CAMERA ISOLATA
BY NAHO KAWABE
Introduction CAMERA ISOLATA
“See you in the small white chamber under the ocean…”
The “Camera Isolata” is a project realized through a special grant for artists under the Sars-Cov-19 pandemic from the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung. The motto of this grant is „Art knows no shutdown“ and it supports projects that take an artist’s approach to a world that is under lockdown 2020.
The Latin derived term “Camera Isolata“ characterizes a closed and isolated room – concretely and symbolically – an isolated space situation. “Camera Isolata” is the space in which we isolate ourselves during the pandemic. At the same time the modern use of the word “Camera” refers to an electronic optical device, the camera, often built into a computer or smartphone that produces a cut out of people’s upper half, taken from real space and cast into virtual space. This way, “Camera Isolata” becomes an online space, forming its geographic centre somewhere under the ocean in submarine cables like the Asia pacific gateway, the SeaMeWe, the FLAG Atlantic and many others.
As the custodian of the “Camera Isolata,” I chose a fictional art-figure loaned from a fossilised yet still existing animal, the Nautilus. This creature that has been living in the oceans for some 500 million years has several hollowed out chambers (camera) in its shell. Its ancient eyes have no lens, creating an image like a camera obscura.
This Project “Camera Isolata” consists of three experiment-videos with six artists who I invited:
Jane Brucker, visual artist, USA
Miss Hawaii, musician, Japan
Henrik Malmström, photographer, Argentina
Setbyol Oh, light designer, Germany
Ziyun Wang, painter, China
Yohei Yama, painter, Vietnam
(Each video is) accompanied by six short texts about their recent lives in their residences.
At first, I used an online meeting app, of the type that rapidly spread through our societies during this lockdown, to contact the artists living in different and far-flung countries to discuss our situation under the pandemic.
As an aside, I asked each of them what they might want to do to get to know someone new. Though perhaps a very naive question, after 2020, our previous established ways of making contact with people might change dramatically. I thought, maybe we can make it the subject of this project.
Online communication will continue to expand, honing its methods and tools. While it seems convenient for humanity to use this new technology and develop its processual practice, humanity also changes in the process. We found it interesting to explore what is unlikely to work with this new online technology rather than to discuss how to master it – including an awareness of future generations potentially losing today’s knowledge, social behaviours and aesthetic sensibilities.
In the end, we decided to do three communication-experiments / actions in three groups using that small online space of the “Camera Isolata“. In each case two artists – who have never met – spend a certain amount of time together in this room, in quasi quarantine.
Group 1 Spend time without talking (meditation)
Group 2 Spend time working (manual work)
Group 3 Spend time drawing
When the custodian signals the end of the quarantine period, each isolated artist takes their still running computer and walks out, until the WiFi connection breaks up, symbolising the boundaries of our social connection.
Jane Brucker
Jane Brucker is an artist and professor at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. She lives in California with her husband Jeremy. This year Jane and Jeremy opened an art space called galerie PLUTO in 2019. In their salon-style space, they create an intersection for art and science by inviting artists, musicians, writers, and of course scientists to exchange ideas and complete projects and residencies. The program for 2020 could not take place as planned and Jane’s own exhibitions at a small Los Angeles museum and at the San Diego Airport also had to be postponed. Although her artworks could still be shown, it made little sense as the airport is seeing much less traffic. Currently, LA has half of all new SARS-Cov-2 cases in California, with the USA boasting the largest number of cases in the world (end of July). In addition, BLM protests and the surge in racial tensions are adding to the political unrest and the outcomes are not clear.
Jane stays home tending her vegetable garden except, once a month, when she goes shopping at one of the large supermarkets in the area. She feels like the world has become oddly small, reducing her normally long commute to the westside of Los Angeles to walking the short distance between her home and the backyard studio. Jane had been visiting Europe since 2000 almost every year, her continuous travels expanding her world and her circle of friends. We met in 2006 as artists-in-residence at Schloss Plüschow in Mecklenburg- Vorpommern, Germany.
While the pandemic has put much on hold Jane sees a big potential in the online classes that began at the university in spring. After 26 years of teaching students face to face, she finds online teaching effectively excites and refreshes her. She uses the internet to try out new approaches, including inviting artists to talk with students in virtual studio visits taking place on Saturdays. As a result, her own conversations with her students have increased. When teaching online classes at her university, Jane includes experiences with yoga and the Alexander Technique. Of all the people I know, she is one of the most adept at using online communication tools. She also has reached out to old friends online and rekindled those friendships.