Uncensored posts from 100 artists across the globe.

I’m relieving myself from the pressure of trying to capture everything that’s happening right now.

I’m getting weird and sentimental and nebulous now that sound camp is over and I’ll be back in Atlanta soon.

I have so much gratitude for this place and time. I’ve met the most generous and bright, wide open people. I can hardly handle it. My brain and body chemistry have been jostled and jiggled and reconfigured a hundred times over this month, and it has me feeling the turning of the season towards Spring and new growth so viscerally. I am awash in possibility!

So for this final post I offer forth my brief and mostly pertaining to two neighborhoods CASH POOR, PLEASURE RICH GUIDE TO BERLIN!!

FLEA MARKETS. Ya’ll the second-hand game of this city is not playing. I do so much processing and mental unknotting when I wander through these loud and colorful spaces. It’s a bustling, sometimes harrowing scene, happening every weekend all over town, each one with its own vibe.

The one in Neukölln is my fav--a big, once-a-month sprawling wonderland of canvas covered stalls right on the canal. This place is part cute hipsters who woke up Sunday morning and did a quick Marie Kondo spin around the house, and part serious collectors slinging the most random and fascinating assortment of bits. This is my ZONE, ya’ll, I could do this all day...until the brunch-coma masses come lumbering through around midday and things become hella clausterphobic. Cheap, cheap, cheap, haggling is the game for sure.  

Konrad Tönz // Fav bar in Kruezberg, divey retro lounge bedecked with gaudy orange paisley, llama lamps, lava lamps, and shelves for days of funk records. Everyone’s rollin and smokin cigs which I will always love and hate. Go when DJ Roco is spinning.

Mo’s Imbiss // best falafel, maybe ever. The woman running this walk-up-window joint is a super elder, warm and weathered, serving spiced tea while you wait. This place is legendary. I’ve never tasted such an array of spices in one bite of falafel. 

Hamy // Another legend. Vietnamese with every dish under 5 euro. It’s a rowdy and small joint, very loud and obnoxiously lit so you aren’t compelled to linger. But the pho and the price is so worth it.

Cocolo Ramen // Not so cheap, but devastatingly tasty ramen. Everything feels and tastes like silk in here, so delish. 

Lager Lager // This place was right down the street from me, so I was a regular. Crafty beer bottle shop with a cozy bar. All the bartenders are hanging out here when they’re not working, giving lots of rambly advice on which beer to snag from the to-go fridge. This is obnoxious but Mary have mercy this spot is the one place you can get something besides the basic ass pilsners dominating the taps out here.

Hotel Bar // Ugh so sweet. Passed this spot on my walk to and from class everyday. Fresh flowers hanging from the ceiling and open flame candles on every surface. Almost caught my hair, scarf, and bar napkin on fire more than once. Berlin bars are truly not scrimping on the medieval castle candlestick ambiance.

Kule Kunsthaus // Shoot, Kule has my heart. This performance space/gallery/artist living project is incredible with a long and interesting history. Originally an artist squat when the wall fell, it’s now one of the few artist-run collective spaces from this era still existing and thriving. 

Templehofer Feld // pre-WWII and now defunct airport turned public park. Super wide open and expansive, which is a stark contrast to the experience of walking everywhere else in the city. Really into the community garden project happening here.

+++++++++++++++++++++///++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ok that’s it for now. 

This town has me good.

now how to integrate?

what if our voice doesn’t belong to us? what if we, so far, are only using our voice as a means to be understood by other people. we’re composing and adjusting our voice for others to handle us and accept us. this is the process of giving the gift of our voice back to ourselves. maybe hearing ourselves for the first time. 

“c’mon people, this is your one precious life, taste the sound of yourself”

when a woman activates her highest pitch she’s pushing against the cultural learning that high pitches are crazed, unstable, hysterical. she’s a shrieking, shrill bitch DEAR GOD don’t be SHRILL please calm down, cut the drama bring it down to a low volume, a low tone, ma’am.

