mutations 3 / european month of photography
DESCRIPTION
Third ( and last catalogue ) of the Mutations series.TRANSCRIPT
MUtAtIONs IIIp U b L I c I M A G e s — p r I V A t e V I e w s
EurOPEaN MONTh OF photoGrAphY 2010 / 2011
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MUtAtIONs IIIpUbLIc IMAGes — prIVAte VIews
PuBLIShEr:
café-crème asblfor european Month of photographywww.europeanmonthofphotography.net
CaTaLOguE MaNagEMENT:
café-crème asblpierre stiwer / paul di Felice2 rue alphonse MunchenL-2172 Luxembourg
graPhIC dESIgNEr:
clément bec-Karkamazwww.cbk-lab.com
Photographs © The artistsTexts © The authors
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permissionin writing from the publisher.
First edition 2010isbn 978-99959-674-0-6
cUrAtors' stAteMeNt
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sIMoN bAUeraMBIVaLENT aMBIENCES
10hUbert bLANZpublic tracks
14ANDers bojeN & KrIstoFFer ØrUMTOPOgraPhIES OF ThE INSIgNIFICaNT
18beNjAMIN cADoN & eweN chArDroNNetBaNgaLOrE: SuBjECTIVE CarTOgraPhY
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MIcheLe cerA & FeDerIco coVreITaLY: a VISuaL arChIVE / dOCuMENTarYPLaTFOrM
26eDMUND cLArKguaNTaNaMO: IF ThE LIghT gOES OuT
30rob horNstrA & ArNoLD VANbrUGGeNThE SOChI PrOjECT: ON ThE OThEr SIdE OF ThE MOuNTaINS
34YVeLINe LoIseUr & bUreAU L’IMprIMANteLa VIE MaTérIELLE /MaTErIaL LIFE
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pAULA MUhrFEMaLES uNdEr TENSION
42sUsANNe wehrPErSONaL-VIEWS
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pArtNers
50AcKNowLeDGMeNts
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MUtAtIONs III
TaBLE OF CONTENTS
MUtAtIONs IIIVENuES
MAcro testaccio, rome23.09.2010 > 24.10.2010
berlinische Galerie, berlin15.10.2010 > 28.02.2011
hopkirk, chillout & culture bar, bratislava03.11.2010 > 28.11.2010
Maison européenne de la photographie, paris10.11.2010 > 30.01.2011
MUsA Museum auf Abruf, Vienna29.10.2010 > 08.01.2011
carré rotondes, Luxembourg26.04.2011 > 10.06.2011
EXHIbItION pREsENtEd ThaNKS TO ThE SIgNIFICaNT PaTrONagE OF:
Mr Gianni Alemanno Mayor of rome
Mr bertrand DelanoëMayor of Paris
Mr Andrej ĎurkovskýMayor of Bratislava
Mr Michael häuplMayor and governor of Vienna
Mr paul helminger Mayor of the City of Luxembourg
Mr Klaus wowereitgoverning Mayor of the City of Berlin
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CURAtORs' stAtEMENt
In the context of the European Month of Photography fi rst held in 2004 and which now includes festivals in Paris, Berlin, Bratislava, Luxembourg, Moscow, rome and Vienna, it was both legitimate and necessary to look col-lectively at the profound changes afoot in the world, and in particular those taking place in the fi eld of contemporary images. This was the motivation behind the 2006 exhibition entitled 'Mutations I", an exhibition focusing on techno-logical and artistic changes in the area of photography.The second edition of the exhibition project, 'Mutations II', aimed at pursuing this line of thought on the subject of video, this time exploring the productive relationships that have developed between fi xed and moving images and providing a sense of where contemporary art stands in Europe today.
MUtAtIONs IIIPuBLIC IMagES — PrIVaTE VIEWS
In a context where all means of communication and artis-tic media are affected by globalization and digital conver-gence, the era of "post-medium" we are entering is a pe-riod characterized by the exploration of hybrid techno logy, in which artists combine and recombine photography and video with a wide variety of other materials. Whereas in the 1980s we saw photography pushed to new heights of popularity by impressively large high quality prints, we cannot always speak of photography today but rather of images. Pictures have become mass products and every-body puts their personal shots on Facebook, Twitter or other platforms and personal blogs. Everyday shots have become commonplace in art and the issue is no longer one of æsthetic excellence but of weaving networks of signifi cance. By putting enough images of yourself or your neighbourhood on the net, by giving a true or staged insight into your own life or that of others, you can build a network of participants that will eventually produce more images and address topics of social and political importance. Naturally the use of images today goes well beyond our own private sphere. Found or shared images become a medium of social concerns by allowing artists to construct new geographical, political or social reali-ties. artists or non-artists redefi ne the use of the image in post-modern society where the line between private issues and public images is increasingly blurred when the individual becomes an element of group dynamics.The people behind 'Mutations III' have thus chosen to showcase European artists who share a taste for experi-menting with new forms of expression regarding the net and its plethora of pictures and are aware of these new approaches to photography.
images. This was the motivation behind the 2006 exhibition entitled 'Mutations I", an exhibition focusing on techno-logical and artistic changes in the area of photography.
