Leah Anderson

Installation

This work was produced through a commissioned invitation that was part of twenty events held to honour and celebrate the 20th year of Art&Fiction’s activity as editors of artists editions.

This installation is comprised of a textual intervention into the advertising space above the entrance of a collection of studios and workshops found along the bisecting streets (where A&F headquarters are located) at the rue des Echelettes and rue de Jura in Lausanne, CH.

Guided by the segmentation imposed by the pediments of the building architecture at the site of the Art&Fiction office, the installation’s text revisits and cites the editorial part of the art & fiction catalog through the use of textual fragments which have been (re)composed to tell a self reflexive narrative to tell a kind of ghost story full of puns and plays on words.

ceramic edition

This edition is a series of sculptural reproductions that are an ode to an Alexander Loye illustration found in the 2011 Art&Fiction publication MODE DE VIE. Kit de démontage.

The textual inscription under the published illustration reads: “L’esprit de la maison, c’est un peu la mise en abime.”

These “house spirits” will occupy the vitrine of the HQ of Art and Fiction publishing house in Lausanne on rue des Echelettes from the 7th of September 2020.

limited edition publication 2022

(Lilith Project Space_Berlin)

The images in this publication are from a watercolour series started during the covid-19 confinement of spring 2020.

The layout and pagination hint at a curious-and somewhat mysterious-narrative of (dis)orientation.

Included in a box-set edition, my small five image spread booklet will be bound with ten other contributing international artists’ work, to comprise this collective publication produced and edited by Lilith Werkraum (Berlin) 2020-2022.

…aka…Thirteen Steps for Getting Lost in a Time-Space Continue

book edition

This self-published and handmade edition of 30 (signed and numbered) was conceived of as a transcription of the same elements that are found in the installation Bookiner. A bilingual (French/English) publication, this book has a hybrid pamphlet/concertina form. Each copy includes a unique two page spread vinyl photo cut out.

installation 2020 digital prints, wood, stone, plexiglas

This work began with a first step: A series of photographic images documenting different moments in the course of a book being read.

Later and over time, these images were reworked in many ways through a choreographed process comprised of different steps to encourage a porosity of the borders between 2D and 3D with the desire to approach 4D.

Using a mixture of analog technologies (ceramics, drawing, ...) as well as digital (photography, computer software post-production...), this work investigates how the conventions and limits of the built form of architectural and paginated space lend themselves to appropriation and projection of meaning.

A printed micro-edition also accompanies the Bookiner installation. In the form of a small self-published brochure entitled: …a.k.a…Thirteen Steps for Getting Lost in a Time Space Continuum…

self published zine

since 2019

NOW or NEVER is an A4 one-page-fold zine produced at home with simple means that will appear seasonly with a different theme focus for each volume.

*Send me an email with your postal address if you would like to be added to the mailing list for the next issue.

publication contribution

2019

The series of images entitled, From the Stacks, appear across two spreads (four adjacent pages) of the publication PLACE, PEOPLE, TIME: Publication as an Artistic Practice.

Atop each of the ‘stacks’ depicted in the four page series, sits a polaroid emulsion lift image. These polaroids were taken and lifted while in residency in Collemachia in the summer of 2019. The stacks of papers under the emulation lifts contain other similar images of various tests and trials completed post-residency while working in the studio to complete this publication contribution.

Because From the Stacks was conceived of specifically for it’s printed context, this work can be considered sculptural publication.

In addition to asserting itself as sculptural, this work looks to disorient and collapse the boundaries between space-time dimensions of the the page in order to call attention to the accumulative nature of reading/writing.

group residency and publication

2019

For one week in the summer of 2019 a group of international creative practitioners came together to work and share concerns and ideas about publication as an artistic process in Collomachia, Italy at the Museum of Loss and Renewal.

The hosts of the residency, Tracy and Edwin (of the museum) and Cristina (of My Bookcase) scheduled a set of morning activities and discussions to get the group familiar with each other and our individual practices and to share our collective questions and ideas.

Two months after the residency, the Museum of Loss and Renewal edits a publication containing contributions and traces from each resident and the collective encounter and community we share.

The launch of this publication was held during the Printing Plant art book fair in Amsterdam in the winter of 2019.

https://mybookcase.org

http://themuseumoflossandrenewal.life

excerpt from online article manuscript 2019

publication forthcoming… (possible glitch*) ?

