Aurélie Bayad

Aurélie Bayad is een visuele kunstenaar die vooral werkt met fotografie, video en audio visuele performances. Bayad focust zich op hoe we online aan zelfexpressie doen, intieme momenten publiek maken en connecties zoeken. Zijn de online media daar wel voor geschikt? Of werkt het eerder destructief inzake menselijke relaties?

In deze residentie tracht Aurélie een audiovisuele ervaring op te bouwen die gebaseerd is op een paniekaanval. Dit werk, Crush Machine, is een collaboratie met de muzikant Nina Lingajaja.

Alle makers zitten in hetzelfde schuitje als het aankomt op nieuwe richtingen te onderzoeken en te verkennen, met de obstakels en overwinningen vandien. We vragen onze residenten naar hun visie op enkele quotes uit het werk 'Truisms' van kunstenares Jenny Holzer en 'Rules for Students and Teachers' van John Cage en Sister Corita Kent.

Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.
That is a rule I wish to follow a bit more, to care less about the result and to just keep on working. To view work less as work but more as an experimentation and to learn from what you did, what you liked and what you didn't. To just keep working and going and seeing where things go because there is really no way to know what will happen upfront anyway. Art is really subjective and, of course, while some artist are widely appreciated, some go unnoticed until someone does notice. And one shouldn't make art to become famous or widely appreciated but instead because there is a need, an urge coming from you. A need to express something and create art, and of course no project is perfect. Some people might like it while other don't. And that's really ok, nothing is completely universal and it's not always a proof that the art is good. It's important to keep on working on your art and keeping improving with time.

Being bored can make you do crazy things
I think this one fits me very much, I feel like i've worked a lot in the past because of boredom and boredom is also a subject that fascinates me. How can one cope with themselves while bored?
In my work I'm questioning a lot this idea of endless stimulation that the internet and social media gives, leaving no room for actual boredom. I feel like the internet is making everything accessible but creating a society based on quick reward, obsessed about seeming not bored but instead busy. A society based on always doing something and never enjoying what is actually here, in front of their eyes. In that sense being bored is becoming more and more rare.
While I realize it's sometimes a privilege to be bored because not everyone have time for it, it's also so important in the creation process. To be able to wonder and dream about life, or the potential life one wants to create. And that “craziness” that it brings is not always a bad thing, it brings new ideas and new ways of seeing the world.
I feel like I've started so many of my art project because of boredom, it was one of my main topic a few years ago. Because being bored is somehow so uncomfortable it pushes you, or at least me, to create things to fill my time, to try to understand the life and to read/get educated on new topics.

Trust your own eyes
This one is so important and yet so overlooked and maybe underrated. Trust that what you feel is right, or that you have the right to feel what you feel, and that what you are doing is what you should be doing. I tend to second guess myself quite a lot during the creation process, to wonder if what i'm doing is what I should be doing and if I'm on the right path, if my artwork is good, etc. And I feel like it's important to remember to trust yourself to know what is right for you and what isn't. It might be a difficult path but it doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a try at least.

You must disagree with authority figure
I think it's important to be confronted with an authority figure which challenges you a bit, not in a “I will destroy you” way but more in a pedagogical one. And the reason for that is that it helps you defend your artwork and to understand why it's so important for you to make that artwork. It's important to have teachers who support you and encourage you to continue on working. But it's also important to challenge the authority figures that are in front of your eyes. And that is because not everyone is going to be nice in the artworld, not everyone has your best interest at art and that's ok. But you have to learn to defend what you believe in and fight for it, whatever it is. Somehow if everyone is happy with what you are doing, not raising any questions, challenging the gaze, or making some people uncomfortable, there might be something a little bit wrong. The most interesting art pieces that I've seen were sometimes disturbing and challenged things I believed in. It was very interesting to see those pieces and rethinking or questioning what I believed to be true, to see it from another perspective, with another point of view.

^{‘Truisms’ - Jenny Holzer 1983
‘Truisms’ zijn een paar honderd uitspraken van politieke, sociale, filosofische of moralistische aard. Soms zijn het 'open deuren', soms geven zij stof tot nadenken. De uitspraken zijn niet de persoonlijke meningen van Holzer. Sommige uitspraken of opvattingen zijn tegenstrijdig, maar samen geven ze een afspiegeling van de werkelijkheid. Holzer zegt: "Ik dacht dat het geheel een redelijk betrouwbaar portret zou kunnen zijn van de manier waarop de dingen zijn in de wereld, omdat al deze tegenstrijdige meningen tegelijkertijd bestaan".}

^{‘10 rules for Students and Teachers’ - Sister Corita Kent 1967
Componist John Cage gebruikte een lijst met tien regels voor studenten en leraars, die opgesteld waren door zeefdruk-kunstenares, docente en non Sister Corita Kent. Kent maakte de lijst als onderdeel van een project in een cursus die ze gaf in 1967-1968. Sommige van de regels van Kent’s lijst doen ook denken aan de ‘Oblique Strategies’ van muzikant Brian Eno en de schilder Peter Schmidt (die we onze zomerresidenten-muziek voorlegden). Neem nu regel nummer zes, "Nothing is a mistake," die doet denken aan Oblique Strategy "Honor thy error as a hidden intention."}