Ishan Clemenco
May 03 2009
Ishan Clemenco's temporary studio at The Orchard, May 3, 2009
The Orchard Projects: You had a studio at the Headlands Center for the Arts earlier this year, right?
Ishan Clemenco: I had a studio at the Headlands during January and February and into March. I was in the west wing of building 945. It was an interim period between HCA residencies that allowed me to work site-specifically in that space, one that I've contemplated working in for a long time, and to engage with aspects of the architecture and the history of the building itself, and also to bring into the equation elements of a project that I've been working on for nearly twenty years.
TOP: Do you want to elaborate on the 20-year project?
IC: I've been spending time over the past twenty years taking walks on a very remote part of the coast of Marin County, which is a protected area. It's one of the most protected environments in the world. It was never allowed to be developed commercially, unlike great portions of the California coast. It was tribal land, and it's a pristine natural environment.
It is located off of coastal fishing routes, and part of the early work consisted of collecting fragments of sea nets and ropes cast off by fishermen along the shoreline. There was initially a dual interest. One in the artifact and how it relates to the culture and the environment. And two, in the opticality of the particular sea fragments and ropes that I was collecting, which were specifically two colors, a particular green and a certain orange, which I would find in very small quantities, mostly in tiny snippets - one or two fragments per walk on the coast over a period of around twenty years.
I collected objects and artifacts and materials with the idea in mind of working at the Headlands in a way that I felt was unique to that site for several reasons: the importance of its military history for seventy five years, and its situation in the coastal environment.
Ishan Clemenco, West Wing Building 945 HCA, 2009, courtesy of the artist
TOP: That's a long project. It takes commitment.
IC: What was conducted during that time was research, studies, and the formation of an archive: an index of materials, notes, drawings and photographic documentation, which I added to and stored carefully in a set of boxes and archival piles awaiting the proper opportunity to bring them out. The Headlands project, Maritime Field, represents a completely separate endeavor from the main practice of my work for the past eight or nine years, working with site-specific wall drawing and chalk line installations.
The residency at Orchard Projects has opened up another direction, shifting from the ocean to the rural agriculture of this specific region. It represents a significant opening into a new direction. Rather than being a maritime project, it's more of an “orchard project,” really. I've already had my eyes opened to obsolescent technologies that are here, similar to those that informed the collection of materials on the coast. Many sea routes are now closed or disused and the nets and ropes aren't being cast off in those regions. They're no longer found.
So, at the Headlands, I made a work dedicated to Terry Fox; a wire piece that relates to my background in sound going back many years, which has been a source for my spatial and visual work. I employed the architecture of the large room, which contains a double row of iron posts, which are patrician columns, and are functional. They're also displayed in a symmetry that is architecturally related to the genesis of building going back to antiquity. It's often been aligned with an empirical presence. On galvanised wires I suspended fragments of sea rope which had taken years to collect. The length of the diagonal lines extended in space, partially loaded with these collected fragments, corresponded proportionally to the amount of time that I had taken to collect them. So there was this coming together of the way that the work was installed and the way that the work was collected and put together.
Ishan Clemenco, Calipers, 2008-09, courtesy of the artist
TOP: You're kind of an archaeologist in the way that you collect data and artifacts.
IC: There are certain threads in the work that extend back to what was going on in the ‘60s with land art and minimalism. I have a dialogue with those artists. I continue a conversation in my work with certain lines in their work to which I hope to add. I see this as a living tradition. In that sense, archaeology is involved. There's a non-denominational or non-religious ritual aspect. You might say it's abstraction, but in a sense it's also really about perception and things as they are. The lines themselves and nothing much more or less, really. I have an interest in how what exists from the past can be brought into the moment and taken into the future without specifically invoking any particular age or era, rather just bringing up elements that I find.
I'm also interested, in terms of the collaborative process, in who we meet in our lives and work with and how that fits into the equation in real time. How things exist, rather than simply opportunities to plug one idea or one aspect of work into another situation. There's a flow and, in this particular situation, being invited here at this time, there is a possibility of making another body of work together with other people.
TOP: So who are you collaborating with these days?
IC: The present collaboration is here at Orchard Projects. And it's really a new direction. A very fresh development out of some things that I've been working on recently, earlier in the year, at the Headlands. More specifically, a new turn in the direction to the site here, relating to the location and the history and the environment of the land. And specifically working with you and Brian, personally and in a creative context. In terms of collaboration, the open-ended situation here is one that I've just begun to explore.
TOP: Would you consider your chalk drawings and line drawings to be a time-based medium?
