Adrian Politzer
Adrian Politzer
Strange Connections
DIGITAL MEDIA—customized website that demonstrates how users’ actions can be thwarted by design. The first section uses an excerpt from the essay "Barbed Wire: The Colonial Legacy of Design in Postcolonial Times,” by Ksenija Berk. Berk writes about the political and dehumanizing power of design, using the increasing use of barbed wire at the border between Croatia and Slovenia as illustration. The live-stream videos point up the connections between politics and design.
The black and white film photographs are my own, shot in August 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa. The images explore the urban landscape while passages from “The Mind of South Africa: The Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid,” by Allister Sparks, tell the story of a nation designed explicitly for apartness (apartheid). This project is hosted at http://adrianpolitzer.xyz/thesis1/page1.html
PRINT MEDIA—A Risograph-printed psychedelic mushroom-trip guide, including a 4-color pullout ‘mandala.’ The text is sourced from erowid.org, a non-profit educational website founded in 1995 that documents comprehensive information on legal and illegal plants and drugs. The type is set to provide a safe hierarchy and make instruction clear to readers while the images follow a disruptive arch: distortions peak in the middle of the publication series, similar to the peak of a mushroom trip. Edition of 30. Exhibited and sold at the 2019 Chicago Art Book Fair.
VIDEO AND PERFORMANCE—An original poem, video piece, and spoken performance. The text is generatively extracted from the essay “Buddhism’s Teaching on the Five Elements” by Gareth John. The essay organizes the Dzogchen Buddhist experience of the five elements; earth, water, fire, air, and space; which represent five major states of being. My grid-structured poem allows multiple readings of these experiences, while the performance piece uses spoken word to further scatter the array and open new possibilities.
Strange Connections
There is only one medium, necessity. The paths of creation are numinous, not defined by physical gestures or material substance. Ways of seeing inform my craft, a practice that investigates the origins, limitations, and possible extensions of different media, in pursuit of clarity. I embrace inherent constraints and also strive to overcome them. My dualistic process invents and records connections that compose the end form. Careful awareness reveals the choreographies of power—these connections, these channels, this flow of energy informs the smallest of choices. Mindfulness fosters patience, which enables me to look beyond the given and trust the organic process that distinguishes my work.