Sigmund Freud once stated “The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real": over these years we had the chance to interview lots of multidisciplinary artists, but most of the time their works were intrinsically connected to a particular feature of the media they used to accomplish a translation of the notions they investigated about. What marks out Theresa Devine's practice is instead is an absolute freedom that, while keeping the concepts fruible to her audience, at the same time unveils the inner nature of the theme of play, that she urges us to discover and recontextualize. One of the most convincing aspect of Devine's work is the way her exploration establishes direct relations with the viewers going beyond any artificial dichotomy between the materialization of a work and the moment we relate to the ideas behind it. We are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted production.
1) Hello Theresa and welcome toART Habens. To start this interview, I would pose you a couple of introductory questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold a BFA in Painting and Printmaking that you received from Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi and a MFA in Painting from University of Houston: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist?
I am extremely grateful for the education that I received from Texas A & M - CC and University of Houston. When the program at TAMU-CC was described to me as a prospective student I was told that the pedagogical philosophy was a "liberal arts approach to studio art." The faculty in the art department delivered on this promise and I was exposed to every studio practice available at the time. These practices included painting, printmaking, drawing, color theory, graphic design, sculpture, and ceramics. I have used every skill they taught me and built on this foundation over the years. This openness to modes of making art afforded me the mindset to also include coding, photography, digital art, installation, interactive art, game design, and toy design. I get the viewpoint that every medium is viable and free to use from my undergraduate experience. In graduate school I was challenged intellectually and conceptually. The professors had very high standards and I was pushed, sometimes relentlessly, to focus, verbalize, and deliver a very polished body of work. I became adept at reorganizing the formal and conceptual elements of a piece to shift audience perception. They taught that sometimes the smallest formal change can make a big conceptual difference. I feel compelled to list the names of these amazing professors here: Bruno Andrade, Mark Anderson, Barbara Riley, Greg Reuter, Carey Rote, Gael Stack, Rachel Hecker, David Jacobs, Rodney Nevitt, Malinda Beeman, Patricia Gonzalez, and Derek Boshier.
Moreover, you currently hold the position of Assistant Professor in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, so I would like to take this occasion to ask how does teaching inform the way you nowadays relate yourself to art making: have you ever happened to draw inspiration from the ideas of your students?
I never draw inspiration from the ideas of my students. I would consider it unethical to practice in that manner. The premise of the body of work and each piece stems from life experiences that make me uncomfortable. I make a piece to satisfy that uneasiness and to have hope that what ever is bothering me can be transformed. My studio practice informs my pedagogy. I teach my students that their own premise is the compass for art produced in any medium, that entertainment and conceptual depth are not mutually exclusive, and that art can change the world. I cultivate self awareness and help them become familiar with their creative identity. The students are asked to examine their own views and perceptions of how a piece should be made and why. The development of premise becomes the springboard for learning technical and hand skills. Every art student I have taught has had a moment of brilliance when they revealed to me the germ of their greatness. I spend considerable time pointing out their personal contribution and creative identity so that they begin to see themselves in a new light. One student states in an evaluation comment, “I was initially confused on what to do as it was about self discovery at the beginning of the semester. Later, it made sense, and helped me complete the class with great understanding of myself and the subject matter.” Another art student comments, “This class was very unique and went over a lot of interesting information about art, such as cliché, which I never really thought about. …I reflected a lot about what I would like to do with my art and what I want to accomplish with it.” When my students discover their own creative identity and are empowered to create their own unique vision, I am inspired to return to my studio.
More information on my research lab and teaching is found here:
2) Your approach is marked out with a stimulating synergy between several practices and viewpoints, a feature that provides your works of dynamic life and autonomous aesthetics.
Thank you. I do what the work tells me it needs. The body of work is driven conceptually and there is no way to predict how it will physically manifest.
I would suggest our readers to visit in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production.
