemporary art from China..

The first room that I walked into made my heart jump with joy, the second caused my eyes to well up with delight and the third just finished me off... I had to slow down to take time and dry the dribble that was running down my chin because I was close to losing bodily controls due to happyness and excitement....
Then I reached the 4th work and stood in awe...

THIS is the kind of art which once moved me so much that I found myself on a path which lead me to where I am now. This is inspirational work, I am stuck for words... And then it carried on. There were more pieces... just as good. My god I love it. The FIRST show since the last Venice Biennale that moved me, excited me, made me giddy with contented eyes and soul..

Oh happiness..
THERE is art.

And now I am packing to get on a plane and see what delights and artistic delicacies the Vennice Biennale will offer..

My god. The life !!

# 23 [5 June 2007]

The show has come down yesterday and there are just some things to move from the cathedral to my house now.

When will I have the luxury of an art handling team at my disposal..?

AND I should be on my way to the Venice Biennale/ Biennial on thursday but now there is no room, no bed to be found anywhere..

So here is my SOS to the world:
can anyone put me up in their apartment, their room, underneath their bed, on the sofa, in the shower..? As long as I have a blanket.. (Well, and I am bringing white trousers, so sleeping underneath the Rialto is out of the question, as I also like to wash sometimes.. in privacy prefereably..)
So SOS & please direct rescue (in decending order)
to:

bdeubner@gmx.net
myspace.com/papersculptures
myspace.com/birgitdeubner

# 22 [2 June 2007]

It is saturday, one of the last days of the exhibition being up, and I am becoming reflective, making notes on ways to improve on the next project, and also finding bits of time to just watch my work and the members of the public that mingle around it...

Tonight I am going to spend a few hours photographing every possible angle of the installation (again..) and tomorrow will then be the last full day. I have had a good response, and I really wish I had had the energy to pursue more funding...

It is great being with the work myself, but it would have been useful to delegate this invigilating job and come to the space with fresh energy to engage, instead of it being an every day job. Which left little time to plan the next project or make drawing work to bolster the bank account which currently is screaming in distress...

But it will come together. I am excited about next week, when I will edit my documentation footage, work on my portfolio and my texts, research the next projects, book my ticket for India (where I am making 2 installations !), find out how to ship my work back from India to here, make drawings, write to a few galleries, apply for a couple of residencies... ok, clearly not all that in one week... but some of that and some of what I forgot to include in the list. And actually: I really want to go and look at other people's work.

And I need to find a venue for this same project (Devotional Choreography) but this time I want to show it in a small room with credit card sized projections. Intimate and very small... Except of course that the scale of the projectors, the audio volume they create will be in complete contrast with the fragility and intimacy of the projected image...

But more about that later. First I am going back to the cathedral to catch some more audience to chat with and see what they say.

I am looking forward to being in the space on my own this evening. It is really quite special to have such unlimited access to the place..To such a place. !

# 21 [30 May 2007]

Today only one image of my installation:

# 20 [29 May 2007]

How do people manage to find time to get bored..? These days are just never long enough. I want to write a few proposals and chase up opportunities and contacts that have come my way in the last month or two... And it always seems to be evening and too late when I have time..
Who sneaks all the time?
I am quite enjoying invidulating my work at the cathedral, at least once a day I find myself in an unexpected conversation which I just wouldn't like to have missed. I hope a few more people come to see the work.

Spending a fair amount of time handing out my information leaflets to passer-by pensioners and Japanese who are equally baffled by the somewhat too small type-face that I used.. Or the language.. I would like a couple of funding type persons to come and have a look, and fall in love with the work, or me, either way, as long as it would lead to funded opportunities to make more work, to make more work for this project, to make new, other work, to just make work. Actually it would be good to meet some more artists/dancers/thinkers/doers.. People to make work with.. The isolation of this project has been tiering especially in the 2 weeks before it went up and the time leading up to the private view..

Did I say: I wish making work would be paid.. I work pretty hard. I would like to work more.

There is definitely the question: Who am I making work for? Who is the art for, and what purpose does it serve..? Is it a selfgratifying exercise, would that even be a bad thing? Does an artist have to be useful to other people, is this a responsibility that is expected of other people? Why would it/ should it then of the artist, who probably isn't even paid..?

