words and concept byMargarita Rozenberg

photographs by Margarita Rozenberg, Monika Golla & the artists

editing & layout ©kunstort ELEVEN artspace

Schulstraße 27, 72181 Starzach-BörstingenGermany

2017

www.kunstort-eleven-artspace.net#kunstortelevenartspace @ kunstort ELEVEN artspace

2017

#meettheresidents

Jackie Riccio USASculpture, Mixed MediaMay-July

#meettheresident Jackie impresses us with productivity during her artist stay in kunstort ELEVEN artspace: she produces a great deal of sculptures, drawings, UAO (unknown art objects) and, our favorite, unique line of overalls. Jackie has a particular style that colorwise and printwise strongly associates with sickly sweet aesthetics of candy produce. However, it‘s not that self-evident when it comes to her work, Jackie addresses issues such as identity, gender fluidity, the ‚digital self‘, and capitalism.

#cherishedobject Definitely, the hand watch. It‘s more than a jewelery or an accessory, it‘s not even a statement. It‘s part of her body as legitimate as a hand or a toe.

#breaks Jackie loves bread. Loves to prepare the dough, loves to bake it, loves to share it with others. She‘s a pro when it comes to baking. Whenever she‘s not working on a sculpture or an overall, she could be found somewhere around bread. „Bake it until you make it“, she says.

More about her work: www.jackiericcio.com

Sarah Sole USAPaintingMay-July

#meettheresidentSara Sole has been painting Hilary Clinton for 8 years by now, so we have all the rights to call her a loyal artist. She came to Ger-many to delve into the „Deutsch werden“(Becoming German) concept #deutschwerden. Being endlessly fascinated with German history, political discourse, culture and collective consciousness, Sarah wants to experience life in rural Germany and catch a new wave of inspiration for her artistic practice as a painter. During her stay in kunstort ELEVEN artspace she paints a famous (as she thought) German fiction character - Heidi. To Sarah‘s surprise, Heidi turned out to be Swiss and not German. What can we say, live and learn, new discoveries are being made every day.

#breaks On breaks between painting she has a cigarette, a notebook, and her phone. She likes to peruse twitter, the comments mostly. She likes to study how people express their drive for agency, political agency, how they make their voice „heard“. She sits and watches and wonders. Then she gets back to Hilary.

#cherishedobject Cigarettes, notebook and her phone.

More about Sarahs project: sarah-sole.com

Natalie Henson USAInstallation, PaintingJuly

#meettheresident Natalie Henson is our artist resident who works on site specific art in Starzach this summer. Much of her work explores the relationship we have with the surroundings and the way in which one interacts with art when not expecting to come across it. Often she places her art in unforeseen public spots. While at Eleven she questions age in-dicators and erosion within paintings, as well as continues to experiment with site-specific works in the nearest forest.

#breaks When she's not making art she teaches art to high school stu-dents. While she loves helping them to create, being alone and making art tends to be a much needed break from the chaos of school. She also likes to run or walk through the woods to relax and clear her mind between working and making art.

#cherishedobject Natalie's grandmother's first and last attempt at knitting - this mitten might have an uncomfortably long thumb, but she still loves it.

More about her work: www.nataliehenson.com

Amie Anderson AustraliaSocial-Art, Installation, VideoJune

#meettheresident Amie Anderson leaves a touch of her uncanny charms in every corner of the residency. Not knowing what to expect from the weather in the rural area she took a bunch of warm sweaters and shirts. But it turned out to be really sunny and hot during her stay. So, she decided to repurpose useless clothing clutter and turn it into art pillows. Apart from being an angel, she is also not scared of going deep into the woods alone to explore the dark conundrum of German fairytales.

#cherishedobject A red apple – she often carries a red apple with her, it ma-kes good snack on adventures around the village (Börstingen) and she likes to photograph it in the forest, while pondering the underlying meanings of German fairytales like Snow White – where the red apple was used as a poison.

#breaks In her spare time she likes to jump on one of the residency artists bikes and ride to the river for a dip. The other days, she runs up the hill to the Weiten-burg Castle for an afternoon tea, pretending to be some kind of royalty, before scrambling back down to her studio. On weekends, she is rumoured to be found in the nearby pub attempting to sing German folk songs with the locals and com-municating with the very few German words she knows.

