BY STEVE BISSON
1. Usually I conclude my interviews with an eye on the future, a way perhaps to relativize or to place myself distant from the fact of being too much in the present. After looking at your portfolio I am curious instead to start from how you imagine your future work?
Future is a bit my middle name these days, and yet I struggle to be in the present! I imagine more voltage, happiness and freedom. A spring-like energy is running through my life after a radical shift in perspective happened in 2014, when I was diagnosed as neurodivergent. A massive restructuring of my identity followed a paradigm collapse and I had to unlearn ways of thinking about myself. Since then I have been meeting many new people who are also on the spectrum to share about our life experiences. Self-ignorance, as well as oppressive, fearful and inhibiting influences had narrowed my natural breathing space. Now I’m practicing Rumi’s « Be with those who help your being » and learning to spread my wings again. Ultimately, I continue to work on releasing mental scripts of how life is supposed to unfold, to welcome surprising opportunities and the excitement of the unknown. In my mind, the future is associated with improvements, with excitement and hope, and with generously passing on the benefits of creative energy. By feeling more grounded, optimistic, peaceful, confident, I don’t internalize others’ fears about being wild or different. I’m laying down the foundations of a life structure that allows me to thrive in the world as neurodivergent so I can fully explore my true abilities and not hold back or be thwarted. I’m realizing that I need rock solid, cooperative friendships and empowering, supportive networks free of draining power struggles or shadowy dynamics.
© Eva Wollenberg, ‘Strix Nebulosa’
I’m very inspired by what people like Temple Grandin, Josef Schovanec, Glenn Gould, Grigori Perelman or Nikola Tesla achieved on many levels. Their visions help me to stay true to my nature, to trust the fact I’ll find my road, and to know that there is a true place in the world for the person I truly am, no matter how different. The difficult part is also to find one’s own realistic vision of oneself, not as defined by others — particularly because within in my neurodivergent spectrum, people put all these extreme labels on you. They struggle to accept the real story, cling to stereotypes, and these can lead to bullying out of fear or ignorance. Various discussions with similar people have made me realize the amount of abuse we neurodivergent people put up with, especially women and those born into disadvantaged social classes. The balance of power and justice is incredibly unbalanced and we have to fight for fairness, equality, and respect. Each individual empowering himself can be a small step towards addressing our global problems.
© Eva Wollenberg, ‘Strix Nebulosa’
2. Tell us about the project ‘Strix Nebulosa’. It is curious as its meditative flavor filters through the screen. It also exudes an almost theatrical aftertaste though the shots are impregnated with naturalness.
My main visual influence is cinema. It is a delicate balance, as the more you try to control life, the more you extinguish it, so you have to work with chaos, accidents! It is all a transference screen and characters exist in a timeless dreamlike state. ‘Strix Nebulosa’ is rooted in that neurodivergence of mine and in my perception of the world, each light has a character. I have a synesthetic relation to them and a light obsession since birth. My condition makes me perceive my environment with such an intensity and extreme refinement, there are constant streams of incoming stimuli, a giant spiderweb of intense sensations. It is difficult to capture such colossal perception and trap it in a flat, rectangular, limited, surface. One needs, as you say, to enter a meditative state to imagine what it feels like, to open, welcome new experience, broaden perspective. Light is sculpting all of us everyday, we should take time to notice, admire the beauty of it. We take that magic for granted, the same way we take water and air for granted. ‘Strix Nebulosa’ is a visual poem about two specific wavelengths I love very much, feel attuned to, find very soothing since birth. It stimulates the same zone of my being as my interest in astronomy, some fluorite stone or prism I own, my Richard Feynman book about Light and Matter or a photograph of the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. It is how my mind organizes things and makes sense, thematic and very precise, interconnected. The same way Earth’s atmosphere filters some wavelengths, or animals perceive only some others, in that work I want to select, focus, filter.
3. Another essential feature of your current search is your eclectic attitude. The observer slides between different languages that seem formulated to give life to a voice rather performative, and that perhaps is better suited to be expressed in an installation.