This article was part of a group invitation extended to the residents of PLACE, PEOPLE, TIME 2019 to explore the online archives of the Edinburgh based art magazine MAP. We each respond with a work in 2020 for possible publication…

Error: Missing File tries to offer a playful but critical look at why it could be worthwhile to slow down and consider the glitches and errors we encounter in our daily lives. The article’s written form is a footnoted list the details ten possible reasons why a specific file might not be found within MAP’s online archives.

https://mapmagazine.co.uk

performative text

2019

This short text was written and performed while participating in the interactive events held by the London Feminist Library and hosted by the TATE modern London during the weekend of June 29th and 30th, 2019.

During this event, the London Feminist Library paid special homage to the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp through participative actions in the reproduced ‘campsite’ and provided access to a selection of of the library’s documents.

During the 29th, I participated with ten others in a creative writing workshop, Waves and Voices, led by Sina Sujatha Schwache. At the end of the workshop we performed our texts at the ‘campsite’.

http://feministlibrary.co.uk

drawing series

since 2019

This series of drawings began in 2019 after a year of studying ‘thing theory’ and the author Francis Ponge. Ponge, a well known French author is often referred to as the ‘poet of things’ because of the form and content of his prose poetry style he developed to describe common, everyday objects, while also addressing through subtext, issues of language and literature itself.

The drawings shown here are a selection from a growing collection of over 100 ‘specimens.’

The source material of this series are banal images and visual material found on the the internet by searching ‘(s)ponge’ via Google search engine in various languages.

Ultimately this work looks to frame and point to the superimposed meanings possible through the use of visual puns within a multilingual context.

From November through December 2020 I will be in residency at INDEX, Zurich-CH to further pursue this work accompanied by additional research within several of the city’s archives.

installation 

surveillance cameras, tablets, plastic boxes, external batteries

2017

An interactive virtual loop between the library and the ceramics studio (two locations of research) is installed in an art school for one week.

The artist composes and reads two performative texts at the start and end of the week-long installation. 

The opening reading is an experimental bilingual text based on Walter Benjamin’s 1931 essay, Unpacking my Library and is performed in collaboration with one of the installation’s surveillance cameras. 

The closing reading is also an experimental bilingual text based on Homi Bhabha’s 1995 essay, Unpacking my Library Again and is performed in collaboration with a google translation phone application. 

This project tries to hack the affordance offered by a security camera in order to generate a space of access instead of prohibition. 

The virtual space offered is indented to invite an access and dialogue between the two laboratories in the hopes of overcoming and eliminating some unintentional antagonisms caused by differing material needs of a library and ceramics workshop. (ie: the dust generated by ceramic processes verses the need to avoid dust in archival practice). 

work in progress 

since 2017

This project began with a week-long research residency in the University of Minnesota’s special collections working with different materials relating to the artist Cecilia Vicuña. 

During my time in the archives (while looking in the box containting folders pertaining to Cecilia Vicuna’s book, Unraveling Words and the Weaving of Water, published by Gray Wolf Press in 1992) I happened upon files on another beloved author’s book (Brenda Ueland’s, If You Want to Write, originally published in 1938, and reissued by Gray Wolf Press several times since the 1990’s). 

I went to the U of M with the intention of finding evidence for the kinds of invisible labor involved in publishing a book and how it might relate to studio or research work. 

However, the serendipitous discovery between Brenda via Cecilia has lead me to expand my research to now include concerns about the generative nature of invisible labor (or the importance of the debris and surplus that accrues from practicing production), and a (re)consideration of how I define the personal as political within my artistic practice.

This project will eventually accumulate in a publication and/or edition. 

installation 

handmade porcelain rings, wire, metal hooks, architectural pillars

2014

The accumulative process of stringing many tiny porcelain rings together like an oversized necklace is used to generate a large-scale 3D spatial drawing.  

The web form is intended to relate to the importance of circulation and networks in terms of the social context of the exhibition (an alumni show) and its location (an old fruit and vegetable storehouse). 

The installation modifies (even if very subtly) how visitors view and move within the exhibition space. 

artist book forthcoming

This book’s content includes a series of poems composed from transcribed You-Tube video interviews of renowned “gender-bending” pop stars. 

Each poem highlights a pop star’s use of one pronoun in one interview ( I, you, we, they, it ). He and She are intentionally omitted. 

In addition to the textual content, this book also includes visual material from screen shots of the same You-Tube interviews as the source material for the poems. These images are also manipulated, edited, and framed so they no longer depict identifiable pop stars.

This book is about the kinds of modifications and distortions that can arise through the use of language, media, and images in the search for possession. 

fanzine edition of two

2017

This experimental publication was created while in residency at the Sitterwerk in St. Gallen, Switerzland. This fanzine, highlights the research I undertook in the materials archive and art library in the search for what can be understood as ‘trialectics’  of text/tile/and textile.