IC: I would. I would say that the instantaneous aspect of the snap is one thing. I was thinking about this yesterday, when we went off to play tennis with the master, Brian. Listening to him volley off the wall and hearing the totally consistent rhythm of his backhand, forehand, and realizing about the speeding up of beats from a very slow return into a line that suddenly, if oscillates fast enough, becomes a tone. There is this aspect of time and in the hanging chalk-line installations, residual dust from the chalk-lines when they're suspended, falls onto the lower limits of floors and exists as an element in time, as well.
Ishan Clemenco's temporary studio at The Orchard, May 3, 2009
TOP: These snap drawings, these chalk-line drawings, in a way they capture that moment, much like how a note is struck on a piano, but they're lasting. They have a longevity and a history to them. You can't sustain the key of C for a lifetime, but you can definitely capture that in these drawings.
IC: Well, it's an interesting point because there's a direct relationship in this work to what is known in music, in terms of description, as minimalism, which goes back to La Monte Young and later Steve Reich, the idea of drones, the idea of a continuous sound, which, I think, has a generational attunement. Many of us, for the last fifty years, have been drawn to work that's immersive, that's patterned and cyclical in construction. So the suspended chalk-lines, I consider to be optical drones. They are fixed from a high place and they're static. Yet they are able to be experienced in the field from a variety of perspectives, and one is not able to take them in, in one continuous or complete view. In that sense, the drone aspect is key to the whole process.
La Monte Young on minimalism
The vibrational aspect exists in the line itself. When it's snapped, it makes a double snap from the vibration of the line itself. You'll see the separation in the vibrational impression. In the case of the impressions, there's been a gradual development of surface and lines which has taken direction in the end game of obsolescent photographic materials, working with Polaroid sleeves that are left from 4 x 5 photography and on film itself, which finally becomes the most sensitive register of the snap. Here at the Orchard, I've been working with various powdered materials and ashes from campesino fires in the orchards.
Steve Reich, Eight Lines, composed in 1983, performed by the London Steve Reich Ensemble, Royal Conservatoire, Den Haag, Neatherlands, December 15, 2005
TOP: You were explaining today about how you were actually able to get or retrieve that ash. It was quite a process.
IC: First of all, it’s wonderful to see an agricultural setting so unsullied. The obsolescent technologies that are in the orchards, and wells that were once used as aqueducts being abandoned, the very basic and simple means of conveying water to the trees. These towers with propellers that move air about. The obsolescent kettle furnaces are which are in the orchards everywhere, are like columns. There is an archaeological reference in that kind of verticality. I've worked with suspended columns of paper cups and other vertical installations. Ash I've wanted to use for some time, it has a kind of purity when it's made from a fire that hasn't burned anything but roots of trees and avocado wood. I took white ash from the top of the fire and sifted it carefully, until it became a grayish white powder and snapped lines with that. Being able to transfer lines onto the metal irrigation plates I found in the orchard is an interesting new line of activity.
TOP: You were a piano player, correct?
IC: I was a pianist and fretted, stringed instrument player.
TOP: How has that filtered and crept into your visual work?
IC: I developed an almost primary relation to strings from an early age. Tuning instruments, stringing instruments, having strings under my fingers, having keys under my fingers for as long as I can remember. Then, leaving that for long periods of time, due to an interest in living without necessarily being constrained by a certain feeling I have about sound making in general that informs what I'm doing rather than becomes the specific focus of my practice. And sound and music are definitely a primary source.
Ishan Clemenco, Untitled (Suspended Chalkline Installation), Detail, 2009, courtesy of the artist
I've noticed that people who respond to the work respond almost immediately. And those that don't respond, necessarily, come and go as they will. Rather than direct attention to the work, I make an installation as it evolves. The goal is almost for it not to be seen in a sense. It's not meant to be different from the surroundings and it's meant to be balanced, to complement or somehow exist in the space in a way that doesn't really draw attention. It depends on the context. In the case of the installation at the Headlands or any work that would be produced here or in the orchards, or in a site-specific sense, there's a different process than say a gallery installation or a museum installation. I think that aspect of engaging with the specific site and with the specific concerns and interests that I'm involved with during that installation time make each particular project slightly or uniquely different from each other. That aspect interests me very much; how a particular phase in time evolves in a specific space.
TOP: I'm glad that you brought up site specificity. Obviously not every space is the same, not every box is the same, not every museum is the same. So when you enter a space and you're asked to do an installation, I'm wondering how that connection and that relationship between you and the space actually plays a role in the development of your installation.