Again thank you for recognizing that there is a dialogue across the different series that point to a larger point of view. I deeply appreciate the interest in the entire body of work: Cen'est pas un jouet: This is not a toy.
While superimposing concepts and images, crossing the borders of different artistic fields as painting and installation, have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different viewpoints is the only way to achieve some results, to express specific concepts?
Yes. For example, "The Enemy Within" pieces all have titles that begin with the prefix "un." I am choosing these titles because I want the series cross pollinate abstractly with the "Unspoken" series to introduce the idea to the viewer that not only are there things we don't say to each other, but also there are things we don't see and that both of these situations introduce elements we can't control in our lives. Another strategy that I use is to reuse titles from series to series. As a case in point, I have reused "Because I'm Pretty Sure I'm Right." This particular piece as an "Unspoken" introduced the idea that having to be right is a ridiculous proposition. When the toy is played with it is very difficult for the blowout to extend and to get a sound out of this piece. It is very stubborn. As a dice game in the "In Pursuit of a Happy Middle" series the game mechanics of the piece make the viewer complicit in order to feel the ridiculousness of the proposition of having to be right. Everyone who plays this game seems to channel the childhood experience of playing "King of the Hill," but then, realizes during the course of the play session that perhaps this is a game that really shouldn't be played. It is interesting that this game is always considered to be a fun experience by the players. I would like to emphasize here that each piece has content that is only apparent to the viewer when it is played with. Each piece has its own personality and the transcendent moment is only visible completely through play. Another example would be the "Unspoken" titled "What's In It For Me?" This piece is about motivations for marrying and it was a nice accident that this piece hits the player in the face when it is played with. There are wonderful little moments like the ones I have described found during play throughout the body of work.
3) I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from In Pursuit of a Happy Middle, an interesting project featured in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once impressed me about this project is the way you have created an effective point of convergence between the sense of reality suggested by an effective assemblage of found objects and a subtle reference to the imaginative dimension that restructures the relationship between exterior world and our inner sphere. This way you establish an unexpected equilibrium between apparently opposite concepts. Do you conceive it in an instinctive way or do you rather structure your process in order to reach the right balance?
I strive for a balance between the exterior and interior worlds. There are parts of my process that are instinctive and during this time I juxtapose and meditate on found objects. Intuitively, I was drawn to the boxes that I use in the "In Search of a Happy Middle" series. I found them at a container store and they seemed to be so perfect all by themselves. All lined up on the store shelf, it was as if they were sarcophagi crossed with Donald Judd's sculpture. I loved how they referred to an existential state and yet reminded me of metaphysical minimalism and a world beyond. Just as in Judd's work each one was the same and yet if you look closely there are differences. These differences set each box apart from the next one and asserted its individuality. It was a bonus that the boxes were mass produced objects. This fit perfectly with the concept behind the dice game series of how individuals gamble on each other and how these relationships form a larger fabric of interconnectedness. When I wrote the rules to the games I was working in a more structured way. For example, "I Am Inviting You To Join Me On the Bandwagon Of My Own Uncertainty" and "Avoid Public Displays Of Affluence" use psycho-social aspects of wealth distribution as subject matter and are both examples of economic interdependence that often gets ignored. Then during the playtest of each game I watched for the transcendent moment of sharing and reciprocity that I tried to orchestrate. During this phase of the creative process I tweaked the rules to strengthen both the struggle and transcendent moment. In general, it was my goal that the players learn that when we fail to recognize our affect on another's life it does not make the effect nonexistent. The player experience follows my creation path. They begin with the closed box unsure of what it might have inside. Perhaps, as I did, they enjoy and consider the box for itself. The box is opened, a game is revealed, and the structured experience of learning the rules and playing begins. The players involvement culminates in the transcendent moment. I lead them to share a specific juncture with me within the game mechanics. In this way skeptical realism meets transcendentalism, or if you will, external materiality meets internal enlightenment in this work.
