Conversation with Jonah Senzel
How was your art practice impacted by the pandemic?
Mostly I’ve had a lot of time to sit and think and ruminate on ideas, and to develop concepts at a more base level. In an odd lining up I began to have a massive interest in public art just before the start of the first lockdown, and I actually developed some ideas for street installations experimenting alone on my apartment balcony. My lockdown obsession with learning knots led to a series of public installations following the first lockdown in which I tied gift-wrapped books in high locations (sometimes unreachable) for people to find. I also wrote my first zine a day or two into lockdown (it was a gag birthday present for my brother) which eventually ended up being the focus of Tricia and I’s contribution to Montana coLab.
What was your experience like collaborating with another artist(s)?
Tricia and I definitely come from different worlds from lots of different aspects, and I found that quite exciting. In normal circumstances I don’t think we ever would have met or passed in the same circles, let alone worked together. That made it even more fun working in a medium (zines) that was new to the both of us. I really prize idea exchange between groups that don’t usually interact, and while our collaboration was made up of parallel work and assignments, It definitely put me out of my default frame of reference to work alongside an artist like herself.
What was a success to come from the CoLab project?
Just putting in the hours on a new medium, and more importantly than that, enjoying the practice as a separation from the other work that we both produce regularly. Walking away with a concrete stack of work feels really good.
The Envelope Manifesto, The envelope manifesto is an ongoing series of interactive public urban installations made up of envelopes
How would you describe your work?
Traditionally I’ve always been a composer, but over time my work has shifted towards interactive and participatory works in all different mediums. In the past year especially I’ve been working with public installations/interventions in which participation is necessary for the work to function. This ‘era’ of my work is really backed by the idea that the work should be relatively uninteresting unless one participates. That mantra helps guide work to be more of a framework, where interest and enjoyment come from cross interaction between participants rather than something I’ve specifically ‘authored’ (see: http://qam.works.rip/ and https://envelope.works.rip/)
What keeps you returning to this subject, body of work?
I see interactive, participatory, and public works as areas where there is still a lot of groundwork to be done when it comes to exploring the possibilities of the medium. It’s a uniquely beautiful canvas which holds a real capacity for expression, not in how the artist strictly and linearly dictates a piece, but in how those who play with the piece interact and create within the confines of a framework the artist has set up. Especially in an era where the unlimited archive of the internet means that traditional arts are inexhaustible and ubiquitous, art that is experienced rather than unidirectionally viewed becomes more and more exciting.
Urban Walks Screenshots, Online interactive urban walks based on Guy Debord's Theory of Derivé see the full works at walks.work.rip
BIO: I am an exceedingly multidisciplinary artist. I'm originally a composer, and these days I'm creating a lot of interactive and New Media Art using a wide spectrum of mediums from fully physical. I like playing, exploring, and wondering, and these themes are often reflected in my work using emergence, non-linearity, and participant creation. I enjoy constructing a framework in which people interact, where the enjoyment of the work is not provided directly by me, but by what you uniquely experience based on broad instruction and systemic design.