My friend Barnie is running the Daata Art Fair, which is ‘a new online art fair dedicated to showcasing the best of international contemporary video and digital art’, their words not mine. He shared it with me the same day London got put into Teir 2 lockdown, meaning pubs and socialising are mostly off the cards and getting a timed slot for a gallery to see REAL LIFE ART are like gold dust. I deeply miss seeing art in person as frequently as before, but this collection of videos designed to be viewed online made me feel something which has been sorely missed and opened my eyes to the power of video as both research and documentation alongside object making.

As a maker and a lover of the tactile and the phenomenal I wasn’t sure if I would find the works through a screen as engaging, however I found the concept of the fair itself was refreshing and I was surprised with how immersed and moved I was by the pieces. I was helped along when I moved from viewing on my Iphone to a projector ( which feels a step removed from the screens we usually find ourselves stuck too)

Through my work I am draw to movement, undulation, repetition and light, and how these things might bring around a calming or meditative state. Therefore collecting and making videos is a key way that I gather research. Animation and video are also sometimes an extension of my creative object making and so I am keen to explore this part of the art world more, and two of the video pieces in particular stuck with me and were particularly inspiring in this respect.

‘Nas Coxas’ by HÉCTOR ZAMORA

The film ‘Nas Coxas’ by HÉCTOR ZAMORA sees two men make clay roof tiles with their thighs, a play on a Brazillian phrase “feito nas coxas” which means “Made on the Thigh” and connotes something has been shoddily made. It was a film born from a previous performance, and sought to capture what had been, but also goes much further. We hear and see upclose the familiar slapping of wet clay and see the muscle memory of the artisan makers gliding and taming the malleable clay body against their skin. The effect is rhythmic yet smooth and soothing. Your own body is almost tricked into believing it’s taking part, your hands and legs yearn for the cool feel of clay and to join in this meditative, tactile practice. Macro shots and a visceral soundtrack combined to create this entrancing, calming experience, which is useful to note as it is something I am interested in exploring in my own work and documentation.

Spaghetti Block chain by Mika Rottenburg

‘SpaghettI Block chain’ by Mika Rottenburg for Hauser & Wirth, was visually quite different to ‘Nas Coxas’ but just as mesmerising. Interestingly it also featured clay - amoungst an exploration of other sensory stimulating materials. Rottenburg plays with scale using micro and macro framing to tell a story of connectedness, and what is described as ‘New Materialism’. I was really interested to learn about this interdisciplinary feild and have ordered the book which inspired her work New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, a collection of essays edited by political and social theorists Diana Coole and Samantha Frost. The blurb explains the feild is ‘characterised by a turn away from the dualisms persistent in cultural theory and a reconsideration of the material relationships between human and nonhuman entities”. We see lines scored in clay body by perfect mannequin like hands, compared with the lines carved into a farmers feild by a tractor. We see jelly shapes satisfyingly sliced and foam dissolved using salt, in a nod to the ASMR and DIY experiment worlds of YouTube. I thought it was interesting that this is the second video from the fair to feature throat singing as a soundtrack. This guttural and elemental score, paired with the rhythmic fast frame transitions and the sensorially provocative footage, made for a dichotic, yet a distinctly calming viewing experience. The video is stimultating, yet deeply grounding and soothing.

Spaghetti Block chain by Mika Rottenburg