HIDDEN MELODY /press release/
Pawel Polit
THREE ELEMENTS IN JOANNA HOFFMANN'S LANGUAGE
Grzegorz Borkowski, 2000
- text
from the catalogue "Book And What
"QUOTATIONS FROM JOANNA'S HOFFMANN
Anna Maria Potocka, 1997
- published in "New Spaces of Art", Biala Gallery, Lublin, 1997
Lech Karwowski, 1997
published in the catalogue of the individual exhib. "Episode. The Guide", Labirynth Gallery, Lublin, 1999
"Introduction to artist's books",
author text
In my artistic practice I employ various media: video and digital
technologies, multimedia installations, graphics and artist’s books.
My
earlier realizations focused on relations between the metaphor and concreteness
of a place I occupy and time I fulfil. Clock mechanisms, self-made lunettes,
view-finders and compasses have often appeared in my work. Space, re-orientated
by myself, no longer referred to any outer pole. It assumed a form of a closed
and self-referential area, forcing the viewer to look for a point of reference
in him/herself. “We are such as we know”; constructing some system of
concepts and notions at the same time we create our reality. It alters according
to changes in our perception and understanding.
In
my work personal experiences and observations appear often in the context of
scientific researches and theories. These references to science correspond with
my conviction that our perception of reality is based as much on our individual sensorium
as on ideologies which shape and
transform our cultural environment. Investigating them and questioning become
part of creative processes and activate the individual participation in the
rapidly changing world.
“A poet in the
scientific landscape” – this phrase by Nick Turvin is the most accurate
apprehension of my artistic attitude.
In
my work I recall ideas which have in an eminent way influenced the evolution of
our consciousness as well as modern discoveries and interpretations striking at
the roots of old definitions and revolutionizing our contemporary world-views.
One
of the series of my works, comprising multimedia installations, graphics and
artist’s books, is titled “Hidden
Melody”. It refers to the Pythagorean idea of the World’s Harmony being
the most pervading and beautiful concepts developed by the human mind. Expressed
in consonant relations between macro and micro components of the Universe, it
gave rise both to science and art. Pythagoras believed that the whole matter
emanated tones, that the whole world was music. He divided it into Musica Mundana
(later known as Music of Spheres) and Musica Humana (music of the human body).
His model, linking in coherent way the man with the rest of his Universe, has
evolved in accordance with changes in our perception and knowledge of the world.
My
realizations merge the images of the inner space of the human body (gained by
means of ultrasonography or magnetic resonance) with images of far off galaxies,
microsounds of the blood circulation and brainwaves with records of cosmic
radiations invoking the dream of Harmony and underlining the power of human
imagination. In this series I was also investigating relations between sound and
its visual interpretation. The music scores were often light sensitive and
manipulated by the viewers.
The
Cosmic Accord, according
to followers of Pythagorean ideas, reverberated once at the moment of Creation (that
means 3-15 billions years ago) filling the universe with the eternal polyphony.
3,5 billions years ago a new line joined in: the music of life scored up in genetic information that, with slight differentiations,
is common to all life on Earth.
My
latest long-term project “Life matters”
was initiated during my art & science residency at the Centre for Genetic
Engineering and Biotechnology in
These
two projects show the scope of my interests and creative practices that bridges
micro and macro processes, computer modelling with physical environment,
scientific data with everyday experiences. I often play with scales and use
various materials ( digital/virtual and tangible, man-made and natural, large
and intimate) to activate the reception of the piece not only on visual but also
physical levels.
Drawing
from scientific researches or standard models I do not illustrate them but give
them another values; incorporate them into the area of personal narrations,
emotions and sensibility. In this
way I want to stimulate individual imagination and reflection and make the
viewer who comes into contact with my work learn something about him/herself and
the surrounding world.
Pawel Polit, 2002
Hidden
Melody
Harmonia
Mundi. Excercises in Perspective
Kingsgate
Gallery, London
21 Sept. -
06. )ct. 2002
This exhibition will present
a new multi-media installation by the Polish artist Joanna Hoffmann. The show
proposes a concise articulation of Hoffman's artistic endeavors, featuring her
interest in interdependence between sound and its visual form. Harmonia Mundi.