Berlin, Bratislava, Luxembourg, Moscow, rome and Vienna, it was both legitimate and necessary to look col-lectively at the profound changes afoot in the world, and in particular those taking place in the fi eld of contemporary
In the context of the European Month of Photography fi rst held in 2004 and which now includes festivals in Paris,
MUtAtIONs IIIPuBLIC IMagES —
have developed between fi xed and moving images and providing a sense of where contemporary art stands in
logical and artistic changes in the area of photography.The second edition of the exhibition project, 'Mutations II', aimed at pursuing this line of thought on the subject of video, this time exploring the productive relationships that have developed between fi xed and moving images and
images. This was the motivation behind the 2006 exhibition entitled 'Mutations I", an exhibition focusing on techno-logical and artistic changes in the area of photography.
lectively at the profound changes afoot in the world, and in particular those taking place in the fi eld of contemporary images. This was the motivation behind the 2006 exhibition
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For many things on the Web, a single “click” suffices to transform even the private sphere into a privacy-ferry. Thus emerge serv(er)ed realities, realities enriched with the "data of others" and re-staged. The leaked image as a practice of appropriation, as a building block for con-structed and consumable realities, is also the point of de-parture for a potential démontage through montage.
The pictorial support that is the living room once more serves as the exemplary framework for a simulation of the private within the public, as a cabinet of one’s own curiosities that sustains the virtual appropriation of real presences. Shifts of perspective and changes of context produce re-compositions of proprietary spaces, trans-forming the private space as a stage into a "possible space of public interest." Multiple encodings on several levels and a variety of possible approaches enable nuan-ced readings — people once again go on a journey to see pictures.
All interpretations are true — and no interpretation is final.
Oscar Wilde
The initial impression may be deceptive. It is not the to-tal picture by itself as we grasp it immediately, but only the arrangement of "secondary plots," "marginal pheno mena," etc., dissolving into sub-images and recognizable in parts as mise-en-scène, that allows for a different view of things. From this point on, the beholder determines the way he approaches something, the detail that is visible.
Today’s wealth of possibilities and forms of representa-tion that ostensibly offer “visual support” create the danger that we lose sight of the image as such, that gaps are closed that should be the preserve of the beholder’s imagination.
sIMON bAUERaMBIVaLENT aMBIENCES
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Isn’t a picture that isn’t sharp often just what we need?
Wittgenstein
New technologies of photographic recording produce high-resolution imagery, but this doesn’t make the cus-tomary print formats any larger; the maximum size of a newspaper spread is in most cases still determined by the span of a pair of shirtsleeves.
But if we consider software such as ‘google Earth’ or ‘Microsoft Maps,’ which handle high-resolution imagery and maps on the Web, opportunities emerge that invite us to experiment online with new formats of representation.
Appearance and disunion are synonymous.
goethe
Moments of ambivalence become apparent once we take a closer look at details—or conversely, depending on the point of departure, with sufficient distance—and perhaps the interpretation of insights and outlooks may be advan-tageous, too, as may be “losing oneself in the image.” In an expanded form, the selection of the distance from which we look may enable us, for example, to process informa-tion, depict time, or disrupt widespread habits of seeing by inserting levels of sharpness and its absence.
Simon Bauer Translation: Gerrit Jackson
The Frame of Possibility (Im Rahmen des Möglichen)
Internet project, 2008
VIsIt the project websIte http://ambivalente-ambiente.exhibid.net 11
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simon bauer
born 1974 in Linz, austria lives in Linz
Simon Bauer studied experimental vi-sual design at the University for Art and Industrial Design, Linz, between 1995 and 2002. He graduated with the-sis work on 'vrGallery' – Interactive Gallery – Avatars – Multiuser.
He has worked at the Art & Tek Insti-tute Linz since 2002 and at the Univer-sity for Art and Industrial Design, Linz, Department of Graphic Design and Photography and Department of Me-dia Technology and Education, since 2005.
WEBSITE
www.plan9.at
SELECTEd PrOjECTS
2009
berufsBILDER, interactive installa-tion/ photography, career expo, Wels
ArchDATA – HRID – High Resolution Information Design, installation / photography, trade fair, ried
2008
Fußball. Geschichten und Geschichte, video work, Schlossmuseum Linz
2006-2008
EXHIBID, commissioned feasibility analysis for 'European Capital of Culture', Linz
2006
Sounding Sheet of Music, installation, albertina Wien, Vienna
2005
Quarry 3D, interactive installation, Technisches Museum Wien, Vienna
ThIS PagE
LEFT
Ambivalent Ambiences (Ambivalente Ambiente) website, 2010
ThIS PagE
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border-crossing 2010
LEFT PagE
border disagreement: attached / detached 2009
Moving Picture (Umzugsbild / Bildumzug) 2009
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HUbERt blANzpublic tracks
"Write something…" Facebook invites me to begin a conversation with a new friend. "What’s on your mind?" I scroll through the photos of the last 27 events and non-events of my new friend. "Write a comment…", I am in-vited again, while in the meantime I skim the albums of her friends‘ friends. "I like this", I comment and am now her friend, one of 351. "We have so many friends online that we need a new word for the real ones" recently de-clared an advertisement for a german daily newspaper in order to draw attention to the increasing presence of on-line editions compared to print media—just like our online friends are now eclipsing our real ones?
