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Art Intercom: featuring Ana Husman
Paddy Johnson · New York (United States) · Nov 30th, 1999 12:00 am · 4 votes · no comments made
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| The disk cover of Ana's film, The Market, by Ana Husman |
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Media artist Ana Husman often speeds up durational video, in effect, animating happenings and actions to underscore the development of social mores. Such techniques throw back to films like Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, a work known for speeding up shots of city dwellers, and Michael Snow’s Wavelength, which consists of a single 45 minute tracking shot of a room, though Husman’s tends to empart a more pointed social message than either piece mentioned above. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb, Husman explores shared experiences and cultural norms. When I spoke with the artist last week over the phone we focused primarily on her conceptual collaborations with amateur artists as well as her professional experiences with Creative Commons licensing, though we also touch upon her film The Market, which was featured on the iCommons Summit 06 DVD. We finish up our conversation with a discussion about the work she will be creating for this year’s Summit.
Paddy: The concept of a shared experience is one of the primary concerns of your work, so Creative Commons makes a lot of sense for you. Do you see yourself as being proactively copyright friendly?
Ana: I wouldn’t call myself an activist. I just see myself obligated to the people I work with. On the subject of Creative Commons licensing though, I think there are at least 2 good reasons to being using it, especially for “The Market”. First, the film was supported by the Croatian Ministry of Culture with tax payers money. Second, often when I create work it is drawn from shared heritage; I am “using” other people story's. By putting them in my own context I would find it inappropriate to close it, to copyright it or to sell it, in any way to make it unavailable for them to use.
I condensed the three reasons to two, because the second and third are the same thing.
Paddy: And do you think you would feel any conflict of interest if you were to receive money from the government to produce a work, and then sell it later in a commercial gallery?
Ana: I find that both sides of this are morally questionable; are you as an artist supposed to live off the government’s money? Who actually needs art and would people pay money for experimental art? In a way I find it easier to deal with these questions then to have a commercial gallery place my art in a private collection.
Paddy: And you had entered a contest when something of this nature came up right?
Ana: Yes, that was the Siemens Go Global! Contest -- it was for young contemporary Croatian artists. They were giving 10 awards, each cca 1000 $ and for the best one, an exhibition at Gallery Blickensdorff in Berlin. The most problematic thing for me was that the award money actually bought the piece, so I applied with the film “The Market” which is CC licensed to see if they would buy/award it. And they did. They bought just one DVD copy out of 500 for 1000 $. I thought that they would have a problem with Creative Commons license and insist on exclusive rights and so on, but nothing of that happened. They phoned me, asked me if it was okay to show the work in the building, and I said of course, and that was it. They didn't seem care.
The problem I have experienced with Creative Commons licensing is always that the people don’t know what it is. I had same problem explaining the license to Interfilm (Berlin Short Film Distribution) which is now distributing the film.
Paddy: I mean, do you think there is any way to make things easier for people to understand, or do you think it’s just sort of part of corporate culture that makes that kind of communication difficult. They’ve got a lot of things to do, they don’t really want to deal with it…is this the core essence of the problem?
Ana: I don’t know. It’s probably that it’s just too small a thing to bother with. They would bother with it if you were to make a commercial for a big corporation -- then they would have some interest in it.
Paddy: And they can kind of understand the practicality for it…
Ana: Yeah, when it’s in their interest. I mean, if I was some big British artist then they would probably take the time to understand the license better.
Paddy: [laughing] right. So moving on, in your work Exchange, or What We Did Not Know About Amateurism, you work to level people’s backgrounds and the piece that you did on amateur artists for example, where you place amateur artist works and interviews in the contemporary art gallery Miroslav Kraljevic, and the work of contemporary artists in the amateur artist space KUD INA. Could you tell me a little bit about the results? Who were the people that were exhibited? What was their work like? Could you see the influence of various backgrounds in the decisions that got made.
Ana: This is project which deals with the very form of an arts club as a model of self-organized art amateurism, but also the relation between the artist-amateur and academic artist (of which only some are 'professional' artists, if we use that word to designate work that also brings financial gain).
Amateurs selected work from Lala Rascic, Jelena Bracun and Boris Plesa. You can see their work here, if you scroll down, but in Croatian only.
Lala Rascic work was video and drawings titled “The Invisibles” dealing with the idea of in-visibility as ultimate freedom through the story about invisible family going on holly days. Jelena Bracun’s work was an experimental animated video titled "Ouroboros” which is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle. When the amateurs saw this piece, they immediately said, yes, to it. And
Boris Plesa, he exhibited black and white photos of birch-tree combined with the names. Each visitor had to connect name with the photo. Kind of a small game.
The group didn't select projects which were more interdisciplinary works between art and social science. They were more oriented may be not to the most classical forms but to the objects and video/films.
Paddy: So when you were doing this project did you learn anything you didn’t expect to learn?
Ana: Well, talking to them, the concerns, the things that you worry about are almost the same. I mean maybe some of the thoughts would be closer to me if I were a painter. I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s the same kind of fears, and thinking about your work for your life. It is very very important for them. So the new thing for me is that things aren’t so different as I had thought.
Paddy: And the other piece you did, The Market, that piece was received very well at the icommons summit last year and you received a lot of attention for it, and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what you felt people were responding to in that piece?
Ana: Actually, I didn’t know that it went so well at isummit. But it went to a lot of festivals, and won several awards. The question that I always get after the screenings is how much time did it take to make it? I think that people also find it visually very attractive and they like the humor in it. It is also important that markets like this are changing because of EU regulations - for example to be allowed to sell cheese you have to have a refrigerator in the market place, and that changes the way it looks.
But my main interest were not EU regulations but the way in which market shoppers use all of their senses when trying to ascertain whether the groceries are local or imported, this follows to lines of argument - that by buying Croatian produce they are supporting Croatian agriculture and that domestic produce is familiar and tastier, although it is not the origin of the goods but the method of its production that counts.
They rather chose to buy local goods simply because it is "our" , Croatian, local produce, and not some foreign, unfamiliar and alien foodstuff which is therefore deemed of lesser quality.
Paddy: Right right. So finally, I was wondering, you may not know the specifics yet, but I wondered if you knew what work you will be making during your residency at the icommons this year.
Ana: Yeah, I’m going to make a small book, etiquette. Usually etiquette contains chapter called something like “travel and leisure” which contains advice on how to behave in foreign countries not to insult anybody as well to represent your own country in a best way. This one would be made specifically for Dubrovnik tourists -- Instructions how to behave in a city as a local. It is collection of instructions which are generated through the years represented as ancient. For example what one should bring to the beach, when and where to drink coffee, how to dress...
Art Intercom is a six part series conducted by Art Fag City blogger Paddy Johnson, who will be interviewing the iCommons Summit Artists in Residence. In the weeks leading up to the Summit, interviews will be posted once weekly, profiling the artists’ work and describing their approach to Creative Commons licensing. Interviews include MTAA (part one and two), Joy Garnett, Jaka Zeleznikar, and Ana Husman, Nathaniel Stern (part one and two), and Kathryn Smith.
tags: dubrovnik croatia culture summit07 artists-in-residence art art-intercom
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