Exercises in Perspective integrates variety of media which the artist has
been using so far: photography, artist's book, object, sound and video.
Hoffmann's work investigates
the problem of relativity of dimensions, permeability of human and cosmic scales.
Recognizing the cardiogram line and the sound of heartbeat as the essential
marks of the human existence, she relates them to phenomena described by physics
and astronomy. In her works, Hoffmann inscribes the event of heartbeat in
circular movements of planets, pursuing the Pythagorean idea of Harmonia
Mundi. Repetitive structures of her sound and video pieces parallel the
inertia of physical bodies.
Harmonia Mundi.
Exercises in Perspective juxtaposes visual elements with musical piece
combining computer stretched sound of the heartbeat with sounds of planets as
recognized and written down in the form of musical notation by Johannes Kepler.
The viewer is invited to produce photographic prints of Kepler's notes, facing
the cardiogram line drawn on the gallery walls and experiencing the organic
reverberations of the sound of the heartbeat. Inserted in the exhibition is also
a new video by the artist in which acoustic and visual waves are juxtaposed with
ultrasonographic image of the inside of the human body.
The title of the exhibition
refers to the problem of perspective, crucial in the visual arts since the early
Renaissance. As the new technologies increasingly introduce new modes of
understanding and experiencing the world, this subject seems to be especially
relevant nowadays. In the age of virtual reality there seems to be no other
stable point of reference than ourselves and our imagination.
Pawel Polit
Art
critic
THREE
ELEMENTS IN JOANNA HOFFMANN’S ARTISTIC LANGUAGE
W.Einthoven's
invention of 1903 of a device recording human heart activity under the guise of
electrocardiogram enabled to visualise one of the most meaningful processes
occurring inside the body. Keeping in mind research-oriented and diagnostic
importance of this method, we should not forget that it also introduced new,
easily recognisable factor to the domain of visual language. For many persons it
is just a sign of life that is typical for heart-powered creatures. Those who
perceive electrocardiogram as entirely unique signature, characteristic for a
given being, and a sort of a recorded life-moment of this being, belong to
minority. Correct recognition of these two overlaid elements is possible for
insightful observer. It is only possible if one juxtaposes various recordings
gathered in various moments of a given person’s life. Similar state of affairs
is to be found in the field of arts, where comparing of several works by one
author allows grasping interrelations between general creative stance and
detailed qualities of works. Motive and notion of cardiogram appears in Joanna
Hoffmann's work throughout several years' creative period. For the first time,
they could have been used in installation shown in Potocka Gallery in 1996.
Walls of two gallery rooms have been lined with black rubber strip, which
reproduced the cardiogram recording. The strip was burdened with little stones
in one room, and weights in the other room. Simplified image of individual blood
pulse through employment of gravitational forces has been encoded into a given
space, typically used for art. presentations. Cardiogram as a form used by
medicine - delineated onto minute scale on paper - was not present directly, but
as a kind of visual matrix rooted in collective memory. It is important to note
that a small book which consisted of only two pages (pages were simultaneously
the cover of the book) accompanied this individual exhibition. Elastic band,
which limited the angle of possible opening of the book, has been mounted onto
the opposite inner pages. This line was also a segment of the copy of authentic
cardiogram inserted inside the book. In last several years, some of Joanna
Hoffmann's artist's books were closely related to her spatial works that, as
Jerzy Ludwinski
Joanna
Hoffmann's artistic language, apart from cardiograms and undeveloped
photographic paper includes one typical element, which hasn't been mentioned yet.
It is the sound of heart beating, which is being transformed in a multitude of
ways. Its semantic message is certainly similar to cardiogram lines, but sound
is present in space in a different way than the graphic sign. it makes its
appearance in
Grzegorz Borkowski,
art
critic and curator at the Centre for
„Quatations
from Joanna Hoffmann”
Maria
Anna Potocka
Text
from the Catalogue „New Spaces of Art, Installations of the 90-ies” Biala
Gallery, Lublin 1998.
One
can say that reality means „everything”.
Nobody
has an access to it fully , nevertheless everybody in some way is able to get
nearer to a slightly different fragment of it. But even the areas we can
approach are rather small. Some things have to be ignored or
at least they must wait. The rest is subjected to selection in order
to define the world in which we move about.
