Knotting
With the performance “Knotting,” I explore the transition between two- and three-dimensional reference systems and the dynamics of materials such as nylon and Dyneema rope slings, shoelaces, clay, and wool. In a scripted speech presented to the audience, I describe and demonstrate the materials' qualities and "sweet spots." I invite the audience to participate in hands-on experiments, including drawing shoelace knots, unraveling knitted sweaters, and twirling elastic ropes. The performance concludes with the presentation of a series of glazed ceramics that I frame as 'knots.' I invite visitors to hold and circulate these pieces, allowing them to physically engage with the objects and connect their tactile experience to the thought process explored during my performance.
Images 1-5: “Knotting”
2018
Performance with glassboard, pens, shoe laces, different type of slings, clay, knitted sweater, wool, glazed ceramics
Duration: 40 min.
Exhibited at LIMBO, 7-17 Latona Road, London, 15. – 16. 3. 2018
Artists: Noémi Barbaglia, Robert Bergmann, Luca Borsato, Max Eicke, Mara Ittel, Yi Li, Sohorab Rabbey, Franziska Windolf, Lars Witte, Julia Annelies Wycisk
Kindly supported by Karl H. Ditze Foundation. Exhibition exchange between the Art Department of the Goldsmiths, University of London, and HFBK Hamburg, 2018
Photo credit: Amber Hahn, Sohorab Rabbey
©Franziska Windolf. All rights reserved.
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Climb With Me
“I Want You to Climb With Me” explores parallels between the physical, mental and human processes of art making and climbing by drawing on personal experience and references from various fields in society, science, literature and art. The text aims at opening up both art making and climbing to the reader as something that is to be shared and yet not communicated without detours and failure: embodied knowledge and the very action of making sense are complex, site-bound and contextual and hence require an active and continuous positioning.
“I Want You to Climb With Me” first introduces my psychic and sensual understanding, handling of and relationship to matter as a daily endeavour, bridging climbing and art making as a mode for learning. It discusses how the very act of moving and touching can turn into a meaningful experience for oneself and others.
The notion of movement in regard to questions of performativity and relativity is then explored by presenting a personal encounter with Dóra Maurer’s work at Tate London in 2020. Miwon Kwon’s discourse of site-specificity finally opens up my own art practice to an active engagement with ‘site’, considering it as a place of encounter and interaction. Distinct ‘traits’ form the specific personality of a space, they shape and are shaped by those who engage with it. The conclusions found by investigating ‘site-specificity’ are used in the text to deconstruct male and dialectic metaphors and clichés drawn from mountaineering. This opens up my perspective on making art to a broader field of daily life and visual art.
“I Want You To Climb With Me”
2021
MA Thesis Sculpture, Royal College of Art, London
41 pages
Kindly supported by the German Academic Exchange Service, 2020-22
©Franziska Windolf. All rights reserved.
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