I’m real shrill lately.

here are some visual reflections from my fellow soundwave surfers~

florencia, chilean sun princess, gliding between london, berlin, eindhoven and who even can imagine where else, everyone has a crush on her and her blue scrunchie:

souf, brother, dream-weaver of the highest order, shaman bojangles, mischief chief, he is the only male in this erupting cauldron of femme energy, he is a tree growing in the middle of a wild and torrid ocean. he will move to the desert when he returns to Israel:

karine blanche, whirling artist of sound and smell, conjuring fires wherever she flies, salting her lemon ginger tea, a gleaming prism in person form:

and me, I am flying, soaring, swimming, drowning, crawling like a baby, walking the city for hours and hours to process and integrate, making up sick spitty beats and recording voice memos while walking the city for hours and hours:

as for Berlin, it rained again today.

images 1: up against the glass on mariannenstrasse

images 2-5: Florencia Martina

images 6-7: Souf Yur and his traveling art project 

image 9: Karine Blanche Seror and her prismatic world

images 10-13: Melissa Word

image 14: flea market at boxhagener platz 

This city is such a vivid container for my life at sound camp. 

Berlin is full-time sonic and visual overflow. It snatches your attention, demanding to be seen and heard. It comes barreling out of the cage of itself and makes this wild, vibrant magic in the face of restraint. 

My work here and the city are like freaky, braided bedfellows. A focused investigation of the voice and how it wants to move through the body means things come unhinged in the process. 

Pulsing and wailing.

There’s a tenderness and ferocity about how the two together ask me to get more free and more known to myself. 

On the east side, every surface in arm’s reach is tagged and graffitied. It’s a 7ft-high band of visual chaos that rises up from the sidewalks and wraps the base of every building like a garish and very normal wallpaper. It’s inside buildings, on floors, on doors, every public toilet.

It’s so ubiquitous that it makes me wonder if Berliners develop a sort of ocular ambivalence to it the same way our ears become numb to the barrage of sound coming at us 24/7 when we live in a city.

Every morning I am walking 23 minutes to a very old building that looks like a castle. I cross a river and see swans. Folks pass me drinking bottled beer at ten in the morning because public drinking laws are basically non-existent and because Berlin. I sing and hum and think about tongue choreography. 

In class, we talk a lot about the in-between space when improvising. 

The fertile, terrifying nothingness swimming between what is happening right now and what will be next. The invitation is to keep bringing each other to the edge and leave the authoring mind on the shore. This is the juicy, ripe space where we meet our voices. It’s a practice of faith building where the willingness to surrender into the unknown-next is the prerequisite for something truly miraculous and gorgeous to launch from our mouths. 

We flail and feel like lame assholes. We try one thousand ways to relax. Each moment another invitation to come more into ourselves.

“Everything is transparent” There is no hiding behind this thing we call our voice.

We massage each others throats. We make palettes and keep the windows open to hear kids playing in the square downstairs.

Our facilitator is a doula-wizard of some fashion. He is patient, he is puling. He sees the threads hanging out of our sleeve and the work we do together tugs and unspools us. 

We learn that the vocal folds look arrestingly and delightfully like a vulva.

The group becomes temporarily interested in embryology to learn if the vocal folds derive from the same tissue as the vulva. 

The answer is no, but the poetry of it has done its work on us.

We are blindfolded often. We learn to beatbox. We eat figs and kit kats on our breaks, and fruitlessly discuss the 20 something events happening that night that most of us will be too spent, too raw, too cross-eyed to show up for.  

We get back to massaging each others throats,

efforting with intention, seeking to soften and set loose the calcified emotional blocks that stay jam-packed, solid-stiff in the throat. The work is intense and very deep. My partner’s eyes are wet and quietly streaming. “Sous la pluie”

We are under the rain of ourselves.

Yesterday it hailed and the flea markets closed shop early.

Fabiana has a tiny tattoo of a keyhole in the space between her collar bones.

Souf walks without shoes to and from class everyday.

We become family, seeing each other so naked in this experience together. We have yet to learn each others’ last names.

So this is week one, what a doozy.

Hello week two, I’m all yours.

image 1: karine blanche’s lean on urbanstrasse

image 2: monica at the bottom, bethanien kunstquartier

image 3: canal walk to class, kottbusser damm

image 4: our studio at bethanien

image 5: corner of bethanien at mariannenplatz

image 6: three mariposas: souf, karine blanche, and i, photo by lisa carlson

Berlin, heaven help me you are such a fun and feral thing.

It’s 7pm on a Sunday night, there are no grocery stores open but my favorite bar down the street is open til 6am every night of the week.

And it’s a tame spot.

