photo Simon Beckmann

“Joya: AiR is an arts residency for artists and writers. Joya: AiR describes itself as not only a unique, stimulating and contemplative environment for international artists and writers, but as a meeting point for divergent and creative thinking. The residency offers an ‘off-grid’ experience in the heart of the Parque Natural Sierra María-Los Vélez in the north of the Provincia de Almería, Andalucía.

My residency at Joya: AiR was generously supported by The Art for the Environment International Artist Residency Programme, an award to explore concerns that define the twenty-first century - biodiversity, environmental sustainability, social economy, human rights - and through their artistic practice, envision a world of tomorrow. I had proposed to make a new series of artworks sitting within the body of work called Future Geology. A self-initiated material futures project which I propose to conduct further research and material experimentation for during the focused period of the residency.

The gems on the image are a poetic translation of these topics (2014-15)

Future Geology

Future Geology focusses on the simulation of human effects on the earth’s crust. In the era of Anthropocene, human activities have a global impact on the Earth. The project addresses the effects of humankind depleting natural resources and polluting our soil. In reading rocks, we read the story of our restless planet. We come to understand its complex patterns of interaction and the nature of change over deep geological time.

Therefore, I created ‘future stones’ over the past nine years; made of artificial materials such as metal, chemical resin, plastic, aluminium, concrete, textile, plaster, glass fiber and glass. In this project I am looking for new compositions that question how our soil can be used for aesthetic purposes, exploring the design opportunities presented by recycled materials. Over the last years I have been refining the sculptures and adding onto it. This artist in residency helps to crystallise my creative practice further and the image below shows one of the first sculptures of this ongoing project made in 2010.

First sculpture made of Future Geology (2010)

The JOYA: AiR experience

Grateful for the opportunity to travel to Joya: AiR I tried to approach the residency as a blank canvas in order to arrive with an open approach and allow myself to soak the environment up as much as possible. However, in preparation of the residency together with the research I conducted I did get an image on how Joya: AiR might be. A beautifully renovated artist in residency located in the “parque natural sierra de maria los velez” surrounded by an incredibly mountain landscape. On my arrival that was confirmed directly. At 8.30PM I got picked up at the bus stop Velez Rubio (the closest you can get with public transport). Simon friendly welcomed me and took me with his Land Rover over the rural country roads to the natural park. It is a 20 minute drive and that made that we approached the house steady but slowly while the sunset took place. A magical start of this amazing experience.

view from Joya: AiR

On arrival my expectations were more than true. The curators of Joya: AiR, Donna and Simon, greeted me with open arms and it was a warm (literally and figuratively) place to stay for two weeks. One of the most special experiences at Joya: AiR was the silence. Especially when being used to living in London, which is never silent or quiet, that was something that stood out from my very first day. It is an incredible valuable gift to experience silence, peace of mind and tranquility. The benefits of that has seeped through to my art. Granting yourself the headspace to sit and contemplate is priceless. I was distracted the very first days, because I am pretty addicted to being constantly productive. For me this felt very unusual and a bit uncomfortable to get used to as well. In English there isn’t a specific word for it, but in Dutch we call it “niksen”. These very first days of “doing nothing” gave me new insights and ideas and I started to love it. I would usually go on a morning walk before it got 36 degrees outside. I would walk through the valley, climb a mountain or sit under a tree to observe and generate ideas. After a couple of days I started making and realising ideas that weren’t part of the plan.

landscape around Joya: AiR

Apart from the contemplative aspect of the residency, the social contact and community aspect was an important part of the experience as well. We would present our work to each other, share perspectives on particular subject and generate ideas on how to make a living as an artist. During the day the artist would work individually and approximately every second evening one of the residents would present their work followed by a tasty dinner party where everyone would share thoughts and ideas. Sharing stories, experience and food was absolutely an added value and contributed to the many fruitful conversations I had.

supper time at Joya: AiR

sunset at Joya: AiR

Outcome

As a multi-disciplinary artist my work always involves creative research, narratives, installation art and material innovation. During residency I developed and discovered the potential of these Future Geology materials further. For this edition of Future Geology I focussed solely on plastic and created rock formations made from household waste or plastic found in nature. These artificial rocks I photographed in nature to start a dialogue with the viewer on when nature starts or ends. And when a landscape finishes or ends. The findings of the work I made in the first week were translated in the series of sculptures I created in the second week.