The materials and books of the Sitterwerk are classified using RDIF technology, and there is a smart table capable of capturing groups of different collections of research material assembled while working.

Additionally, the archive and library team have put together a software for visiting researchers to produce a limited-edition fanzine of their research and use of the table. 

installation

ceramics, sand, garden

2016

A series of seven sculptures in ceramics are placed within the growth of the rooftop garden of the Foundation Pierre-Arnaud in Lens, CH.  

The sculptures were realized in conjunction with the book, L’Homme aux herbs, on the occasion of the foundation’s exhibition about the author Maurice Zermatten. 

 In the final scene of the novel, l’Homme aux herbs, the reader is left to decide (or not) if the protagonist lives or dies. 

These jar-like ceramic sculptures are designed to echo the dual possibility of ‘life and death’ found at the end of L’homme aux herbs. 

Installed in the rooftop garden during the growing season, (April through to September) the installation becomes more and more hidden as the season progresses and the foliage develops.

This gradual erasure paired with the necessity for the viewer to move around the entirety of the large garden in order to view all seven sculptures, work together to generate more of the uncanny feelings of ‘neither here nor there’.

commissioned edition of 100

porcelain and textile 

2016

Each ‘package’ contains three handmade colored porcelain fruit shapes: one pear, one lychee, and one peanut per ‘package’. These ceramic shapes are knotted into a red and white vichy patterned handkerchief. The color-combination between the three different ‘fruits’ is unique in each of the 100 multiples.  

This work is positioned to push the boundaries of the edition genre’s more traditional understanding of authorship in several ways. 

One example of this is this work’s rejection of signature, which traditionally is used to authenticate and construct value in practices of multiple editions.

Instead, in this edition, evidence is allowed to remain of the presence of the hand and the traces of touch involved in the production and manufacture of this work. These are intended as alternatives to a signature.

 Additionally, the lack of numeration is ment to reflect more transparently the nonlinear process of making that is required in the production of ceramic multiples by the use of plaster moulds. 

Commissioned as an institutional holiday gift to be distributed during a staff party, the Vichy handkerchief becomes both giftwrapping and part of the work of art. And the receiver’s opening of the ‘package’ and their unknotting of the handkerchief becomes a final gesture of the work. Through this appropriation of its own commissioning context, FRUITS D’HIVERS  refutes a clear delineation of its authorship, and blurs the line between production and consumption.

an article about fanzine no. 213 TEXT(TILE) published in BLACKOUT journal no. 1 

2018

In the form of a personal diary, each ‘entry’ comprising this article helps tell the story of Fanzine no. 213. as I revisit the events leading up to, and following my residency at the Sitterwerk in 2017 and the publication of the article itself. 

Throughout the article, I discuss some challenges and surprises I encountered wile undertaking this artistic labor, as well as some of its rhythms and flows. 

performative installation

clay and found material

2017

This work was carried out in the context of the 2017 BIG festival for Geneva’s independent cultural spaces.

 Each edition of BIG takes place at a municipal park in the Center of Geneva, where the independently run cultural spaces of the city are each issued a shipping container for exhibiting and using to the discretion of each space’s wishes for the duration of the three day festival which is free and open to the public. 

For the 2017 BIG edition, the Neuchâtel based-Swiss artist, Martin Jakob, was asked to represent the Geneva independent art space, TOPIC. 

In turn, Martin invited different artist-colleagues to come and make an intervention using the material and tools stocked in the container.

For my intervention, MINI-big, I recreated (in miniature, and using only clay and bits of other found materials) the same forms realized by the other artistes who collaborated with Jakob during the festival. 

 This collection of miniature forms became a humorous but effective living archive or witness to the structures generated from the 2017 BIG TOPIC container.

artist book forthcoming

Based on a set of old notes, the textual content of this book is typed transcriptions of hand-written logs taken while looking at a series of images in a collection of archives concerning soviet didactic films and propaganda. 

 This working sessions of these logs took place in the context of an embedded residency in the exhibition Villa Soviétique, held at the Museum of Ethnography, Geneva (MEG) in 2009-2010.  

Ultimately, Withdrawn, is a book about the negotiation and process of making sense of and becoming familiar with something very unfamiliar.

sculpture

porcelain and wood

2011

Multiples of conical vessel forms are handmade in porcelain. Different bookbindings are molded. The vessel forms are covered with many clay reproductions of the bookbindings. 

