^{Entretien (EN)}
SWTTIP
Nadia Lichtig / Hazel Ann Watling, 2020



– How do you situate yourself within this collective work which is Staying with the Trouble in Painting (SWTTIP) ?
– Comment vous situez vous au sein de ce travail collectif qu'est Staying with the Trouble in Painting (SWTTIP)?

Katharina Schmidt is the source of the project, which comes from combining a previous project, which she initiated, titled Trouble in Painting (2015) and the name of Donna Haraway's recent book Staying with the Trouble (2016). Within this project there are two parts. The performative collective installation at Building Canebiere shares its title with the whole project, and then there is an curated show at Espace Mourlot. This wall installation is performed through collective working. It is formed through multiple voices and forces, of which I contribute and nourish. This multiplicity assures that the answers I give to the following questions will differ from the answers of other people involved in SWTTIP. I could go into specifics with the ideas and activities that I have contributed to the project but I don't think it’s necessary to do that. Sometimes it can be a reassuring activity, to reaffirm your identity within a collective. When there are many egos at play together and ideas become shared, you can lose yourself emotionally and mentally. However, on the whole to lose yourself is the aim ! Haraway uses the word oddkin and the image of a string game, picking up and passing on. I think it's really important to not deplace emotions, expectations or judgements on each other. In this project where there is no hierarchy and there is meant to be a horizontal movement, each member shares responsibilities. It's all about finding balances in yourself and within the collective - to achieve that, it takes trouble. Then there is the role of shaping, inviting, organising and making the work, but also the other of being an invited artist making a proposal. I've proposed some scanned and digitally reworked ink drawings of animals and animal behaviours. The series explores the transition or transportation of painting in and out of the digital realm, by use of brush and ink on paper scanned and reworked multiple times. The painted illustrations animals making marks in social relationships.



– How do you articulate SWTTIP in relation to your own artistic practice ?
– Comment s'articule le projet Staying with the Trouble in Painting par rapport à votre pratique artistique ?

I think this project opens up to incorporate every participant's explorations, it is very elastic - like the vampiresque realm of contemporary painting. This vampire image is being replaced by compost. I think by exchanging the image, there is a move away from ‘consuming’ towards the idea of interconnectedness. By being a part of SWTTIP I get the opportunity to explore personal questions and ideas that I've been nurturing for a long time, concerning collective working. I continue to reflect on similar ideas and participative structuring in other projects I've helped start or shape, like Artistes sur Artistes (2015), 1+1+1 (2018), We are in this together, we are not one and the same (2019) and Buttered Toast (2019). It picks up on a lot of the themes I was exploring in Growth (2016), especially the collecting and merging of images from a potentially ever expanding network of artists. Exploring the modernist myth of the Painter, as a lone self, is often the central focus in all of these projects.



– What status does SWTTIP have in your eyes ? (is it an artwork, installation, exhibition, a gift .. all this at the same time) ?
– Quel statut SWTTIP a à vos yeux ? (est-ce une œuvre, installation, expo, experiment, don aux autres...tout tout à la fois ?)

I'd call it both an artform and a collective project. I have a floppy description, which I've been using recently, that is ‘relational painting’, but I think SWTTIP is more of a ‘performative installation’.



– How do you situate yourself in relationship to artistic intervention in the street (for example graffitti) ?
– Comment vous situez-vous par rapport aux interventions artistiques dans la rue (par ex. le graffiti) ?

Graffiti is heavily present in Marseille, and something which tells about the attitudes of the population. It's an expression of multiple voices, those that are most usually not present or visible in institutional spaces. There is a mix between the legal and the illegal, a fringe is traced out between graffiti and street art. There is a tolerance which paints Marseille as a city that welcomes difference and a certain level of rule breaking, there is space left for this. Interaction with public space is so important as a political tissue within a society, because it is a place where people voice, share or dispute their opinions and diverse positions. A common language in which diversity can exist, comes from socialising and being aware of the other. Public space is a troubled space but it essentially defines the individual, without it there would be no social or individual desires, and no language. Language itself being a social activity, from within personal reflexivity comes. Imagine languages as needing to be formed, they don't pre-exist culture. If we could rethink language in different forms of interaction and responsiveness. we could imagine opening up spaces between humans and non-humans. Painting, in terms of trace - telling through marking, and imagery using visual signs are both forms of pre-language – post-language - extra-language that include both an idea of a universal, in what the human eye is capable of seeing, and a personalised social coding and way of interpreting. The space of Painting is a space in which collective consciousness and shared preoccupations can de tracked in repetitions of motifs, marks, innovations. There are continuous echoes and reactions within a city's graffiti, and likewise on a much smaller close knit scale in SWTTIP, each sketching out the different social networks from where they come.