Photographs out of photographic serie made at JOYA, Future Geology (2019)

During the artistic research about plastics and landscapes I found out that the region Almería in Spain contains a plastic sea. This involves 30 miles of white plastic greenhouses. Once a year the plastic needs to be replaced and the plastic sheets are dumped on the land. This resulted in land covered with plastics which are meters high. Even though, I didn’t have the possibility to visit this region myself, it does resonate with my project and the research influenced the formation of the project Future Geology.

Plastic Sea from an aerial perspective, Almeria, Spain

In many aspects my time at Joya: AiR was valuable. Personally as well as professionally. Beauty, silence, environment and headspace was enriching and nourishing. Granting yourself the time to re-work and revise is priceless. The off-grid experience in rural Spain made me also critically look at my own living environment on an off-grid narrowboat in London and ultimately the amazing insights and conversations with the fellow residents is absolutely something to cherish.

Impact and future plans

At Joya: AiR I got the opportunity to expand and create a new body of work. Besides that it also gave me the unique opportunity to think about my future plans. What is next and which ambitions do I want to realise and prioritise. My time in rural Spain was an inspiring and great input to crystallise my future plans. As an environmentalist this influenced not only my perspective on my work, but also on my personal life. The residency is off-grid and carbon neutral. It was very interesting to hear the presentation by Simon about their story and in particular the water life cycle. It is a tricky thing especially in such a dry area. Also the electricity is generated in a sustainable way with photo voltaic and wind energy. That made it an inspirational source in itself as an artist working with the environment. On top of that, the experience also made me look at my own living environment. In London, off-grid and on a narrow boat. Totally self-sufficient as well but in a completely different manner. Some parts of this do overlap, but others differ. This made me look at my current living critically. Thoughts about how improvement could be made for me personally but also for the waters of the canal river trust. This might result in a future project. In the next 6-10 months I would love to find a suitable place in London to exhibit the collection of Future Geology artworks. Besides that I am looking into future opportunities on living on a narrow boat floating over the London canals. I do have the ambition to create, form and make my own boat from scratch and make it a platform for the future. Not only fuelling my own ambition, but also serving tourists, visitors and Londoners”.

Gwen van den Bout

Biography

Gwen is a London and Rotterdam based conceptual artist, graduate of a masters in Narrative Environments at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. In her work she translates stories into interactive and sensorial spaces where the audience can explore her work intuitively and create their own meaning. Gwen makes art installations, curates exhibitions and creates sensorial brand experiences. Gwen previously studied at two universities in the Netherlands where she completed a BA at Breda University of Applied Science and a BA at Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam. She gained industry experience at several museums and cultural festivals, as well as with luxury retail companies, including working as a Visual Merchandiser for de Bijenkorf, the largest department store in the Netherlands. Gwen also won an open call from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam to exhibit her contemporary installation artwork at the museum. Looking to the future, Gwen is focused on working in multi-disciplinary environments where she can communicate stories – ranging from exhibitions in museums, intuitive installations and outstanding window design. She is passionate about participative culture and bridging the gap between the commercial and cultural worlds.

Nine Quadrats @ Joya

“My residency at Joya: arte + ecología has opened my practice to routes and pathways I didn’t know existed. This was the case even from the application process, where I was successful in securing the residency through the University of the Arts London Environment International Artist Residency Programme. I was already being inspired by reading about Joya’s important mission, their approach to resource sustainability, and the artistic research that Simon Beckmann had done into the ‘ephemeral water systems’ (Sistemas Efímeros). Joya seemed the perfect setting to experiment with land and environmental art, which I researched and blogged about ahead of the trip; I wanted to somehow link this to mapping the terrain, which I also investigated prior to and during the residency.

