Project description
The project focuses on documenting on photographs what can be found underwater around Mediamatic. These photographs are focusing purely on the rare and unique finds. Eventually a selection of the photographs will be printed on alternative surfaces with a special self developed technique using light sensitive emulsion. The alternative surfaces will be self made by using elements found in the water and natural / artificial waste found around Mediamatic. Surfaces made from these combined materials will be the surface for the black and white photographs.
I would like to spend 1 months to dive every day a few hours in the Canal around Mediamatic and document every day what can be found underwater. Documenting both living organisms, and found items and everything that can be seen. These digital photographs will be focusing purely on the rare and unique finds. Eventually a selection of the photographs will be printed on alternative surfaces with a special self developed technique using light sensitive emulsion. For that I would like to build a temporary dark room on the premise of Mediamatic. The alternative surfaces will be self made by using elements found in the water and natural / artificial waste found around Mediamatic. Surfaces made from these combined sources will be the surface for the selected black and white photographs, printed with the analog technique in the dark room. 'What's left to capture?' is a check in on what is still available to capture as documentation as well as asset for development.
Amsterdam has more than 100 kilometers of canals. We are surrounded by them, yet we don't know at all what's are in them. Could my project discover something new, something useful? Or will it be more of a documentation with some material experimentation?
Personal introduction
Hungarian-born Amsterdam-based artist, Krisztina Czika, has always felt herself irresistibly drawn to the material world, to what you might call the stuff of life. Even as a student in Budapest and later in the Netherlands, she zoomed in instinctively, fascinated by how everything was put together. In her work she began to experiment with many different kinds of physical materials, focused not solely on their palpable characteristics, but equally on the stories and emotions they carried within them; concerned with both the physical and the metaphysical. This material fascination has consistently inspired wholly idiosyncratic research and has influenced both the focus and the form of Krisztina’s subsequent art and conceptual design work.
Estimated costs
I think one month would be ideal to research and work on the documentation part, and an other month to develop the surfaces and print the photographs in the dark room. Hence 2 months artist fee of 4000eu and about 1000eu material budget to set up a small dark room and for all the photographic chemicals it requires. Artist fee; 5hours / day and 5days / week with an hour rate of 20eu.
This proposal is part of the 'Penny for your Thoughts' project 2022.