See more works here: www.amieanderson.net

Gretchen Geraets New ZealandInstallationAugust-September

#meettheresident „You play, and tease, and laugh, my friends—that’s as it must be! But my soul feels—alas!—its desperate needs.“ (The Shaft, Friedrich Hölderlin)Gretchen Geraets is working on unorthodox body of photographs. She takes pictures of objects and places in an indirect way, for example, through the looking glass or the object‘s reflection in the Neckar river. She‘s like Alice in Wonderland that got too deep into the rabbit hole and now is documenting what she witnesses. She is talking about reaching things erratically and experiencing them obliquely instead of going for the classy Willful Owner scenario. Her interest in alienation and restlessness discourse brought her to Friedrich Hölderlin‘s poetry. This guy seemed to know remarkably well about solitude and alienation. Hölderlin was born in Tübin-gen (20 km from Börstingen) and, in fact, that was a crucial point for Gretchen‘s choice of the art residency for Summer 2017. A balance between play and seriousness organically fits in Gretchen‘s artistic practice. Why so serious? Let‘s break the shape instead. Let‘s turn everything into a surreal dream.

#cherishedobject Adidas pink sneakers. The color was too bright for her but this was the only vegan option in the store. Plus, every driver can notice her biking on the highway, which is absolutely comforting.

#breaks Gretchen becomes an expert on mushrooms during her stay in Börstingen. She keeps on trying to find edible ones. Yet, she enjoys examining mushroom spores and their magical properties. Her room smells like a big mushroom field by now, we like it though. We see it as an art piece by itself.

Enjoy more creative experiments here: www.gretchengeraets.com

Julie Rafalski UK / USADrawing, CollagesJuly

#meettheresident Julie Rafalski‘s time at Kunstort Eleven Artspace is very productive, reflective and inspiring. Besides having the time and space to create drawings and experiment with new media, Julie also uses the residency building to create site specific installations. The atmosphere of a modern art residency set in an old school in rural area is very creative and productive, Julie says. We at ELEVEN aim to creatively collaborate with others, for a photo session, for examp-le, or a sound performance, or baking a cake, or learning Geman - anything can inspire artists at kunstort ELEVEN artspace to collaborate. Julie knows it well! While staying in the residency she can learn and practice new art techniques with the other resident artists.

#cherishedobject A pencil. Julia is a deep thinker who needs nothing else but a simple pencil to dismantle her inventive psyche.

#breaks Chatting with comrade artists, thinking about art in general and docu-menta in particular, giving an insightful and honest critique to the fellow residents in ELEVEN on their art works in progress - when Julie is not creating a new mas-terpiece, she is busy with providing intellectual and emotional support to other artists. Thank you, Julia, this is important and rare these days.

Look at Julie‘s site: www.julierafalski.com

Rochyne Delaney McNulty UKMixed MediaJune

#meettheresident During her stay at kunstort ELEVEN artspace Rochyne Delaney Mcnulty is challenged to approach ideas she had previously kept boxed up. The distance from technology creates an environment that pull out the streams of consciousness that might otherwise be kept under wraps, she says, the environment at ELEVEN is one that fosters interaction and exploration. Free-dom is paramount; ideas and practice can be shared without fear of judgement. Rochyne‘s art confronts the question of social moderation. She turns such parts of social moderations as the act and the risk (both physical - harm; and social - embarrassment) inside out and analyzes the enriching experience it can provide to the world.

#cherishedobject She seems to be always carrying peg and an elastic band around. Good for closing things or attaching stuff. „Not very special but very useful so probably important“.

#breaks In her spare time we can often see Rochyne making tea, doing yoga or just chilling. And Rochyne claimed to be a bad-ass cook, we often saw her do culinary magic in our spacious and friendly kitchen.

Follow her projects here: rdmartanddesign.tumblr.com

Sophie Morrow AustraliaVideo, PerformanceJune

#meettheresident Sophie Morrow‘s art examines the hidden self, the performed self and the fictional self through social interven-tion and performance. For that she created her alter ego, called Carmyn who usually plays the leading role in Sophie‘s videos and performances. During her stay in kunstort ELEVEN artspace Sophie creates a unique sound art piece. It consist of only one seg-ment, the word „yes“, recorded in a loop. A genius piece talking about the consent and the dark side of it, exploring the point of bearing with a craving when this craving is not ours. What happens if you deny your ambition and say yes anyway? What‘s our motivation for saying yes to others? Sophie exposes, we experience.

#cherishedobject Right now, since she‘s a lone traveller, her most clinged-to object is her diary she got at a pound shop in London. Its mostly filled with sad, lonely or angry thoughts as those are the times she needs it most.

#breaks Odd food creations, cups of rooibos tea, a knitting project, a procrastinati-on phone call, a walk in the sun/chilled air/moody rain and a piece of toast.

Discover more: www.sophiemorrow.com

Margarita Rozenberg Russia/IsraelDrawing, InstallationMay-September

#meettheresident Margarita Rozenberg is a multi-disciplinary artist who has recently developed an interest in nature art. After making a few installations on trees, she continues to use fabric, threads and wood to explore symbolism and mysteries of Starzach flora. While having a stroll in the woods, she found a raibow-shaped crooked tree that reminded her of a door (perhaps to another dimension), so she desided to work on door curtain beads that will be placed in that location.

