6x6 project - blog - artist questionnaire

Bernd Oppl

What’s your background?

It depends where I am standing or in which space I am. Sometimes my background is the city, a street, a house, a room. Sometimes it is a landscape, sometimes it is the bed where I sleep. It depends on the point of view.

What are your artistic influences?

I am influenced by what surrounds me. It is the architecture that surrounds me, my body as the smallest space I have to carry around, technologies that influence and change our perception of what surrounds us. So what interests me the most is this relationship between the media image, physical space, technology and our body.

How do you start a new work?

It can be different things that trigger a idea and lead to a work. Sometimes it is a text, a found object, a film I watched. But also often it feels like one work leads to the other. So the process of working and experimenting is what leads to new works.

What are you working on right now?

At the moment I work on a series of dioramas. those dioramas create a mise-en-scène of completely empty spaces. The viewer sees a series of 3D-Prints of non-descript spaces of transition and pause. Given their monochrome simplicity, these random places become surfaces onto which fantasies and memories can be projected.

Bernd Oppl’s portfolio →

Alberto Cabrera Bernal

What’s your background?

My artistic interests have always been varied, although my initial calling was literature, when I studied a degree in Hispanic Philology in Madrid and published my first book of poetry, “Integrando” (Ed. Devenir, 2003). Later, I wrote “Salida al interior” (2003), to shortly thereafter abandon literature and begin to create collages with graphic images from newspapers, detritus and money. Without realising it then, the distance from there to filmmaking was minimal. Keeping in mind what Bruce Conner said about himself, I simply substituted “collage” with “montage”.

What are your artistic influences?

I would prefer not to talk about influences, exactly, but rather of affinities that I share with artists from different disciplines. There are many who have, at one time or another, been important to me for different reasons, the majority of those for questioning the limits of the language they used. Acrobatics with a bit of humour, I would dare to say that Palaeolithic pictorial and sculptural expressions could cohabitate with Baroque music and John Cage in my conceptual imagery, with the playful aggressions of Fluxus, the formal rigour of Structural Film, and YouTube.

How do you start a new work?

Most of the time my works are linked, and I do not think I could well indicate the boundaries between them. When thinking about concepts, above all, what I really do is continue to research in a concrete direction. But sometimes it happens that new ideas materialise on occasion and show themselves without it being necessary to know of their origins. I like to think that my mental attitude is of permanent surprise at myself.

What are you working on right now?

I am preparing new 16 mm films, a photographic series that should be called “antilandscape”, and various sculptural works around the concept of “Added”.

Alberto Cabrera Bernal’s portfolio →

Edouard Decam

What’s your background?

Although I studied and worked as an architect for years I always had this attraction for the landscape and especially for the mountains, the physical connection we have with those territories. Since 2016 I dedicate all my work to artistic research, trying to understand our relationship with nature and the construction of the landscape, through the prism of architecture and science.

What are your artistic influences?

I am really concerned by the artists of the land art, mainly Robert Smithson. Works by Gordon Matta Clark, Anthony Mc Call, Dan Flavin, Raphael Zarka, are some other important influences, together with all the photographers of the Datar project in France during the 80′. Scientific research and most of all the spaces where it takes place are topics which highly informs my practice.

How do you start a new work?

My work – and life – depends on physical displacements, explorations and hikes. Most of the time I am attracted by a specific architecture – a dam up in the mountain, an astronomical observatory or a synchrotron -; the moment I discover those places my work starts to exist. The images I capture, both photographical or moving images, are built at this very moment, they arise themselves somehow: the sites and the movement create those images.

What are you working on right now?

After my first film, Volva, I am currently working in a new one – to be shot in 16mm as well – at La Palma Island (canary Islands). Images will create a dialogue between the crater of the local Volcano Cumbre Vieja, the astronomical observatory in place and the natural surrounding landscape of the island.

Edouard Decam’s portfolio →

Elisabeth Molin

What’s your background?

I’m born in Copenhagen, Denmark and moved to London in 2006 to study at Chelsea College of Art. I got interested in art through films and the way in which they can resemble the mind and mental states. Through film I got interested in these metaphorical moments and fragments in film which represents something about the whole, a mood, which you can’t describe but can relate to. I did my Masters at RCA from 2011-2013 and since then I have been traveling doing residencies and site specific projects in Athens, Rome, Copenhagen, Cologne and Los Angeles which has been exciting and productive for my work.