Whilst I prepared a good deal before the residency, in reality no one can really be ready for the sights, smells and sounds of Joya. The location is set amongst contouring almond groves, surrounded by pine-clad mountains, with an ever-changing light, which changes from silvery through to deep amber-pink. Despite the beautiful studio with stunning view, I couldn’t wait to hike the nearest mountain, and ascended the nearby Sierra Larga. The summit is covered in sculptural limestone paving. Standing at the top, taking in the panoramic view, I recalled some of the land and map research I had done ahead of the visit. I decided to try and ‘capture’ the topography and biology using an interpretation of the quadrat sampling technique (see pictures).

Upon descending to the studio, surrounded by other artists creatively exploring the landscape in other ways, I constructed a second square, this time on the map. Starting with the location of the quadrat I had just constructed, I identified eight other corners or midpoints of the square. Over the next ten days I visited each of these and assembled a location-specific quadrat, made only of the resources in the location environment – stones usually, but also sticks and the bare earth. Other photos are included in this blog, and a full narration of the piece is provided here.

Without the residency at Joya, it is unlikely that I would have taken this step into an unfamiliar territory and explored making temporary, sustainable art deep in a fragile landscape. The location, the presence of a curated group of diverse and fascinating artists, the critical guidance of Simon Beckmann (and the insanely good food provided!), all enable a fertile and productive experience. This setting has allowed me to take some important steps forward in my artistic practice, and I will never forget the opportunity Joya has provided”.

Less is More: 12 Days In Joya: arte + ecología

It feels difficult to report the experience I had in the residency at Joya: arte + ecología. Although it was an insightful one, which nurtured me a lot, it seems I am still digesting it. Perhaps that is because somehow it has not finished yet, once its outputs are still in progress.

Before arriving at Cortijada Los Gázquez at Parque Natural Sierra María-Los Vélez I only had a vague idea of the dynamic of the place and of how my project would be developed over there. Aware that I would only find it out in situ, I tried to prepare myself as much as I could. In my suitcase I was bringing a couple of books, my equipment and some objects that I imagined to make work with. Arriving in Granada, though, I have been told that my luggage was lost and that the airline company could not guarantee the exact delivery date.

Spending the first week with only few clothes and part of the equipment would have been an unfortunate beginning, unless it did not allow me a deeper exchange with the place I was inserted in. As Rauschenberg said, “when you are lost you look so much harder”.[1]

My initial project was based on an ambiguous sensation of missing the natural environment from my home country, which had been strong since I moved to London one year ago.[2] The nostalgia of having a lifestyle in Brazil, which was more integrated with nature than I have been able to do recently, was combined with an anger provoked by facts regarding the huge devastation there. I was particularly struck by the recent disaster caused by the collapse of a mining dam in a Minas Gerais, which created an enormous environmental impact. The strong image of the mud invading villages, rivers and the sea was attached to my memory about Brazil and generated the need to produce a work of that.

In this residency, I wanted to approach this double relation to the environment, between a certain healing that nature can promote and the environmental disaster. Inspired by De Maria’s manifesto On the Importance of Natural Disasters, in which he states that natural catastrophes ‘may be the highest form of art possible to experience’, I was interested in this same force that can be both generative and destructive – whether producing an artwork or a disaster. Intending to avoid making a spectacle out of the images of the disaster in Minas Gerais, my initial proposition was to try and create experiments using the sound of the explosion plus sounds that would be recorded during the residency.

Although I was interested in that Brazilian landscape, after my arrival in Andalucía it became clear that it would be more sincere to react to this place rather than evoking something that was not present. The lack of the specific material I was planning to use also pushed me to detach from my previous plans and to throw myself to the experience of the place itself.

Yet the landscape in Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park is astonishingly beautiful, it has been suffering from centuries of human unsustainable occupation plus the consequences of climate change. The agricultural practices, such as monoculture farming, as well as the arid climate and lack of rains have been causing a severe process of desertification.

Amid that area, though, Cortijada Los Gázquez is a pole of renovation. Restored from an abandoned complex of five dwellings, the residence is constituted by bright and generous spaces, designed in resonance with local architectural tradition. The off-grid energy system makes use of the abundant sunlight and wind that characterise the site. Inside the house, the loving family members Donna, Simon, Sesame and Solomon make the artists-in-residency feel like home.

