Capturing Chaos and Order: A Conversation with Julian Wolkenstein on Maximalist Visuals and Galactically Buoyant Hamburgers
By Adam RivettJulian Wolkenstein's work is bold, vivid, and hard to describe, defeating the aims of the summary-desiring opening sentence you were likely hoping for. A playful and experimental creative personality, his work across film, photography and AR/VR tests the boundaries of the orthodox, the routine and the familiar. His work can be experienced at international art galleries and sporting stadiums alike — in campaigns for Allianz, the BBC, British Airways and Sony. He's also the newest member of The Pool Collective.
His own site sits in counterpoint to the often sombre and self-promotional nature of testimonials such as these, so given the charged surrealism of his work and a suspected potential for some irreverence within his answers, I sat down with him with a mind to avoid the banal and hopefully probe for a deeper insight into his work and practice — especially around those galactically buoyant hamburgers.
Adam Rivett: You started in photography, so describe what that early work was like. The medium's obviously very flexible, but you've moved in so many directions since then — did it feel like you were always searching for a more specific aesthetic from the start, or has it felt like a narrowed, focused pursuit instead, where impediments and distractions are removed?
Julian Wolkenstein: I love how images immerse you in their world — getting lost as you wander around, making meaning and feeling. It happens with good books, films, plays, games. Even conversations between people! I'm drawn to maximalist visuals: busy, layered, confusing, coherent — all of it. They reflect the overstimulating chaos and distractedness of the internet age.
My early work was limited by a tyro's ability. I was always going to approach things differently, but starting out in an era where prominent photographers were jostling around along with the emergence of the digital age certainly was a driving force. I'm also honoured to work with people who are way more talented than myself along the way
AR: Does your Echoism project feel prophetic in some way — the first thing kids do when they get a phone is still to do goofy shit with the camera, but Echoism captures and preserves this tendency, making art of it. I know the site is gone, but how does looking back on such a massive project feel?
JW: Echoism was a response to a previous series called Symmetrical Portraits, which received a lot of interest. Given, per Barthes' dictum, the author died ages ago, and recognising the evolving online technology, I wanted to "democratise" the process and explore how I could facilitate users having the experience I had when making the original series. It became apparent quickly that it was mainly about how they would make it their own, how they would interact with the tech, and what they would do with the App. It was fun to watch it being used around the world, going from time zone to time zone sequentially. It was my first natural move beyond regular photography.
As a rule, I'm drawn to art's problematic concepts and failures. Symmetrical portraits offer little insight into beauty; if it does, it's somewhat misleading, like phrenology. Yet it is equal truth that, on the surface, symmetrical people are considered more attractive. Much of my work sits on a knife's edge of two opposing ideas — fact and fiction, chaos and order. I'm interested in an object's state and how this is perceived visually and materially.
AR: I'm going to ask you a version of the most dreaded and corny question possible: where do you get your ideas from? The caveat to the obviousness of this question is that you can only answer the question by talking about Burger Herder, your VR Project, which places you inside a hamburger as if it were an inescapable cavern. How did you find your way to a work like that?
JW: If you think of a cinema as a sensory deprivation chamber where everything is controlled, VR is that, but next level. Physically, you are essentially in a sphere instead of looking at a 2D screen. 3D meshes are at base level 2D planes, which are just 1D points in space. Solidity is inferred, but everything is just surface like you wrapped a photo around a form in space. As you navigate around a 3D space, you can go through things — it's called "clipping", so it felt right to be inside a Plato-type cave. Conceptually, food is something we experience with multiple senses. It's somewhat visceral. We take photos; it's a representation. A driver of desire. This is not a burger. The intention is to blur reality and simulation.
Unreal engine, the program where this was built, is a "game engine", so it had to end up as a game. Thus Burger Herding. Art galleries have tended towards interactive work as it makes for a better audience experience. Gamification is a useful way to enhance an experience.
AR: How does something like the "Big Hits" campaign for the Allianz Wonderwall come about? Do they have an idea they need made flesh, or is it more someone looking for your technical nous to bring the concept alive?
JW: This is the "make flesh" side of the work, a "go make something" type of project, which is my favourite. The client most definitely had the format and keywords to work around, but I was tasked with visualising it and bringing it to life. I then embarked upon exploring different visual techniques that suited the narrative. Projects like these can be like making a "Houdini Reel". To explain, Houdini is a 3D software program. So, as I got started, I was conscious of not just using a technique for technique's sake; there had to be there for a narrative reason. But yes… it's still a Houdini Reel!
