Art Office

Anastasia Shin examines social and economic systems and how people behave within them. Learning and thinking by seeing and feeling is her adage. She makes installations and co-founded the online publication project rotterdamartwriting.org. She studied at Goldsmiths in London and at the Piet Zwart Academy in Rotterdam, graduating in 2018.

Shin: 'I was working on Untitled (Artforum Beads I & II) which consisted of me rolling up advertising pages from an art magazine and eventually turning them into curtains. Those curtains conceal but are transparent at the same time, that intrigues me. The ads are a way to distract you, to sell you something. By making beads from the advertisements, I reclaim the time and attention they took. On the other hand, those advertisements naturally ensure that such a magazine can exist, that authors are paid, I am also aware of that. Making the beads was originally supposed to be a group activity: I made 1000 beads with others. But the remaining 3000 I made myself, during the lockdown. They would be shown in the group exhibition Living a Making. We would discuss the creative process, about investing in materials, in the unknown, in each other's work.'

How did you deal with the fact that you had to continue working alone?
“Instead of having conversations, I listened to podcasts and books on the same subject. It was an introverted period in which I listened and worked with my hands. My world became small, I focused on my own environment and took a lot of walks.'

Was the PPR award important at the time?
'Thanks to the award I was able to continue working. It ensured that there was no financial panic. I approached it as if it were a job: I used a structure, I kept track of my working hours, for example. This work is about work and leisure, about what happens when the world is turned upside down. Making the beads, the simple operations of rolling up, applying color, was very contemplative. Material and intellectual labor run parallel in my work, they shape and influence each other. The question of how we value work, time and relaxation was an important question on which my work reflects.'

How important is the social aspect of your artistry?
'I like to work together, but that was no longer possible. I discovered how important it is to be physically present. Even when you're not talking, proximity to fellow humans matters. It only dawned on me when that once obvious contact was lost during the pandemic.'

What are your plans for the future?
'One of the books I read was Fully Automated Luxury Communism, which deals with the idea that luxury is having more than you need. Author Aaron Bastani outlines a society beyond work, scarcity and capitalism, in which a basic income and automation provide us with free time. I am interested in thinking about the potential of automation. I also read the book Four Futures: fiction with a similar theme. Those two books are the basis for a seminar on labor, relaxation and the attention economy, which we are going to organize as the exhibition Living a Making will still be organised.'

Does your own work as an artist offer you guidance on how to deal with difficult situations? 'Thinking about how social and material aspects influence contemporary existence gives me insights. And then I adapt. As an example: I think it is important to make contact with the person behind the cash register, even if it is just a small gesture, a smile, a short conversation. You are better with people than with machines. In Alphaville of Godard, the protagonist presses a button and a machine generates a wooden coin with the word Merci on it. He throws it over his shoulder. The film is from 1965, but the ethics and nuance of human interaction is in line with how we think about it now: an automatically generated thank you from a machine is basically worthless.'

How important is it for you to reach the public, during a pandemic?
'The bridge between artist and audience is important, platforms are needed in which work and audience meet. I had already set up an art blog before corona, on which artists and writers from Rotterdam publish. We published a conversation piece between the two artists Golnar Abassi and Maike Hemmers entitled 'A Discomfort Inside', about work and display in a domestic setting. That turned out to be very relevant at the time of the first lockdowns. But there was so much unknown about the future, sometimes it didn't feel relevant anymore, so we took a break. We need time to process everything.'

Temporary work contribution PPR
Om artists during the corona lockdowns to help maintain their professional practice, launched CBK Rotterdam de Ttemporary Wacknowledgment Production, Presentation en Research (PPR) about this visual artists can are signed up at CBK Rotterdam. Divided into two rounds in 2020 in 2021 finally received bijna two hundred artists a contribution. The result of the temporary work contribution is bundled in a publication in which we, together with a few artists, look back and look forward. This is one of fifteen interviews from this publication.

Text: Machteld Leij
Photo: Mark Bolk