„Objects
appear or become present in the area of my language by themselves. I do not
choose them but rather notice them and undertake decisions.”
The
process of defining the shape and the symbolics of one’s private world is
especially visible in artistic decisions, mainly because they do not enter
relations with practical matters. Decisions serving the everyday life are
deprived of such a clear authorship.
Most of them are attributed to (account for) specified functions or aims. In art,
where something like a function or aim does not exist, each choice has
an individual designation, a declaration of interest, weight, uncertainty,
strength and many other possibilities.
„
the starting point is always to a some degree of a mess, due to a chaos of
information and experiences. Maybe repeating elements, creating a narration of
links (...) is a never-ending attempt of ordering, an effort undertaken always
from the beginning, again and again.”
All
of us have to mark out an area of privacy, no matter if this delimitation serves
everyday life or art..
This
act divides people into two different groups. The first one is unaware that any
choice has already taken place . Such people function convinced that their life
or art touches upon the whole world. With such an assumption it is easier to
believe in the rightness of one’s point of view, in the truth of one’s
knowledge.
Those
who belong to the other group are conscious that their existence
embraces only a fragment of the world
and that it ensues from particular choices. Thus all conclusions and
reasons are loaded by something especial, something that is inside us.
Such
awareness brings criticism but also an interest in others’ views.
„Much
more important is the quality of experiencing and the relation with that which
is not myself.”
Sometimes
other points of view complement our
own observations, and treated as a selection from reality are incorporated into
our private areas.
„I
think that we are stuck in and
contribute to a reality in which nothing is given, is all-ready existing.
Everything is being constructed.”
Many
artists have such consciousness. But usually it is kept aside their main subject
matter, though it serves their methodology , increasing the prudence of creative
decisions.
The
awareness that we see only a small fragment ( which itself may contain omitted
places) that we „see” it through devices parameters of which are different
from those used by others, increases caution in judging, in coming to
conclusions, in falling into certainty.
In
the case of Joanna Hoffmann, the consciousness of representing an individually
constructed world serves something more than an outlook on life. It constitutes
the main place her creativity pivots around.
The
choice of such an area of creative concentration
implies a particular attitude and behaviour. Trying to describe this
attitude one should adopt some order, but to tell the truth no hierarchy or
sequence has raison d’etre here.
Nevertheless,
one can start the description by underlining
modesty , which in a natural way issues from the fact that we have only
limited fragments of the world in our disposal and to extend these
resources is difficult. But modesty
has also its limits. It manifests itself in not expressing assertions to become
obligatory outside. What is
revealed comes rather in the form of denouncements. Such modesty, when the
threat of somebody else’s
intervention appears, can evolve into a kind of obstinacy The strength against
somebody else’s opinions and interference arises from the conviction that
within one’s private world one is the main expert.
An
attitude strongly concentrated on the private structure of reality may also
contain some disbelief in the possibility of communication. If this disbelief
assumes the character of assumption
it can have many artistic consequences. For example, the rejection of finishing
sentences and the elimination of things
of secondary importance from the
work which then underlines the „symbolic readiness” of indispensable ones.
Arranged
in such a way, objects of more or less the same
level of necessity acquire a particular weight.
An
object always has its meaning, its identity, though difficult to grasp /to
perceive/. Maybe entangled in so many notional or linguistic texts, existing and
constantly being created, it has
itself disappeared somewhere.
So
what is the meaning of an object? It seems that the meaning of an object lies in
its concreteness.
In
Joanna Hoffmann’s installations, these „heavy” , concrete objects, in
which one should search for full meanings, are integrated by some „course”.
The line of this course depends on the architecture of the place where the
situation happens. And this line decides that the obtained whole is possible
only in this place.
„Joining
objects, either by a background or lines, comes perhaps from a fear of loosing
them within the space. Unlinked they are endangered by the state of
weightlessness, inertia, disappearance.
Maybe
the majority of our vital energy is
used for this constant process of uniting, bounding together objects, people,
ourselves....”
