Tonjaschja Adler

Tonjaschja Adler – week 1 – give a GIF as a Gift
Jun 16, 2022

It all started with a misunderstanding.
I read on the InstaProfile of Sasso Residency the invitation to apply for the 2022 to the artist residency in Ticino. I thought, “Oh, how extraordinary, they’re not asking for a classic portfolio, but for a GIF”. 
On reading the invitation more carefully, I realized that my enthusiasm or a tendency to dyslexia or my affinity for misunderstandings had turned a Gift into a GIF.

Misunderstandings are usually communicative disturbances resulting from the difference between 
what is meant by a sender and what is understood by the receiver. It occurs especially in conversations between experts and non-experts when they use the same terms, which, however, have different meanings in colloquial and technical language.

For artists, this phenomenon is a gift at the right moment, which we gladly accept, and which has already turned many works in a good direction. Nevertheless, I sent a GIF (video) as a Gift along with 
a print, a transcription of a digital image into an analogue version, and an edited Still from the video “Thinner Air”.

Ink Print / 2021

Transcription in biology is the process of copying a segment of DNA into RNA. We have all read about this in the past two years in connection with newly developed vaccines against Sars-Cov-2.

Transcription in music means writing or rewriting of a piece of music, either solo or ensemble, for another instrument or other instruments than which it was originally intended.

Transcriptions, overlaps and detecting misunderstanding, forcing chance and translating it as a force into one’s own work, that suits me and corresponds to my artistic practice.    

My time in the Artist Residency began when I moved into Spirito. The name of the space, which is a room that opens into another space, located directly under the roof. In good spirit, I will spend the 
next weeks together with the artists Barbara Collé & Uta Neumann and Susanne Weackerlin here 
at Sasso Residency. 

What connection can I find between the space, called Spirito, the large blue carpet with a pattern structure that lies within it and the stay in an artist residency with a sense of social cohesion and 
mutual support?

To be continued…

Tonjaschja Adler Website: https://tonjaschja-adler.allyou.net
Open Adler Archive on
Instagram: @Tonjashja

Sasso’s Golden Combinations – Story 3 – How we match together like Lime & Coconut or Watermelon & Chili
Jul 2, 2022

‘How lucky that the people of Sasso have put us together in this time slot of the artist residency.’ ‘How would the Sasso’s have chosen to put us together? It’s so spot on!’ 

These are statements that the four of us, Tonjaschja, Susan, Uta and Barbara have said to each other several times from the moment we walked into Sasso. And we repeated it while cooking together, drinking coffee in the ‘stone garden’, while working downstairs in our atelier or during on of our Brocki-tours.

‘What a fantastic match and how special that we click so well, and that we inspire each other in this way.’

Later, when I scrolled through this Sasso blog, I noticed that artists who were here before us, this year, and the years before, had these exact same thoughts. The above statements have also been literally thought, felt, lived (and communicated in this blog) by previous residents of Casa Sasso.

Still, we don’t know how the Sasso-people make their choices, how they put together such right combinations. But the outcome, the energy, the happiness, the beautiful full moments, the shared experiences, the continuous laughter that fills Sasso all the time, we know these to our very fiber.

Thank you dear Sasso community! Thank you for your care and lucky, golden hand.

With love,
Uta Neumann, Barbara Collé, Tonjaschja Adler and Susan Waeckerlin