ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: LINDA LOH

Caddisfly Project conducted a micro-interview with artist Linda Loh, whose work is featured in Vol 01: Transitions. Linda is a multimedia artist based in Melbourne and New York City.

We love her work for its sensitivity and inventiveness. She works with light as if it were a living organism in its natural habitat and sometimes transposes it onto digital landscapes.

Click here to watch Linda’s video Sliver (2020) in full. Below is a selection of our favorite stills from the video.

CP: What is your daily routine like?

LL: Mornings can be slow. My first coffee is a disproportionate pleasure, preferably in the sun or bed, or both. I enjoy a big walk outside to a nearby bushland creek, or around the local streets. It helps justify my otherwise sedentary day, but I also capture images that might feed into work. In normal times, I might meet a friend for coffee and chat once a week or so.

I attend to admin, email, deadlines, chores. I'm an information hoarder, and spend a lot of time writing notes in my phone, with so many things to look up that I almost have a micro-internet of my own. I can't seem to get through a podcast, talk, book or article without writing down something for future reference. In turn, that podcast, or whatever, will have been something from a previous note. So, I might review some of the things I was looking at already, from my multitude of open browser tabs, or things that pop up from my lists. Most of it is about art; right now I'm learning a lot of software, and looking at net art, so my lists are never-ending. I'm coming to terms with this research habit being an intrinsic aspect of my work.

By afternoon, the light in my room or around the house often presents opportunities for capturing video or stills, sometimes observed by chance when I am otherwise just working on my computer.

Around 5 p.m., when normal people are on their way home from school or work and looking leisurely, I start to get productive. I get on such a roll that dinner itself is a distraction, especially if I'm the one cooking. In past times, exhibition openings clashed with this. Night time is also optimal if I am using my mini-projectors.

My computer gets switched off later, after I've postponed my reminders, yet again. If it's not too late, being horizontal on the couch in front of the TV is an appealing treat, because it's been rare for me over the past year.

Exciting life!

CP: Can you describe your current workspace?

LL: My space is wherever I am, and for the last year—in both NYC and Melbourne—my space has been my home. Right now in Melbourne, it is a room at the front of my house with windows on two sides. I have a view through a tree to my quiet street where I can see people with their dogs on the way to the park. All horizontal surfaces are covered with random detritus. Most of my work is derived from what's there in front of me, whether it be a chance angle of the sun through a window, or a reflection I hadn't noticed before, or the strange oxidation colours of a saucepan. My laptop computer is my studio, along with my phone, and I love that mobility. One of the many reasons digital art appeals to me is that it doesn't take up any real physical storage space and can be made anywhere; arguably art that doesn't exist. I have no fancy, expensive equipment; I try to keep it light and simple, working with what I have.

CP: What’s the smallest thing that gets in your way (like a grain of sand in your shoe)?

LL: Those internet rabbit holes I find myself down frequently. The procrastination from being stumped at the foot of multiple steep learning curves.

CP: What are you reading now?

LL: I'm about to launch into research about neoplatonism, a less-discussed corner of philosophy. In that context, I'm excited to get stuck into Plotinus and the Moving Image, a comprehensive collection edited by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and Giannis Stamatellos. It discusses poetics, aesthetics, the transparency of reality, illumination, contemplation, consciousness, unity, the ineffable, the ephemeral, atemporality, eternity, perception, reflection, the universe; phew, all my favorite themes in one place!

I've happily got a hold of the beautifully succinct Metaphysics and the Cosmic Order, by Joseph Milne. It discusses ways of knowing, and how our attachment to fixed views of reality is starting to lose hold; a shift that is not a moment too soon.

I'm part way through Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel, a rich account of the lives of the women of Abstract Expressionism in New York; a fascinating period piece. It's a brick of a book that I'm lucky to have on indefinite loan from my local library, due to COVID-19 closures.

Finally, I'm looking forward to Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind, which has been waiting on my shelf for a while. I read its spine every time I walk past.

One day I will read some fiction again; surprise, I have a long list!

CP: How would you title your autobiography?

LL: It All Made Sense to Me

[With regard to my somewhat meandering path in life.]