Karen Winzer/ Berlin/ Germany: 

For me art is a tool to follow my questions and exploring them by diverse means and often with the people around. 

I am very much interested in specific socio-spatial situations – buildings, streets, villages, cities – the interplay of their social, psychological, architectural, historical characteristics. I often take up methods from other disciplines and modify them, e. g. like in a psychological test I ask neighbours to draw their neighbours as animals/ I modify the sound of a showroom together with an acoustic engineer to prepare it for an experimental concert/ I involve people in a residential area in Berlin in urban planning, simulating the gigantic dimension of a planned construction site in their street etc.

I track down the specifics of a situation and work on them in a cooperative, investigative and interventionistic way – with the people on site. Their perspectives and personal skills become core part of the working process. The results are developed according to the input of the participants and the local conditions. They can appear in diverse formats: a common walk, a public concert, a record, a photograph, an interview or something built etc.

In Skagaströnd I ask residents to make two blots with me and to describe what they see in them. I record their interpretations/associations: What images lie dormant in the specific social surroundings? Which personal, social and political motives may become recognizable? How are the realities of life reflected in the interpretations? Is there something like a local subconscious? Can it be reached by blots? 

In the meantime more than 70 blots have been made by residents of Skagaströnd and some of them have already been realized with diverse means: a giraffe, a scaphoid bone, a begging dog, a monster etc. – it’s an ongoing story…

For more information:karenwinzer.de and https://www.instagram.com/flecke__international and https://www.instagram.com/winzerkaren/

Thea Elder is an Australian analog film photographer and mixed-media artist, working out of London. Thea’s practice is concerned with her identity as an ecosexual, queer woman, and what that means for her relationship with the Earth, other humans, and the Erotic (Eros) in relation to her liberated body. Her practice is dictated by her sexuality and connection to her body; when embodied wholly, she is mindfully engaged with her practice. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) – HONS, obtained from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Both Thea’s artistic and personal healing practices are deeply rooted in Eros and the power of Ecosomatics. Her most recent photographic series, ‘Carnal Dynamics’, examines the nuanced stages of recognising and processing trauma/s stored within the body by capturing subjects in motion – nude. This series was a culmination of the past few years of her artistic journey and aimed to challenge oppressive societal norms around showing vulnerability. Her nude portraiture is reminiscent of natural landscapes, and awkward, unusual cropping of final images represent an understanding of physical and mental healing that is simultaneously both obvious and difficult to pinpoint.

In her time at NES Residency, Thea will be creating a new body of work, and expanding her practice into printmaking and watercolours. By blending media, and experimenting with her photographic practice in all weather conditions, Thea hopes to create a series of tonal transfer prints and watercolour paintings exploring her inherent and infinite connection to nature. She hopes this series will continue to entangle her as vibrant matter in whatever surroundings she finds herself in.

You can find more of her work at www.theaelder.com and @theaeldercreative.