ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Joseph Sledgianowski
CREATRIX Magazine: How did the pandemic impact your art practice?
Joseph Sledgianowski: This has pressed some pause and tension throughout the performance art realm (and well… the entire world, especially this country) I feel many people have been offset extensively. What became the ‘live, in person’ formatting that evolved into much of the performance platform basis… as it had eventually simplified, enclosed, and was taken as a settled theatrical amplification. Many people may forget that early performances were often short videos of people in their own created spaces, often adaptable, not so much the artist formatting for a held over studio/gallery inclosure box .
But it is not so much the box, its the distancing, and the immediate difficulty to translate and be in a sense, overwhelmed with expectations of performing live through something like ‘Zoom’.
I have yet to attempt to perform through internet streaming (no, actually I have, but solely performing sound). I probably would just record something separately, and send/ play for others… I feel this one/direct view dissonance is a bit numbing… The setting, the image looks like a canvas now, on pause, yet not finished. Some of what I’ve absorbed over the last 6 months feels no different than having my 20 windows of different pages I’m reading in and out of. layers of fog and cloud without the noticed edges or lines defining anything aside for the computer screen being there.
I’m considering doing some performances using green screens and multiple cameras, but all at once. We’ll see…
CXM: What are your future plans?
JS: I’m currently building another large modular synthesizer. Mostly all hand built from pcbs I’ve been ordering since the beginning of pandemic time. Feeling very deeply carrying through the process of so. Like an ongoing durational creation of the interactive tools of most of my sound works.
The work for work.
& Tools for making tools, ha.
I’ve been drawing out a few of the plans for very large installations, but who knows when those will ever come together. Much to do with a multitude of offset walls where continuous sounds will intersect/ reflect throughout different points unexpectedly. Like constantly changing sound depending on where your positioned and what directions you are facing… A lot of math going into it, and geometric and auditory analysis. Maybe its a good thing it may take a while.
Also have a few new albums releasing soon… 2 solo cassettes by the end of this month & a split 7” with my friend Sean (Forclose) before the end of the year.
CXM: Online or LIVE ART?
JS: I prefer live art…
CXM: Martha Wilson once said: “All performance art is dealing with trauma”? What’s your take on it?
JS: I would somewhat agree with that. I have plenty of built up trauma over years, and performance is one of the major therapeutic streams I’ve found throughout my life. Somehow translating deep dark memories, reflections, in ways I cannot thoroughly release to peoples as simplified words, confused and distanced definitions. Formless…
CXM: Thank you, looking forward to seeing your work!
As a media sponsor of LIC LIVE ART festival CREATRIX Magazine interviews all participating artists in anticipation of the upcoming event, taking place on August 22nd at Culture Lab LIC at The Plaxall Gallery, and organized by Local Project Art Space.
Joseph Sledgianowski is a multimedia artist with a main basis in sound and performance. Continuously creating works poking at disassociation and misunderstanding through life. Blurring distance, seperation, depth and tension in giving a physical and mental definition. Joseph collaborates often and continues to curate underground events. He has performed all around the US, Mexico, Canada, and throughout Europe in Estonia, Poland, Germany, Scotland. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
