The RAVEN: Recently sat down with artist Elisabeth Smolarz, their dialogue is below.

Sarah Walko (aka The Raven): How do you usually start your day? Do you like routine or not?

Elisabeth Smolarz: I am pretty flexible, but usually I wake up early – if possible at dawn.
I make a pot of green tea, read the news, answer emails, do a little yoga, have breakfast and transition to coffee.  Or not.

SW: What have you been listening to this past week? Reading?

ES: Gus Gus has been playing at my house for the past months, but right now I am listening to Haim.
My reading list for Feb/Mar is:
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

Elisabeth Smolarz, Exhibition installation view, Image courtesy of the artist

Elisabeth Smolarz, Exhibition installation view, Image courtesy of the artist

SW: Who were a few very strong individuals that have influenced you?

ES: Martin Kiess / Frau Najim / Andreas Opiolka / Marianne Eingeheer / Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson / Raymond Meier
and many [other] authors whose writing changed the way I look at the world.
SW: Is there any geographical place where you had an experience that served as a threshold or break through moment in the evolution of your practice?
ES: 1. New York / 2. The Galapagos Islands / 3. Real de Catorce

SW: Are any of your pieces self portraits?
ES: No.

SW: What is one current project you are working on we can look for coming up?

ES: I am working on a new video with an Iraqi Veteran.

Elisabeth Smolarz, THREE GRACES–SALLY HEMINGS, WU ZETIAN, MELUSINA, 2011, 3 channel video, 3:45 Still courtesy of the artist

Elisabeth Smolarz, THREE GRACES–SALLY HEMINGS, WU ZETIAN, MELUSINA, 2011, 3 channel video, 3:45
Still courtesy of the artist

SW: Do you spend a lot of time in the studio alone or need a lot of think space alone time? What is your balance of the need to retreat into a reclusive state to continually reconnect with your individual voice and then also be out in the world working with others, exhibiting, performing, lecturing etc.?

ES: I am a hermit, and feel a strong need to separate myself from the outside in order to be able to fully engage with it when the time comes to do so.

SW: Are you sea or land? day or night?
ES: Sea. Day and Night.
SW: Name one living artist you’d love to have a drink with? one dead one?
ES:  Alive: Katarzyna Kozyra
Dead: Ad Reinhardt
SW: Do you have any poems memorized? any quotes or prose memorized? if so – why those ones?
ES: The poem that first comes to mind is one I learned as a child in Poland: Kto ty jesteś? Polak mały 

It’s quite perverse, because it makes you believe you owe your life to the country.

The second quote that comes to mind is more entertaining. A friend sent me a youtube link to a Zizek lecture in which he mentions Einstein’s famous quantum physics quote: God doesn’t play dice. and Niels Bohr’s reply: Don’t tell God what to do. The third quote is something Ilana Hammerman said to me:

You should always ask yourself, at what point, as a citizen of country, do you become an agent of injustice.

I guess because I am getting ready for my residency in Israel, I have been thinking about the concepts of nations and religions. I am sure if you ask me again I will remember something completely different.

Elisabeth Smolarz, Video Still courtesy of the artist

Elisabeth Smolarz, Video still courtesy of the artist

SW: What kind of bird are you?
ES: Phoenix

Sarah Walko is currently part of a group exhibition at The Rainforest Art Foundation in Queens, New York. The exhibition, titled Raising The Temperature will be on view until June 2nd, 2014.
Elisabeth Smolarz is participating in a group exhibition in Chelsea, titled Everything & Nothing, Part I, presented by Sarah Crown at Spazio522, 526 West 26th, Street, Suite 522.
More soon!
xo