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Ωhms & Ωhmens Ohms & Ohmens Ωhms & Ωhmens

Power structures, societal imbalances and inequality have been persistent and ongoing themes in my work, with the political serving as the agenda, and purpose of my practice. The main struggle for me, was to find a way to understand the distant links that are formed between political matter and the manifestation of the work itself. For the past year, I’ve wrestled with my practice and tried to find ways to develop a dialogue which negotiates a non-didactic or over-simplified conversation with its audience. As a result the work produced is just a series of subtle statements, which are quietly (and near invisibly woven) into the work.

I work materially, creating environments and assemblages which are populated by excess amounts of collected objects, bound tenuously together in precarious synthetic string, wires and ropes. A population of excess mundanity - these materials work gravitationally together to balance themselves into a form of equilibrium. In it’s abundance - the objects are placed in positions which do not privilege the presence of one over another. A level of equality becomes key, a dichotomy of balanced positive and negative symbols - or the gesture towards a stasis of apathy or non movement.

These materials are collected and collated over time, mostly over years - some found objects are picked up from walks within the cityscape, along the shorelines and inside parks. From the walks materials such as discarded nets, cuttlefish, chunks of burnt out charcoal, torn fabrics, used drainage pipes, industrial food cans, rubble and ropes are collected. Others are bought from hardware stores - metals such as copper tape, chicken wire, garden rope, washing lines, wood. Inexpensive Turkish or Chinese trinket stores - where odd bits/tit bits can be found - mostly plastics, fake hair, fake nails, vinyl flooring of variable textures and prints. The urban detritus becomes the source of my material manifestations. The objects are never glued down, and I suspect it’s because I feel an affinity with the temporal, the grey areas to every paradoxical argument.

My Myopia 'My Myopia' is a series of sculptures, assembled from collected items from the sides of the streets, to detritus from the sea and shop bought items such as lights and wire. The sculptures at first appear as a small island of objects, charged with coloured light and wrapped in both dried natural and synthetic substances. A combination of clutter and order, it is a tenuous balance of duality which is incapable of enveloping the one statement.

A neon toucan sits atop a raw wooden plank with palm and banana leaves resting atop, alongside animal skins, rigging slings, plastics and a bright pink neon tube light. These objects are bound to the plank by a series of synthetic coloured wires and strings, positioned precariously but with a sense of logic. The sculpture floats in the space, highlighted by neon lights which set the sculptures aglow but masks the clarity of the objects. The viewer has to come closer in order to understand what the objects are. Upon the easels are cascading reams of hair, woven broken pieces of glass and a large bulb with the words ‘Aye’ painted onto the bottom, suspended within a woven plastic macramé basket.

'My Myopia' signifies our inability to look beyond our present contemporary society of consumer goods, objects and concepts. It brings an uneasy meditative pause - by transforming the space with light it invites you to focus on these floating islands of clutter. The objects lend themselves to significance and insignificance but the work asks no more from the viewer, other than to share it’s space of meditative apathy.

I’ve been trying to find ways to weave a political discourse into the fragments of these installations. I have created these environments which set the stage for a potential voice, but I’m still in a place where I’m trying to bring focus to a subtle or strong statement which will activate these objects. I’m currently creating double printed advertising posters with hidden messages and small video clips or interviews to add into the installation.

Burnout, to localise it a little more. The environment has a psychological effect. Is a disease of our time. A human disease - what does this mean, when people have this - we exhaust ourselves and others in our environment. An increase in our lifetime - scale, it has implications - we turn to quickly - we disabled it via the broadcast, use the broadcast material - I’ve been thinking about actions, happenings - the migrant conversation - the aspirational. We can employ translators

Club Autonomie

A series of double sided printed posters, with statements that reflect the anarchist movements of the 1890’s when Martial Bourdin made his name as the first international terrorist. When a bomb blew up in his hand near the Greenwich meantime observatory in 1894, the only thing that could be found on him was a calling card for the infamous ‘Club Autonomie’ - the central meeting point for the international anarchists in London. Soon after the explosion, the club was raided and the members interrogated leading to the final closure of the club a few months later. The works are an accumulation of double sided posters which signify lost messages that come to view and disappear dependent on whether they’re held up to light. Variable clock pieces are assembled in a form of order, pebbled with shards of metallic coated glass and brass.