I fully agree with you, I envision it as an ecosystem, or various organs in a body. Such approach is very fulfilling. The artists I like most are nearly all polymaths with a generous approach, for example Patti Smith, Björk, Nick Cave or David Lynch. The person is the core, what is holding it all together. I like when things develop like rain forests, or treasure islands, with diversity. How I loved when David Lynch decided to release some music! The same way, I like diversity in a society, melting pots, a cosmopolitan spirit. I have a phobia of monoculture, it scares me. The installation part is very true, I dream of creating interactive installations, immersive experiences. I’d love to meet more people who are knowledgeable in domains of hi-tech, new technologies, to learn from them.
« I knew I could trust the ground, feel it and talk to it, lay in the fields, and plow the furrow deep with my feet. The ground was for me stable and predictable, with a generous nurturing function. I used to kiss the earth and always felt amazingly loved by it. So I became an island »
Eva Wollenberg
4. Tell us about your relationship with literature, a recurring ingredient in your work. The writing accompanying the images and becomes indispensable to hold together the narrative. I like the fact that sometimes the images seem to become the captions of the texts. This dialogue between word and image changes and evolves in your works, and I think that in this apparent imbalance lies one of the roots of your creative work.
It is with language itself, literature’s bones, that my relation is most complex. I learn languages in few weeks in general, read a 500 pages book in few hours, but also have strange learning disabilities and don’t think in words but in images, and 3D. It is like a minefield, I could easily remain mute a whole year younger, keeping it all within, then invented alphabets, or annoyed my teachers as I was writing all my lessons reversed, from right to left. To find my own language has been the battle of my life. Talking is often associated with extreme discomfort, overwhelming and debilitating shyness; I truly thought in the past there were perfect words, couldn’t talk at all because I didn’t find them, so the fear of misunderstandings paralyzed my ability to communicate. When I wanted to share my complex thoughts architecture, open the mouth, there was an icy wall between me and others. I think my friend Olivier Pin-Fat is very right when he says that his photographs are like sentences, and his written texts are full of images. I can really relate to such vision. Words are like synaptic connections and poetry moves me in a way photography doesn’t. I once cried half an hour in the street because of three lines by Paul Celan, that never happened to me with photography. Or, when some writer friend sends me beautiful texts of his, I feel on a cloud for days, as if our minds started to merge. The feeling of bonding, happiness and understanding is indescribable. Right now, I mostly need to read short poems. Anne Carson is my current love. I did read ‘Autobiography of Red’ aloud in the night of September 19Th and felt a new universe was opening. I think she is changing how I see, feel, think, and says it well: «Up against another human being one’s own procedures take on definition.»
© Eva Wollenberg, Notes book
5. In this recourse to poetry, or in this poetic making, I see entering your editorial productions. Formidable, unique and original. Tell us about them.
Thank you very much. I wanted to experiment with a Wabi-Sabi approach, embrace fragility, imperfection, something raw. I see a lot of beauty in what is rare and delicate. These are humble productions, owned mostly by artist friends. Feral Leaves is a recent one, I used the beak of a bird skull found on an island to write the texts. There are unique edition silver-based photographs and photograms in it, dissolved, left drying in the wind. A beloved writer friend owns it now. I am happy, it is safe with him, truly loved. Faust is a sealed blackout poetry unique book. The way I read and see makes me naturally able to see poems hidden in blocks of text at lightning speed, and I do blackout poetry to soothe myself, focus my intense mind, calm it down. Such poetry appears when I feel very mute and dig to find language again. It is a very personal healing process. I’d love to print my first books also (photography and poetry), look for funding and support. One of my degrees is in design and I have a many ideas but remain open.
© Eva Wollenberg, unique Wabi-sabi glass book containing poems of the books Penser avec les dents, Les cahiers de chute et d’ire (first volume), and Penser avec les dents, Les cahiers d’ivresse nova (second volume). On the glass plates you can see high mountains, waterfalls, glaciers, and sometimes a discreet human presence. 9 ancient stereoscopic positive glass plates, archival ink, original ancient cardboard box. Box: 2.6 × 5.5 inches Glass plates: 2.4 × 5.1 inches (each 0.03 inches thick)
6. I feel like your way of working although inserted in the experience of the technique (whether photographic or video) gives us the opportunity for a « naked » glance. That is, the look is a question of truth and no longer a form of acceptance.