4) As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you explore the intersection between adversity and play, I daresay, in such way that challenges the elusive but ubiquitous dichotomy between experience and memory, reminding me of the idea behind Thomas Demand's approach, when he highlighted that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead. "While the conception of Art could be considered an abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a sense of permanence, going beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of those concepts you explore. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion, personal experience is absolutely indispensable as part of the creative process?
You have some separate ideas in this question. When I read it I feel I need to break it down to address all of the facets of your thoughts. My thoughts on the "dichotomy between experience and memory" in my work are: There are experiences that I find that persist. I usually refer to these as "napalm exposures." They are episodes that stick and burn in memory and become the impetus for my work.
The thought that "[Art] has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium" is true in my case but it might not be true for other artists. The medium of play, as activated by toys and games, has psychological and narrative formal elements built in to it which allow for unveiling larger perspectives, as you put it, the "intrinsic ephemeral nature of those concepts." These larger perspectives are what I wish to become permanent. The objects that I create only need to last as long as is needed for the seed of the idea to become planted in our collective value system. I am making the objects as archival as possible because I think that it will take some time for my perspective to be heard. This is an idea rooted in Edward O. Wilson's theory of "group selection." I wish to influence how our species evolves and have an input on what values are retained for future generations.
For me "personal experience is absolutely indispensable as part of the creative process," period. There are as many ways to create art as there stars in the sky and I would not presume to think that the way I make art is the way that others make it.
Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?
Yes of course.I imagine that there is work to be made that is about that type of disconnection. This work would be, as Arthur Danto would say, the "contradictory predicate" of what I do.
Moreover, what is the role of memory in your process?
I have already addressed this but I will amend here that I think that my experiences and memories are typical. I am living a life filled with the same challenges as anyone else alive today. I see myself as a specimen in the petri dish of the world and when others connect to my work I believe that they are joining me in the dialogue I propose because they have had similar experiences which burn in their memory.
5) Another interesting body of work of yours that has particularly impacted me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled The Enemy Within and I have to admit it's one of my favourite work of yours: what mostly appeals me of this project is the way you accomplish the difficult task of investigating about the ephemeral and at the same time elusive nature of the concept of game and especially the way we relate to the intrinsic atemporal feature that marks out the idea of video games... when I first happened to get to know with this work I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. I later realized I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?
The short answer to this question is: Yes.
The long answer is: This particular series came from a personal desire to be able to "play" apainting. I had a deep wish to dispel the confusion that this type of art work engenders and to create a direct bridge to the viewer through play. I wished for my communication to go beyond words. My early work explored abstract expressionism and I wanted these games to reveal the intuitive concepts found within this genre. Painting resides in the plastic arts and my desire at its inception flew in the face of an accepted view that the plastic arts are trapped by their own physicality. Johan Huizinga explains this divide like this, "The very fact of their [the plastic arts] being bound to matter and to the limitations of form inherent in it, is enough to forbid them absolutely free play and deny them that flight into the ethereal spaces open to music and poetry." It was my thought that the introduction of play into an experience of a painting would finally free it from its trap and form a connection between the maker and the viewer in the course of the play experience. While some of my games have stated goals, none of them have a stated win condition, and so invite the player to create their own conditions to win. This vagueness toys with the concepts of paidic and ludic games. Graham H. Jensen explains these concepts, "In paidic games, players can still 'win' as a direct result of conformance to implicit, culturally influenced goals; and in ludic games, goals can be established by the player, even if they do not help the player 'win' or progress in a way intended by the developers of the game." Leaving interpretation of rules and win conditions open connects to the player and builds on a reflection from Clement Greenberg that "Content is to be dissolved so completely into form that the work of art cannot be reduced in whole or in part to anything not itself." According to Ian Bogost, in video games, dissolving the content into the form "resides in the gap between rule-based representation and player subjectivity" and this thought parallels the current ontological position of painting, that is to be caught somewhere between the eye and the mind as and/or between interpretation and consciousness.