I love this place so much. It’s a city that, through the years, has seduced and wooed me, eschewed me, chewed me up and drooled me out, spun me dizzy and, above all else, reminds me that it is a place refusing to be pinned down or captured.

I’m living in Kreuzberg for a month, a damp and dull-gray handful of days that will feel like infinity and like never enough time all at once. Tomorrow morning by Berlin time marks the beginning of why I’m here, a three week course in experimental performance and vocal embodiment.

There’s fifteen of us, gathered from all over the world, who will share our days unraveling and reframing what it means to move your body, make noise, and make sense of it all or resist sense-making altogether. I’m excited to be with my voice. Creatively examining how we listen to each other, and what motivates us to use or block our voice feels urgent! Feels radical! So pumped!

Everything has me rapt. I’m curious, I’m challenged, I’m staying up so late, I’m on the tragically popular beer-cheese-bread diet. I am not myself. I am electric. I’m wide-eyed for the details, obsessed with wheat paste posters piled 30 deep and sliding off the sides of apartment complexes. All night bars with cigarette smoke and sweaty bodies and chatter in four languages spilling out onto wet sidewalks. 

Getting around is clunky, speaking is clunky, I am self-aware, everything is political. I’m amused by the specific way traveling in a foreign environment reminds me of how out of control we are, and I relax into it. I’m here for it. I let myself be seen flailing. I let my awkward tourist show. I let my dance floor goddess show. I’m stepping through a portal, over a threshold. I resist defining this place. I’m playing in this expansive, exuberant now!

While traveling to Miami for fun and cool work things has its perks, it's still work. We rise early and do the required laptop-ing - it would be amazing to put everything on hold until we got back, but that's not how it works. Unglamorous. Writing the email you're sort of dreading or putting the finishing touches on a design that you're feeling stuck on still sucks. It's just warmer and there's palm trees swaying outside and the windows are slatted and breezy instead of covered in shrink wrap to keep the cold out. 

That said - here are some of the breezy enjoyable things we did and saw while not glued to our screens starring: MIMO, Little Haiti, Little River, Wynwood and North Beach.

Miami is a trip. We have been coming a few times a year for the past five or six years, and one of the things that keeps us coming back is that, in many ways, this place is a complete 180 from Detroit. The differences are really quite stimulating. Detroit is very historic, weathered and earthy while Miami is very Modern and airy. The tropical foliage makes even the most neglected areas a bit charming. The color pallet here is bright, pastel and lush. We nerd out on the things that most people here might not even think twice about. A pair of manatee sculptures in front of a motel, a mosaic mural made out of broken mirrors for an optometrist in Little Haiti, this one empty building in MIMO with the perfect combination of blues and modern geometry, hand painted signs and typography like this roti menu.

People’s relationship to money is different here. It's such a four letter word in Detroit. Any slightly flamboyant display of wealth back home causes cringe and sets off conversation about our past and future. In Miami - wealth is the backdrop. High rise architecture, yachts, luxury cars and fashion boutiques are so commonplace they become ignorable. The thing that is interesting to us is that, despite the clear economic disparity between certain neighborhoods, whether you have it or not, it seems that money just isn't a trigger the same way it is back home - at least from the relatively small group we've managed to intersect with.

The dynamic between locals and tourists is interesting too. Miami is a year round destination and tourism supports the city's countless clubs, restaurants, hotels and cultural outlets. It's an infrastructure to the creative vibrancy. In the same breath - we find that many locals, despite undeniably stellar programming in some of the more nationally visible venues, tend to stay a little more off the tourist beaten paths. Interestingly, that discrepancy seems more contentious than that of the presence of extreme wealth.

We are certainly outsiders, tourists even. So our perspective on all of this is limited to  the few days we spend a few times a year as privileged guests.

The other thing that keeps us coming back here is our quarterly residency at The Anderson. Our fifth appearance on this stage was coordinated and co-promoted with our friends from Exile Books who organize the Miami Zine Fair. On our constant search for the creative parallels to be made between creative communities - working with Exile - the experimental book store in Little Haiti that organizes a 150 indie publishers was kind of a perfect fit for us.  