My eyes are full of many photographs I never took, and maybe these are hidden in the ones I took, somewhere, like ghosts, taproots. All that beauty offered to the wind has to be somewhere, in experience, certain tastes, choices. Some photographs can be seen as the confirmation of the possibility of grace, the sublime, delicate, what makes life bearable. We are what we see, I think, there are so many projections going on. The look is a door, what allows such rare phenomena to take place. And, well, when you study quantum physics, the ideas of reality and truth are complicated ones. There is a Rashômon effect going on. If truth was a monolith, there wouldn’t be so much philosophers, scientists, artists, mystics scratching their heads since we are conscious to be alive. It’s in our nature to roam and seek it, we test our understanding, build experience. The look also is something we work on like a scholar. The more I grow old, the more I wonder what matters most. Truths or how we use the truths we think we know? Because, «A truth that’s told with bad intent / Beats all the lies you can invent.» William Blake wrote wisely. I am a seeker, it takes a lifetime to maybe find rare and humble answers. Look at us humans, so vulnerable, living on a small round little sphere in the middle of nowhere. What are we supposed to do with that condition? All the rules we create, then change, seem to discover, then erase, then re-discover, endlessly asking Why? Our whole condition is a state of nakedness in front of the unknown, maybe the idea of Truth is what we need to invent to make it all bearable in front of the intuition of greater chaos, a safety net. Can all of that be contained in our look? Lightning is to light what an image is to horizon. Both matter. The microscope and the telescope. I’m just a human somewhere on Earth trying to find meaning, experimenting with it, interested in seekers.
© Eva Wollenberg, ‘Strix Nebulosa’
7. About the performative dimension of your research
I have a great collaborative friendship going on for 16 years now, with the experimental composer Sunnstede, we start to release things together and he is one of the most important persons in my life. We both come from the underground rock and alternative culture, these roots are always somewhere, and I think we are a bit itchy right now, need to explore. I loved to see Bill Viola work with Nine Inch Nails for example. Video or photographic projections during music/dance shows or theater plays interest me particularly.
© Eva Wollenberg, ‘Strix Nebulosa’, Révolution Cardique
8. The relationship with space, nature, a place. Standing in a place, as philosophical exercise, to inhabit our own questions. The photographer becomes a place. The place becomes the photographer. What are your favorite places and how you choose to interact with them?
I’m interested right now in Michel Foucault’s vision of heterotopias, discovered it and dig into it slowly. My favorite places are places where I can be fully myself, uninhibited. When one is with a beloved, and feels really loved for who one is, even a pile of dirt turns into a wonderful place. On a purely physical level, my soul needs to see the horizon, the sky. I love also the dramatic and accidented shapes of mountains, woods, lakes, black moor soils full of blueberries, wild beaches. Something untamed and not too hot suits me most. I scan visually, collect edible wild plants, need to touch, taste, smell, listen. I let such places offer me surprising opportunities, make my boundaries porous to be a discreet presence in harmony with animals.
© Eva Wollenberg, ‘Strix Nebulosa’
I love to go on some alpine-like mountain here, lie on the soft moor ground, cuddle, nest like an animal, and contemplate sunset or the blue lines of the mountains. I have all day and night constantly in my ears the sound of the river and the waterfall, wild animals sounds. It all just invades me without conscious awareness after living here since childhood. It sculpts my imagination, emotions, whole being. Sounds are spaces, too. My current home is an humble and small unique room, a mix between an eagle nest in front of the woods and a writer’s retreat dedicated to the Muses from morning to evening. Cozy Spartan could be a way to describe the paradox of my living situation right now. The next years I want to travel, need to go down a specific old magma chamber that attracts me, precisely to inhabit my own questions. On that level, Josef Schovanec truly inspires me a lot, ‘Eloge du voyage à l’usage des autistes et de ceux qui ne le sont pas assez’ is the story of a luminous divergent walking laboratory using travel as therapy, with humour. To go away in order to be fully oneself, find places where our quirks, instead of being shamed, are seen as beautiful and glorious!