What are your artistic influences?

I’m influences by the everyday mostly, the paradoxes and surreal interstices I find around me, as well as dream life and the subconscious. Some of the artists and writers that has influences me the most are Laurie Anderson, Siri Husvedt, Pierre Huyghe and Jeremy Deller.

How do you start a new work?

It depends what I’m working on. I like to create small bubbles for myself which defeat a bit day and night and act more like pockets of time for particular works. If I’m for instance writing I will devote the morning to writing and the afternoon to editing, if I’m taking pictures or go filming I will record in the day or night and edit in the night or following morning. Although I’m devoting different work to different days it often happens that the pockets collide and film become text or story become image. The notion of being in transit, in between spaces, between purpose, have a relevance. It symbolizes to me, moments where different worlds meet and transform each other mutually.

What are you working on right now?

At the moment I’m in New York doing a residency. I’m spending the time filming, writing and taking photo’s in the city. The video I’m making ‘Sun 88 Realty’ is about elevators, escapism and about how value is created. It combines the personal experience of living in the city with ideas of comfort and post capitalist life.

Elisabeth Molin’s portfolio →

Screening #1

We are thrilled to invite you and your friends to the inaugural screening of 6×6 project!

Wednesday, 24th of January, 8 pm
at
Blake & Vargas
Reichenberger Straße 72
10999 Berlin

Facebook Event

PROGRAMME:
Anita Delaney / The Cusp of Your Credenza / 10:33 min / 2015
Anne Haaning / Mother of Monsters / 06:39 min / 2015
Dagmar Schürrer / I Want To Be Like You / 05:45 min / 2016
Lotte Meret Effinger / Surface Glaze / 08:00 min / 2015
Mirelle Borra / Was machst Du hier? / 11:00 min / 2014
Sarah Bernauer / Feeling Felt Episode 1: Are you real? / 13:42 min / 2016

We are looking forward to see you there!

Andrew Black

What’s your background?

I was born in 1990 in the North of England and moved to Glasgow in 2009.

What are your artistic influences?

Pornography and conversations with friends.

How do you start a new work?

When someone asks me to, or when it can be supported. Then I do what I can with the time and resources available, usually in-between other commitments.

What are you working on right now?

A film made with the support of Market Gallery as part of their Studio Projects residency, recorded partly underwater. Starting with Pamela Colman Smith’s drawing for the Moon tarot card, it includes a village that was flooded during the construction of Thruscross Reservoir, close to where I grew up, and a moment of gay sex in a ruined village on an isolated peninsula on Scotland’s West coast.

Andrew Black’s portfolio →

Ibai Hernandorena

What’s your background?

I currently live and work in Paris, however I still have a strong connection with Basque Country where I’m from. I studied Fine Art at Cergy Art School, Paris. Since graduating, and on the side of my art practice, I’ve always worked on set-design for film shoots. Art informs the design of a set and vice versa. Art and cinema are in a constant relationship.

What are your artistic influences?

I’m influenced by many artists such as Raymond Hains, Bela Tarr, Le Corbusier, Robert Smithson, Chantal Akerman, Laure Prouvost, Virginie Despentes, Don Delillo, W. G. Sebald, Enrique Vila-Matas, and many more.

How do you start a new work?

It is often triggered by a place I visit. It can be a disused motor track in Catalunya, the ruin of a housing estate that was never finished to be constructed in the north of Madrid, an old and empty scientific observatory on the French Riviera, the history of a wasteland in Paris suburbs, the sound space of a film.

What are you working on right now?

Right now I’m working on a sculpture commissioned by the Nouveaux Commanditaires (New Patrons) and Foundation of France. In 2018, it will be installed permanently in a borough of Bordeaux, France.

Ibai Hernandorena’s portfolio →

Eden Mitsenmacher

What’s your background?

I was born in the USA grew up in Israel after graduating highschool I moved to London where I did my Bachelors in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College University of London. I later went on to do my Masters at Dutch Art Institute and am currently residing in Rotterdam Netherlands.

What are your artistic influences?

My artistic influences do not normally derive directly from the art world itself. I am currently really influenced by youtube, manga, fake news, fair wages, and romcoms.

How do you start a new work?

I am not really sure how I start making a new work as I am constantly working. Sometimes the deadlines help me finish up a work but I always have several projects going on at once.

What are you working on right now?