The Anderson is one of these out-of-the-way spots that really has a great vibe and makes the effort to bring a well curated mix of things onto their stage for the local audience. The spot is a former New York style piano bar that has been thoughtfully reworked with homage to it's past blended with Miami's glamorous 70s and 80s era pastiche. It's an incredible fit for us - off the beaten path, coveted by the local creative scene and it's walls are flanked with among many visually decadent details, a suite of Patrick Nagel prints, one of Haute to Death's aesthetic godfathers.

It’s also a space with lots of different areas - you can bask under the twin disco balls, hideout in any of the darkened corners, crew up in a booth or wrap around the bar. There’s also a whole beachy outdoor element as well including a palm lined pavilion, tiki bar and sandy fire pit. Each area is designed for intimacy and several small groups make each area feel lively.

All these experiential elements in the club contributes a dance floor that ebbs and flows throughout the night - which from a DJing perspective is actually quite lovely. It allows you to take the program all over the place, bring the energy up slowly or take it back down. You get to play to different moods - and it’s always a dreamier track that seduces people to come back under the disco balls with us.

The stage in the main room has the original piano, weathered from it's previous life and reincarnated as the DJ booth. For us, the decor and feel of a room and the people we see on the dance floor majorly influence what we play and how. Disco calls to us in that room. It’s the sound that for us aesthetically anchor our sets there and the thing we come back to in each energy cycle. Warm recordings with live instruments - congas, horns, strings, piano stabs and energetic vocals.

The crowd at The Anderson is always a great mix as well. It’s a nice variety of artsy types from pierced kids with sleeveless denim jackets and patches, bearded record nerds who pick out the afro-beat sample in that track, the girls flipping their braids to the diva-house track, the middle-aged swingers drinking scotch who chat you up at the bar and - of course - that one RA fan-boy who stares you in the eye while enthusiastically pantomiming twisting knobs on the mixer with his wrist flicking to the beat and Shazam-ing your Moodymann tracks from his Apple Watch. It’s always that one guy these day. Always.

We are driving 1400 miles from Detroit for the Exile Books Miami Zine Fair. It's 22 hours, a straight shot down I-75. It's a path we have round-tripped probably a dozen times.  

Half of why we drive these distances instead of flying is that it's a bit meditative. In our normal day-to-day it can be hard for us to slow down or to mono-task. Driving gives us the time to be deep in our thoughts. The tedious repetition of trees, lane markers and chain restaurants drifting by allow for a rare strain of focus. The kind you get from the inability to do anything else. Boredom is maybe the term for it. The only stimulation coming from the regional nuance found in gas station knickknacks, brief human interactions, local snack spots and deep south billboards.

The other half is that it allows us to follow in a certain tradition and ideology. We take our ethos and brand of parties, our art, our friend's art and by extension -- our culture -- along for the ride. We are proud to represent our home and excited to meet like minded creatives at each stop. Often the people we meet and places we find in the less well known cultural hubs can be the most interesting.

While we often attribute our freeways as the infrastructure for people to get to work or for goods to be trucked from coast to coast - they are also how ideas travel.

Many credit i94 as the connection between Detroit Techno and Chicago House. The path beaten by producers and DJs who travelled to exchange test pressings and weekends in the clubs absorbing each other's craft. One famous example -- Derrick May selling Frankie Knuckles his first drum machine in the early eighties -- arguably the exchange that set Chicago House in motion.

With Detroit's proto-techno classic Clear by Cybotron as the spark, Author Dave Tompkins credits I-75 as the detonator fuse that traveled south and exploded in the roller rinks and set the Latin Freestyle and Miami Bass genres in motion. An explosion that over the course of the 80s and early 90s sent distorted shock waves back up I-75 with a grittier sound, coked up tempo and lurid vocals that came to be known as Ghettotech.   

Unquestionably other urban hot beds along the way receiving the signal, interpolating it and rebroadcasting it in their own way. Atlanta's rich musical legacy in House, R&B, Hip Hop and Trap is an undeniable example.    

Had a fun-filled, inspiring weekend. It began with the launch of We Found Hip Hop, an organization founded by world-renown photographer Piper Carter. Carter returned home to Detroit to take care of her mother almost a decade ago and found that her hometown needed a space that honors women who enjoy hip hop as well serve as a place for female performers to perform and hone their craft. After dedicating years to this endeavor she created We Found Hip Hop. They support women in hip hop through artist development, production, and promotion. Held at the Charles Wright Museum for African American History, the celebration included a talk between singer/MC Mahagony Jones and Piper Carter (above) and several of their artists performing with a an all-female band. They also released a We Found Hip Hop mixtape on Sound Cloud. Check them out!

