HOOT nr. 3 — Kamilé Krasauskaité

The 9th HOOT pops up for the winter 2022-23, but the conception of this issue started well over a year ago at our beloved Plage Avant (Traduttore, traditore’s studio, Marseille). 

We met Sophie T. Lvoff at many openings and art related events in Marseille these last few years, having a practice that appears mainly as photography, Gufo got curious about all the processes that she uses which involve sound, installation, writing… and more. She welcomed us in her studio of the city of Marseille where she recently settled.

We found out about the “trompe-l’œil” of this iconic checkered table, witnessed the installations of translucid and colored objects evolving on the sunny wall, and looked through her photographic chamber it’s called a large-format camera, but this is funny… For this issue, Sophie suggested to interview another artist, Moyra Davey, who also works in photography and writing, and appeared to have shared experiences too.

The topics of everyday life, intimacy that images embody in both their works, take another dimension as soon as their thoughts, voices and writing expand and express the entirety of their gestures.

This issue is the first interview between two native English-speaking artists, who have ties to the French language from childhood.

The penpals are the main characters of that encounter where we are very welcome to join in their very generous conversations. This is only an excerpt of a long and well referenced correspondence.

Cadavres rassemble 13 poèmes écrits par Phœbe Hadjimarkos - Clarke sur les errances dans les villes âpres, les campagnes humides et les maisons branlantes. Les poèmes sont accompagnés de 15 dessins de Rozenn Voyer.

Schismatics consists of 10 short stories, in a fictitious way dealing with forgotten historical personas. Among them, artist Goda Palekaitė includes Mary Anning –– an amateur discoverer of dinosaurs, Emanuel Swedenborg –– a mystic who empirically explored the architecture of heaven, and Essad Bey –– a Jewish-Muslim writer and orientalist. Here their lives are revived and balance between the lines of history and story.

The book fuses elements of fiction, academic writing, and artistic research, and intertwines with rumors, forgeries, and inventions. Previously, its characters and narratives have already appeared in Palekaitė’s performances and installations, which are presented in the middle of this bilingual edition. In the introductory essay, Valerio Del Baglivo analyses the author’s exploration of facts and fiction, the mechanisms of knowledge production, and the trans-chronological perception of time. At the end of the book, Monika Lipšic ‘Riddle’ reflects on a ‘schismatic poetics’. 

Goda Palekaitė is a contemporary artist and researcher whose work combines visual, literary, performative, and anthropological practices. Exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and collective imagination, and social conditions of creativity, her work evolves around long-term projects that manifest as performances, scenographies, installations, and texts. Her performances, solo and group shows are being presented internationally. In 2019 Goda Palekaitė received The Golden Stage Cross and the Young Artist’s Prize for her artistic contributions across disciplines.

Published September 2020

How to Sleep Faster is published as part of the collaborative discussion that form the critical direction of the gallery. and sits alongside the first two exhibitions – Sleep Faster (February), and How to Carve Totem Poles (March). It has been put together as an open ended continuation of this dialogue through which we seek to understand the contradictions / complexities that define and form our experience, existence and participation in a contemporary digital-analogue creative environment.

Arcadia Missa Publications; Rozsa Farkas, Tom Clark, Jammie Nicholas, Laura Farley (eds).

For British artist Delaine Le Bas, dress is divine. Clothes appear as both mask a nd memorial within an expansive body of work exploring mythologies of Le Bas’s Romani ancestry. Embroidered and hand-painted textile is central to the artist’s lyrically activist practice, alongside costume, writing and performance. In a new series of portraits by the British photographer Tara Darby, directed by Jane Howard, gold leaf dances across the planes of Le Bas’s face in repose, it wraps and jangles around her wrists, glimmers across her clothes. In a notebook she has inscribed: “In the forest of grief I grew into a shrub of gold.” The grief is alchemical.

As Stephen Ellcock writes:

‘The maxim ‘Know Thyself’ was inscribed in gold on a column on the threshold of Pythia’s temple, serving as a warning that wisdom, understanding, empathy and anything remotely resembling peace of mind are unachievable without selfawareness, reflection and ruthless self-criticism.’

The fragments of hope, anger, magic and curiosity redolent in Le Bas’s work form a call to action. A reminder of the racism, exclusion and subjugation that abound. Photographs of Le Bas, which Darby has been making for more than a decade, present the artist as truth sayer, inquisitive goddess and modern-day Sibyl.

Through the incorporation of texts—a conversation between gallerists John Marchant and Keiko Yamamoto with curator Claire Jackson—drawings from Le Bas’s journals, archival images taken at her home and the restyling—and reflection—of her own personal wardrobe, In the forest of grief I grew into a shrub of gold radiates psychological, social and political wisdom. Fashion is revealed as both tyrannical disguise and liberating regalia.

At midday, March 17th, 2020, Macron’s government decided to place France in suspended animation. Total confinement. The first in a series of strict debilitating lockdowns to combat the spiralling Covid-19 pandemic. This first confinement lasted 55 days. It ended on 11th May 2020. The first part of a dramatic trilogy.

One month in, in April 2020, David West picked up a box of pastels that used to belong to his mother. He had had them for many years but never used them. New to the medium, locked in his Paris studio, he sets himself to the task. Naturally, violence ensues. Folk horror. Animals are disembowelled. Faceless sexualised female bodies perform. Screaming faces educate. Covered figures stand motionless. Shadows. Hooded beings populate. Stabbing, scratching, fading, softening, sforzando. Crescendo. Schadenfreude.

Occasional respite comes when West ventures outside - andante - but the externalised screaming pushes him back in. Hagazussa. Ghosts from West’s past, real and unreal, appear and disappear, figures and shapes, compositional arcs, a slimy snaking emerald hand parts the waves for colour to gush forth a new language verde fosforescente, worm purple, rosa shocking, vermillion, cobalt, ultra-black.

This book reproduces a small selection of some 300 works, in chronological order, in an attempt to document time, evolution, revolt, epiphany and joy. Joy in colour, horror, form, symphony, and finally, West’s visions of a new utopia. Marcato. Decrescendo.

Softcover (21cm x 29.7cm)
100 Pages
50 copies
Signed and numbered by David West

Slant is a mail art project and a publishing house. It invites artists, designers, writers and poets to express themselves through a common theme every two weeks. it has poetry as its beacon of reflection, keeping in mind that sometimes we must tell the truth slant in order to see our reality depicted.

First edition, approx. 240pp. 4-colors riso printed.
20 x 25,5cm, 200 copies. Coptic hand-made binding.
Softcover printed wraps. French and English texts.