With his photography and animation project public tracks, hubert Blanz travels the labyrinthine paths of such friends, their friends’ friends, and their photo albums. public tracks are visualizations of social networks, ins-pired by debates about inflated and superficial friend-ships, about the communicative habits of the Facebook generation and their casual interactions in the public and private sphere, their user profiles, forms of self-presen-tation and exhibitionism.
Who knows whom? Facebook creates a personal friend wheel for you. hubert Blanz goes further: proceeding at first statistically like the friend wheel, he then chose as an example from 500 Million Facebook users the account of a particularly well-connected and active user (Eric Themel: austrian, 33 years old and a professional snowboarder, currently 1483 friends), viewed his friendships and con-nected with his friends’ friends. The public tracks are honest, however, and they call the social capital of these quantity-driven friendships into question: friends be-come letters, lines, purely graphic elements and are ulti-mately reduced to mere data, lost in the abyss of the net.
Photographs are reduced to contours, surfaces and co-lors which no longer reference any concrete event, just as the letters no longer characterize the friends — each leaves his trace in the public domain, each (if only as one of 500 million) makes his media appearance, up until now a privilege reserved only for stars or individuals with pro-fessions in the public eye. hubert Blanz thus translates the immense range of these kinds of communicative fo-rums into thickly abstract images, networks saturated with interchangeable photo fragments. Countless dots, devoid of meaning and relegated to the distance, evoke associations with the universe, star clusters and gala xies and thus invoke Facebook’s claim to globality, a claim which their Friend Wheel also suggests in the image of a globe lined with citizens of the world.
hubert Blanz: “From the mass of photos of the profiled user and from the structure of his network of acquain-tances, I attempt to create a kind of “virtual portrait” of this person. The size of the network and the connections within the circle of friends or acquaintances are decisive factors and accordingly determine the form.” Whether one’s social capital rises with the number of friends or indeed depends on a more intensive form of relationship building—write something…74 people like this.
Ruth Horak Translation: Annie Falk
VIsIt the project websIte www.blanz.net/emop
Write something…
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public tracks 07 (+ detail)
2010C-print, diasec on dibond
147 × 189 cm
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public tracks 04 2010C-print, diasec on dibond 147 × 189 cm
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public tracks 08 2010C-print, diasec on dibond 147 × 189 cm
hubert blanz
born 1969 in hindelang, germany lives in Vienna.
1993-99
University of Applied Arts, Vienna
WEBSITE
www.blanz.net
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ExhIBI TIONS/PrOjECTS
(SELECTION)
2010
Brave New World, austrian Cultural Forum London
Blickwechsel — Österreichische Fotografie heute, WestLicht. Showplace for Photography, Vienna
New Frontiers — Experimental Tendencies in Architecture, design Factory, Bratislava
The Art of Speculation, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg
2009
Kardinal-König-Kunstpreis, art room St. Virgil, Salzburg
Contemporary Photography. New Positions from Austria, Carinthian Museum of Modern art, Klagenfurt
X-Plantation, MOMENTuM gallery, Vienna (solo)
Spotlight, Museum der Moderne Salzburg
2008
zeitraumzeit, Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna
Dialog mit Wien II / Dialogos con Viena II, Centro de Extensión La FaCTOrIa, Santiago de Chile
2007
Un Space, MaK depot of Contem-porary art gefechtsturm, arenbergpark, Vienna
North-West By South-East, 'Mala Stanica' National gallery of Macedonia, Skopje
Fresh Trips, Festival of contempo-rary art aspects, Kunstraum Innsbruck
21 Positions, austrian Cultural Forum, New York
Spatial Visions, Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna
2006
Simultan, Museum der Moderne Salzburg
2005
Level Five, O.K spectral, O.K Center for Contemporary art, Linz (solo)
Spaciously, austrian Cultural Forum, Warsaw
2004
Blanzscape, Lindner gallery, Vienna (solo)
2003
Junge Wiener Kunst, Storms gallery, Munich
Conflicts/Resolution, Essl Museum — Contemporary art, Klosterneuburg
Geospaces, Projektraum, Kunstraum Innsbruck (solo)
Artists from Galerie Lindner, Vienna, Sonja roesch gallery, houston
Topographies of the Insignificant is a description of ultra-local spaces in six different cities across Europe, six simi-lar places with no apparent characteristics or hi story: a section of pavement, with its disposed cigarette butts, coffee spills, chewing gum and tiny weeds, is explored as a complex microcosm of hidden information and unchart-ed territory. The project is envisioned as a contemporary version of daniel Spoerri’s An Anecdoted Topography of Chance (an associative mapping of objects lying at ran-dom on the table in the artist’s hotel room) set in the glo-balized and media-saturated world of 2010. Topographies of the Insignificant will connect micro-topographies of rome, Berlin, Vienna, Bratislava, Paris, and Luxembourg.