– Does the project have links with this type of intervention in public spaces?
– Le projet aurait-il des liens avec ce type d'interventions dans l'espace public ?

I think SWTTIP doesn’t go far enough into questioning this, or isn't meant to question this... In the original discussions there was talk of far more off-shoot projects exploring this relationship. In the end SWTTIP is performed in semi-public space. The passage is mainly frequented by the inhabitants living in the building. I still think it's interesting to dig deeper into the ideas and behaviours in street art, graffiti and contemporary painting, as they all share common grounds. Through looking at similarities and differences whole worlds open up.



– Is the archiving or documentation of the project SWTTIP important in your eyes ?
– Est-ce que l'archivage / la documentation du projet Staying with the Trouble in Painting est-il important à vos yeux ?

I've been experimenting with 'stories' as a way of tracing a documentation of the work, by republishing participant’s posts and posting my own photos concerning SWTTIP. These 'stories' are a flimsy and contemporary way of archiving incorporated into daily life.. They also mimic the flow and disparition of imagery like that in the performative installation of SWTTIP. The hashtag #swttip seems an appropriate way to document or trace the work, bringing it into the virtual space and having multiple voices make up its contents. Again the idea of private and public space comes into question when using social platforms. There have been multiple discussions about an edition or a fanzine. At one point there was my prefered idea of a photocopier in situ that people could use to make up their own fanzine, correlating to the images they like etc.



– What 'image' of this project would you like there to remain ?
– Quelle image voulez-vous qu'il reste de ce projet ?

I liked the first description we wrote in french about the tentacled monster, an image borrowed from Haraway's text. Tentacles that reach out through the city and social networks.



–The idea that the artists are the organisers ( or if we like ' curators') of this exhibition, is it important in your eyes ?
– L'idée que nous, les artistes, sommes les organisateurs, (ou si on veut "les curateurs"/ les "commissaires") de cette exposition, est-ce important à vos yeux ?

There is a second part to SWTTIP, an exhibition in an artist-run space, titled SWTTIP/Chris Reinecke. In the latter I would place Katharina Schmidt with Alice Griveau in the position of artist- curator. In the show we can see clearly specific roles of curating put into action. However Katharina prefered the description of 'making kin' in this situation. As if she is welcoming Chris Reinecke into her family through this exhibition. I think the terms 'curator' or 'organiser' seem 'off' to me. I'd say we all share the role of 'artist', and the artform comes from all the interactions which make it up. As an artist when you are making work you have to source materials, or when you show a work you tell people about it, these are regular activities for artists and activities we take on with SWTTIP. A curator is a role of caring for a project, it comes with many responsibilities, such as providing artists with payment. A lack of curation could be replaced by making/thinking/performing together and inviting others; again this image of 'making kin'. Each participant in SWTTIP is exploring some kind of attitude towards painting and through a rhizome effect we've invited and incorporated voices that tell about painting and the making of painting in multiple ways.



– Is there a political position for some ?
– Serait-ce une position politique pour certains ?

My main drive at this point in my life and painting practice is to place importance on openness, on possible ways of thinking that can help shape our daily life and political attitudes, especially in regards to ‘staying with’ the others and when I say that I don't just mean humans. It is important that we are not one and the same, equity not equality... There is a leveling factor in SWTTIP, through the use of black and white print, A4 or A3 mosaic. Each artist brings their own personal and therefore political intentions into the project through their image proposal and choices on scale and where that image should be pasted. Black and white and the use of the grid seem to be loaded aesthetically and politically. For instance, the desaturation of all the images allows the 'blending' of the images to take center stage. The modernist grid is given a new makeover, in this installation it gives way to crossovers and hybridations, rather than giving a restraint. Print as a medium to deal with the 'painted' images tells directly about trouble rather than pleasure, it reduces the objecthood and materiality of a painting and acts as a representation of the work itself. Print in general talks about reproduction, circulation and accessibility. I think one way to rethink 'growth' and accumulation, which speaks directly of our current conditioning in consummation, is to recognise infinity as having its own internal limitations. That is instead of a line going forward, a line that goes back on itself. The grid structure central to SWTTIP can relate to this idea somehow, like a circular shape it can fold/collapse back into itself.