#cherishedobject Rita brought a sack with hand-picked dried herbs all the way from Syzran, Russia, where her familiy is comming from, to make the beast herbal teas for healing both body and soul.

#breaks Rita‘s favorite scheme for having a break from working on an art piece is following: pour a glass of wine, take a sit, read a book.

Her drawings: www.behance.net/rose-mountain

Joseph Horejs USAPhotography, Drawing May-September

#meettheresident Joseph is first a photographer. During his stay Joe is playing around with the quantity-quality relationships in art. His aim is to produce a column of 10.000 pieces of paper with gesture drawings on them. For the beginning of our exhibition in Tübingen he had completed 6.000 drawings from the expected 10.000, but he‘s not giving up on this project. At the studio of #kunst-ortelevenartspace you can see him working hard to reach his goal. #cherishedobjects Joe brought a piece of paper with Reiki principles on it to remind himself that making it work for just one day can change everything.

#breaks During the breaks from drawing or taking pictures, Joseph is indulging himself in tasting local food. Swabian food is the best, he says, especially, when it comes to cakes: plum cake, black cherry and cream cake, cherry pie....Joe never misses a chance to treat himself to something as heavenly as a cake baked by an honest Swabian host. „Prinz Carl Café“ in Rottenburg is his favorite bakery so far.

Check out his stage photography here: unkyfreshism.com

Azin Sadati IranInstallation, SculptureAugust-September

#meettheresident Azin Sadati is a sculpture artist who is working on a very important project right now. As Iranian young woman she is pressured by government to wear a hijab. As an artist she‘s trying to find a way to express her urge to break free from the political oppression at least when it comes to the basic fashion. Inspired by a journalist Masih Alinejad who started the movement of people wearing white on Wednesdays, Azin created an installation consisting of white shirts with Friedrich Schiller‘s poems on them. The famous german poet wrote about freedom, the concept that is so important to Azin - as well as the white color. It‘s opposite to the traditional use of black in muslim wo-men fashion. The installation is presented in Tübingen as part of our group exhibition.

#cherishedobject Azin‘s greatest treasure is her silver ring left from her grandmother. The three coins united into a ring are more than one hundred years old.

#breaks Azin likes to write poems herself, so whenever she has time she tries to go for it.

Do you want to follow her engaged tweets: twitter.com/AzinSadati

Andrea Guterres AustraliaComposition, MusicAugust

#meettheresident Andrea Guterres is a sound artist with a background in classical music. Guitar heroine, dance music guru, dark stories narra-tor. She collaborated with another resident of ours, Helena Hartmann, a performer, to create a unique sound art piece. Andrea loves to collaborate with performance artists to enhance the holistic side of music. After this residency she‘s heading to THE Camden and Fringe Festival to present a beautiful one-hour sound and dance performance together with two dancers from Finland. We wish her good luck and all the love from the festival audience.

#cherishedobject Definitely, her acoustic guitar, she takes it everywhere!

#breaks When she‘s not writing music or playing her gorgeous guitar, she likes to cook. Food is her second favorite thing after music.

More music: http://andreaguterres.com

Fergus Gratton AustraliaWritingAugust

#meettheresident Fergus Gratton is, what is called, an aspiring novelist. He‘s been working on his novel for the past five years, leaving it for a while and coming back to it, switching between numerous distractions, bustling to and from freelance projects. His real passion lies in modern fiction where the border between genres is blurry, and that‘s where he‘s aiming to with his novel.

#cherishedobject Fergus has an academic background in philosophy, so it‘s almost natural that there‘s always a book by some modern philosopher on his nightstand.

#breaks Are there actual breaks from creative process? Fergus doesn‘t think so. Traveling, talking and reading - all of that is an integral part of his artistic practice.

Elisa Carreño BrazilCollages, PaintingMay

#meettheresident Nail polish, salt, lace, watercolors - all of these cn peacefully coexist in Elisa Carreno’s art. Elisa works with abstract imagery by using practically every possible material she can found around. She leaves a space for imagination when creating an art piece so that a viewer could have his own interpretation of what is shown on canvas - fried eggs, spider’s web, humming bird, or is it radio wave? No one knows what’s going on there, including Elisa herself. Elisa’s artistic challenge is experimenting with al sorts of materials, thinking outside of the box and still being honest as storyteller.

#breaks During the breaks she is frequently spotted in the kitchen, performing shamanic dances over a bowl of lentils or chia seeds dessert. Some witnesses can even justify hearing The Smiths whenever Elisa is involved in the kitchen chronicles.

