Artist statement

I have developed my practice as a device of agency, exploring the connections between a given context and a surrounding network of ideas and latent potentials. The individual works and interventions may function as an activation, an excavation or a criticism. I will often extract fragments of information, cut up existing texts and use the possibilities offered by new media or even just common stationary materials as a way to make this information tangible again. Sometimes the resulting objects are minimalist and apparently familiar – disguised as a business card, map or dialogue – but they can also end up as audiovisual collages of words and images.

This approach provides a way to map the energy structure of systems, in particular language in all its forms. I see the visual arts as an arena where it is possible to make experiments that don’t have a concrete result, but work as a catalyst for alternative forms of research. I work in a variety of media, but my current research mainly uses new media and site-specific performance to study relationships and behaviours. I do a lot of travelling and collecting, switching between systematic and erratic approaches, looking for artifacts to bring back for further study in parallel contexts.

The limits of language and visual semantics are key aspects of my experiments. I make maps, visualize networks, layer and juxtapose images and sounds of moments and settings documented according to a set of rules I have invented. The rules change every time, and I adjust my method according to the circumstances offered or denied and locate my own position within them. These alternative grammars disrupt the content of the messages, they are delivering jumbled reports.

If there is a reality that I want to exist I create it. I make up stories, scenarios, speculate – see if they stick. Often they dissolve but leave behind residue for new questions, further subjects for investigation. I call the framework for the methods I use ‘Expanded Pedagogy’. This is a dynamic form of teaching focused on cultivating sensitivity to already familiar objects and situations using tools from a range of sources including theatre, conceptual art and language teaching.