Reading ft. z. B.: Pilot
Voices
Reader:
Marie Reichel
Quotes marked in colours:
Hiroshi Takizawa
Clemens Tschurtschenthaler
Hanna Besenhard
Ophelia Reuter
Dear listener,
welcome, have a seat,
lean back, enjoy your drink,
listen, and look around.
Previously in ft. z.B.: Pilot:
The following reading is about the first round of the long term project ft. z. B. which is a collaborative production chain that uses artistic cross-media translation to address and overcome creative blocks. Within this project I am particularly interested in investigating surfaces as dynamic translation zones in artistic practices, where cross-media translation enables collaborative (knowledge) creation. I examine how such an expanded understanding of surface as a forum for discourse can foster empathy, challenge habitual thinking, and awaken creative capacities. The project aims to create networks between artists by circulating "stuck works" through translation processes, where participants transfer received materials into different media formats.
Since I decided to create the project as a series format and divide it into episodes, I called this very first part pilot. Most TV series have a pilot, which is usually used to evaluate and adjust the series so that it becomes popular. I did something similar, as I first had to get a feeling for the project—not to make it popular but rather to adjust certain criterias, time schedules and communication patterns. After the pilot I want to go on with Ep1 (Episode one), which will be followed by Ep2 (Episode 2) and so it will be continued. Each episode will halt after 3 to 5 artists. The pilot includes 5 artists with me as the initiator and the collaborating artists in the given order: Hiroshi Takizawa, Clemens Tschurtschenthaler, Hanna Besenhard and Ophelia Pauline Reuter. Before I go into details, here is a brief recap of what has happened so far:
It started with my stuck piece,
that has been laying around in my studio
for ages.
I passed it to Hiroshi, who later called it
“silver-plated, ownerless shoe tree.”
Hiroshi translated the
“silver-plated, ownerless shoe tree.”
to an assemblage of materials
and passed it together
with one of his own stuck pieces
to Clemens, who later wrote
“The reused materials,
the glass piece glued to the cold metal frame,
all attached to a little cement block
[...] In the center:
A black and white photo of a group of people
[...] his „unfinished“ project. A USB stick
with a collection of 27 photos
and a short text file”
While the shoe tree went back to me,
Clemens translated Hiroshi’s
finished + stuck piece
to one new piece of his own:
“I used 34 wooden drumsticks
—all the same, but all different
—and put them together
to construct one whole sculptural object.”
and passed it together
with one of his own stuck pieces
to Hanna, who later worte
“the ice hockey visor adorned with plastic flowers”
Hanna then translated Clemens’
finished + stuck piece
to one new piece of her own:
“[...] a spatial installation based on six slides,
each showing a part of a drum set. [...]
What matters to me in this gesture is
not to hide the projector,
but to stage it.
The flowers are attached to the projectors
—their long stems and red blossoms
will be fragmented and placed
(very) discreetly,
perhaps even geometrically.”
I’d describe Hanna’s stuck piece
as a flat polished marble smiley
in the shape of an old Greek theater.
She handed over to Ophelia,
who then translated Hanna’s
finished + stuck piece
to one new piece of her own:
description is missing (Ophelia)
— And so it will be continued in ft. z. B.: Ep1.
- How to begin and why I have started this:
Das Haus des Nikolaus and being stuck
ft. z. B.: originated from a children’s puzzle I draw when I am stuck in my creative thinking: Das Haus des Nikolaus (The house of Santa Claus). The seemingly simple house—a square with diagonals and a triangular roof—is an Euler graph and can be drawn in many different ways. To me, it is comparable to the many ways of creating, and in relation to ft. z. B. the many ways of translating. In retrospect, this seems ironic to me, since my stuck and deadlocked situation causes me to draw this shape over and over again, but this shape has something incredibly creative about it in its many possibilities.
“When a work is unfinished, it keeps returning to my mind — I circle around it again and again.”
When you have made creativity your profession, there is no way around being stuck from time to time. Let’s call it by its name: creative block. Of course there are many different reasons, why we get stuck in our creativity. Some things simply remain undone because you simply cannot find the time to devote to them. I recently read a sentence in a collaborative written text by three curators/artists, that seems very fitting here:
“The feeling that there is never enough time for art. Making it, curating it, seeing it. Something always gets in the way: e-mails, installation, hosting, press, scrubbing floors, preparing equipment. The whole carousel of tasks that swing us as far away from the artwork as possible.” (LAURENZ, SHIMMER, 2025)
It’s a struggle we had experienced even within this project, that addresses these very problems. “And today, as we are also experiencing a bit ourselves, it’s very difficult to organise such things with artists who are constantly moving between projects and money-jobs.” “And of course, everyday life continues — we all have other projects and commitments. [...] rather, the project has to grow within and alongside our everyday routines.”