The installation consists mainly of posters which are in black and white, with one side featuring photographs of buildings and factories and the other - illustrations of targets and anarchist statements such as ‘Abort Labour’. These posters are suspended in the space via broom handles and string, and others are attached to the windows. Small spotlights strung up with black cable, fall behind the posters offering some light to see both sides at once. Upon the floor, rests a series of folded posters, broken glass and clock assemblages which construct a form of clock like orientation. One ‘Club Autonomie’ business card is strewn across the floor, the only indicator of it’s anarchist beginnings.

Terrorism in our contemporary times is now predominantly associated with the war upon IS and the middle East. We no longer have anarchism as a frontal feature or topic of debate, critiques upon the market and the capital are given less importance and less publicity in news of today. This installation is an attempt to see where these voices can still occur, and maybe to understand the futility in making such statements. The posters are designed to appear and disappear and due to their quiet nature they can go unnoticed. What can words do these days, and how do we operate? Are we silenced.

I would like to make the piece more of a tangled fragmentation of present day anarchism and that of the past during the Club Autonomie days. What were the concerns and how has the argument contemporised? I would like to build upon these posters and make into a working office, that sits between that of an anarchists den and a branding office or advertisement agency. I would like for these posters to become more ‘Pop’ but loaded with sharp powerful statements behind it. Just need to find the words!

Conclusion

The static. The charge of the installation - is it in momentary stasis. How can these items become charged, or move into a moment of transference - of the positive and the negative, the pull and duality of every possible argument. Is this why the objects are suspended, held still for a moment - like floating words in the present which are there to be observed, to be reflected upon and to be interrogated?

To conclude on the lines of creating borders and connections in between these things, to observe the moments where a touch can happen but be so misunderstood. Resistivity. Electrical resistance. Volume resistivity…if we make the ohm high then it’ll disconnect the power circuitry.

The translation of connections towards space and culture - and how to be pulled in by it. To speak of it, to see it and understand the pull of external forces which at first appear to govern us - whilst placing us in a realm of open space. towards understanding the concepts and to see the unseen, to experience the grey space - to understand the projections in which we belong to.

Through discussions with Omer Fast and Redmond Entwistle -

The reflection of connections, electrical resistance and invisible intangible walls.

The coil around the inner tubings. The currents that run deeply into the system, and internal fabrics. How to remove the static - a pause. They’re quiet noisy pauses, or collections of cultural assemblages

The projections, electrical currents, magnetic pulls - governing forces and opposing ones. To distill it and suspend it to make it visible

to only embrace the things that you can see, smell, touch and feel - in order to not be on the periphery, to comment on the marginal.

Action on the ground:

http://ozgurkazova.org/en/#ok https://www.facebook.com/OzgurKazova

http://studioroma.istitutosvizzero.it/en/histories-hidden-in-plain-sight-workshop-con-maria-thereza-alves/