The project takes the form of a website with an “infinitely” zoomable map of the world. Extra detailed zones are add-ed, enabling the user to zoom down to a micro-level and see actual cracks of the pavement as if they were great valleys or distant galaxies. The extremely detailed map of six very limited locations is in close proximity to the physical show where the project is presented. This gives users the opportunity to further explore the locations on-site and add their own insignificant stories.
Topographies of the Insignificant is based on a collabora-tive writing process taking place online with a selected group of writers, artists, architects, and others with an interest in urbanity. New points on the maps and texts are collectively produced and all texts are open for editing or expansion by other members of the group. This organic and nonlinear process blurs the boundaries of ownership between the participants and encourages many connec-tions between the different points on the map.
Scattered across each of the locations, a vast number of clickable points is located. Each clickable point on the map opens up a text window featuring fictional or factual information about this specific point, and links to other points and texts. Multiple narratives weave in and out of each other and researched facts about found objects and their history mix freely with fictional accounts and imagined micro-topographies. Through such meticulous mapping, the seemingly insignificant objects and places are linked, not only to each other, but to historical, so-cial and political events, rendering them anything but insignificant.
By means of a willful misunderstanding, the project turns apparently familiar city pavements into a mixture of space-operatic visions of the future and histories of the past. The online photographic and narrative portrayal on the website is supplemented by interventions and al-terations on the physical sites in each of the cities, further blurring the boundaries of fact and fiction. Through col-lective and deliberate misunderstanding, over-interpre-tation and fictional connections between the six physical sites, the project reflects on the possibility of radically rethinking the city from the bottom up.
Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum
VIsIt the project websIte www.insignificant-topographies.net
ANdERs bOjEN & KRIstOffER ØRUMTOPOgraPhIES OF ThE INSIgNIFICaNTa SITE-SPECIFIC aNd COLLaBOraTIVE INTErNET PrOjECT
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Screenshots from Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010
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Screenshot from Topographies of the Insignificant Vienna, 2010
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Anders bojen & Kristoffer Ørum
born 1976 / 1975 in Copenhagen live and work in Copenhagen
Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum, who studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenha-gen, between 1999 and 2006 and at Goldsmiths College, University of London, between 2003 and 2004, have collaborated on nu-merous projects since 2002, in-cluding video, sculpture, internet and performance works. Their projects examine the field bet-ween popular culture and alter-native realities produced by sci-ence and media.
Inspired by the absurd and irra-tional discipline of ’pataphysics (invented by the Surrealist writer Alfred Jarry), they see science as a place where the fictional and factual become indistinguishable and where irrational and mystical knowledge is produced. By ex-ploring complex microcosms un-earthed in ordinary, everyday products and stereotypical me-dia personæ, they create a fan-tastic new history for the familiar.
WEBSITE
www.anders-kristoffer.dk
SELECTEd ExhIBITIONS
2010
File, SESI' Cultural Centre, São Paulo Game Continent, The aarhus art Building, aarhus Adventures in Immediate Unreality, Beaver Projects, Copenhagen
2009
Kurs, Museum of Contemporary art, roskilde Petra rinck gallery, düsseldorf Sculpture by the Sea, arOS, aarhus Radiant Copenhagen, Internet project
2008
Ultrasonic International III, Mark Moore gallery, Los angeles Tenderpix, Tender Pixel gallery, London Imagined Futures, Ssamzie Space, Seoul
2007
The Pattern in Us All, Copenhagen university The end of the universe as we know it?, solo show, galerie Mikael andersen, Copenhagen
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bENjAMIN CAdON & EWEN CHARdRONNEtBaNgaLOrE: SuBjECTIVE CarTOgraPhY
Metamap.fr is an on-line cartographic tool that makes it possible to create subjective maps by adding multime-dia content: photos, videos, sounds, texts, links, location points and paths. It is then possible to consult this data using a transverse geographical or thematic approach.
In the context of the Metamap project carried out in Bangalore1, we’re making a series of subjective maps to explore the complexity of the world of communication technology and the way it can influence our behaviour and sensations. here are some of the key ideas behind ‘Bangalore: Subjective Cartography’.
There are many ways of talking about technology and its ef-fects on human society. In the "culture of disenchantment"2 upon which industrial society is founded, adopting a ratio-nal attitude implies rejecting the principles that prevail in traditional myths, whether they be linked to a "magical" approach to unexplained phenomena, an alchemistic or energetic approach to the body, a spiritual and cosmologi-cal singularity, or the power of symbols in relationships between people and their movements in the terrestrial sphere. however we can observe that the explosion of information and communication technologies and their consequences in terms of the multiplication of artificial electromagnetic waves can cause changes to occur in the psychological activities and symbolic imaginations of the people who use them.