Whatever it might be, those situations mostly create those things, which most of us artists are familiar with –
Things that
have been lying around,
untouched for a long time
in the studio,
on the desk,
on the computer,
in storage,
or in our minds
— half-started works,
never completed
because you are stuck.
z. B.:
A silver-plated, ownerless shoe tree.
A USB stick with a collection of 27 photos and a short text file.
An ice hockey visor adorned with plastic flowers.
A flat polished marble smiley in the shape of an old Greek theater.
A painting of a huge purple scrunchie.
And yet, we can find more productivity within those situations than it sometimes seems. With ft. z.B. I want to find a way to help process these things, ideas, thoughts, data, collectively, but also to let go of them, and simply share them with someone else.
“Usually, I can become very critical of my own work that I interrupt it before it’s had a chance to develop. Sometimes I overthink so much before while from the beginning that I don’t start creating at all. This time, I felt a kind of openness toward my own process, and that was a really pleasant feeling.”
The translation chain works as follows: It starts with something stuck, which gets passed on to another artist, who translates it into a different media. This translation, along with something stuck of their own, gets passed on to another collaborating artist of their choice. The next one translates both into a new media. And so it continues. “Translating the traces of another is, in effect, also translating the interior of oneself. By touching the ambiguous realms within and externalizing them, rigid thought patterns begin to shift. Rather than overcoming a creative block, it feels more like using the “blocked state” itself as material, transforming it into the next act of creation.” The timeframe is three to four weeks with a focus on spontaneous, intuitive working methods, overcoming creative blocks through immediate, direct (re)action.
“Getting rid of the „overthinking“ tendencies…so it is a lot about letting go and trying to not overthink and maybe in a second moment, go back and see what was the path to the final works and what do they transport as a group, together.”
“In my case, the gesture with the flowers was the best example. I knew I wanted to “add” something or complement the projector with a contrast, but it wasn’t clear how. Clemens’ gesture with the flowers, which I translated quite directly [..] was a very quick decision, and I immediately felt comfortable with it.”
“In the process of translating Marie’s unfinished object, I initially find myself somewhat immobilized. There is a sense that my usual methods and ways of thinking do not apply, and I hesitate, unsure of how to respond to the “voice” of the other’s work. Yet, it is precisely within this hesitation and constraint that sensations and desires I had overlooked begin to surface.”
“The thinking process was a bit different from my usual way. I was less strict and less critical with myself (so far), and it felt easier to acknowledge that the work is still in progress — not finished yet — so there’s no need to criticize it while it’s forming.”
- etc. and vice versa
— on palimpsestic chain production
Within ft. z. B.: I see my artistic work as examining the processes, presenting them appropriately and communicating them in order to reflect and learn from them. My contribution here is the forum that I have created through my work as initiator. I am particularly interested in the material surface and its constitutive significance in artistic communication patterns and relationships.
That is, z. B.:
artist–artwork,
artwork–viewer,
viewer–artist,
space–artwork,
artwork–artwork,
space–artist,
viewer–space,
etc., and vice versa.
“There’s a sender, a receiver, and a signal. It’s about how the sender encodes it, how the receiver decodes it, and what happens in between. [...] In my case, it was like this: Clemens gives me the object—he “sends” the signal. The medium is the drumsticks, the work he created from it, the ice hockey visor with the plastic flower, and the poetic story he tells me about them. [...] He gave me a “signal” that triggers a semiotic process (which is very empiric can be even arbitrary). The project is exciting because these processes always occur in artistic thinking and making—only here, one becomes particularly aware of them, perhaps even deliberately so.”
“[...] media is the way materials communicate to the viewer. This includes the arrangement of a display, lighting, or the framing of a photograph. It acts like a “translation device,” picking up the voice of the material and conveying its traces of meaning and time.”
I am building my interest in surfaces on Tim Ingold's concept of the palimpsest with its "anti-stratigraphic" principle—where "traces of the past rise to the surface even as those of the present sink into the depths" (Ingold, 2022). I started to conceptualise surfaces as dynamic, permeable entities—similar to human skin—continuously evolving through processes of careful erosion and accumulation.