Such
is the first impression. It results from a conviction that things came first,
and a linking line appeared afterwards. It seems that these are objects which
are connected, that after having been chosen they got comprised by some line’s
course. Thereby things are considered to be of most importance. But there is a
possibility that it was the other way round, that first there was a line, some
undisturbed course, some pure idea, for example an idea of a book, and then
objects occurred, and hung on this course, forcing it to submit to the load,
burden, weight, or they made
their way into the middle of the idea, deforming its evidence
The
assumption that the line was primary implies some initial perfectness ,
something simple and continuous that, due to
events we experience, was
subjected to tensions, weights and went out of its way.
This
version gives less liberty to the choice of objects . On the whole they are
imposed by what happened previously. The act of forming looses its freedom; as
if „something” uses us to form itself. This „something” is most often
the past remembered in a particular way.
„Choice
of elements is made by intuition. Maybe they open my instinct, the instinct of
reading the reality in which I live, work, grapple with. What is being
constructed is a particular situation - visualisation /demonstration,
confrontation of a process of thinking harnessed in the process of intuition.”
Objects
which influence the course of the line or intervene in the content of a book are
dictated by intuition, past, events, memory. Thus they cannot be freely chosen,
they must derive from the inside of a private world and refer to its borders.
They have to describe this world and interpret its principles. They are both the
content and its translation.
„Inner
spaces are open for co-creation, for a dialogue; being realises itself in what
is open by dialogue.”
In
a situation where the appearing object has such a wide and open function, it
cannot represent or tell anything - it can only signal. Best if it does not
allow any verbalisation or description of the signal. In this way we „derive”
some meanings which we do not name
or define. Only when these meanings gain some constitution , can we afford to
increase the sharpness of comprehension.
We
can compare this to the reception of a sentence. Senses of words are „derived”
but not deciphered. Only a jointly elaborated meaning is getting opened.
This
is the best way to approach works
composed of many elements; to search only for those meanings which come out of
the arrangement of particular things. For various reasons, it might happen that
we will not encounter such meaning, and then we will find ourselves among
autonomous objects which seems to have no reason to be so close to each other.
Objects
constructing a new meaning can be very distant from matters and
passed events to which they somehow refer. Best when the private past of
the work cannot be reached at all.
Objects
created or arranged by Joanna Hoffmann keep this distance. One can feel private
references behind them but one cannot reach them. Thanks to this, they allow for
being filled with someone else’s privacy and do not disappear in the
attractiveness of biographic explanations.
One
has to have a great sense of balance to keep one’s private area unrevealed
while observing it intensely and to signalise constantly its existence through
non - revealing,
This
perpetual taming of life can arise from a particular treatment of art.
Art
is for me a form of being.
Art
allows me to penetrate /to find my way/ into the matter of life through a
different door, the door which, set
ajar, offers the freedom of cognitive imagination.
*Quotations marked in the text were chosen by me from the conversation with Joanna Hoffmann.
Anna
Maria Potocka is an art critic, the Chief of Polish Section of AICA
„(...)
Sometimes we get an impression that we can hear a clear sound of a tight string.
Thin as a spidery thread, too transitory in its flickering to be seen, it is set
into resonance by the will of self-preservation. This gentle resonance attracts
our attention. Blurred at the beginning, almost indistinguishable from noises,
it slowly acquire acuteness as new concretions, approximations and variants
appear. They are bearing an image of identity, a knot joining different
perspectives and time courses.
This
process can be observed in the work of Joanna Hoffmann. Here everything has its
reason..
Causa
materialis are ash, wax, sand, paving stone, brick...in natural colours of grey,
ochre, sepia - casts, imprints, traces, destructs - elements and remnants of
something that once had a form. Now - crippled - became a container, a casket
with a double bottom, protection, veil. They conceal objects:
a watch, compass, magnifying glass, book, record, scale...This is the way
the first tension arises - between the matter in the state of disintegration,
decay, distraction and objects of a
highly complicated and organised body. They designate some points, centres - to
notice them one has to stop, concentrate, read their function and behaviour
within the whole structure.
The
effective cause could be expressed in the question: Is a „stable behaviour”
of a subject possible? Can a subject be still a unity despite the fact that
everything which he/she considers as his/her own can be exposed to distraction,
abstraction, joined into another - biological or ideological - narrative.