[1] ‘I don’t necessarily desire a perfect photography’. Interview by Alain Sayag (1981), in Robert Rauschenberg Photographs, Pantheon Books, New York.

[2] My practice as an artist is mostly based on research and perception of territories. Having a camera, an audio recorder and my body as main tools, I work across different media, including film, performance and installation. For the development of a new work, I would describe my research method as similar to Suely Rolnik’s definition of the cartographer’s practice. In her words, ‘the cartographer does not intend to explain or reveal. What they want is to dive into the geography of affects and to invent bridges of language to make their crossing. (My translation). Rolnik, S. (1989) Cartografia Sentimental: Transformações contemporâneas do desejo. São Paulo: Editora Estação Liberdade.

“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes of photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars” (Mandel, 2015: 32)

I spent a fortnight in the company of the Beckmann family at El Cortijada de Los Gázquez (home of Joya: arte + ecología), in an alpine desert, living at 1000m above sea level in the Parque Natural Sierra María – Los Vélez. In the spring of 2016, I applied to the Art for the Environment International Residency Programme (AER) run by Professor Lucy Orta at the University of the Arts London. The award was for a number of research-led artist residencies to take place across the world for existing and recently graduated UAL students. I was about half way into my first year of a PhD programme at London College of Communication, studying within Creative Research into Sound Art Practice (CRiSAP) research centre.

What struck me about the opportunity to visit Los Gázquez was the idea of spending two weeks off-grid. Two weeks without. Two weeks disconnected. What might two weeks offline do for me? To me? What did off-grid mean? What kind of systems would be in place to live an off-grid sustainable life with a family (two adults, two children in a non-native country).

I was also interested in studying the environment of Los Gázquez as an off grid site. Far from any built up metropolitan centre, far from where I tend to spend most of my life, in the anthropogenic urban wash of cars, generators, ambulance sirens and helicopters, impossible to distinguish one source of noise from the next. I wondered what a rural and open landscape might offer as an alternative field to my listening and recording practice.

My application for the residency was based around some of my PhD research questions. My research is based around what I call ‘sonospheric investigations’ into media infrastructures. That is to say, that I try and listen to a whole gamut of frequencies, using air-borne and land-borne transducers, converting vibrations into digital signals that can then be converted into sound from loudspeakers. I centre this listening practice around the internal and external architecture of media infrastructures (data centres, fibre optic cable landing sites, satellite and telecommunication receivers etc). I am interested in how the Internet and its related infrastructures vibrate across the globe as a physical material network; the ‘medianatures’ of the Internet, to paraphrase Jussi Parikka.

At Los Gázquez, I wanted to experience being disconnected from the internet but I also wanted to study the infrastructure of an off grid site. Data Centres in particular are the hub for the global Internet network and as such are huge consumers of energy. Many of the world’s biggest companies operate them (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft etc). They are a huge burden to the electrical grid of their surrounding area; it is estimated that they use an equivalent energy requirement to that of the aviation industry and as such, they are a significant site for ecological, socio-political and environmental concern, as well as a significant site of property rights, concepts of the self, the posthuman, the cyborg, the Anthropocene and of provenance and rights in the digital age.

My research led me to analyse the noise of such sites as representative of waste. The noise, generally being vibrations caused by industrial scale HVAC systems, fanning hot exhaust air into often cold climates (in the northern regions of Scandinavia for example).

Recently, I have been studying a site that Apple have been in protracted negotiations for over a year to build a data centre in. It is in the Derrydonnell forest in County Galway, Ireland, close to the small but well known medieval town of Athenry. Apple claim they will use exclusively 100% wind energy from the grid. I was confused but fascinated at such a claim given how estimates are that the data centre once fully operational is expected to require around 8% of the entire Irish grid’s energy allocation (more than the capital city Dublin).

And so I began to wonder what exactly does sustainability mean? What does sustainable energy mean? How sustainable is the technology used that is claimed to be ‘zero carbon’? Surely it is made full of components built as a result of intensive land destruction and mining; the production of rare earth minerals and metals for example to produce microchips, lithium-ion and lead batteries.

