Interview 23 // Suzanne Anker

Welcome. My name is Helen Harrison. I'm the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, Long Island, and I'm an advisor to the Techspressionism exhibition that will be opening in April at the South Hampton Arts Center. I'm here with Suzanne Anker, who is one of the exhibition participants, and she and I are going to talk a little bit about her work and about specifically the items that will be included in the exhibition. So hi, Suzanne. It's good to see you again. Good to see you. Well, I'm just so delighted that this show is coming about because I have worked with Colin over the years on the Techspressionism concept, which is his. And the idea is... The idea that technology is a tool, is a means to an end, to express an artist's personal vision, I think is very important to emphasize because I think technology often gets in the way.

Helen A. Harrison

People concentrate on the medium and not on the message. How do you feel about the role of technology as a tool for an artist?

Well, I think it creates new ways of seeing. The digital revolution... Well... Essentially is the latest phase of the intersection between art and technology. We can even go back to the camera obscura, which Aristotle talked about. We could look at the photography revolution in 1839. We could look at video art in the 60s and 70s. And now we have... A paradigm shift. We have the ability of zeros and ones to create images.

Suzanne Anker

And in many pieces of my own work, to create actual sculptural objects. So this is really a new way to see the world. Similar to the invention of the microscope to see the hidden... The hidden... Worlds that are not on view.

I think the hidden world for the artist is the world within. The ideas, the concepts, the feelings, the intangibles that are the substance of the art. And what we see is almost like an outer shell that the artist has created to express those concepts. And I think that from what I've seen of the pieces that like the ones behind you representing the role of the artist, I think that's another tool that was used to explore the inner mind. And how did you decide to adapt the Rorschach block as a signature image?

Well, for a number of reasons. After my work with genetic iconography, I moved into neuroscience a bit. And what struck me was the way that... The way in which the brain processes images. And I came across several images that I have worked with before. Certainly the chromosome. The butterfly. And of course the Rorschach. All of those are symmetrical images that essentially deal with the way the natural world operates to some degree. And each of these images is a transformative image. The chromosome is a bio archive of ancestral echoes. The butterfly goes through metamorphosis to create a winged creature. And of course the Rorschach test is a projective device used to create a human body. And the Rorschach test is a projective device used by psychologists to articulate...

Suzanne Anker

Help the patients articulate their hidden desires.

I think it's interesting too. Andy Warhol did a series on them. And the fact that they have this kind of visual fascination is I think key to their appeal. That they look like things that they're not. So there is a lot of subjectivity involved in the work. And I think it's interesting to see how people are interpreting them. I agree.

It's the ambiguity of the image which artists are very much interested in. And other artists like Annette Messanger has used the Rorschach. It comes up not only as an image but it's also a cultural metaphor. And I think in that sense of being double sided. It's been described in the popular culture and in the news reporting.

Suzanne Anker

And I'll just read you one description that talks about its metaphorical associations from a review of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. In which the reviewer said about the Rorschach test. The space odyssey called it a searing inkblot of modern thinking man's apprehension as the ultimate place of technology in the celestial scheme of things. And it goes on and on in its sort of cultural metaphors. There's another one that from the New York Times. That characterized the photographs of Diane Arbus as Rorschach images of her subjects. So those are some of the ideas behind the pieces as well in terms of their cultural significance.

Suzanne Anker

Now everyone knows what a Rorschach test is. Whether or not it is a test of the human mind. Or whether or not it is a test of the human mind. And I think the question is, has validity is another point, question. It certainly has been used. It is the most used projective test that people have taken. But when Herman Rorschach actually decided to use this test. It was for schizophrenic patients. It wasn't for a clear psychological projective test. But it has been adapted through culture to essentially be used by psychologists.

Suzanne Anker

Now Rorschach invented this based on one of his favorite pastimes. Which was a game called Blotto. In which you take a piece of paper. You put some ink on it. You fold it in half. And you get this symmetrical structure.

So it actually predated Rorschach.

