Was macht eigentlich: Luiz Zanotello

In unserer Rubrik „Was macht eigentlich…?“ erzählen Hochschulangehörige von und über ihre Arbeit.

Luiz, you are currently a doctoral student in the binational Artistic PhD programme. Why did you choose this programme?

Luiz: What first attracted me was the possibility to continue to grow my artistic work and research skills together within a practice-based doctoral programme. While other German PhD programmes include a practical component, the emphasis on the artistic practice and its integral part within the “doctoral dissertation” is rather unique to the HfK. Of course, the opportunity to pursue a binational PhD also appealed to me, and I was eager to join the cooperation with the PhDArts programme at Leiden University and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. I find it really exciting to be among one of the first PhD candidates at HfK and both accompany its emergence among other colleagues whose work I admire. I also appreciate deepening my research with Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick, who was one of my supervisors during my Master’s degree in the HfK back in 2017.

How do you approach your artistic practice with a research focus? And where do your ideas come from?

Luiz: Artistic research as an academic field has a rather recent history, although the connection between art and research goes back a long way. I view it as a research framework where one’s artistic practice is aimed at acquiring (generating? sculpting? multiplying?) knowledge. That is to say: this is an inquiry-based endeavor, where we often start with a research question we desire to dive deeper into. We then examine our own practices, uncovering the knowledge embedded within it or the knowledge that occurs as an effect of such a practice. While any artistic practice is a form of exploration, artistic research goes deeper and deals with the epistemological aspect of our work – the knowledge that can be shared, negotiated and discussed in a broader framework. 

I approach it from the standpoint of new media art, in particular through the practices of techno-imagination embedded in such a field. In particular, I have been developing an understanding of the process of translation and the notion of distance through an auto-ethnographic perspective. Although cryptic, this last term answers your second question: my ideas come from my lived experience – as a migrant, as an artist, as a researcher, but also sometimes as a mourner, a poet, an ally – and the tracing of larger cultural phenomena from such partial perspectives.

You are staying in Portugal at the moment. Could you share more about your current residency there?

Luiz: I’m currently an artistic resident at gnration, a cultural institution in Braga, Portugal.The two-month residency is part of the European Media Art Platform, a network of 16 leading European media art organisations. The residency will culminate in a solo exhibition where I’ll be presenting a new transmedia installation opening on October 4th, and it might travel afterwards to different institutions within the network. In my project, I have been researching the ambiguity of language within media, and how time and weather may translate, over a distance, as image.

One of your artworks is featured in this year’s Personal Structures Biennial in Venice. Could you share how this piece came about?

Luiz: Last year, my colleagues from HfK's binational Artistic PhD programme and I took part in a short residency entitled Crystal Room at the GAK. For me, this culminated in an exhibition and a performance during Bremen’s Lange Nacht der Museen. In this performance, I translated my voice into light in order for it to materially cross the Weser river. The audience on the opposite side could only hear my voice as it transformed across the gap between where I stood at the banks, and where they stood inside GAK.

When I was invited to the Personal Structures Biennale organised by the European Cultural Centre (ECC), I had the opportunity to work between two balconies, and I saw that as an opportunity to continue where I left off at my last year’s performance. Artistically, I wanted to find out what was happening in this space in-between; moreover I wanted to find out what happens to language as it crosses such a distance between media.

Your work seems to focus a lot on the process of translating language from the metaphysical realm to materialism …

Luiz: Absolutely. Translation plays a central role in my doctoral research. I’ve realized that the languages I use influence how I understand, sense and imagine the world. We all know that an act of translation is a moment where something can get lost, but it is also a moment when something gets created. When a book is translated, the translator becomes integral to the work — a creator alongside the original author. These moments of translation fascinate me. It’s an ongoing process, with thoughts translating into images and words, similar to how light reaches our eyes and goes on a long thread of translations until we can interpret it. Even now, as I speak. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, really.

You recently received a doctoral scholarship from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. Congratulations! Did you have to apply with a specific project idea, and what are you planning to do with this scholarship?

Luiz: Thank you! The application process was extensive and required a detailed 20-page exposé of my research project among many other things. My hypotheses and research questions evolved over time. Initially, I delved into the trope of the abyss within art/science and the method of critical autoethnography.

With time, I’ve come to focus on the aforementioned topics of techno-imagination, translation and distance. It’s exciting, but also a very challenging process, as I find myself constantly exercising a poetic/subjective and a scientific/objective perspective at once. I have roughly still two more years to finish, and I’m excited about where this journey will take me. Ultimately it is my hope to compose enough understandings that will contribute not only to my own personal development, but to the collective sphere and knowledge fields at large. The scholarship is enabling me to have enough time to do that, a privilege I’m most grateful for.

What’s next on your agenda?

Luiz: I am currently concentrating on completing my PhD, but this involves as well the presentation of my artistic work along the way. Besides the residency and solo exhibition at gnration in Braga planned for October, I’m part of the collective exhibition “Hydromedia” at the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe in July, as well as at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden in November. By the end of the year I’m part of a collective exhibition at Silent Green Kulturquartier in Berlin with my PhD project too. In addition, there is another exciting project coming up in September: when I was invited by the ECC to do the exhibition at the Personal Structures Biennale, I suggested that we also organize a summer school for our PhD programme. So, my invitation was extended to include the summer school, which I am gladly co-curating together with Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick and Icaro López de Mesa Moyano. It takes place from September 12th to 14th as part of the Personal Structures Biennale and is entitled "Scenes of Transformation and Resistance: Performing in Artistic Research”. The focus is on performance as a research method through a variety of intersectional approaches. We cordially invite all HfK members to participate! Looking ahead, I may also teach again at the next summer semester. Exciting things, but I really do see the end of my PhD in the horizon already – and that does bring some relief too.

Thank you very much for the interview!