When Hiroshi returned the metal shoe tree I had given him in the beginning of this project, so that he could transform it into his own work of art, he wrote me a lovely letter in which he sensitively picks up on my interest in the palimpsest and incorporates it into his process. “First of all, I perceived this shoe tree as a “trace object” — one that has already fulfilled its function, or one that no longer belongs to anyone. Its “absence” and “unnameability” seemed to resonate with the palimpsestic residuality that you explore in your research. In other words, it is an entity that once had meaning or function, but has since been overwritten, now demanding reinterpretation within a new context.”
To me, as an artist with a sculptural approach, this interplay of subtractive and additive is evidently reminiscent of the basic principles of sculpture and plastic art. Ingold’s view on palimpsests has had an immense influence on my artistic as well as my research-based mediating work on material surface as an important communication item. Through this I am now positioning the surface in a broader sense than merely in its materiality: as an entity that is a forum for discourse—a space where meaning is negotiated, contested, and collectively constructed.
In his letter to me, Hiroshi furthermore captures my interest with his translation,
“This structure corresponds, I believe, to the core of your research: the understanding of “surface” as a constantly shifting, permeable membrane. The layered composition of concrete, photograph, and frame is an attempt to overlay multiple “surfaces,” and to express the intersections and slippages of meaning that emerge through and across these surfaces. In the process of translation, rather than resisting the original meaning, I aimed to subtly shift it — to crack open the existing pattern and allow for new perspectives to emerge.”
Originally, the term palimpsest refers to a manuscript written on parchment where the text has been carefully effaced to make room for later writing. Since parchments are highly absorbent, it is not possible to completely erase what was there previously. It can also cause the individual texts to blend into each other, making them difficult to read. We are conditioned to believe, “that any deepness of thought would be best stimulated by being in the environment alone.” (Bamford, 2022, p. 193) With ft. z. B.: I want to work against this firmly established idea. I am rather aiming for a palimpsestic method of creation, that is on the one hand based on an individual creation but at the same time blends in with someone else's idea. “no work exists in isolation. Every creation is influenced by its surroundings and by other artworks.” “I like to think about the objects as participants in the creation of a place, a situation or an environment. Through using them in arrangements with purposely created structures I try to generate specific emotions or internal states through the encounter with physical appearance, materiality and architecture—often combining them with non-physical elements such as soundpieces or video works. I look for the moments when a work all of a sudden generates a sort of agenda and it becomes an entity, a character of some sort.”
Subject: Invitation to collaborate
Instruction: translate
The invitation for collaborating comes with an e-mail, which is at the same time the instruction for participating and translating. Who should be next in line is decided by the previous artist in consultation with me as the initiator. The essence of the instruction for collaborating is to translate two things you receive from the previous collaborator to one piece of work by choosing a different medium. “Regarding the invitation to “translate someone else’s (un)finished work,” I was initially hesitant. Another person’s work already carries traces and meaning, and it was unclear how much I could intervene or which “voice” I should follow. For instance, the fragment of the “shoe tree” Marie gave me seemed incomplete and ownerless, and at first, I felt a bit immobilized, unsure how to approach it.”
“Something to speculate about!
Who and what are they?
Creating a narrative with what is there to be seen…”
To pursue my interest in translation, I began to look into literary translation. Two translators have particularly influenced my thinking, and I would now like to briefly explain the essence of their work.
One of the translators, that influences my own thinking is Kate Briggs in her book “This little Art”. She explores the multiple motivations behind remaking something within one's own context and suggests that remaking can serve to bring the original closer, facilitate understanding of what it was or is, and enable it to signify differently—thereby producing new knowledge (Briggs, 2017). Briggs differentiates between “doing something again in the name of newness” versus “doing something new in the name of againness” (Briggs, 2017, p.). She positions translation within the latter category: as a practice that consciously gestures toward its origins while simultaneously manifesting as something entirely new in its materials, manner, and occasion of making.
“[...] translation refers to preserving as much as possible the traces and intentions of the original work, while overlaying my own sensibilities and interpretations and transforming it into a different form or medium. Translation involves a balance between “faithfulness” and “intervention,” where one listens to the voice of the original work but re-expresses it through one’s own bodily sensations and emotions.” “For me, “translation” would mean that I fully understand Hanna’s work or believe I know what she wants to express and then put it into new words. Creative work is always a process to me: an evolving idea rather than a finished “solution” or “plan.” Therefore, there also can’t be a clear translation of it, neither into words nor into another artwork.”