Yes. Not for psychological reasons. But for a children's game. Yes. Which I liked very much. So I think that the question of the Rorschach. Being three dimensional. Which I'll show you some images of shortly. And these are the pieces that will be in the exhibition. In Southampton. Is like holding the imagination in your hand. When you essentially can pick up a three dimensional object. That supposedly has projective kinds. Of ideology within it. It becomes a whole new set. Of metaphors.

Suzanne Anker

And what interested me. About turning the two dimensional ink plots into three dimensional objects. Was that when one thinks of an ink plot. One thinks of a random kind of geometry. But it's all mathematical. And I was able to create. These objects. Because the computer. Could translate. This coastline.

Suzanne Anker

Essentially it through mathematical variables. So I felt that. That for me. It fit into this idea. Of. The idea of. Neuroscience. And the way. In which F. F MRI technology. Can actually see the brain. In action.

So actually when you look at the scans of the brain that you have on the wall behind you there. You can see the similarity because partly I guess because of the. Symmetry, but also just some of the forms that kind of echo. The Rorschach. And I wonder. Why you felt it was important to make them three dimensional.

Because no one has ever done that.

That's what artists always like to break new ground.

And because when they are three dimensional. They look very much like body parts.

They look like artifacts or fossils or things that were sort of primitive buried in the soil for generations. And here they are. That's correct.

Well, I'm going to share my. Screen and show you a few images. Right now. And then we can continue. Our conversation. Okay. Let's take a look at this. If we kind of go back. To its origins. And this was a show in New York city. In 2002. All the butterfly in the brain. And these are silkscreen prints images of brain scans.

Suzanne Anker

Butterflies and Rorschach tests. All about these projective techniques. That have to do with a kind of. Invisible internal reality. And here are a couple of the prints. That you can see close up. And in these MRI scans of the brain. We see an image that looks like a butterfly. And a chromosome. And this is a kind of. So this kind of typology. Between symmetry. Was what I was looking for. And.

Suzanne Anker

As I move forward. In this. Show I decided I'd make a few ink blots myself. And. I have this MRI scan of the brain. And I have a single butterfly. In each one of these pieces. It's the same butterfly. But.

You can just see it sort of superimposed on the central symmetry.

That is absolutely correct. And it's superimposed on some Rorschachs. And it's superimposed. On some of my own. Ink blots. And what we see here now. Is the relationship of figure ground. That we all talk about in art. That we can essentially. Change an image. By what is underneath or on top of it. And here you can see that up close. Does not look like the same butterfly. But is the same butterfly. So again. It has to do with. Opticality. Which was the first.

Suzanne Anker

Foray. Into the. Unseen.

It's also interference. You've got the one pattern interfering with another and creating a third pattern.

That is very good point. Here. And I think that visual interference. Is so. Important. To. To information. Particularly through technology. Particularly through machine learning. In which I have learned in some of my other works. How the. How the machine. Reads information. And gives me new clues. About making things. This has happened in other series of works. And I think that's a very important part of my work. Where the machine. Actually makes its own mind up.

Suzanne Anker

If it has one. And here are some of the. Rorschach pieces. They initially start out. From Herman Rorschach. Ink blots. Then a third. Access. Is. Created by the use of the software. Program called Maya. So that we have a back. And. Front. Of these pieces. I gave them my. Own names. This one is called Wolf. And as you can see in the back of the piece. That's very seashell. Like. And.

Suzanne Anker

I've also made them. I've used the rapid prototype pieces. To convert them into bronze.

And.

These have a certain weight. To them. Which again, you can hold your imagination. In your hand. Here's some larger ones. This is, we'll be at the show. Here. And. These are. These are quite big. I would say they're about 10 inches. Wide as compared to the smaller ones, which are. Probably about four inches wide. And what happens now is that on this scale. Other metaphors.

Suzanne Anker

Take. Place. One could look at this as even a pelvis. Yeah. Kind of bone structure. And that is not evident from the two dimensional. In plot or even the small. Three dimensional ones.

What's interesting as you look at it more closely, you can see that, although it has a kind of symmetry, it's not actually totally symmetrical. Because some of the shapes are varied as they would be in an, in an inkblot. Where it doesn't. Exactly duplicate. One side and two to the other. So you've got little bumps and ridges and knobs and things that are on one side and not on the other side. And yet. Just at a glance, it looks like it's totally symmetrical.