#cherishedobject If a portraitist would ever paint Elisa’s character, he would definitely place a jar of chocolate nut cream in her hand. By all means, it is Elisa’s spiritual animal. Every now and then Elisa says: And now it’s a hight time for a spoon of delicious Schokocreme! Her philosophy is simple - There’s never too much of that.

See her work here: www.elisacarreno.com

Evelyn Wong CanadaWritingAugust-September

#meettheresident Evelyn Wong is a multitasking guru of #kunstorteleven-artspace. At the moment, Evelyn is working on a number of stories simultane-ously: a short story for Manchester Writing Contest, a bio piece told from the perspective of her perished grandmother, a spy story set in Europe, another short story for an American magazine. #cherishedobject It should come as no surprise Evelyn loves to read. Wherever she goes she makes sure to bring her e-book along.

#breaks Reading, of course — to learn from the masters.

Would you like to read more stories from the heart? Go to www.evelynstorytelling.com

Baishali Das IndiaGraphicsAugust-September

#meettheresident Baishali Das is a character designer who strongly believes that if one can distinguish between heroes and villains just by looking at their outfit - that‘s a good character design. Baishali loves redesigning old characters, especially some infa-mous villains from 90s‘ Japanese animation. In fact, right now she‘s working on the Dark Lady‘s (from the legendary Sailor Moon series ) sinister design.

#cherishedobject Jack Kerouac‘s „On the Road“ is Baishali‘s perpetual companion and a comfort reading for all of her past, present and future travels. She has read it a hundred times and more has yet to come!

#breaks When she‘s not designing, she likes to put makeup on herself and others, to try out some new trends and give someone‘s look a new depth. It‘s the same as character design, she says. Baishali has kind-ly agreed to do the makeup for the #kunstorteleven-artspace residents on the day of our group exhibition in Tübingen.

Baishali‘s blog: www.dasyeeah.deviantart.com

Helena Hartmann GermanyPerformance, InstallationAugust-September

#meettheresident Today we find Helena Hartmann working hard in the studio on her project „Never Underestimate Gimcrack“. Helena is develo-ping an art piece where she interacts with the people of Börstingen village by going door to door and asking for an old inactive clutter, gimcrack, as she calls it. Then she writes a personal poem for each object she gets from a local. What is gonna happen with all these objects afterwards? Helena is presenting an art performance involving all of them during the onAIR group exhibition event in Tübingen.

#cherishedobject Helena has been collecting dolls for a while. When a little girl, she dreamt of a plastic Barbie instead of fancy porcelain dolls her parents would give her. It took her years to start appreciating old-fashioned dolls. To this art residency Helena brought an old French doll which reminds her of a dear friend.

#breaks When Helena is not writing poems or collecting gimcrack from the village locals, she likes to treat herself to her all-time favorite jam-n-cheese-sandwich.

More of Helena‘s projects here: helenahartmann.viewbook.com

Yung-Jen Chan TaiwanSculptureAugust

#meettheresident Yung-Jen Chan casts manhole covers in the places she travels to. For her it‘s all about relationships between humans, society and different objects. A manhole cover reminds her of a door to another dimension - the underground. It was such a thrill to follow Yung-Jen in her search for the next „door“ in the rural area of Börstingen. She just found one in the middle of the forest, can‘t wait to see her casting its shape and texture. Thank you for this adventure, Yung-Jen, it was fascinating to watch you work.

#cherishedobject Wherever she goes, Yung-Jen car-ries a constant reminder of a promise given to herself. She got a ring tattoo on her left pinky finger, a finger that in her culture is strongly associated with promises. Her pledge was to work hard on her art and to live life to the fullest.

#breaks Yung-Jen likes to just sit and chill while having a break from doing her manhole cover magic. However, it‘s not always possible due to the nature of her art - it draws so much attention from the people who pass by, everyone has something to say to the artist doing it!

See Yung-Jen art here: www.chanyungjen.com

éèTerézia Krnácová SlovakiaTextile, ObjectsAugust

#meettheresident We have a chance to take a sneak peek at creative practice of one of our residents. Terézia Krnáčová is working on a unique fashion line. Inspired by refugee life vests, she uses textile and national Slovak colors to create futuristic jewelery-looking collars while meditating on the idea that everyone is more or less nomadic, disappointed and unsatisfied, looking for a better place under the sun. Her special fashion line is a part of our group exhibition in Tübingen.

#cherishedobject To feel at home away from home, Terézia brought over her good luck charm - a small action figure of a wolf founded inside of a Kinder-Surprise chocolate egg.

#breaks When taking short breaks from creative process she likes to to have some coffee, take a stroll in the woods or chat with her family and friends.

Get a glimpse of her lifestyle here:www.instagram.com/terezia.krnacova