Facilitator, writer of Emergent Strategies and co-editor of Octavia’s Brood, Adrienne Maree Brown asked me to participate in a discussion about the film Black Panther called “Wakanda v0.1 in Detroit: a Pathway to Prosperity?” So many good ideas and reflections bounced around. My favorite was when someone suggested Vibranium is within us Detroiters, that we are the Vibranium. The talk took place at Incite Focus, a fab lab on the east side of Detroit. They work to find efficient, sustainable, and innovative solutions to our deep-rooted problems. The lab is filled with multiple 3-D printers, woodcutters, laser cutters and more. I call it Batman’s cave. Above is a picture of a bathroom made using the woodcutter. 

After the Wakanda discussion, my crew and I went over to the Riverwise Magazine one-year celebration at Craft Work in West Village Detroit. Riverwise is a project of the Boggs Center in Detroit. The Boggs Center exists in the former home of Detroit activists James and Grece Lee Boggs. Riverwise Magazine is “an independent community-based magazine that centers visionary and revolutionary story-telling.” I love the magazine and everyone involved.

One of my favorite places to visit in Detroit is the neighborhood of North End. Because of redlining, North End became one of the few areas where Black families could buy homes thanks to Jewish families selling to them. In fact, North End is the first neighborhood my father’s family moved to when they moved to Detroit from Mississippi in the 1930s.

North End was also where many jazz musicians and later funk bands practiced and played. Oakland Avenue served as the entertainment district of North End. The elders speak of how jazz clubs and lounges lined the streets abuzz with people. There is now a movement from residents of North End to revive the district.

It is in North End where most of my friends live, create and innovate. My first stop is always Red Door Digital. A printing company occupying a large building with an exceptional art collection, a gorgeous fireplace, and a small maker’s space. Red Door Digital has become a hub for innovation by holding events like the weekly Detroit Blockchainers hack night. The maker’s space belongs to sonicyberneticist Onyx Ashanti. He focuses on the development and performance of an exo-skeleton musical instrument that he 3-D prints. Onyx also builds 3-D printers and teaches others. He is my first futurist friend. Onyx was first to explain to me Bitcoin. I haven’t been the same since.

After two days of brainstorming at Overlap, a gathering of design professionals at Amatista, I went to the town center of Tepoztlán to take a break from intellectual play. I happily explored the bustling Saturday market and found some really cool gems like the Aztec-style designed Superman t-shirt (above) I bought. I finally tried the infamous Tepoznieves ice cream, mango with chili sauce...delicious!

On the night of a full moon, I arrived in Tepoztlán, Mexico, aka the place where magic lives. There are legends swirling around this small city surrounded by copper filled mountains. Before arriving I was told that deep in the mountains of Tepoztlán there lives “Chinelos,” amphibean like beings who “walk” on fishtails. They have very curly hair with seashells at the tip of the ringlets and scaly skin. Once a year it is said they choose a person from town to invite back to their magical place and grant them with a special gift. I hope to meet them while I’m here.

Our reality moves in cycles. Through the right lens you can see waves of creation and destruction moving through everything. The creation of art seems to be a magnet for a subsequent devouring, an energy that is craved by the machine. After a couple times around, you know it’s coming. But these days the cycle seems to be in hyper-drive. 

Over the course of the last eight years in my studio space in Atlanta, I saw the cycle transpire. For a couple years, I was just off the map in what was considered an abandoned building. People that walked by just didn’t see my building. It was a non-place, somewhere in between places. People would pass by going from one place to another lost in their thoughts or distractions. I enjoyed being invisible for a while, getting to know the context, observing. I was exploring myself and my art without being scrutinized or judged. And then I decided to begin actively expressing myself with the building. It was exciting to slowly be discovered by passersby.

I made friends with the entire community and enjoyed being a part of the neighborhood as it started to thrive. But I slowly started to pick up on another type of voyeur. The type that pulled up in big white trucks and parked for periods of time in the near distance, facelessly observing from air-conditioned interiors and buttoned-up collared shirts. Eventually, I lost my creative space to the capitalist driven phenomenon that has been commonly identified as gentrification. I was uprooted, un-stuck, and floating so I decided to move halfway around the world to explore a context as far removed from my own as I could.