Kate Briggs’ concept of againness”resonates deeply with the palimpsestic methodology I try to develop within ft. z. B.. When participants translate received objects to a work of their own, they operate within this frame of againness—acknowledging what came before while creating something fundamentally new. The stuck materials that circulate through the chain carry traces of their previous manifestations, yet each translation transforms them through new contexts, hands, and intentions. This is not about erasure or complete reinvention, but rather about layering—where individual authorship and collaborative accumulation function as co-constitutive forces. Translation, understood through Briggs' framework, becomes a method for processing creative stagnation collectively while maintaining connection to what preceded, addressing both the isolation of solitary studio practice and the paralysis of stuck and unfinished work.
“Translation can be understood as one story told in different languages—in my case, languages such as sculpture or installation, French or Spanish. [...] When I received the invitation, I thought less about translation, and more about how one could respond to something—how a work continues through another person.”
What interests me particularly in Briggs' understanding of translation is its paradoxical nature: translation is fundamentally a solitary act—sitting at one's table, working through constraints—yet it is simultaneously collaborative, existing only in relation to what someone else has already made (Briggs, 2017, p. 252-253). This mirrors the structure of ft. z. B., where each artist works alone in their studio, yet the work itself is emerging from and responding to another's creation. Briggs describes how translation offers “an artificial inspiration”—one can sit down assured of giving birth to something, because “the work has already been written. What matters is how to write it again” (Briggs, 2017, p. 252). In ft. z. B., we similarly confront materials already made, yet must determine how to make them again, differently. The practice is solo but collective but solo but... at least not alone.
Regarding the invitation to “translate someone else’s (un)finished work,” I was initially hesitant. Another person’s work already carries traces and meaning, and it was unclear how much I could intervene or which “voice” I should follow. [...] However, within that hesitation, sensations and desires I hadn’t noticed before began to surface.”
Crucially, Briggs' practice as a translator foregrounds the material surface as the site where this paradox plays out. Translation occurs on the surface—the page, the screen—where one text is carefully layered over another, where meaning is negotiated between languages, between original and remake. The surface becomes the forum for this exchange, the permeable threshold where one voice meets another, where traces of the past rise even as new inscription sinks into depth.
The act of translation ultimately became a process of drawing out ambiguous areas within myself and turning them into new questions and forms. Rather than waiting for my thoughts to become organized, I placed myself within the uncertainty and instability, engaging in a dialogue with the materials. In doing so, unexpected forms and expressions emerged, and the direction of my creative work gradually became clearer.”
Since the dawn of time, writing and letters have been closely linked to a material concept of surface. The surface as the layer we come into contact with, interact with, write on. In ancient Rome, for example, people wrote on bark. The Greek λέπω (lépō) means to peel, bark, strip off the bark or husks and might have given the way to the Latin Liber and Lepra. Liber in Latin means bark, and by extension a book. When Liber transformed into French, it split again into Livre (the book) and Libre (free/freed). The brief etymological journey from bark to book to freedom shows me, albeit only metaphorically, how surfaces have always been places of inscription, transformation and exchange. This material understanding of surface extends into the practice of translation itself, where one text is layered onto another through the mediating surface of language.
The other translator that influences my thinking is Uljana Wolf. She describes translation as a practice of falling—a deliberate letting go of control, of perfected forms, of the translator's own habitual tendencies (Wolf, 2016, p. 15). She compares translating poetry to bouncing in an inflatable structure, where bodies and language are constantly thrown into new configurations before they can settle into fixed shapes. The translator must not close what remains open, must not complete what is deliberately unfinished, must not transform the bounce into ballet (Wolf, 2016, p. 15). This resonates with the instruction within ft. z. B.: to work spontaneously, intuitively, allowing materials to remain permeable rather than resolved. “[...] I felt the term “translate” might become a big question in my head and hinder me in this process. I really tried to go with what I felt when I saw Hirosho’s work and his materials and let my feeling guide me. It could have gone anywhere but I think I felt that his work and his photo files matched really well with the wooden drumsticks I had been working with for a bit. So there was the connection already in front of me. It's funny, when I read „please translate into your medium of choice“ it already felt a bit limiting or maybe enclosing, because the question about what medium to use would have been the first thing to think about, not the emotion that was felt.”
What Wolf emphasizes—and what mirrors the experience of us participants in ft. z. B.—is that translation reveals something unexpected not about the foreign language, but about one's own (Wolf, 2016, p. 17). One learns from the other's work while simultaneously discovering new capacities within one's own formal language. In ft. z. B., we similarly encounter our own medium anew through the act of translating another's stuck and finished work—learning not only what the received object might become, but what their own practice can do when responding to another's gesture.