The endless debate about whether or not to implement a "precaution principle" relating to the health effects of these waves is symptomatic of a rationalist approach that implies seeking scientific validation before any political decision is made, instead of trying to move forward in harmony with science using a more subjective approach. age-old traditions based on subjective methods, where the starting point is a mental conception that raises a
1 The project is the continuation of a workshop held between 19/11/09 and 05/12/09 at the Center for Experimental Media arts at the Srishti School of art, design and Technology in Bangalore (India)
2 Max Weber, Le savant et le politique, 10/18, 2002
VIsIt the project websIte http://bangalore.metamap.fr
certain metaphysical principle from which it makes de-ductions, have made it possible to develop empirical knowledge concerning the effects of the environment on our bodies. In 1907 henri Bergson wrote in L’évolution créatrice3: "What is visible and tangible in things repre-sents our possible action upon them". In this sense, then, anything that enriches our perceptions with a view to act-ing upon reality is worthy of our attention - even if this means using subjective methods whose results are not considered to constitute proof. Subjective detection, when it is used systematically and in parallel with the results of technical measurements, leads to areas of knowledge that could not be attained via theoretical scientific explo-ration alone.
globalization has accentuated the uniformization of hu-man relations and behaviours in urban space (from the way we relate to food to our ideas and ways of life). The new infrastructures of communication technologies, ar-tificial electromagnetic waves, noise and pollution pro-duced by industry and human activities in general, thus become potential subjects for investigations into the most contemporary forms of psycho-social urban conditioning. The post-war sociologist henri Lefebvre4 accorded con-siderable importance to art, which he approached not as something autonomous but as the means to an aesthetic experience capable of demonstrating the unfounded na-ture of conventional daily ways of living. he considered the city to be at the heart of an aesthetic insurrection against the everyday. human beings, he believed, have anthro-pological social needs that are neglected by theoretical approaches to the city, and in particular urban planning theories. The need for imagination is ignored by urban design, and imagination is thus absent from the facilities it produces.
The artistic work we have undertaken in India also uses a method that is empirical and autonomous. We use all the
3 henri Bergson, L'évolution créatrice, PuF, 19984 henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne, L'arche, 1997
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Screenshots from Bangalore: Subjective Cartography
Internet project, 2009-2010
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arts and technologies that enable us to define subjective maps of the city which highlight the transformations of the psycho-social urban framework, confirming and sup-porting, via intuitive methods, the various points of view that motivated our inquiry. We build our subjective maps by combining different methods: photography, film, and sound recording; we use do-it-yourself tools and sensors to explore the visible and invisible electromagnetic city; we make measurements by taking water from street vendors and performing dIY biological analysis (with webcams made into microscopes); we adopt psychogeographical approaches in exploring territory, defined as the study of "the precise effects of the geographical environment, consciously developed or not, acting directly upon the emotional behaviour of individuals"5; we produce expres-sions of personal subjectivity; and we have meetings with experts and witnesses. For example we have collected testimonials from people who complain about the fact that telephone masts have been erected near their homes. We have also met scientists from the National Centre for Biological Sciences who talked about the growing aware-ness of the negative influence of electromagnetic fields caused by mobile telephones (more than 10 telecom com-panies and as many transmitters) on the meditation of ancient sages. These ancient practices and this ancient knowledge are threatened by the ever more rapid deploy-ment of electromagnetic technologies. all these elements have gradually enlightened our project.
Technologies that are designed to make communication more comfortable not only reflect a new social relation-ship between people, entirely mediated by publicity ima-ges that make the possession of these objects into a necessary condition for well-being; they also potentially suppress ancestral mediations thanks to which space be-came visible and tangible. We must preserve this ability to act upon things.
5 Définitions, Internationale Situationniste n°1, 1958
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Microbial streetsby Neha Bat for Bangalore:
Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010
Donate your eyesExtract from Bangalore:
Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010
Preparing Bakrid festival of sacrificeExtract from Bangalore:
Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010
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DIY electrictyExtract from Bangalore:
Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010
Don't use GSM in public transportsExtract from Bangalore:
Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010
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benjamin cadon is a media artist and tech nical manager for Labomedia, an in-dependant media lab in Orléans, France. Through this NGO, Benjamin Cadon di-rects several artistic, technical and social projects linked to geolocation : 'Imagi-nary landscape' with Sylvie Ungauer, 'mapping the laboratoryplanet' with Bureau d'Études and more recently 'MeTaMap'. He has also been active in several art organisations and develops audio-visual performances and installa-tions using open-source real-time soft-ware and electronic devices.
WEBSITES
www.labomedia.org www.01xy.fr
ewen chardronnet is a French artist li-ving in Paris. For the last 10 years he has been active in developing art works fo-cusing on the cultural, social and envi-ronmental impacts of information sys-tems, and has been engaged in numerous collaborative works such as the Associa-tion of Autonomous Astronauts, Makro-lab, Acoustic Space Lab, World-Informa-tion.Org, the Spectral Investigations Collective and other collective phantoms. His recent works include various perfor-mances, electromagnetic waves related artworks and the artist-led journal 'The Laboratory Planet'. He has been involved in several new media subjective mapping projects and in 2009 was the general cu-rator of 'Futur en Seine', a large-scale digital city festival of the Paris region. As an author he has directed or contributed to several books and publications.