If I am honest I am making work for people with inspiration. What their precise background is isn't of importance. But I really do need an inspired audience. I couldn't pretend any other truth than that. My art isn't going to exactly change the world. Most people's art really won't do that. But I have small contributions to make to the dialogue between people.. One wouldn't expect, one shouldn't expect that every act a writer takes, a philosopher or scientist, will necessarily change the world. But each thorough endeavour is worthwhile in it's own right and an inspiration to anyone who cares to take the time to engage..

So I am not under any illusion that a majority of council flat tenants will enjoy or even tollerate my work, but I was once a council flat tenant (as a child and teenager) and when a friend took me to a gallery, for what was then my first time, it left an amazing impression on me. It opened my eyes to more than the art works on display but fitted in snuggly with the experience of having an enlightened Latin teacher who tought less latin but more philosophy and thought.. It also connected with my growing enjoyment of reading "Die Zeit" a german newspaper that transported me into another world, one of words and thoughts and possible futures..


So perhaps my work may just be the tiny experience that adhers to someone's mind ready to pop back up and connect to another beautiful experience which in combination change life.. For someone.

For some time I struggled with art, the necessity, the use, the indulgence... But now I feel a sense of purpose and am not particularly interested in continuing the inward directed sense of distress and questioning that probably leads to more inaction than action. Art is very useful, but it takes some inspiration to understand that. Of course there are some art forms and expressions of which the 'use' is more easily identifyable, but I think my work comes in as a form of visual philosophy...

# 19 [27 May 2007]

Today I feel nourished thanks to my art work, actually... While I invigulated my show, I met an interesting Urban Planning Phd student, and was drawn into a 2 hour conversation about everything. Philosophy, Art, Society, practicalities and the impossibility of me making it to this year's Venice Biennale, after I already bought the plane ticket... We talked about teachers of all kinds and supervisors, education establishments, faith, spirituality, paths in life and right ones, wrong ones, and the debatable need to follow one at all... and I introduced him to scones.. (He isn't from this Island)

The project costs had spiralled beyond all expectation (evidence is not exactly visible..) and the full time involvement with getting everything to work took 10 days more than I had scheduled. 10 days in which I wanted to make some drawings for the gallery that sells them and for a regular customer of mine, and 10 days which would have also been the time to reflect on next steps.. And so now I can't go mingling in Italy with the international exclusives and would-like-to-be-exclusives... Making new work and meeting application deadlines take precedence over a not entirely neccessary adventure...

The conversation with this stranger refreshed my brain cells and I also feel a sense of freedom spread itself like fresh air, all around my mind... A freedom that comes with having made decisions. (Cancelling Venice, as sore as it was; and also not taking the opportunity to hear Jan Svankmajer talk, even so I have a ticket for tuesday in London, and I have been looking forward to this for 5 weeks -and to seeing my friend whom I have only seen once in the last 2 years and whom I love ... But again, I just can't leave my show now. After all the work that I have put in, I need to be here with it now.. And I am actually starting to feel proud of it...)

# 18 [27 May 2007]

This is now the last week of the show being up at the cathedral, and I am only just feeling that I am getting at least some of my momentum back. So I have extended the viewing hours and am finally looking forward to meeting my walking-by-by-chance audience..
There isn't much advertising of the work, which is a little disappointing, but I just got so run out of energy and I did what I could.

The Liverpool Art Blog has me listed, although in a bit of a half hearted way, which is not surprising, Ian is running this great website almost as a one man show, and I know he has help, but I don't think there is enough funding, if any and certainly for work like his there should be.
It is the Art in Liverpool Blog that played a large part in helping me re-launch back into my art practice, 2 years ago. It is a fantastic resource of what is happening in Liverpool; who the artists are, where they are, what they show and where. I think he has been absolutely instrumental in facillitating a community that previously was considerably more scattered.. Especially since most Cafes don't have notice boards any more and instead choose a streamlined, corporate style, with space only for the latest, glossy property magazine...

From the day that I re-launched myself into my carreer, his website has really made a world of difference, to have access to where the private views are and with that were the art community and exclusives are. Which makes 'beginning again' so much easier, it's like having friends/colleagues before one has met them...

The only other equal contributors to the dynamic with which I am now working are an artist I met at one of the Independent Biennial Openings and "Mercy" the Liverpool Design Collective, with a magazine and a very strong poetry/music/art branch. They (Tomas Harold & Nathan Jones) curated "Bracket This III" during the last Biennial, a show to which I was invited to make work.