I was accepted to be a resident artist with Red Gate Gallery, a 27 year old contemporary art gallery in Beijing founded by Brian Wallace (Australia). It was the first private gallery for contemporary art in Beijing and is ranked in the top 500 galleries in the world. The gallery inhabits a Ming Dynasty Watchtower, one of the few remaining remnants of the original wall that surrounded Beijing. 

Red Gate nurtures an ongoing international artist community. I am in residence with three other artists that represent Belgium, U.S.A. (Harlem), and Austria, seen here with the Residency Director, Jen Lindsay (USA, NH). When we are not creating art, we spend a lot of time with each other, getting to know each other, where we come from, exploring and engaging with Beijing.

The surprise that I found was that although Red Gate Gallery continues to be incredibly successful, it was also in the midst of being uprooted. The Chinese Bureau of Cultural Relics was reclaiming the 550 year-old Watchtower and the gallery was being put out on the street.

Meanwhile the established Arts District, referred to as 798, has gone through it’s own cycles. Located in a former electronics warehouse district, 798 became the area that artists started moving to in the early 2000’s. It was the perfect place to get low rent and large spaces, the ideal formula for young artists to commit themselves to their art. As the energy built, people started flocking, galleries followed, then more people, lifestyle shops, coffee bars, and tourists. As all-things-chic started taking over the spaces, rent went through the roof. 

Goodbye artists, and goodbye to the energy that made it happen. But as the cycle comes full circle, Red Gate has found itself in an unusual position as it has kept it’s heart close to the street by working with emerging artists and continually supporting and engaging with what is happening. Red Gate now finds itself presented with the opportunity to return to this district with a space that it sees as having the potential to re-inject an authentic vitality to a context that has become diluted.

All of Beijing is witnessing intense growth. Residents of entire neighborhoods are being put out on the street. Entire blocks are ripped up inside of a day, making way for high-end development; the Chinese equivalent of yuppie-condo multi-use living that is blanketing cities in the United States. 

There is a particular texture that is targeted for extinction, areas that have an organic nature and are not legally classified. Areas that tend to house a “poor” class and are typically filled with what are referred to as migrants, people that have moved to Beijing from rural areas. My studio is in such an area, and there is an exciting energy to the state of lawlessness. This is the context that is my natural habitat, that inspires me, sets me free, and that, unfortunately, doesn’t last.

My art here became a response to this impermanence. I created artwork that I could carry out into Beijing and place directly in the city. A type of moving installation that travels with me on foot, slung over my shoulder to be set up for a period of time and then to move on. Art that claims a place as its context, both blending and standing out to create a moment of timelessness. 

Art that moves on, staying ahead of the onslaught of the wrecking ball, evading the tip of the claw.

In the midst of my time creating art, I caught the first hint of an imminent armageddon. On my way to eat with a new friend at a favorite restaurant, we stepped out of my studio in to what was typically a 24-hour buzzing ball of chaotic energy only to find a ghost town. Restaurant after restaurant was closed and as we neared our destination we slowly discovered that the doors of every single restaurant in the entire village were locked. White pieces of paper stamped with red stars were glued to the glass double doors. And then a couple days later the emptiness was filled by unrest. The entire village had been slated to be razed.

Art will survive. It is in the spirit. It is a part of our nature. It is a part of the flow. From the first scratches on rocks and marks on cave walls, art is an act that speaks to the metaphysical, a conversation about an ever deeper reason for being. It acknowledges The Self as woven in to an expanding universe that is built out of the unknown. As art continues to be labeled and commodified, harnessed and used, bought and sold, it will continue to evolve, evading the confines that a world places on it. Art will continue to break its bonds within reality as it perseveres to witness the world continually devours itself.

Creating art is not about making something pretty or painting something that looks like something else. It is infinitely deeper than that. It is an exploration in to the unknown, a conversation between the artist and their self, wrestling and coaxing a shadow, fumbling blindly through a dark cave with fingertips searching for treasure to bring out to the light. Using a tiny waterproof penlight to explore and illuminate a vast ocean.

Art is made with unknown intention. It is an act that listens to its self as it happens. There is no imitation in the act of creating art, only inspiration. An artist expresses and explores their unique self within the collective self, using their entire being.