IC: Given the proper amount of time, and again it can be more or less time, there's an initial attunement and assessment of the space, a visiting of the space. I usually measure the space, do a drawing or an elevation, start to look at the numbers involved with the measurements, and I reference those observations with meaning that I've experienced with particular numbers or directions or dimensions. I can expand or contract given elements of the space to work within a set of dimensions I might be interested in, or with the building or the exterior space or whatever the environment I'm working in can dictate. Some aspect begins an active engagement with the space. At a certain point, all the gridding, figuring, and contemplation give way to a more centered response, an intuitive response. That is a sense of feeling the space and ultimately, tuning, I think, is really what it's about. It's a visual, body-centered, tuning based on a number of factors.
TOP: So the space actually serves as an instrument?
IC: In a sense, I'd say.
TOP: It seems like each of these pieces is sort of this very condensed history of mark-making and drawing in itself. Of the idea of looking in and realizing the occupation of a space, and trying to express that, in its simplest form: a single line or marking. In terms of the history of drawing, what mark makers, what artists have you followed?
IC: I'd say Leonardo, I'd say Turner, I'd say Beuys.
TOP: Beuys? For what reason?
IC: His integration of object, artifact history, and line. An admiration for his draftsmanship and his sculpture. Also his school: Blinky Palermo and Imi Knoebel. Various aspects of painting from that time have influenced my work. And Judd, definitely.
TOP: What land art?
IC: Early Dennis Oppenheim, for sure. The early work I like very much. Aspects of Michael Heizer because of his background with archaeology. Walter De Maria, Nancy Holt were of interest to me. The work at the Headlands leads to the work at the orchard and for me it represents arriving at a place of engaging my work directly with the land again in a new way that's exciting to me. I like to walk. I've been walking these orchards a lot and I find that walking in clustered orchard space contrasts with walking down an unfettered coastline. It's an interesting change.
Ishan Clemenco, West Wing Building 945 HCA, Detail, 2009, courtesy of the artist
TOP: I was going to mention Vito Acconci when you were mentioning your practice of walking on the beach at the Headlands earlier. If you were Vito Acconci, what would you be following?
IC: I'm following a trajectory of work that probably has its basis in Russian Constructivism, Tatlin, the use of faktura and the tensile properties of various materials and an interest in color that goes back to early Renaissance painting and going into Judd's exploration of color, and Kelly and Newman, for sure. A dialogue with those artists that's filtered through experiences that don't relate at all to the art world. That come from other directions. Antiquity. Indian art and ritual. One image that informed the hanging chalk line installations is a bell temple in the Himalayas, in a remote village that I walked to that was filled with bells that had been brought by pilgrims for hundreds of years. The ritual of the temple was simply to ring the bells, and they were hanging on individual ropes, various bells from all parts, and I liked that simplicity. There was no liturgy, there was nothing to be said. And hanging chalk-lines carpenter tools are sort of optical bells as I see them. They contain their pigments. They have the potential to make a line, or they can recede into the tools themselves and be simply what they are. They're found objects and what they come out of is the tradition of workers and engineers; people who anonymously use that instrument for practical purposes. It's become a visual language, a spatial language. I guess it relates in some way to Flavin's discovery of the light tube as his language. It's not something I really considered in terms of attempting to translate one language into another. It all sort of arrived over a long period of time to be a working vocabulary.
TOP: Speaking of discovering a working vocabulary over a period of time, what's it like being married to an artist as an artist?
IC: It's an extraordinary experience to be able to share a life with someone else who's working out creative things all the time. We've had the opportunity to work in tandem and alternately on our work. We don't have a collaborative process, per se, although we work with each other on our work. I feel it's very special to have a partner who's an artist. It can be perhaps simpler to have one artist with one person who's not an artist, who might simply enjoy the work or support the work consciously or by some sort of sympathy. In the sense of a marriage with two artists together, it's challenging and it's rewarding and it's deeply meaningful.
TOP: Do you ever find each other's work informing yours, or processes of work informing yours?
IC: Absolutely. During the process of the anti-portraiture project and earlier bodies of Cheryl's photographic work, I began to use her cast-off Polaroid sleeves, which I noticed because she was using them and I began to make chalk-line drawings on those and this led to further exploration of obsolescent photographic materials and I contacted Polaroid Corporation and they provided me with rolls of photo substrate, large leaders. Right there is one example of being given the gift of a piece of paper that floated onto the floor in her studio. And other incredible suggestions and observations from daily life together, just things people say to each other.
Ishan Clemenco's temporary studio at The Orchard, May 3, 2009