WEBSITE
www.semaphore.blogs.com
the web application metamap.fr is develo ped by labomedia.org in orléans (fr) http://bangalore.metamap.fr project lead by Ewen Chardronnet (fr) and Benjamin Cadon (fr) in collaboration with the artists of the spectral Investigations collective: alexander romer (de), Loreto Martinez Troncoso (es), helène Chaudeau (fr), gepeto girault (fr). the students of bangalore srishti school of Art, Design and technology: Neha Bhat, Saumitra Shrikant Chandratreya, alisha Panjwani, Namrata Mehta, ankitha Chandrakanth uchil, Sunayana Shankar, Malovika Banerjee, Sowmya Swaminathan, Saema husain, gautam Vishwanath, Mimansa Sahay, aliya Pabani, Spriha Chokhani, rashmi Sirkar, gourav Madhogaria, Sayantoni Palchoudhuri, Meghma Mitra. the faculty advisors of bangalore srishti school of Art, Design and technology: Vasanthi dass, ayisha abraham, Meena Vari. curating and coordination by Eve Lemesle (fr) and Meena Vari (in) produced by Labomedia (Orleans) with Srishti (Bangalore) with the support of region Centre and the alliance Francaise of Bangalore.
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MICHElE CERA & fEdERICO COvREITaLY: a VISuaL arChIVE / dOCuMENTarYPLaTFOrM
Every one of us has a personal geography which, through the way we look at things, allows for the perception of the physical world we live in. Landscape exists only through our own experience. Perception of the external world oc-curs by selecting, consciously or unconsciously, the in-formation to be elaborated through a cultural and visual map belonging to each one of us and transformed through our personal language of symbols. Each landscape is therefore unique and has a character which can be un-derstood only through experience, comparison, analysis, and representation.
Can we consider the contemporary landscape an emerg-ing phenomenon in which the influences of globalization relate to our lived experience?
Over the past few decades, we have been witnessing transformations of the world in which social, political, technological and economic issues are active agents dis-solving sedimented concepts. The distinction between urban and rural and the idea of border, along with phe-nomena of human and natural alterations, are no longer connected to national identity. In the 21st century, land-scape is an emerging form determined by globalization, conflicts, and environmental changes. global elements may be recognized anywhere in the world – elements whose continuous forms of dispersion and concentration redefine geographies and territories, deeply altering their natures.
research and investigations are conducted on these phe-nomena, permitting the proposal of more general hypo-theses and considerations:
• do forms of reading and representation capable of as-similating changes in society and the physical changes in contemporary cities exist?
• What is the Italian geographical identity of today?
vIsIt tHE pROjECt WEbsItE www.documentaryplatform.com
• Can photography represent social landscape and ― fol-lowing this ― those who live in it?
• Is it possible to interpret changes in terms of conflicts and differences interposing multiple identities, inter-culturality, multiethnic society and reinforcement of traditions?
DocumentaryPlatform is a project originating from the in-tent to observe what is happening in contemporary Italy at this historic moment. The reflections of various investiga-tions conducted by photographers of the Italian territory and society are gathered together via the construction of a visual archive
documentary is the language of choice. It is an approach best suited for the study of contemporaneity and its criti-calities while attempting to define sets, series and rela-tionships within itself (M. Foucault).
Through common and significant themes, it will be pos-sible to construct series of series in which “visual corres-pondence” allows for the articulation of characteristics and the activation of reflections on a territory as struc-tured and complex as the Italian one.
Constructing “visual correspondences” allows for the observation, within a comprehensive scheme, of how each context has been crossed over time by different settlement models, how a geographic region has been interpreted and reused by different social forms, how in-dustrial development has contributed to the alteration of territory, and how the tourism industry has become the driving engine of future scenarios.
Photography, as an observer of transformations and through its widespread practice of appropriation, may play an ethical and even political role in learning how to look at contemporary society.
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Screenshots from DocumentaryPlatform
Website, 2010
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Fabio barileExtract from Among
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Domingo MilellaExtract from Paesaggi
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Gabriele rossiExtract from Litorale
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Michele cera
born 1973, degree and PhD in Town Planning.
His main photographic interest is in hu-man settlements and landscape repre-sentation and survey.
His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including 'Ereditare il paesag-gio' (catalogue published by Electa, Venice, 2007) and 'Global Photography' (SiFest 2009).
He was awarded a prize at the Premio Fotografico Atlante Italiano 07, organized by Italian Ministry for Arts and Culture.
His work is represented in major public collections, including the Maxxi (National Museum for 21st Century Arts) in Rome, the Museum of Biella Territory, Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea, The University Museum of Photography in Bari.
He coordinates the Laboratory of Archi-tecture and Landscape Photography at the Technical University of Bari.
WEBSITE
www.michelecera.com
Federico covre
born 1977, graduated in architecture at the University IUAV of Venice with a dis-sertation that examines the research of Bernd & Hilla Becher.
He studied photography with Lewis Baltz, Dominique Auerbacher, Guido Guidi and Marco Zanta.
His photographic project dealt with the contemplation of the landscape and re-flects in a more punctual way the modali-ties of description and classification of ele- ments of the landscape.
His work has been exhibited at: Fondazio-ne Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice), Galleria Spazio Paraggi (Treviso), Fondazi-one Studi Ricerche Benetton (Treviso), Maxxi Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo (Rome), Fondazione Studio Maran-goni (Florence), Linea di Confine per la Fotografia Contemporanea (Rubiera, RE) , Galleria San Fedele (Milan).
