Stefan J Schaffeld
Ostrhauderfehn, Lower Saxony
Stefan J Schaffeld is a Dutch visual artist with a BA Fine Art (UCA) and MA Intercultural Practices (CSM).
MessageStefan J. Schaffeld, Dutch, currently living in Northern Germany, is a freelance visual artist, practice-oriented researcher, and professional art therapist. He holds a BA in Fine Arts (UCA, UK) and certified vocational training in expressive art therapy (IHK, Switzerland). He follows a MA in Intercultural Practices with Central Saint Martins (UAL, UK)
His biography is interwoven with relocations and living abroad for many years. Beyond linguistic communication, immersive sensitivity to the host culture is essential to him. This informs his work (artistic, art-therapeutic, and simply human) as an empathic encounter with all people.
His primary interest resides in experiencing and exploring affective encounters through art-based interactions as an empathic and critical social practice of care. In his collaborative works and installations, he explores how these encounters are mediated by our social and cultural expectations and how an attitude of respect can support participatory and emancipatory interactions. He explores the preverbal understanding of lived spatial experiences, including moments of wonder and resonance between human and non-human actions. Processes of physical transformation enable a material perspective on in-between spaces.
Education (art-related)
2024: MA Intercultural Practices CSM (UAL), UK
2021: BA Fine Art, University for the Creative Arts (UCA), UK
2020: Diploma in Expressive Art Therapy (Mal- und Gestaltungstherapie IHK)), Institut fuer Humanistische Kunsttherapie (IHK), Switzerland
Statement
Dwelling - affective concentration
My approach in exploring and making art relates to methods of concentration and meditation. It is a silent absorption in a process that doesn’t claim to be pretentious or representational. The objects created are not precious though the process and experience are.
My fingers are moving and rotating across a surface. I want to touch - to get close and to become one with the immediate space around me. Paper as my preferred material supports a responsive directness onto which I and my collaborators, the pen or charcoal stick, can experience the ‘touch-ness’. We are taking a walk to explore the surfaces that are offered to us. It is a relational, a social process of attuned movements of my body with materials that bring forth interwoven lines and images. It is also a process that requires my attention and a heightened sensitivity to my body movement. A conversation between my moving acts and the material’s responsiveness evolves where I am co-responsible for the walk we take. It is a process of intensity, and through my durational efforts, I become aware of my feelings and the physicality of the materials and my body. The making is often a workout demanding the need for negotiation for a resolution. At times, things stand in the way; something cannot be done as intended or planned. Moments of disruption or failure may lead to frustration or dignity. These are magic encounters of wonder and moments of aesthetic experience and empathic correspondence.
In my practice, I am exploring the dynamic field of vibrating encounters. Through my acting and making, I cross and blur boundaries where things and I join in negotiating the in-between-ness. Here, a potential space opens up when I feel attuned to my environment and its materials. In that space, an exchange of affect and effect may occur, informing my making and works. Making is a constant dialogue with materiality and moments of serendipity. Touching the immediacy of materials and touching the ground that supports me is a visceral and kinaesthetic experience of making sense of the environment in a non-verbal way.
I am throwing myself into the making, the evolving picture as a process of becoming through creation. Throwing myself means to shift my perception and to experience the otherness of myself. I reach out and touch the limits of materials and space.
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