Lara Loutrel, Florian Foerster - To Illustrate the Space between...

We are creating a body of prints that illustrates the space between the two places where we work, both the physical & mental space. By creating & exchanging instructions, and creating & exchanging prints made from these instructions, we are establishing endpoints in lines that cross the space between us. The specific method is below.

Lara makes instructions & mails the instructions to Florian.
Lara makes a print from her instructions, Florian makes a print from Lara's instructions.
Florian mails Lara the print he made.
Lara inspects Florian’s print, then modifies her instructions & mails them to Florian.
Lara makes a second state of her print from her instructions, Florian makes a second state of his print from Lara's instructions.

At the same time, Florian makes instructions & mails them to Lara, they repeat the same steps with their roles reversed.

The disconnection of instructions from execution is a bit like making an intaglio plate, then putting it through the press, where interpretation takes place between the plate, paper & ink, hidden from the artist.
When the artist compares the plate with the print, he can observe how the press interpreted the plate, and make modifications to the plate to correspond with his intent for the print. Observing a number of proofs as the artist modifies the plate makes apparent a lot of information about how the artist works, his intents, his levels of concern with various aspects of his art.
We have designed a method, which uses printmaking as the model, to illustrate a (mainly mental) space in a manner similar to observing the proofs as an artist works on refining a plate.

The process can also be seen as an exploration of space by two observers from two different reference points and their attempts to communicate, to understand & misunderstand each other.
We hardly know each other in the conventional sense of having talked or spent time with each other. Our communication has not been driven or even informed at all by our daily lives; but by this strange, cryptic, invented language of prints and instructions. It has been a bit like building an artificial, printed world.

The project was on view 16 September - 3 November 2010 at La Galería at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts as part of the exhibition "Exchange"

Photos from La Galería Exhibition

The project was exhibited April 3 - May 15, 2009 at the Distillery Gallery, 516 East Second St, Boston MA, as part of the TransCultural Exchange's global project Here, There and Everywhere: Anticipating the Art of the Future.

Photos from Distillery Exhibition

An intermediate exhibition of the project was held at the Werkschau Florian Foerster during Nachtundnebel 08 in Berlin.

Photos from Nachtundnebel 08