Absolutely. This is sort of a whole theory about the culture of the copy. Or the clone. There's no such thing as an exact copy. And even through technology, whether it's photography. Or rapid prototype sculpture. Each time you make one, they're slightly. Different. Even if you tissue culture plants. Through molecular means. You are not getting exact copies. So that is a very important point that you raise.

Suzanne Anker

Because we like to. Think. Of the ability of things to be. Perfectly symmetrical or. Perfect copy when there is no such thing. As that. And. What I've done here. Is to create a small video.

And Thank you.

And that's to eric satis music so I think that video shows the brain in action and the of core choreography of thought that takes place when we view works of art and that includes art made by technology technology well

I mean I have to disagree with you slightly because I don't think the art is made by the technology I think the artist makes the art and then the technology enables it really it comes from your impulse to create something and then you find the means to do it and of course colin and I are both fond of quoting jackson pollock in that regard he said technique is just a means of arriving at a statement so you're your statement comes to you through these forms that you've been able to develop through technology I

I agree with that and I think without though the ability to use the 3d technology which is rather new I could not have made the 3d rorschach test now when I was thinking about what can I do with what can I do with 3d technology I had to think for a very long time what would be a significant image that would essentially give me new metaphors and as it turned out it was because I had access to this technology that I was able to realize this project so

This is a 3d printed is that how it's going to work yeah I think that's a good question I think it's going to work yes it's

3d printed yes

Then when you arrived at the image that you wanted you how do you translate it from two dimensions to three well

You run it through a software program because basically maya which is the program we used creates a third dimension okay what you do normally is you run it through a process of curing and compiling If you wanted to make a painting three-dimensional, then you would have to create a third axis. And through this software, you can extrude and extrapolate the data in order to make a third axis. So that's what interested me first was using the technology.

And what could I do with it rather than simply replicating something but to create something entirely new using that special medium so if you and I thought it's interesting you have some of them that are small enough to hold in your hand so they are have a tactile dimension as well absolutely

And they're really a pleasure to put in your hand particularly the bronze ones because they you know you feel kind of the weight that the imagination has as a kind of storehouse for the future wonderful

So will people at the south end of the world be able to use the technology to create something that's so special to them actually be able to touch them will you will you have them on open display well

That sort of depends on what the southampton art center allows you know in normal circumstances it's do not touch the art well

Also they we don't want them to have legs so to speak you got that but

Maybe there's one that they can they can hold maybe it's at the guards desk or something and they could be that they could feel what this is so I think I think that the role of technology and as you're talking about it's used by artists as a form of expression is very much of the moment and many artists whom I know are involved in this endeavor and it's interesting to note also since I'm also the chair of the fine arts department at the school of visual arts and when this technology was first introduced to students they were very hesitant about it they thought that they wouldn't be able to make paintings anymore but they have now changed their mind and are gearing towards it and making some really fantastic work well

You bring up an interesting point I mean as long as windsor and newton is still in business they'll be able to make paintings but will they want to and as long as they want to Of course, we've been down this road before. Painting has died and been reborn several times in my lifetime. But the fact that they're hesitant to experiment with it, I think I understand that. When I was in art school back in the 1970s and 60s, we had a vacuum forming machine. And I was doing sculpture. And everyone wanted to play with the vacuum forming machine. But why would you do that unless it was to get a result that you couldn't get any other way? So first you had to figure out why you wanted to do it. And then you figured out how. So that was the part of the process. Just having the machine there didn't make it interesting.

Helen A. Harrison

You had to make it interesting.

I agree with that. And a lot of artists mistake the technology. For the art.

My

Interest in techno-based art is to really break open different and new tropes of images that could not have been achieved any other way. That, you know, we had seen this also when plastic came out as a. Sculptural material. And there were many exhibitions about. Artists who use plastic. Well, that's not the point. You know, the point is, yes. The material has a language. But it also is deeply embedded in the history. Of art for its iconography.

Suzanne Anker

And what. What kinds of iconography are. Are. Developing right now. Because we have many tools. At our disposal that we hadn't had. When we went. To art school.