Once the porcelain forms are fired in the ceramic kiln, they are stacked in various combinations with wooden planks placed atop at different interval. These are prefabricated wooden planks sold at hardware stores for the making of DIY shelving. 

 When the construction is complete, the result is a shelving sculpture where: the porcelain pieces are as structural as they are decorative, the orientation to the sculptural space ambiguous and multiple, and implicit hierarchies embedded in the linear frontal orientation of a typical bookshelf are undermined.

Ultimately, this zigzagging shelf-like sculpture seeks to propos a platform for the contemplation of some paradigm shifts and a remodelled vision and understanding of the bookshelf and its use. 

installation

paper, porcelain, photocopies

2011

Feather shapes are drawn and cut out of folded A4 copy paper. These paper shapes are prepared and dipped in liquid porcelain. The kiln transforms them in to sold drawings. The leftover paper remaining from the cutout feather shapes are assembled and glued across a section of a wall in the space of an empty retail department store.

The porcelain feathers are hung on a section of the same wall, directly next to the paper cutouts. Directions for reconstructing this installation are handwritten, in French, on an sheet of A4 copy paper. The directions are photocopied and glued to cover a section of the wall next to where the porcelain feathers are hung. 

This installation cites Kosuth’s various ‘One and Three…’ works from the 1960’s and 70’s and proposes an addendum: That process and incompletion be considered just as important and relevant to the production of meaning and value  as Kosuth argued for language,  and concepts for the production of works of art . 

digital photo triptych mounted on aluminum 

2011

The images of this digital photo triptych were taken during a drive from Lausanne to Grison with family visiting from out of town. 

On the way, we stopped at the summit of Fruka Pass to visit the tourist site for the Rhone Glacier. I arrived with my camera ready to take scenic group photos like any other tourist. To my surprise, what I found was not the tourist site I had anticipated…

 Sometime around 2011, in the hopes to stop (or at best to slow) the rapid pace of the glacier’s melt, the Rhone Glacier was covered, during summer months, by a large anti-UV canvas. This was also done to protect a tunnel that that is drilled each year into the interior of the glacier. This tunnel has become a monumental site for both scientists and tourists over the course of last century.

The images in this triptych address the misleading nature of how the folds of the man made fabric covering the glacier mimic (even if unintentionally) the glacial landscape, and how instead of visiting the idea of the ‘wonder of nature’ at Fruka Pass, now, it is also possible to visit ‘a wonder of man.’ 

installation

porcelain

2012

This work relates to the subject and themes of the previous Reflections on Site I (photo triptych). However, in this second edition, the mimicry of the canvas covering the glacier is reproduced in porcelain through ceramics processes. 

These porcelain sculptures are then situated in several locations of the restored historic building of the Foundation Valette in Ardon, CH.  

 The occasion for the installation was the invitation to participate in a collective contemporary art exhibition relating to the cultural and physical geography of the Rhone Valley, the location of the exhibition, and where many of the participating artists have lived, or are currently residing.

installation

porcelain and mirror

2014

In this edition of Reflections on Site,the same themes from previous two editions are revisited. But this time, the work relates to the reconverted domestic space of the cultural institution Le Manoire, as well as the site and context of the exhibition Show, Shown, Showed.

A glass mirror (usual to one found above a fire mantelpiece) is placed on the ground in front of a hearth.

Small handmade porcelain forms are arranged atop the mirror. The porcelain forms mimic, in miniature, the canvas that covers the Rhone Glacier. (Reflections on Site I and II).

When viewers approach the installation to see the miniature forms more closely, they cannot help but also apprehend their own image in the mirror. This is an important part of the work, as this reflection is intended to point to how projection is unavoidable in the human gaze and how we always see a part of ourselves (conscious or not) reflected back wherever we choose to fix our gaze. 

experimental video

2010

As a resident artist embedded in the Geneva Museum of Ethnography (MEG) exhibition Villa Soviétique, I collaborated with a fellow artist Jacquie Styne to script, film, and perform the nonlinear narrative  ‘plot’ for this video. 

This five minute piece, shows a duo of “protagonists” playfully performing a strange  hybrid rendition of Musical Chairsmeets Truth or Dare. 

In the video, grotesque scenes juxtaposing labor and leisure are relayed through burlesque images of table ritual---all within the bucolic and bourgeois setting of the MEG’s Conches location ( an old manor house and site of the exhibit Villa Soviétique). 

performative installation

ceramics, found materials

2012

This project was realized during a two-week collective wood firing residency in the tiny fishing town of Roya, Latvia. The residency gathered a group of international artist in Roya to realise, fire and instal a work in the town’s public space in conjunction with the ROYAL film festival.  

