Time, Space & Existence
Randee Silv
April 2021
An interview with Isolde Kille
After I was introduced to TIMESPECIFIC by a video artist friend, my curiosity was definitely stirred. What you’ve written on your information page is very alluring. “TIMESPECIFIC features and documents works that are often unable to be framed, boxed, copied, packaged and sold,” and that it is “A message system. Documenting the in between as a constant. The history of objects, quasa object, non-objects, hyper realities … . Experimentation is mantra!” Can you talk about the roots of your thinking and what you’re envisioning?
UNDER THE MOON – Stars, Enamel, Paint, Iron dust,
Glass, Canvas, Silver nitrate, 14 1/2 x 11 in.
The name TIMESPECIFIC is a name, and an idea, that I conceived several years ago. My first initiative in that vein was on December 13th, 2014, titled 12.13.14 in continuum….
TIMESPECIFIC was inspired by Robert Smithson’s ideas on site-specific art. I was always very touched by Smithson’s visionary writings and his use of language, but I had a sensibility that art is moving more into time itself. So site-specific became time-specific.
First, I featured some friends here and there… but it never really took off because it was so hard to get artists to share process instead of products. The international pandemic was really the game changer, and it was during this time when all those ideas fell into place and started to make sense.
In February 2020, I started an open call for TIMESPECIFIC, titled 6 FEET, which was the recommended social distance in the US, asking international artists to submit photographs from their current situation. I didn’t have thousands of submissions, but I was connecting in times of dis-connect, and I was so touched by the replies from the artists, thankful for ways to connect in this dark time. This is when TIMESPECIFIC was really born, and I finally found my message system.
TIMESPECIFIC needed the disconnect from the ‘site.’ Suddenly everything was digital, on-line, pixels, fast communication, immediate transfer… everything was airborne, and I was in my element. There is nothing constant, but there is a constant exchange, and it is evolving.
Since the first open call for 6 FEET, all my current projects have started organically. I have worked in collaboration and in dialogue with the artists. This is how I base most of my decisions. It teaches me so much, and I also think that this is a different model of operation.
I choose to work from the heart instead of the mind, and to stay open and flexible and rather examine interactive processes. Working and exhibiting on-line creates challenging and exciting new opportunities.
The artistic process is very much at the heart of this discussion because it creates new stories. It is a journey through how we can strive to find new ways to reduce our carbon footprint as artists and connect as well as share our art works on-line. TIMESPECIFIC is not limited to the physicality of a single particular site, new networks emerge on-line, spanning disciplinary, linguistic and geographic borders.
TIMESPECIFIC is the sum of all participants who are examining this river of consciousness.
from TIMESPECIFIC’S project 6 FEET
Yes, I can totally follow how TIMESPECIFIC evolved and really appreciate your focus on artist process and on cultivating networks. There’s quite a selection of captivating photographs in “6 FEET”, where I see you gathered 76 contributors from 20 different countries. Could you share with us some of your observations & thoughts after having interacted with so many diverse participants? And how did you then segue into your next project?
from TIMESPECIFIC’S project Choreography In Time And Space
6 FEET describes an atlas of our current human condition during the international pandemic through the eyes of artists; and it is at the same time collecting a record of who each respondent is as an artist, as a human being, seen in a collective.
Besides an ad on social media, I also reached out to my friend, Sascha Windolph, the founder and director from the Kiosk Der Demokratie. He helped me to forward this open call by reaching out to a selected spectrum of international artists directly. This is how we achieved submissions from 20 countries in such a short time.
For me, it was truly a wonderful experience during the first month of isolation to receive images and text from all around the world. I received so much gratitude from all of the artists thanking me for creating this opportunity. Some wrote that they were inspired and now will continue to make a series on this subject. Some were simply honored and felt warmth and were positively uplifted during this dark time. Some enjoyed the idea and invited others. It started a snowball effect.
Somewhere, I regret that I set a deadline for this project. It could have been on-going… but it made me also realize that I don’t aim for quantity. I was seeking to cultivate personal connections.
“A message system. Documenting the in between as a constant. The history of objects, quasa object, non-objects, hyper realities … Experimentation is mantra!”
Those were all thoughts which I had collected within my own process as an artist, and now I’ve adapted my methods to work with a larger group of artists, exploring ideas about interconnectedness. What do we have in common? What differentiates? Those were all open questions in my dialogues with artists, and it inspired TIMESPECIFIC’s second open call titled Choreography In Time And Space.