Yeah, quite right. But there are also the consideration that. Once you've decided. Excuse excuse me, once you've decided that you want to use this technology and you have an aim in mind, you have a goal for it, that this is going to give you X, Y, Z result. When you learn the nuances of the technique, that might lead you in a whole other direction that you hadn't even envisioned before. So as with any medium, it has its own life, it has its own qualities, its own properties, its own character, and you might not have even thought of it until you actually start manipulating it.

I agree, and I've continued to use the rapid prototype machine for newer sculptures that are quite different, and that I'm always surprised. The outcome because it's not a hands-on experience it's kind of a mental experience of choosing the different ways to model the item and you're not sure what you are going to get as a final result it's a collaboration with the machine and sometimes the machine teaches you things

That you have not thought about hmm oh I think it's the same is true with paint learning how to use paint learning how to use clay learning how to use a camera all of these technologies and it's been you could even consider the pencil a technology that there are and some people handle it better than others you know people say well well why did why did Jackson Pollock use liquid paint because that's what he needed in order to get the result he was after but it led him in a direction that he probably could never have foreseen.

I agree with that, and I think, again, embedded in Pollock's work is an element of surprise, but also the way he used line as a gravitational force, so that the bigger ideas of human consciousness, if not the universe itself, are also embedded in his metaphors, and he needed liquid paint in order to do that.

Right, and similarly, you think of Lee Krasner's collages. She needed to destroy earlier. She needed to destroy earlier work in order to create new work, and I found that when I first saw it in exhibition in the 1970s, at first I was appalled because I thought, oh, it was like killing your children and cut up your art, and then I thought, are you crazy? Of course, she made something much more interesting and wonderful out of it by rethinking how she used the material and what kind of effect she could get with it that she hadn't envisioned when she created the original work.

I agree. Actually, I'm going through a process like that right now in this period of work I've made over the last couple of years during COVID. It's a series of work called After Eden, and I have been photographing my huge outdoor space and garden and collaging many of the elements to essentially mutate the images, and I think that the world we live in necessitates that kind of thinking because in some ways we are connected in new ways. So the kind of cut and paste techniques that started out with, say, surrealism.

Suzanne Anker

And then readapted through Photoshop really changed the ontological status of what an image is. Image A collides with image B to create image C, which is different than A and B. So I think that Krasner's work in this case, and certainly earlier artists, and I think that the work that we're using is going to be one of the most important things in the world. Their use of collage or cut and paste, which is a big word right now, even on our computer, is a prelude to what is happening in the digital revolution.

So do you feel in your own work that you're never satisfied, that there's always something else you can do with what you already have?

I think the hardest part about my own work is what to do next. And I think when you end a series of work, or as I work in a way that are project-based series of works, and when those are complete or fairly complete, I may pick them up again three years later, okay, with a fresh idea. But the hardest part is really beginning a new body of work that starts from ground zero.

Oh, I wouldn't say anything ever starts from ground zero. You always build on what you've done before, even if it's to reject it. I mean, you know, you've got this image bank in your head, and you know it. So you're going to go back to it.

Well, that is true as well. And, you know, the proclivity that one as an artist or even a human being has towards those things that spark their attention or create a sense of wonder are the same things that they were always attracted to, even as children. So it's just...

Well, that's an interesting point, because I think a lot of people, you know, I think it was Picasso who famously said, I have to learn how to draw like a child, because of that open-mindedness and the lack of constraint that you find in children's art, that you want to have that kind of intellectual and emotional freedom to express yourself in ways that you're not... So they're not self-censoring, that you don't want to put the brakes on your own imagination.

That is true. So artists are really just grown-up kids.

Well, have you anything else you'd like to tell us about the work that you'll be showing at SAC or about your development in general?

Well, I've been showing a lot of my work internationally, right now. And I have... I'm in a show at the ZKM Museum in Karlsruhe, which is based on art and technology. I also have a large installation going up at the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, as well as several national shows coming up. So this...

Suzanne Anker

It's a very rich time in my life for my work. And I am very grateful to have the time to make it.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Suzanne. It's been a delight speaking with you. And we look forward to seeing your work at the Southampton Art Centre. Well, thank you so much.