“However, within that hesitation, sensations and desires I hadn’t noticed before began to surface. The act of translation ultimately became a process of drawing out ambiguous areas within myself and turning them into new questions and forms. Rather than waiting for my thoughts to become organized, I placed myself within the uncertainty and instability, engaging in a dialogue with the materials. In doing so, unexpected forms and expressions emerged, and the direction of my creative work gradually became clearer.”
Crucially, Wolf sees her translation as separate from the original text, even as it remains in dialogue with it. The translated poem is not the poem that got translated, yet it could not exist without it. It is solo work—the translator alone at the desk—yet fundamentally collaborative, dependent on what another has already made. The surface of the page becomes the forum where this paradox materializes: two authorial voices occupying the same space without collapsing into one another.
“I tried to stay open to Hannas thought process and connect it with my own. It felt like receiving fragments that I could use to craft something new. Or like receiving loose words that I could rearrange into a sentence that makes sense to me. So, I wouldn’t quite call it a translation — it’s more like playing around with something already in motion.”
- Solo but collective but solo but… at least not alone
This conception of collaborative yet autonomous creation challenges conventional notions of singular authorship. “It reminded me of the process when I was making music over the internet. Just start with an idea, send it to a friend, get something back,… In referencing each other, do they open up unexpected narratives and thoughts?”
My exploration of authorship is reflected in the title of this long-term project. I borrowed the term from the pop music industry: “ft.” is an abbreviation for “featuring”, indicating that a song includes a guest appearance by another artist. This typically means the featured artist contributes a specific part, such as vocals, a musical solo, or instrumental work, but the song is primarily attributed to the main artist. The featured artist is often credited after the main artist's name, signifying their supporting or collaborative role rather than being the primary creator.
“However, I see this project as a collaborative workflow rather than collaborative authorship. There’s still a clear structure: we know who created which piece, even though we let each other’s works influence and guide us. Collaborative authorship, for me, goes one step further—when I create something together with another artist and, in the end, it’s neither their work nor mine, but ours. The question of “who did what” becomes irrelevant. [...] But maybe I’m being too strict with that definition.
In her essay On the Author Effect: Recovering Collectivity, Martha Woodmansee traces how the modern figure of the solitary author emerged only in the nineteenth century, replacing earlier collective models of textual production (Woodmansee, 2000). In the thirteenth century, there were four modes of book-making—scribe, compiler, commentator, and author—none of which implied isolated creation (Woodmansee, 2000). The medieval florilegium, a notebook practice of copying, commenting on, and reworking others' writings without attribution or concern for ownership, exemplifies a fundamentally collective approach to making (Woodmansee, 2000).
Woodmansee argues that digital technologies now facilitate a return to such collaborative practices, where boundaries between original and response, between one's own text and another's, deliberately blur (Woodmansee, 2000). ft. z. B. operates within this recovered sense of collectivity but in the offline world. Each artist works alone, yet each work emerges from and feeds into a collaborative chain. The surface—whether manifested in it’s materiality or in its ability to carry signs for meaning—becomes the site where individual authorship and collective accumulation negotiate their relationship, where traces of multiple hands remain visible even as new work asserts itself. “For me, material is the body of the artwork, while media is like the voice through which that body speaks. Materials are tangible; you can feel their weight, temperature, and texture. Concrete, for example, is cold and heavy, asserting its presence, while photographs quietly draw your gaze and evoke moments and memories from the past.”
With the method of ft. z. B., we examine these translational artistic processes. We make ourselves conscious of them, experiment with them, and learn to understand them as a tool—particularly at a time when algorithmic tools and generative AIs are strongly influencing and changing the way we create. “Of course, there are still blockages and thoughts about whether one is doing something truly “new.” I then ask myself what I actually want: originality, or to think something further, to shift it, to continue it. [..] But art can also be something collective, something therapeutic. There are many reasons to do something that has already been done before.” “I sometimes come across an object rather randomly and somehow it intrigues me because of a bunch of different reasons. [...] But I also often specifically look for certain objects to complete an idea or a work. After a while they generate their own space in the back of my head—almost like a character. Some kind of object-archive or repertoire begins to grow and the object-characters can be activated in an almost modular way.” “Then, there are moments when thoughts begin to unravel. My hands start moving on their own, and unexpected forms emerge through dialogue with the materials. In such moments, the experience is less about “trying to make something” and more about the sense that “something is forming through me.” “A piece feels finished when I can finally let it be, when I no longer feel the need to go back and change it. It’s also the moment when I can create some distance between myself and the work—when I can take a step back, look at it as a whole, rather than as a collection of small parts still demanding my attention.”
Thank you for listening!
Best wishes,
Marie