For my contribution to the residency, I chose to make two editions of flounder fish in clay as a tribute to the local love of this special species. 

Upon arrival in Roya, I quickly learned of how the flounder was a staple to the local diet and fish economy. Later after a little research, I also learned how the flounder fish goes through a special metamorphoses called eye migration', a trait scientists explain is developed as an evolutionary adaption to their environment. 

Basically, what happens is: gradually, as the fish matures, one eye moves from one side of its body, to meet the other eye, on the other side of its body. This happens slowly as the fish grows large enough to safely swim and hide along the ocean floor. 

The ceramic fish editions were installed amongst the different piles of debris and derelict structures found at Roya’s fishing port. At one point during the film festival, an informal ‘guided tour’ of the installation was given where the challenges and importance of adaptation in terms of many subjects (flounder fish, European culture, local economies, the ageing process, video games, etc…) were discussed. The ceramic fish were distributed at the end, as appreciation to my hosts and to other participants of my informal tour.

performative installation

second hand porcelain, pedestal

2012

A collection of white tableware is collected from different Swiss second hand stores. These items are stacked on top of a pedestal until performance time. 

The performance begins when the artist, at the prompt of a timekeeper, approaches the pedestal and begins throwing the dishes on the ground in a methodological fashion, waiting for all the shards to settle before smashing another. The breaking continues for one minute exactly. 

As porcelain shards spread, the public encircling the performance backs further away. The debris of SMASH MINUTE is left ‘as-is’ until that day’s closing of the exhibition. Afterwards, the shards are swept up and collected next to the pedestal for the remainder of the exhibition. 

installation

paper, Ikea shelving, porcelain

2011

Two identical Ikea shelves are placed equal distance in front of a wallpapered pattern comprised of mirrored photocopied images of Richard Serra’s 1967 work, List of Verbs to Relate to Oneself. 

Within the spaces of the shelving are handmade ceramic forms  that relate to the verbs required for performing physical and mental acts of research (digging, collecting, and sifting). 

The appropriation of the Ikea shelving is motivated by the intention  to juxtapose the mass produced with the handmade and to undermine and satirize some of the pejorative associations attributed to qualities of the domestic and the decorative. 

A generous amount of empty space is left between the different physical elements of this installation. This space is reserved for the viewer to navigate, negotiate, and reflect on their own path and experience with(in) the work.

installation and research project 

ikea shelving, table, notecards, markers, magnets, photo, map, rugs, porcelain

2012

In the context of the research project, Revisiting Heritage, hosted by the Art School of Valais (EDHEA) and a neighbouring village of Leytron, a team of artist and specialist were assembled to address the questions: What was it Leytron possessed in terms of Heritage? And how might it preserve this patrimoney?

My contributions to the project included performing oral history interviews and documentation with different local collectors of Leytron on the subject of their personal collection practices. In addition to the field work, I also revisited my installation, Bodies of Knowledge, for the exhibition that was held in the communal hall of Leytron at the end of the research period. During the exhibition I organized informal guided tours to visit the local collectors, and included a message table and board within my installation  (in lieu of the Richard Serra wallpaper motif from the firstBodies of Knowledge).

Following the end of the exhibition period in Leytron, I continued to work with Bodies of Knowledge II, as I wrote articles and gave presentations in the context of the Swiss Artistic Research (SAR)’s annual conference, We the Public.

www.patrimoinerevisite.ch

installation

art museum shelving, porcelain

2014

The project Revisiting Heritage eventually evolved into an experimental four-part exhibition series shown at the Art Museum of Thune from 2014-2015. For the first part of the exhibition series, Artists and Ethnography, I was asked to revisit the work Bodies of Knowledge.

This time, it was necessary to scale down the use of space, and adapt the installation to a much smaller setting. In this way, two shelves became one, and a piece of furniture from the museum archives and storage was used to replace the Ikea shelving. Additionally, a new set of ceramic forms, fragmented and abstracted even further, was produced. 

Another invitation to revisit Bodies of Knowledge came several years after the Thune exhibition in 2014. This time I would be appropriating the shelves at the store, Bischof Fine Books, in Zurich, CH. 

These shop’s bookshelves are attached to the main wall of the retail space. Therefor, they are open from one side only,  and offer a single orientation of access. 

This was an issue, as the freedom of circulation was something important to previous editions of this installation. So, in order to adapt this work to its new conditions, new porcelain forms were designed.

These forms were designed in such a way that might suggests the objects putting up resistance to their shelving conditions by overflowing, floating, and disappearing into the play of the light of white-on-white.