Along the way, there are various stakeholder inputs to consider and work with, impacting the final work. But I'm used to working collaboratively to get the best results. It's a meditative process for me — I'm entirely in the moment with the thing I'm working on. There are dramatic highs and lows when it comes to working and not working, which keeps it interesting and fun for me. Plus, I'm prepared to say it's not quite right yet and fix it. It's all iterative. There's not much point in doing a project like this unless I'm happy with it
AR: One work I'm very fond of is "By The Harbour", which, as you mention on your site, was inspired by time spent walking around Sydney Harbour, particularly Rushcutters Bay. What one might call "personal inspiration" is harder to source in your work — some artists are all self, while your work is more evasive, playful, and at times ironic. How do you see "yourself" in the work, to put it in an old-fashioned way?
JW: Everything I do is super personal; just don't tell anyone that! Most of the photo series are thoughts, reflections of ideas or conversations dealing with philosophy, cultural theory or pop culture — at least in my little sphere. Added to this is that 3D is such a creatively demanding process that it develops like printing a black and white photo, to use an old metaphor, over time, and with this, it ends up reflecting what I'm thinking about at the time, which is a collage of visual ideas, and in this case, one that responded to an emotional feeling about the place.
AR: While I'm asking old-fashioned questions, I wanted to ask you about meaning and artistic vision in your work — a lot of it functions as logical inversions, unexpected arrangements, juxtapositions, etc. The "Sorta Moribana" photographic sequence from 2018 or the famous Pony Pin-Ups are elegant examples of what I'm talking about — "alternate sculptural beauty", to borrow your own words. Do you see yourself as pursuing a vision that deliberately seeks to upend and recontextualise, or does this sort of work feel like an organic reaction to a world that's already upended?
JW: Both these projects were collaborations. The Ponies were with Micah Walker, and Sorta Moribana was with Matt Keon. Yet they ended up somewhere different from the original conversations, and that's at the heart of working collaboratively with others
AR: Tell me more about Touch Liminal. In your words, it's a "web-based Augmented Reality weblink, dimensions variable, location variable". It was free to anyone with an enabled device. The images and description of the work on your site can describe it better than anyone else, but what I'm most curious about is the work's implementation — was it located and accessible to people predominantly in gallery spaces, or was it meant to be "useable" in domestic locations too? Do you see that kind of AR/VR as necessarily bound to particular art spaces or moving into permanent everyday spaces, too?
JW: It was purposely made for an exhibition around the theme of Touch. Web AR isn't locked into downloading an App — thus, it's more usable. Way less friction to start! Still, it only exists if you turn it on. It's also slippery in terms of its geolocating, which is way more interesting in an art sense as I'm attracted to the concept of "failure" as an art form. Obviously, it's not appropriate if we're discussing it in a commercial sense! But yes, the AR could work anywhere. But without the context of the theme, the work would make less sense. AR already is and will become even more prominent as the tech matures. It'll grow in two ways — functional, where its purpose is self-evident and more relevant for art and entertainment, where, like most things, it's more interesting in the context of an idea.
AR: I often ask other visual artists about influences, but it's usually a namechecking occasion — a few old masters, some new exciting voices. I'm keen to hear the same thing from you (so please give us names to chase!), but given your work's intersection with developing technology, is there another way to frame it? Are there new devices or new tech that excite you in the same way as a designer or filmmaker does?
JW: There's a long list of people and things that have had a profound effect on me — off the top of my head: Matt Dryhurst and Holly Herndon, Quentin Deronzier, Jean Baudrillard, baseretardgang, the concept of the Panopticon, Michel Foucault, fashion label "The Injury", Aiden Zamiri, Joseph Beuys, Samuel Beckett, Felix Gonzalez Torres, George Orwell, the Museum of Everything, Mathew Barney, Hito Steyerl, and Miyazaki.
And, of course, no conversation like this is complete without mentioning AI. As another creative tool, it's fascinating and unique when used in specific ways. For motion, I'm very enamoured with the surreal horrors we are seeing right now, but I hope it's used to solve problems in the world rather than just make pretty pictures.
Jean Baudrillard (may or may not have something to do with all this).
Image © Matthew Collings, 2015AR: Given your extensive work with a wide range of clients and benefactors, I'm curious what the exchange of ideas is like. Your advertising work is often replete with quite surreal or even comically grotesque imagery — what kind of permission do you have to cut loose, and how open to some of your wilder notions are agencies?
JW: I love the mental overload and stimulus of building on an initial brief. I start from a very expansive viewpoint and then narrow that down. It's not a particularly linear workflow. There's always an interdependence in creative endeavours, so I work well collaboratively. My favourite thing is to have exploratory conversations with creatives to build on a concept. These open chats can go anywhere, and there is space for wrong thinking. That one sentence, which might be a terrible idea, could trigger something in someone else that brings a new perspective. Often, this is not the case as the briefs are signed off, but you know it's fun when it happens.
All works © Julian Wolkenstein (unless otherwise stated)
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