At the moment I am working on new projects with Rebecca Tritschler for our Youtube channel we feel u. Make sure you sub.

Eden Mitsenmacher’s portfolio →

Ivo Aichenbaum

What’s your background?

My background is quite diverse. When I was finishing high school in Patagonia I had a Black Metal band, some weird theatre experiences based on Antropologic theatre, Grotowsky, and Artaud practices, and also did a Social Sciences bachelor oriented to cultural heritage studies. Then I went to film university that was based on the Architecture faculty, so it wasn’t really a typical film school, it was open to a wider conception of Design of image and sound. There I became suspiciously involved with the contemporary art scene and started making some video, photographs, and installations for self-managed art spaces and museums. But it wasn’t until I started getting to know the so-called post-dramatic theatre that I understood my voice, making first-person documentaries. Those films portray the process of politicization that my generation experienced since 2011.

What are your artistic influences?

There are plenty of artists that I admire and had influenced my work in different fields. An international selection includes Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rimini Protokoll, Chris Marker, Jonas Mekas, Ross McElwee, Chantal Ackermann, Jean Luc Godard, Barbara Hammer, Eduardo Coutinho, Glauber Rocha, Raymond Depardon, Hito Steyerl, Harun Farocky, Chris Krauss, and Orson Welles among others. I also want to mention Raymundo Gleyzer, Fabian Polosecky (Polo), and Sofia Medici from Argentina and actual collaborators like Liv Shulman and Gabriel Valansi.

How do you start a new work?

I have some topics on which I am obsessed with; The present activation of personal and political archives, the relation between Art and Work, and the changing subjectivities from xx to xxi century, especially the overcoming from the post-communist trauma. Research and chance have the same relevance in the process. Sometimes is a conceptual issue, sometimes it has to do with my biography, sometimes is a portrait or collaboration, but mostly I make unsystematic collections images, travel notes, readings, texts, photographs, archives, and records of conversations that become a film essay at the editing room.

What are you working on right now?

Since 2016 I’m working on a series of collaborative chapters of a serie titled International Journal. It´s a travelogue over countries that experienced socialist or communist revolutions. I already recorded six 27´min chapters trough Central America, Cuba, Israel, Eastern Europe and China. The ending chapter is taking place in Russia for the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. So please support this new travelogue watching my films here at 6×6 project!

Ivo Aichenbaum’s portfolio →

Gabrielle Le Bayon

What’s your background?

My background was marked by cinema early on in my life. When I was in my teens, I often went to watch classics at the cinema with my father who was a documentary filmmaker. I remember watching Ray’s “Pather Panchali”, Rossellini’s “Païsa”, Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St Louis”, Mankiewicz’s “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir”. This experience has definitively encouraged me to make films. Although I started with a History degree in Paris, I went on studying Film and Photography in London, where I lived for over ten years. It is such a stimulating place, where the art world experiments with many forms. There I could explore interactions between cinema and artist’s films and videos.

What are your artistic influences?

In London, I met filmmakers William Raban, Ken McMullen and Stuart Croft, who were my teachers at the London College of Communication and at the Royal College of Art. For a few years after graduating, I had the opportunity to assist on the development of some of their film projects, often for research and later on production. There were inspiring experiences because I could have an insight on their ways of working. The stimulating relationship of these artists to their work has broaden my approach on filmmaking. But when it comes to my own projects, I look at literature.

How do you start a new work?

A new film project, usually starts with reading. Then I detach myself from the original texts to write my own script in relation to the context that structures it. The writing process is a frame where I throw in my feelings of reality and where they translate as physical, natural moments of the characters. Then I have to visit the places where I envisage my film shoot. My method would be, to quote Jean-Marie Straub: “Walk in a place three times, and find the right topographic point. That way one may be able to catch the mystery of the place without destroying it.” This is the way I approach the writing of all my films. Topography is the trace of History, the trace of what we want to show, what we want to say. With photography, there isn’t a starting point. It’s a spontaneous on-going process that allows me to remain open to my immediate environment, without any program or strategy. In “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris”, Georges Perec writes in details what he observes on a square over the course of a day. It’s an inventory of his immediate environment, the traces of the real.

What are you working on right now?

I’m writing my next film, which is the portrait of a woman writer during the Second World War. It combines real and fictional facts inspired from her essays, journals and letters, focusing on the politics of the female body during her time and in our current political context.

Gabrielle Le Bayon’s portfolio →