He is a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Art and Design, University IUAV of Venice and he lives and works in Venice and Treviso.
WEBSITE
www.federicocovre.com
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Francesco NeriExtract from Ritratti
Michele ceraExtract from Taccone
Giovanni LamiExtract from Apnea
Federico covreExtract from Dovresti esserci
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EdMUNd ClARKguaNTaNaMO: IF ThE LIghT gOES OuT
The aim of this website project is to provide a platform for comment by those most closely involved in the history of guantanamo Bay, within the visual context of my work which explores the detainee camps and the homes of men held there.
Guantanamo: If the light goes out is a study of home, of a very particular idea of home at a very particular time in our history.
The work examines the tension between the personal and public. I am seeking to define people who have been presented to the public as violent terrorists, yet never charged with anything, through the places they call home - the spaces where they reflect on the private memories and trauma of their experiences.
For eight years the american naval base at guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba has been home to hundreds of men, all Muslim, all detained in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on suspicion of varying degrees of compli-city or intent to carry out acts of terror against american interests.
Labelled "the worst of the worst", most of these men were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many fell prey to a uS military policy of paying bounty money to anyone the Pakistani secret ser-vice, border guards or village leaders on both sides of the blurred afghan-Pakistan border considered a possible or potential "suspect", thereby becoming currency in the newly defined ‘War on Terror’.
deemed by the Bush administration to be enemy comba-tants rather than prisoners of war many have been held in legal limbo for years and repeatedly interrogated. almost all have been released without charge and only a very few have been tried in the special military commissions set up for the purpose.
Over a year after President Obama made the closure of the camps the first policy declaration of his new adminis-tration, 180 men remain in detention at guantanamo and there is no sign that the camps will close.
rather than documents to monumentalize the historical fact of the camps, these images illustrate three experi-ences of home: The naval base at guantanamo which is home to the american community and of which the prison camps are just a part; the complex of camps where the detainees have been held, and the homes, new and old, where the former detainees now find themselves trying to rebuild their lives.
The post-prison homes illustrate the contrast between the shared humanity of their domestic interiors and the spaces of the prison camps. Motifs of imprisonment and entrapment are present in both, resonating with the prisoners’ experiences (and coming to terms with them). glimpsing the evening sun through a window is a simple thing but readjusting to having the freedom to do so may not be so simple. Like a net curtain, memories can ob-scure the view.
Still-life imagery of personal space and possessions fol-lows a long tradition of symbolism and metaphor. as in my previous work, this series draws on the ‘Vanitas’ style of 17th century dutch painting in which the artist used eve ryday objects like hourglasses, candles and flowers to symbolise the passage of time, the transience of temporal existence and the vanity of Man’s endeavours in relation to the rule of god.
The details of the ex-prisoners’ homes and the environ-ments at guantanamo reflect these themes, except that the rules of control are not divine but those of guards and interrogators, and a different kind of superpower. an identity bracelet, a red Cross calendar and guantanamo-issue Korans are among the objects brought home and
"when you are suspended by a rope you can recover but every time I see a rope I remember. If the light goes out unexpectedly in a room, I am back in my cell."
Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458
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kept. Items of clothing that are still worn or an image of a solitary confinement cell carried on a mobile phone are ways for some of regaining a sense of control.
On the naval base an american community lives sur-rounded by razor wire in the last enclave of the Cold War. This is small-town america with a high school, golf course, a mall and familiar fast food chains; a small town chosen precisely because it was thought to be not america, a place where hundreds of men could be held beyond the protection of uS law.
It is home to a community where I found echoes of a wider america traumatised after 9/11 by a new post-Cold War threat from a religion and cultures it does not understand. a trauma which led, arguably, to a mindset trapped by a determination for revenge and protection at all costs, and to the policies of demonisation, detention and interroga-tion at Bagram in afghanistan and at guantanamo Bay. Motifs of entrapment are to be found here too, together with iconography redolent of religiosity and military order.
Each day for a month a new image from my series will be added to the website.
The sequence of these images will jump from prison camp detail to domestic still life, from life outside to the naval base and back again. This is intended to evoke the process of disorientation central to the techniques of interrogation and incarceration at guantanamo, and to explore the le-gacy of disturbance such experiences exert on the minds and memories of these men.
daily responses in the form of comments, documents, articles and photographs will be added by individuals most directly affected by or involved with guantanamo: Ex-detainees, lawyers, writers, psychologists and even ex-guantanamo guards. These additions may relate to the specific images or to wider themes (such as detention, in-terrogation, home, identity or intercultural isssues).
I will also invite contributions from members of the public with an interest or connection to the subject such as fa-mily or friends of detainees.
The site will include a range of statistics relating to guantanamo. For example, the number of days the camps have been open, the number of detainees held there, the number of successful prosecutions of detainees, the number of dead on 9/11, the number of soldiers killled in afghanistan etc. One statistic will appear on the site each day.
The work for the Mutations III is drawn from the imagery of the artist's book 'Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out' which is published in October 2010 by Dewi Lewis Publishing.
