Structures of Feeling with Tiana Jefferies

Tiana Jefferies is a spatial artist hailing from Australia, and she currently lives and works in Berlin. We visited her installation Ground State (Schwül) and talked to her about how she uses pleasure, intimacy, and irony in her work to investigate relationships between architecture, ecology, and climate.

Can you introduce yourself and your practice?

I’m a spatial artist living and working in Berlin. The main materials that I use are camping equipment and outdoor equipment. I'm interested in the relationships between architecture, ecology, and people. I approach things quite playfully, trying to acknowledge the ridiculous or ironic moments in these relationships.  

Why do you like to work with found objects? When did you first start using them?

It started with the kerbside collection culture in Brisbane, Australia, and seeing so much potential in the materials. I was interested in seeing relationships between what is thrown out during different seasons. After summer, there are all these pedestal fans that get thrown away. It speaks a lot to the climate that we live in, but also to the political, social, and the economic climate of that specific group of people.  

Then it kind of became more specifically about camping equipment and outdoor materials. Anything that seemed like it facilitated some kind of relationship between people and the outdoors. Tents allow you to have this feeling of being closer to nature, but actually they act as a barrier as well as a connector. I was trying to playfully explore the material culture that facilitates our relationship with the environment around us.

(Kerbside collection is a service run by local city councils in Australia that collects household waste and recyclables from homes and businesses. It's usually available in urban and suburban areas.)

You are now based in Berlin. Has this process of material collection naturally shifted with the zu verschenken culture in Germany?

Yes! That was part of the reason I fell in love with Berlin, and I immediately knew I wanted to live here, was the zu verschenken culture. I know people don't like it because they feel like there is trash and rubbish everywhere, but it is a material wonderland for me. You can find beautiful stuff every day.

I wanted to ask about your artwork Ground State (Schwül). The work has three iterations and has been shown in Berlin, Brisbane, and Melbourne. How did this installation develop?

It began during my residency at GlogauAIR when I first arrived in Berlin in 2023. The work consists of neon paracord, vibration motors, and found organic matter. It was part of this new era of my practice. The materials I used in my practice previously were reflective of an Australian context, and I was trying to situate myself in a new landscape and a new place.

The work itself consists of a net woven from neon paracord with vibration motors and sensors attached, so it responds to movement with movement. The type of movement is like a little jitteriness, as if there was an insect on it, jumping around.

I wanted to create this feeling of responsiveness and active participatory exchange on both sides. When you encounter the installation with your body, it also has an encounter with you. We have this same experience with ecology as well. At every moment the environment is responding to us just as much as we are responding to it.  

Each iteration is slightly different and incorporates organic or industrial matter from the local architecture / environment in the installation.

You mentioned you wanted to create a sexy swamp vibe with this installation. Why is that?  

Already being interested in wetlands, realizing that Berlin was a swamp originally and still has a little swampy aspect. I also wanted to parallel that to this feeling of swampiness in certain club situations. Like these kinds of dark corners and wet environments. Swampy ecosystems have this concentrated bioactivity, and this is also true for queer club culture – especially in Berlin. There is equally a lot of activity. They are both rich and vibrant spaces but are often not considered to be beautiful or necessarily important landscapes and spaces.  

Each iteration has felt quite intimate and playful. Was this intentional in the work?

I've always tried to bring a good amount of intimacy to the works. The idea of intimacy has this big circle around it for me in my practice. I’m interested in the intimacy between myself and the things around me, whether that's a weather pattern, or a friend, or maybe certain interrelations between humans and nonhumans. I want the structures to highlight and draw attention to the intimacies that are already there. Creating new structures of feeling to bring with us into the future.

 

Myfanwy Halton wrote this text in English.