I am not interested in becoming a Luddite and thankfully neither are the Beckmann’s at Los Gázquez. They are interested in doing the best they can to maintain a good quality of life in as off-grid and sustainable way as they possibly can, investigating the possibilities of land reclamation, and returning to sustainable measures of living without burying their heads in the sand and without harking back to some kind of golden age that never existed. They are progressive and thoughtful about how they can make a positive and ecologically sensitive impact on Los Gázquez.

I spent most of my days field recording and creating a library of sounds, produced according to my own initial intrigue and then later, according to the sounds that the residents here associate with living in Los Gázquez. The library comprises goats, crickets, sheep, vultures, wind turbines, water pumps, photovoltaic panels, clay fizzing with water, children playing games, people eating dinner, flip flops across the concrete floor, diesel generators, a Land Rover, the silence on top of a mountain, electromagnetic noise from battery stores, electromagnetic interference from a phone attempting to connect to a distant and patchy 4G signal, helicopters, jumbo jets and much more. The collection of recordings put the environment at the centre of my thinking but I am thinking of the environment as the things that surround us as we exist. This is not a study of nature versus culture. For me the urban dweller, Los Gázquez and the surrounding area feels remote but the family home has electricity, Wi-Fi from a satellite uplink that connects to a suborbital network and bounces back to an exchange in Italy, and the landscape surrounding la Cortijada de Los Gázquez has signs of anthropogenic activity everywhere, from the terraced abandoned farm land to the water catchment systems, to the artificial walls and tributaries built within the Barrancos (water drainage, fluvial systems drawing down from the mountainside).

I have been on many walks into the relative ‘wilderness’ of the Parque Natural Sierra María on my own, taking a bearing and just going for it. Listening carefully to changes in sound, the flies, the trees, the wind, the nothingness, the everything-ness. I have recorded infrasonic vibrations with geophones, contact transducer microphones on vibrating bodies of metal, stereo microphone recordings of my position in the landscape and electromagnetic frequencies with coil-tap transducers. I’m not sure what to do with this collection other than listen to it and think about how it might relate to my other work on the urban and black site data centre spaces of my existing research. How does a site like this challenge my conceptions of isolation, off grid? How many miles do I need to travel in Ireland to locate somewhere away from any kind of anthropogenic noise like I can here… Let alone London?

Being disconnected from the internet… How I tried… How temptation pulled me back in… How on my fourth day, whilst marching up a mountain first thing in the morning, on my own, where I managed to see a fox, two vultures and an Ibex in their natural habitats, I became more intrigued by suddenly picking up a full strength 4G signal. How whilst thinking about life in a post-apocalyptic world, where petrol had gone stale, the grid was disconnected and the internet was just a myth, my field recorder started bleeping to the interference of a roaming mobile data signal and a sudden emergence of a low flying helicopter passed over me. How, even at my most isolated, I was never far away from signs of human activity, whether it be signs from the past 30-40 years or in the past 300-400 years. The marks were everywhere.

It has been an absolutely incredible experience. I look forward to working through my recordings and thoughts, and the journal that I have been keeping which I will publish on my website at www.earthkeptwarm.com over the coming weeks, with processed recordings, pictures and videos. A log of work in progress, a diary of thoughts, and a documentation of research activity in this dry, barren and utterly beautiful landscape.

I would like to extend my thanks to my hosts, Donna, Simon, Sesame and Solomon for being so welcoming. Their life here, as English expats, who have stepped up to a fascinating and difficult challenge of living in a radical and rural setting just north of the small town of Vélez-Blanco is truly inspirational. My thanks also go to the fellow artists and guests who have been here during my stay, Dayna, Elena, Melissa, Nana, Nigel, Anna, Peter and a special thanks to Abbie who without her… I wouldn’t have got completely lost one day when failing to find an ancient cave painting that was allegedly in plain sight.

Reference

Mandel, Emily St. John. (2015). Station Eleven. Picador, Pan Macmillan, London, UK.

Parikka, Jussi. (2015). A Geology of Media. Minnesota University Press, Minnesota, US.