By Leah Ammon In this final installment of our conversation, Tiffany Singh talks about a previous installation of The Bells of Mindfulness, and more broadly about her creative development and practice. Leah Ammon: This is not the first iteration of The Bells of Mindfulness, correct? Tiffany Singh: That’s right. I did a version of it in Melbourne (Australia) and it didn’t work at all. Melbourne is a big city, the piece was installed in the middle of a shopping district—and it just got destroyed. I think it was because people were in an acquiring mindset. They were out on a Saturday afternoon, shopping. They came across this beautiful thing—the installation of the bells—and they just took them. That’s why, here at Montalvo, I’ve picked a spot that’s a bit out of the way as my installation site. I hope people will feel a little more invested in the work from the outset because they’ve had to put in the effort to find it, rather than just stumbling upon it. LA: Was your process for informing people about the intention of the piece different at the Melbourne installation? Were you present at the installation site to talk to people when it was being activated, as you have been here at Montalvo?
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By Leah Ammon In the second installment of our conversation, Tiffany Singh speaks about the constituent elements of The Bells of Mindfulness, and explains a bit about processes she went through to produce and install them. Leah Ammon: Can you tell me about the individual pieces that make up The Bells of Mindfulness? I know that you have 1,000 artisan-crafted bells and 1,000 hand-folded paper cranes hanging from the branches of a persimmon tree on 1,000 strands of hand-dyed twine. But can you tell me about the way the twine has been treated? Tiffany Singh: The bells are attached to the hanging strands with twine loops that have been dipped in beeswax from the hives behind the Lucas Artists Residency complex, which holds the earth of the Montalvo grounds. The addition of the wax and earth gives the piece a more grounded quality, and the wax in particular smells lovely. It’s drawing bees to the garden, which is helping to pollinate the surrounding plants. Once the bells go, the colored strings will remain behind as a visual indicator of how deconstructed the work is. By Leah Ammon In this first installment of our conversation, Tiffany Singh speaks about some of the principles that inspire her work, including ritual, communal engagement, and learning to relinquish control of the finished work of art. Leah Ammon: I know that the focus of your work—not just The Bells of Mindfulness, but the work you’ve done up to this point—has been the sacred and the spiritual. Why are you drawn to those topics in particular and why do you think they’re important to explore? Tiffany Singh: There’s a third topic missing from that list, and that’s ritual. Maybe ritual is best understood as activation of the sacred. When I spent time in the East, I observed there were many daily rituals that brought people together. There are temples in public spaces where people go together to light incense every morning. These are actions that make you feel like you’re a part of something that’s bigger than self. Media artist Daniel Canogar’s exhibition in the Project Space Gallery, entitledThe Film Trilogy, was on view from July 29 to October 14, 2012. Inspired by the history of film as it developed in California, as well as Silicon Valley’s pervasive tradition of fast-paced innovation,The Film Trilogy featured three separate multimedia installation pieces, each featuring appropriated and repurposed obsolete cinematic technology.
We asked the artist a few questions about the exhibition. Media artist Daniel Canogar has been in residence at the Lucas Artists Residency Program (with one hiatus) since July 18. He began his tenure at Montalvo with a projection of his monumental work Asalto on the façade of the historic Villa as part of the 2012 Rock the Garden celebration. Participants crawled across a green screen installed on the Front Lawn, while filmed from above. These images were then projected onto the Villa. We spoke with Daniel about Asalto. Interviewer: Something I overheard more than one person saying at “Rock the Garden" about Asalto Montalvo was “How did he ever imagine to do something like this?” Could tell us a bit about the creative process and the thought process that led you to develop that work? Daniel Canogar: It was actually a political circumstance that triggered the project. I was asked to do a projection on a monument in Madrid—the city where I live and have my studio—called the Puerta de Alcalá (the Door of Alcalá). It was built in 1798 as the official entry into the walled city of Madrid, and it was a means of regulating who came into the city and when—the gates were closed at night, for example. Around the time I took on the commission, some truly horrifying images were coming in... This Friday, October 12, from 6:30 to 8:30pm, multimedia artist Daniel Canogar will host a reception and artist’s talk discussing the work he’s done at Montalvo, including Asalto and his exhibition The Film Trilogy. We asked Daniel what he was most looking forward to about Friday night’s reception. This is what he had to say: “For me, this talk is both a tremendous opportunity and gift. Much of the communication that happens in the professional art world is very frustrating. You have an opening, and perhaps that evening some people will tell you in passing that they like your work. If you’re lucky, you might get a review with the critic going into more detail. But as an artist, there are very few occasions to have an in-depth dialogue with the public about your ideas; ideas that you have spent years, maybe even your whole career, considering and exploring. I’m always very interested in hearing people’s reactions, and what they think my work is about. Sometimes they see things that I haven’t, and their insights are really brilliant and help shape my future projects. I also look forward to sharing with people an as accurate as possible portrait of my creative process: you know, to let them see the kitchen and learn how things got cooked up. When people encounter the finished work, they get no insight into the course of action that lead to its completion. It’s much more realistic and interesting to explain the false starts, the mistakes, the learning processes, and describe how things changed along the way. And I hope, most of all, that learning about my process will encourage people to explore their own creative projects.” |