alovebigas magazine

“He is schizophrenic, fatuous, foolish, capricious, and has auditory hallucinations. He lives life secluded because he is suspicious and strange. He reveals delusions of influence; his affect is poorly oriented and often restless.” These were frenetic years during which the “holy Nanettaicus Meccanicus of the photocell”, as he once referred to himself, scratched incessantly on the walls of Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra. “He did not talk to anyone; he was wary,” Trafeli said. “He thought only of his graffiti. He could not stop; he had no other interest.”

The Collection de l’Art Brut Lausanne considers Nannetti’s graffiti to be an example of art brut, opining that his writing is reminiscent of Etruscan inscriptions and reveals an imaginative world all his own. Photographer Eleonora Castagnozzi said: “During his incarceration Mr Nannetti made a series of carved murals using his belt buckle. They are considered by some to be an artistic masterpiece.”

‘As a child, I spent my summers in the village, where the most exciting events were cows returning from pasture and fresh bread delivered to the store. I escaped boredom by hiding in the attic for days and reading everything I could get my hands on. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami and Mikhail Bulgakov have been heavy influences on my work. Their blend of poetry and magic with history and everyday detail is what I strive for in my photographs’. Nadia Sablin

IK: For you, in which way the subject of trauma reaches, or should reach the viewer?

Yana Pirozhok: The trauma of sexual violence at a young age is primarily a gross invasion of innocence and its destruction. Innocence is literally the absence of guilt, the absence of negative experience, the absence of oppression. I deliberately do not focus on the violence itself and mention it as a fact of my life only in the text at the very end. In the film we do not see trauma, we see the absence of trauma. We find ourselves in innocence itself, inside it, we see the world of the child. This was important for me: to experience the absence of trauma. Only through visual bugs and noise in the image can the viewer feel discomfort, feel the fragility of childhood.

What keeps you shooting film?

'First of all, I simply love the look of photos made with film. Not too sharp compared to digital images. Besides, not being able to see the result on the spot, gives me a certain level of tension. This is necessary for my concentration. I press the button when I'm certain that the image is "ready”. After so many years, I'm still thrilled to look at just developed films. I cannot give this up'. Kumi Oguro

Small paintings as parables of plants and animals and old stories of black robbers and white stags. Fragments on death like mirrors from a black sleep in the forests of fairy tales. All stories from the dust of the dead in fragments and footnotes like melodies of heartbreak and north and night and exploration – breakdowns. About saints with no promise of heaven and lost sailors forgotten ... Herbert Pfostl

Curator and writer Amy Mackie interviews artist Nina Schwanse as Veronica Compton.

This fictionalized interview is presented in conjunction with Schwanse’s exhibition "Hold It Against Me: The Veronica Compton Archive". Schwanse, posing as Veronica Compton, responds to the following queries as Compton might have in 1993, while serving a 22-year prison sentence in Bellingham, Washington for attempted murder.

''Let It Be' is a work I started in 2008 and has lasted until now. This work captures a sleeping subject in bed at night using an 8x10 inch pinhole camera. The scattered cloud-like photos of the subject in bed are a fitting contrast to the clear images of the indoor items. It aims to elaborate upon the author's thoughts on time and life. In the passage of time, all living things are equally minute in their journey, and even less significant than the material world we chase'.

(The way I look at photography, this is near perfection. Very hard to choose only four images. Please look at the artist’s site for more.)

'The entrance hall is an important place for the hanging of pictures, receiving friends and guests, and hosting extended family celebrations at the end of each year. As a significant part of rural family life, the entrance hall is a vital stage for maintaining the hierarchy of seniority in family life, and maintaining contact with outside acquaintances.' ... Guo Guozhu

More images, more information on website.

'Makurakotoba' or pillow-word: a conventional epithet or attribute for a word; it usually occupies a short, five-syllable line and modifies a word ... to raise the tone and to some degree also function as images.” So (by analogy) a pillow shot serves as a visual “nonsense-syllable” or non sequitur that creates a different expectation for the next scene.

Helene Delmaire did all of the paintings for the film Portrait of a Lady On Fire and even appears painting in the film.

   ‘I did pretty much all the paintings except the one that’s without a face. Céline and the actresses would work out how the scene was going to go. Once that was set up, I’d come, take a photo and while they were shooting the scenes, I went to a little corner of the castle and did my sketches’.

'I used to quote Rebecca Walker’s autobiography a lot about missing this black outline around her body, which feels like everybody else just naturally has. That felt like what my work was about: trying to fill in that outline around myself, where it feels like I am missing something here, I’m not understanding this part and I am outside of this conversation.  So, that to me is what the work is about and approaching it through language'.

For 27 years, Deanna Dikeman took photographs of her parents waving goodbye as she drove away from their home in Sioux City, Iowa, USA. “I never set out to make this series; I took these photographs as a way to deal with the sadness of leaving,” explains Dikeman in a statement provided by MACK. The project captures every goodbye from 1991. From 2009, her father is no longer there — he passed away a few days after his 91st birthday — and, in October 2017, Dikeman photographed an empty driveway following her mother’s funeral. “For the first time in my life, no one was waving back at me,” she says.

'Having experienced deeply personal challenges while in London, including a painful divorce, the damaged objects she puts back together with elements of her own creation become metaphors for her life.  Delving into Baudrillard's 'Simulcra and Simulation' which examined the exchange of physical objects and actual experience for representation and voyeurism, and the philosophical work of Joseph Beuys, Danays ultimately found that she no longer needed to attach herself to broken objects.'

http://www.mailepingel.com/angeleno-sarah-danays

Straight out of the womb they're told they're toxic. Any success they have comes not from their hard work but from this male privilege they need to damn check. Our world is on fire thanks to all those terrible men in charge, right? When they speak, they're 'mansplaining'. Careful how you you flirt, boys. You're all potential rapists. 'Believe Women', right Amber? Patriarchy is the enemy and you're it.  So much poison in your well. But FGS don't cry about it. You have so much to apologise while still so sweetly nascent, so new in this world. The world's figured you out before you've even begun. Yep, it's hard being a boy. Karen Osdieck's series quietly illuminates ...

For this series, Buried in the Left Behind, I collaborated with a genealogist who specializes in finding the last living heirs to great fortunes. The homes here documented have been abandoned for as many as four generations; the people who once lived inside replaced with cobwebs and vegetation.

With this series of still-lifes photos, my intention was to invite the viewer to actively consider these objects as the embodiment of stories of the people who owned them. And to consider their own spaces and objects, imagining the stories they’d tell.    ... Carine Idy