Is it possible to objectifies the subject,
reduce to singular
behaviours, functions, relations?
Whatever
the Self (here - Joanna Hoffmann) generates seems to have a narrative character.
But it is not any particular story. The aura of used materials and objects does
not suggests any strictly defined theme of narration - it becomes its symbol.
WE
are unable to possess symbols, but we can combine them. What’s more - we do it
constantly. Some people claim that
they represent something we should
integrate with. This integration implies the merger into some great age-long
history, into a stream of the ”universal”, where our home is meant to be.
Thus we are „at home” each time when we allow ourselves to join something
more general, something that overpasses us, something we are all immersed in.
Joanna
Hoffmann’s treatment of space results in compositions which are equally
delicate and vulnerable as our Self endangered by the heavy machine of
destruction. Threads of different stories, narratives and symbols seem to meet
each other at points where some distinguished
elements evoke a concentrated and active
look. These threads transform the point of
their intersection into a centre of subjectivity.
Space
and time are essential here. Since we have no access to other dimensions which
could join all these „lines”
existing in the space of intuition rather than in the physical world , we assume
the presence of the centre rather than we see it.
The
time of existence of substances varies despite the fact that one conceals the
other.
Elements
arranged within the ”closed by walls” space require a panoramic look., a
sweeping glance along its own „horizon”, but then
they provoke to come closer , change the accommodation of the pupil to
another distance and scale.
Touch
of the matter. The aesthetics of a trace, allusion, suggestion.
These
constitute only a part of the structure of Joanna Hoffman’s installations,
This
structure eludes descriptions. Otherwise what would be the sense in realising it?
Even
if such an analytical description appears - it can not introduce the unity.
However, being truly equivalent it could evoke
such intuition. But then we would be dealing only with its aesthetic and not
with subtle orchestration of space made by Joanna Hoffmann.
Lech
Karwowski, an excerpt from the catalogue of Joanna Hoffmann,
“Episode. A guide for”, Lublin BWA,1999.
Remaining a medium of a language particularly reach in cultural codes, the art-book does not limit itself to the traditional form of a book but opens an area of multi and inter-media (using D.Higgins's term)activities. Yet regardless of the form the book assumes, its essence is based on the episodic character both of its time and of its space.
In her famous text "On Photography" Susan Sonntag recalls Malarme's words: "Everything in the world exists only to find its end in a book".This end however, is a very special one. It results from our fear of disappearing, of the state of distraction, weightlesness, inertia. It is a consequence of our constant need to order, link together things, matters, people, ourselves. Thus this end is a never ending sequel of openings which activate time and space, motif and context, introduce animation and methamorphosis.
Experiencing a book (both on mental and sensual levels) is not separated from a biographical time, and as such leaves traces both in the viewer and the object created only to stimulate his imagination and sensitivity. In most of my books, their content transforms or vanishes. It is not however a "destructive power of time" but rather filling some area of time with presence - an active form of being. In my book "here and now" a double pyramid, made of computer-printed words "and" , whilst opened reveals the light-sensitive inside. It contains spirals composed by handwritten words "here" - "now" mirroring each other. The more illegible words become, the more visible become fingerprints of readers. A similiar situation appears in the series of music scores titled "Music for inert repetitions", based on a graphic record of one heartbeat scanned into a stave. Each book-music score composes one of many possible modules of narration. Here the light sensitivness of material makes the notation changing, disappearing, "living" just as the sound to which it refers.
In many art-books, their physicality constitutes an important part of their content. A book is an object that occupies the place in space and simultaneously becomes a metaphor for places we seek for and carry in ourselves. Two compasses, inbuilt in my "Brick-case", influencing each other suggest the beginning and the end of this wandering.
"How little time we have to fulfil ourselves, how little ourselves we have to fill up time". This text inscribed in one of my dated books expresses the anxiety which accompanies many of us. The present we are living through constantly disperses itself and directs us to other, not-utterly-recognised presents. Hence, according to some, "there are no books but only one Book", according to others "there is no one Book, there are only books". These opinions meet in the consciousness that each of us has an access only to a little fragment, in each case different of the reality, which he shapes and share with. Sometimes using the medium of a book.
Joanna Hoffmann, 2000