Creating art in itself changes reality. Reality is not the same after something, anything, is created within it. This is a part of the wonder and why art is crucial to our world. On whatever level, when something new is brought in to the world or created, the field of reality is fundamentally changed by the new thing that is now within it. It places a new structure within the larger structure. It creates new connections and different flows and our metaphysical web is altered. Consciousness evolves.

The process, on the whole, isn’t particularly pleasurable. It takes bravery and confidence to allow the discovery, because you have to question everything and expose yourself to not only yourself but to the world, to stand naked in front of an audience, to endure whatever happens. It doesn’t matter what it looks like or sounds like, it matters that it happens.

Art is an act that becomes a physical entity, be it sound, motion, light, or mass, an act or series of acts that come from somewhere between creation and destruction, blossoming and decay. 

It is a process of figuring out how to allow oneself to be completely free and to do whatever you want to express or explore. Staying nimble with a loose flow is the ideal. Again, you work with your entire being. The profound nature of the work of art is in how it happens. The act becomes the object. It is an artwork. 

As you draw near completion, you start to feel it. It starts to vibrate and you resonate with it. It resonates with you. The art is within the piece and it emanates it’s own being. And each piece in turn creates the new iteration of the artist.

I had no preconceived notion of what kind of art I was going to make in China. Preconceived notions will only get in the way of new experience. It will never be what you expect, nor will it be what you are used to. A dramatic change in context makes everything inspirational. There’s an awakening when you travel, leaving behind the environment that you are so used to seeing that it has become muted. 

When I walk the streets in Beijing, everything seems to be changing all around me. It’s like nothing is solid. The sidewalks are being ripped up, buildings are being reshaped, shops close, shops open, signs appear, objects block the way, other objects vanish… it’s all like a blur spiraling around me and I can tell this has been happening for a long time. It shows in the patina of the walls and the strange layers of buffing. That’s what it seems like is constantly happening to everything: something goes up and then it is buffed out, leaving ghost prints behind.

Objects litter the landscape. A lot of objects are like signs or markers. They claim the space, shaping the perception of the environment. Form is of negligible substance here, almost like being inflatable. What may appear as a traffic barrier is easily picked up and moved. So it seems with just about everything here.

I started to think about making forms to place in the environment. Creating art that appears to have a weight but is actually hollow. Art that I can move around in the environment, inhabit a space but disappear as quickly as it arrived. My paintings have been becoming increasingly sculptural but they have continued to hang on the walls. These new works are hopping right off the wall, taking on their own structure.

The creative process is always intense for me. I tear myself down to the beginning and piece it all back together. It’s strange to go through. There are exhilarating periods, but crisis and catastrophe are par for the course. It’s important to not get derailed by the unknown and to remain focused and nimble. The process is vital and every artwork changes me.

Beijing has an intense energy. Everything is in motion all around and at all times. You have to be aware constantly when you are out on the streets. It’s a steady flow and doesn’t seem to have any rules. Traffic is an amalgamation of cars, buses, bicycles, scooters, delivery guys, weird enclosed three-wheeled vehicles, people crisscrossing, horns honking and everything is coming from all directions. It doesn’t move anything like we are used to back home. It’s more like erosion or some kind of weather pattern. Pedestrians build up and a car will creep through, blocking a lane, and then the flock of pedestrians will use the car as a shield and next thing you know they’ve completely taken over the crossing. Then the oncoming cars or a bus will beep their way through. There is no sense of entitlement to space, people cut right in front of each other, or are constantly filling in gaps and there is no fuss. All of this motion spins lawlessly around and all the while the Emperor’s throne sits motionless at the very center of it all, in the Forbidden City.

When the rush is on, the sidewalks are packed, the streets are packed, the subway is packed… Cars are riding in bike lanes, motorcycles are coming up the wrong way… Bicycles passing in front of you. The only thing you shouldn’t do is stop. When you are crossing a street, vehicles will aim right at you assuming you will not be there by the time they get to you. It’s a little intimidating at first but once you get in to the flow, it moves very efficiently and is actually kind of fun. I’ve only been hit once. When I recall watching the mindless cellphone-absorbed pedestrians stepping out on to the Flat Shoals crosswalk in East Atlanta, I still grin. I remember them looking up as 40 mph oncoming traffic screeched to a stop and be like “Hey, I got the right of way!” Not here.

