SINA WAGNER (NÉE DEISTER) – ... —ON THE WORK OF SWANTJE LA MOUTTE (2008)
Sina Wagner (née Deister)... —on the Work of Swantje La Moutte
For Swantje La Moutte each new work is a new beginning. A new beginning means new discoveries, unbiased experiences, and a sense of wonder —the curiosity and fascination of the unknown. It requires the courage to face new situations and let go of the familiar safety of daily life. It involves risks, but also opportunities to look at something and think about it in a new light. The artist makes use of this renewal in search of an expressive tool in which her linguistic ideas can manifest conceptually.
The starting point from which she takes off again and again is space. The world we live in, our environment, our immediate surroundings and society. Within these geographic and social structures, we live and act together by communicating with each other and thinking across boundaries, sometimes in global processes.
The installation „Lebensvorstellung eines Kindes“ mixes water from the world’s three oceans, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, and the Atlantic, in a baptismal font inside St. Andreas Church, Braunschweig. Next to it visitors can see the packaging material used to ship the water to Germany, documenting the making of the project. In its life-giving and life-sustaining function water is the foundation of all life on earth. This work also makes reference to worldwide communication and joint activities, which have made it possible in the first place for the water to mingle. The artist handles the qualities of the elements sensibly, and creates intervals in our thinking that exist beyond opposites, in turn drawing our awareness to these different poles. Water may be the origin of all life and essential for its survival, but at the same time, nature is governed by terrifying forces outside our human sphere of influence. Opposites are pairs that mutually cause and sustain each other —movement cannot exist without rest.
In her work “Still” Swantje La Moutte takes up the theme of unifying the world’s three oceans once again. In this case, the water is separated from the air in an invisibly locked glass ball. The water’s enforced state of complete stillness makes the uncontrollable movement of the element palpable. By pointing out opposites, spaces are created and opened up while, on the other hand, boundaries are traced. However, these boundaries do not appear in her work as limiting authorities but as indicators of knowledge, thought, and experience. In her work, the artist communicates a natural, sensitive relationship with the basic elements, handling them respectfully, yet without a sense of superimposing dominance. Going back to the beginning, once again we find ourselves in space, which sums up all boundaries of thought, all intervals, all connecting and expanding thought processes, and all views and actions resulting from these, giving them a common basis.
The geographic dimensions of space are the theme of Swantje La Moutte’s work “Los Angeles International Airport”. The connection of far away places is shown through a tunnel at Braunschweig University of Art and Los Angeles International Airport. A fragment of the airport’s precision runway is transferred to the floor plan of the tunnel, true to its material scale and north-south orientation. Through these formal parallels a connection is made between two unrelated places, also reinforced by the fact that planes from Germany land in L.A., California daily. Within this work two places are reinvented. The pattern on the floor of the tunnel traces its boundaries where the rising wall and the simultaneous end of the floor meet in a hard transition. The vastness of the California airport stands in harsh contrast with this, making it another focal point. The exterior surroundings of these very similar runway markings could not be more different, yet in the realm of thought, they develop a close relationship. Another important aspect of the work refers to global interconnectedness today, as modern transport allows us to easily get from one continent to another, cross oceans, and experience far away cultures. This is part of many people’s work, while others go traveling as a hobby, because they take an interest in things foreign. In any case this is based on a global way of thinking, which we increasingly take for granted.
Swantje La Moutte’s works have a remarkable power to trigger associations and reflections. By uniting water from the three oceans, for example, we are also confronted with the question of how to deal with our existential raw materials. The photographic work „Auf Erden“ shows wildly growing, exotic vegetation you would hardly find in a German forest. Her work demands an intense look at the observer’s own environment and the way he deals with it. Looking at things foreign and new confronts people with themselves, with their own culture and actions. Things foreign allow us to rediscover and reflect things familiar; processes or individual ways of acting can be reconsidered and possibly even changed. In this context language is the means through which new experiences, emotions, or information can be communicated and perceived by others. Global connections and joint actions require communication and could not exist without it. What the artist is mainly interested in, however, is not the written word as a message in itself, forming the basis of communication or the starting point of communal understanding. Rather, it is the materialization of these ideas in a conceptual manner that visually or acoustically challenges the observer’s imagination.
At the movie theater, audiences expect moving images and dramaturgically directed story arcs. These expectations are taken up and reversed in the video works „Erste Farben” and „Licht“. The main video consists of black images; ten different voices recount a movie from memory. Titles and proper nouns are left out. The metaphorical power of the spoken word, the vivid descriptions and subjective memories, as well as the omission of images, result in a situation in which the effect of language depends on the viewer’s imagination.
Another work called “To the pictures” demands free, independent thinking from its observers: A possible projection screen is marked on a wall. In front of it, we can see traces and materials from the world of painting. The spectator is given everything he needs to develop any kind of form and color. Now, using his imagination all he has to do is take the mental route towards creating individual images. He is free to choose when it comes to the thought material he wants to use and the invention of immaterial images, or entire worlds of images. Different questions can be asked in this context. For example: How do images influence the observer? How empathically do different people react to the same images, the same movie? In how far can people’s imagination be moved or influenced? How far does the power of a fiction or reality based imagination go when all it is given are basic materials as a starting point for the creation of imaginary images or worlds of images? In “To the pictures”, these questions, dissociated from their scientific context, can only be answered for the individual observer who mentally experiences subjective situations and emotions inside this work. Everybody brings his own story and his own life. His individual experiences, knowledge, and subjective power of imagination accompany him as he steps up to the materials he is given, offering themselves up like tools wanting to be used.
Besides the cognitive components of experience, the artist’s work also deals with visual means of expression in art. Form and color are areas that govern the work “All the colors”, for example. Two sheets of parchment paper are minimally fixed to the wall in a single point. The result is solely determined by the material, and gravity. The shape is created by folds, which form as the material is hung and succumbs to gravity. The paper is industrially manufactured and highly sensitive. It quickly loses its own individual qualities when being processed, and blends into something new in association with other materials. Being hung, however, these two sheets of parchment are only influenced by their punctual fixation, and the shapes created in this way possess a high degree of independent aestheticism. Colorless and blackened —white and black. Swantje La Moutte’s interest in opposing forces now becomes visible through another aspect —color. Two imaginary poles are being shown, indicating opposite ends of the color spectrum: black and white. As far as color perception, part of our vision, goes, the lightest and the darkest color are juxtaposed. Works using these colors open up certain mental intervals. No allocation needs to take place —rather, the two opposites suggest the possibility of the in-between.
This holds also true for the work “Light fast deep glaze / Flood in Flood out”. Through the medium of installation, the observer experiences an entire room and can move around in it, free to change his position and perspective. Physically moving around between opposite colors invites him for a mental walk through the spaces whose poles materialize in the form of color. Once again, language also plays a part because especially colors like black and white are used in a metaphorical or symbolic manner.
Swantje La Moutte’s works are not complete unto themselves but function as open structures. Language is present by representation in different media, which in turn form a foundation for communicating with the recipient. Works like “Threshold”, “Long before”, or “A room on its own” are based on our environment and work with the negation of the difference between art and life, or, by extension, the distance between a work of art and its observer. Making reference to what the recipient already knows, the artist helps him overcome any timidity potentially associated with a work of art: he is involved. This happens through mental participation and activity during the observation process, and originates in the very starting point of these works —thinking in language gives birth to the basic idea.
The artist deals with the environment and the observer in a sensitive manner. Her works offer a vision as well as approaches to ideas, imagination, and maybe even dreams. The observer can participate in Swantje La Moutte’s exceeding movements, get to know them, experience them —and start thinking anew.