Action and Apathy

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 Ωhms & Ωhmens Ohms & Ohmens Ωhms & Ωhmens
-I have worked to interrogate the possibilities of representation for political ideas, to make the unseen narratives visible.
+Power structures, societal imbalances and inequality have been persistent and ongoing themes in my work, with the political serving as the agenda, and purpose of my practice. The main struggle for me, was to find a way to understand the distant links that are formed between political matter and the manifestation of the work itself. For the past year, I’ve wrestled with my practice and tried to find ways to develop a dialogue which negotiates a non-didactic or over-simplified conversation with its audience. As a result the work produced is just a series of subtle statements, which are quietly (and near invisibly woven) into the work.
-I have been trying to understand this through the emotions of apathy, from living in a position of over abundance, or to be overloaded with information and media - to understand the position in which we all face about being inactive on the political frontline. It’s trying to locate or understand our abilities to empathise and act - and in so many circumstances it feels like it is an overwhelming condition of our time to feel powerless, and to do nothing.
+I work materially, creating environments and assemblages which are populated by excess amounts of collected objects, bound tenuously together in precarious synthetic string, wires and ropes. A population of excess mundanity - these materials work gravitationally together to balance themselves into a form of equilibrium. In it’s abundance - the objects are placed in positions which do not privilege the presence of one over another. A level of equality becomes key, a dichotomy of balanced positive and negative symbols - or the gesture towards a stasis of apathy or non movement.
-The orientation of humanity can be considered as organic entities of electrical currents, from above the city scape and below on the ground - the synaptic grid like system of human construct conducts and connect us to one another. These connections can be seen as charges, of both positive and negative - we may pass through the border or be rejected, we may live lives of richness or through poverty - we may block one another from passing through capital or through.
+These materials are collected and collated over time, mostly over years - some found objects are picked up from walks within the cityscape, along the shorelines and inside parks. From the walks materials such as discarded nets, cuttlefish, chunks of burnt out charcoal, torn fabrics, used drainage pipes, industrial food cans, rubble and ropes are collected. Others are bought from hardware stores - metals such as copper tape, chicken wire, garden rope, washing lines, wood. Inexpensive Turkish or Chinese trinket stores - where odd bits/tit bits can be found - mostly plastics, fake hair, fake nails, vinyl flooring of variable textures and prints. The urban detritus becomes the source of my material manifestations. The objects are never glued down, and I suspect it’s because I feel an affinity with the temporal, the grey areas to every paradoxical argument.
-The duality of readings, or the dual aspect to every argument ends in a static still stalemate where opposing conversations and subjective opinions end up in one cyclical argument. I’m interested in the ways to subvert of override this route - to butt our heads against the veins of a blockage, or a barricade. To disrupt the efficient currents of life, to question it’s fluid administration and to crumble away at the solid. In the end - adding friction to an already seemingly efficient current seems to be the only form of resistance in which one can take.
-Last friday I vomited over my dinner plate, amidst conversation about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict in comparison to the horrendous score of the Brazil vs Germany match 7–1. I had too much to drink, a tobacco rush and was vehemently grossed out by our position to discuss with such conviction topics that were so far away with our limited mediated knowledge. Then the first course was served, the oily smell of the Thai food was the final push that sent me from sheer nauseas privilege to throwing up. Where do all these conversations go, if not just to show a gesture of empathy towards a group of people or political awareness over polite dinner conversations…
+My Myopia
+'My Myopia' is a series of sculptures, assembled from collected items from the sides of the streets, to detritus from the sea and shop bought items such as lights and wire. The sculptures at first appear as a small island of objects, charged with coloured light and wrapped in both dried natural and synthetic substances. A combination of clutter and order, it is a tenuous balance of duality which is incapable of enveloping the one statement.
-Power structures, societal imbalances and inequality have been persistent and ongoing themes in my work, with the political serving as the agenda, and purpose of my practice. However my main realisation over the past year was to understand the distant links that are formed between political matter and the manifestation of the work itself. I work as a material practitioner, creating these environments and assemblages which are populated by excess amounts of objects, bound tenuously together in precarious synthetic string. A population of excess mundanity - these objects work gravitationally together to balance themselves into a form of equilibrium. In it’s abundance - equality becomes key, a dichotomy of positive and negative - a stasis of apathy or non movement.