I’ve been beating the streets and constantly exploring. The infrastructure is mindboggling. Telephone cables are wadded from pole to pole in giant messes. The entire environment seems to be in flux, a constant upheaval.  Shops fill in around telephone poles (some poles stick right through the façade) and over sidewalks. Beijing has been booming and buildings are torn down daily with new ones going up. Gentrification is as real here as it seems to be everywhere. The balance between historic structures and new high-rise living is precarious, with ancient structures being ripped up on the reg.

People are always outside. They congregate in open spaces, courtyards outside where they live, or are just generally wandering. It feels more communal. Grandparents are tending to babies and kids are running around. Everyone is interacting. The Chinese are typically very friendly but they can also be quite blunt. Communication is difficult, but there always seems to be an understanding and an appreciation for foreigners, especially those that are genuinely engaging. The cultural difference is immense but we are really enjoying it here.

With all of the energy buzzing, inspiration is immediate and it is off to find solitude in my studio. I’m in a village part of Beijing called Fei Jia Cun. Ready to make art…

Hello! My name is Carl Janes and I am an artist from Atlanta, Georgia. This summer I lost my creative space, locally known as The Secret Spot, to gentrification. I had spent 8 years there, converting an abandoned building in East Atlanta Village in to a cultural landmark. My art evolved in, on, and around the little building and I transformed along with it. I got to know my community and made many friends. I also got to know and support many artists through my space. But there was an inevitability that revealed itself as the community around it grew and property prices soared. The dream of ownership faded quickly and I had to cope with the reality that one day I would lose what had become my sacred ground. I decided I had no choice but to treat it as a transition, like a snake shedding its skin, and to use the experience to grow.  

I decided it was time to explore the world. I didn’t sign up for a tropical paradise experience or some kind of eco-adventure. As a relevant contemporary artist, I wanted to dig in to what is going on in our world, how it is changing, what is driving the change. I wanted to see for myself what is happening and to figure out how I could help build bridges and to share understandings across cultural barriers. The world is ours to mold, as it is ours to be molded by. I want to create art that manifests a positive reality, a global understanding, and a conscious future.

There are many things that drew me to China. The main thing that piqued my interest was the concept of Qi. To the Chinese, Qi is something that is very real. It is talked about as conventionally as water. But to a western consciousness, it simply doesn’t exist. Qi is loosely translated as energy but that doesn’t come near to fully describing the phenomenon. If you talk about Qi in the States, you can come off hokey or flighty but it is taken very seriously here. It is real and it flows through us and through the universe. I discovered Qi through studying Tai Chi at the Mei Zhong School in Decatur. I started five years ago, and for years there was talk of “feeling the energy” and letting it “flow.” I just kind of went along with it until suddenly I started feeling it. Along with the talk of “energy,” there was also this talk of a Master in China. I thought, well, that’s fancy. Then one day he showed up. My interest in Chinese culture continued and I began reading books about calligraphy, lattice design, and patterns. I began taking language classes, a language so foreign that I had nothing to relate it to. I saw Qi everywhere. It is in the tones as the language is spoken, the brush strokes as it is written. Qi was a discovery. 

As an artist, I started seeing Qi as the essence that flows through me and out of my brush. It is what Jimi Hendrix unleashed through his guitar. It is what breakdancers do with their bodies. It is what poets release with their words. It flows from within and it emanates out, a part of a metaphysical chain reaction that vibrates and resonates everywhere. The world is in a very dynamic state right now. A fissure runs through it as many underlying foundational problems have affected the surface everywhere. Political arguments and disagreements have grown increasingly polarized, social and civil issues on every front have grown to seismic levels, and leadership has been replaced with reality television. Natural disasters, war, the plight of migrants, the list continues. A fragility has been exposed and the global stage of influence and power is shifting dramatically. 

My wife and I, along with our 4 year-old daughter, decided to move to China. We wanted to have a fully immersive, extensive, global-cultural experience. We plan to be here for a year. I was awarded an artist-residency with Red Gate Gallery, my wife will teach (and explore other professional opportunities) and our daughter will go to school. We live in a very Chinese part of Beijing and there is no English being spoken. We see about 3 foreigners a day, maybe 1 from the US a week. I’m looking forward to sharing my observations with you this month and the art that it inspires.