Instead of images, this time TIMESPECIFIC asked artists to submit video sequences, and instead of placing the works one by one, TIMESPECIFIC created a collaborative film with the sum of all video submissions.
from Ati Maier’s SpaceRider Cycle
The pandemic has definitely pushed us to reimagine ourselves as artists and to participate in collaborative and collective projects that cross boundaries and borders despite these physical separations. In the film collage “Choreography in Time and Space”, you’ve captured this shared sense of curiosity, tension, uncertainty, surprise and awe that flows strongly throughout. TIMESPECIFIC also features Ati Maier’s video installation “SpaceRider Cycle” based on insights from The Oglala Lakota, and Barry Gerson’s film “Circling The Edge of the Prescient Moment”, about circularity and shifts in time and motion. I’m curious to hear more.
from Barry Gerson’s Blue Follies
Thank you, Randee. You’ve summed up very well several branches of TIMESPECIFIC. Yes, next to open calls or ‘initiative to action’, TIMESPECIFIC also features individual artists such as Ati Maier and Barry Gerson’s experimental films.
Barry and I are longtime friends; We met 15 years ago at an opening in New York. We shared an immediate connection in our work and have stayed in dialogue since. I feel honored to present Barry’s films from the last 53 years on-line.
Ati Maier and I both grew up in Germany, and lived in New York City, but we met in New Mexico just a few years ago, We both share the sensibility to connect to the ‘roots of existence’ while envisioning at the same time a possible future. We both see our life as a journey. Ati describes herself as a SpaceRider, coming to Earth as an observer and going back into space again. In 2020, Ati Maier had an exhibition at The Staedtische Galerie in Wolfsburg, but all her scheduled performances got cancelled due to the pandemic, so TIMESPECIFIC featured her SpaceRider Cycle to make it available for the on-line community. And we organized an interview with Ati and the art critic & writer Gregory Volk to further examine the story behind the SpaceRider Cycle 2020.
Matter on Print #3181, C-print, Medium, Earth, 14 x 11 in.
The diverse terrains traveled by the SpaceRider are all so visually engaging, with a constant feeling of wonder and cosmic intrigue. Barry’s Tibetan throat singing is really powerful and evokes a mesmerizing trance. I know that in your own work you “like to invent materials” and “allow chance to reveal itself.” Three projects that immediately drew me in are “Under the Moon”, where you’ve sandwiched enamel paint, iron dust and silver nitrate between glass and canvas; “Matter on Print”, where you’ve combined paints, pigments and earth onto a photographic print; and “Documentation of the Self”, on living in a Zen Monastery for 13 months. I’d love to know more about how you move through your creative process.
from Isolde Kille’s documentation of the self 13 Months
In New York my art work had two components, the paintings addressing the sublime, and the documentation of my surroundings, often de-constructing media images. “13 Months” is breaking away from this dual system and seeking answers in myself. It is an inner journey and it also documents my transition moving away from New York City to live in New Mexico. 13 Months is the beginning of my journey where I have been seeking alternative models to create as an artist in a natural environment. .
Under The Moon still represents an extension of my previous works which I had exhibited in New York. Abstract Painting connecting to a memory of deep space, stars, moonlight. But I developed those works in rural New Mexico on the land itself, allowing far more experimental production processes. The silver nitrate can be highly explosive. This element of danger, and not being able to control the outcome fascinates me as painter. I like to invent the materials.
As artist, I often push the moment of production to destruction in order to discover something new. I work with chance to invent new forms. And I probably produced 100 of those glass works creating alchemies with paint, silver nitrate, pigments and elements of earth such as grass and dirt itself.
Under the Moon is also the first interactive art work of mine. The glass and the mirror specs created through the silver nitrate, are highly reflective, and once installed in space, each glass capsule acts like a Kaleidoscope in space, reflecting parts of the environment and viewer. The idea that Art is an event in time is not only reflected in TIMESPECIFIC, it also took place in my own development as artist.
In recent years, I extended those processes on large scale canvases while often filming my process in video. I continue to work in all media, including earth and even sun exposure, exploring decomposition, light, and the natural landscape. I work interactively, sometimes the works have multiple outcomes, there is a video of the painting in various stages, the image of a work which doesn’t even exist any longer. The image of the image which fell into the dirt and took on a form in itself. Out of the sum I create installations, and/or an assemblage in space.
This is a travelogue in-between the second and fourth dimension. The fourth dimension appears as a two dimensional surface. We project the world around us as a two dimensional surface. The two dimensional surface is our battleground of illusions which tricks us with special effects to identify it as the world we know. It is our extension of our consciousness, that which binds us to the rest of the world. We imagine that we enter spaces while never even standing up to enter them. My art work is an invitation to enter! Enter now!
TIMESPECIFIC’S collaborative film Choreography In Time And Space was featured in MIXING IDENTITIES at Canvas – London International Art Fair at THE LINE Gallery, London April 15 – May 14, 2021.
Luca Curci talked with Timespecific aka Isolde Kille, during MIXING IDENTITIES. You can read the interview on ITSLIQUID a web based information platform here →
Studio visit with Isolde Kille July 22 in Santa Fe, New Mexico →
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