+A neon toucan sits atop a raw wooden plank with palm and banana leaves resting atop, alongside animal skins, rigging slings, plastics and a bright pink neon tube light. These objects are bound to the plank by a series of synthetic coloured wires and strings, positioned precariously but with a sense of logic. The sculpture floats in the space, highlighted by neon lights which set the sculptures aglow but masks the clarity of the objects. The viewer has to come closer in order to understand what the objects are. Upon the easels are cascading reams of hair, woven broken pieces of glass and a large bulb with the words ‘Aye’ painted onto the bottom, suspended within a woven plastic macramé basket.
-I’m trying to find ways to distill or break the circuit of a cycle of life, in some ways it’s a form of optimism - a belief that people want to engage if they were given time to do so. Light has become a recurring factor in my work. as I use it to mark the space, to create a zone. An environment of charged energies which rub up against one another, which have the potential possibility to produce a friction both negative and positive.
+'My Myopia' signifies our inability to look beyond our present contemporary society of consumer goods, objects and concepts. It brings an uneasy meditative pause - by transforming the space with light it invites you to focus on these floating islands of clutter. The objects lend themselves to significance and insignificance but the work asks no more from the viewer, other than to share it’s space of meditative apathy.
-The Possibilities of Bourdin
+I’ve been trying to find ways to weave a political discourse into the fragments of these installations. I have created these environments which set the stage for a potential voice, but I’m still in a place where I’m trying to bring focus to a subtle or strong statement which will activate these objects. I’m currently creating double printed advertising posters with hidden messages and small video clips or interviews to add into the installation.
-My Myopia
+Burnout, to localise it a little more. The environment has a psychological effect. Is a disease of our time. A human disease - what does this mean, when people have this - we exhaust ourselves and others in our environment. An increase in our lifetime - scale, it has implications - we turn to quickly - we disabled it via the broadcast, use the broadcast material - I’ve been thinking about actions, happenings - the migrant conversation - the aspirational. We can employ translators
-Came together to create these islands of thoughts, an assemblage or collage of ideas which float on an island marked out by light.
-Colloseo
+Club Autonomie
-LÊT'Š ŠHÅKÊ ON IT
+A series of double sided printed posters, with statements that reflect the anarchist movements of the 1890’s when Martial Bourdin made his name as the first international terrorist. When a bomb blew up in his hand near the Greenwich meantime observatory in 1894, the only thing that could be found on him was a calling card for the infamous ‘Club Autonomie’ - the central meeting point for the international anarchists in London. Soon after the explosion, the club was raided and the members interrogated leading to the final closure of the club a few months later. The works are an accumulation of double sided posters which signify lost messages that come to view and disappear dependent on whether they’re held up to light. Variable clock pieces are assembled in a form of order, pebbled with shards of metallic coated glass and brass.
-Soft powers and the touch, confirmed
+The installation consists mainly of posters which are in black and white, with one side featuring photographs of buildings and factories and the other - illustrations of targets and anarchist statements such as ‘Abort Labour’. These posters are suspended in the space via broom handles and string, and others are attached to the windows. Small spotlights strung up with black cable, fall behind the posters offering some light to see both sides at once. Upon the floor, rests a series of folded posters, broken glass and clock assemblages which construct a form of clock like orientation. One ‘Club Autonomie’ business card is strewn across the floor, the only indicator of it’s anarchist beginnings.
-///
+Terrorism in our contemporary times is now predominantly associated with the war upon IS and the middle East. We no longer have anarchism as a frontal feature or topic of debate, critiques upon the market and the capital are given less importance and less publicity in news of today. This installation is an attempt to see where these voices can still occur, and maybe to understand the futility in making such statements. The posters are designed to appear and disappear and due to their quiet nature they can go unnoticed. What can words do these days, and how do we operate? Are we silenced.
-Alfredo Jaar
+I would like to make the piece more of a tangled fragmentation of present day anarchism and that of the past during the Club Autonomie days. What were the concerns and how has the argument contemporised? I would like to build upon these posters and make into a working office, that sits between that of an anarchists den and a branding office or advertisement agency. I would like for these posters to become more ‘Pop’ but loaded with sharp powerful statements behind it. Just need to find the words!
-Waalid Raad - The Atlas Group
 Conclusion