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Camps: Detainee's Cell in Camp 5 from 'Guantanamo: If the light goes out' (2010)
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Images from Guantanamo: If the light goes out (2010)
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With a reputation for combining strong ideas with an ability to work in sensitive situations, edmund clark is best known for his powerful, thoughtful and beautiful images exploring the consequences of control and incarceration.
Awards include the British Journal of Pho-tography International Photography Award for 2009 for his ongoing series about Guantanamo Bay, a 2008 Terry O’Neill / IPG Award for Contemporary British Pho-tography for his book 'Still Life Killing Time', and a Gold Pencil at the 2003 One Show Awards in New York.
His work has been acquired for public and private collections, including The National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and he has worked as an Artist-in-Residence for the National Trust in Britain.
Clark originally studied History at the Uni-versity of Sussex and The University of Paris, La Sorbonne before working in in-ternational research for five years. He went to The London College of Communi-cations in 2004 for a postgraduate diploma in Photojournalism. After working as an editorial photographer he now concen-trates on longer-term fine art and docu-mentary projects.
WEBSITE
www.edmundclark.com
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ROb HORNstRA & ARNOld vAN bRUggENThE SOChI PrOjECT: ON ThE OThEr SIdE OF ThE MOuNTaINS
We started The Sochi Project in 2009. Over the course of five years we want to map out the extensive region around the russian resort Sochi. This is where the Olympic Winter games will be held in 2014. a controversial choice, be-cause this subtropical coastal area still lacks virtually any kind of facilities and infrastructure. at $33 billion, these are set to become the most expensive Olympic games ever. The games are being organised in russia's most unstable region. a few hundred kilometres away are the breakaway republics Chechnya, Ingushetia and dagestan. and just a few kilometres away is abkhazia, officially a part of georgia but recognised in 2008 for the first time by russia and three other countries as independent.
The games themselves, but above all the surrounding area, offer a lifetime’s worth of writing material. That’s how we started The Sochi Project. and that's also how we ended up in Krasny Vostok : a village with one foot in the 19th century, still partially without gas and electricity; a village we stumbled across by chance in our search for stories. Barely 200 kilometres from Sochi, but a world away. Except perhaps for falling for the name – Krasny Vostok literally means "The red East" – there is no rea-son to portray this village; and that's why we did. a village like so many in russia. Where the population is dwindling; where industry and activity are disappearing; where a handful of people are attempting to prevent the decline; where Moscow’s politics trickle through slowly; where every day is a struggle to keep the village hanging on. Only when you are familiar with this kind of village, we believe, can you get to know this region better. The Caucasus is more than just conflict and refugees, fundamentalist Islam or billion dollar games. It is first and foremost a beautiful region, home to several million people trying to make the best of life. In georgia, abkhazia, russia and here in Krasny Vostok, in obscure Karachay-Cherkessia.
Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen
vIsIt tHE pROjECt WEbsItE www.thesochiproject.org
> Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
Photo album of Boris zulemanovich Bezhanov from the time he was studying in Sukhumi. renate is a friend from germany who once visited Sukhumi.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2009
Cows on the way to Krasni Vostok.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
head of the lamb which was thrown
on one of the sheds near the house
of Stella and georgi.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
retired police man husey aibasov (55)
standing besides his car.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
Blossoms near the road in
Krasny Vostok.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2009
a tribute to deceased soldiers in the school of Krasni Vostok. The school has his own war museum.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
Murat (11) in the corridor of the school in Krasny Vostok. he wants to become a police officer.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
WWII veteran Mohamed Kardanov (83) in his house in Krasni Vostok.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2009
Children are preparing a huge harvest celebration. The celebration will be held in the canteen of the school of Krasni Vostok.
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The story of how documentary pho-tographer rob hornstra (1975) and writer/filmmaker Arnold van bruggen started working together can be easily summarised. Without ever having met, Arnold rang Rob at the end of 2006 with the ques-tion: “I’m going to Abkhazia in two weeks. Do you want to come?”
Arnold and Rob are addicted to background stories and convinced of the power of slow journalism. Both individually and together they work on long-term projects with the aim of bringing people into con-tact with worlds that they do not, or scarcely, know. Their interests co-ver a wide range of topics. In addi-tion to The Sochi Project, for exam-ple, Arnold is also making a film about Texel, the island where he was born; while Rob is working on a personal account of his neigh-bours in the working-class district Ondiep in Utrecht. But whether they are working close to home or on the other side of the world, their deeply rooted interests and inde-pendent working method result time and again in eye-opening stories.
Arnold is co-founder of the journa-listic production agency Prospek-tor. He has travelled to many cor-ners of the earth, particularly Eastern Europe and the former So-viet Union. His written and filmed documentaries have been publi-shed in newspapers and maga-zines and shown at festivals and on television. His articles reflect his personal engagement in and love for the tragic absurdity of the docu-mentary stories he looks for.Rob’s photography is characterised by a stylised rawness, with a large dose of intrinsic engagement. He has published three books on his own which, despite increasing print runs, sell out ever faster. He has been commissioned by interna-tional newspapers and magazines to produce documentary series. He has also taken part in numerous (solo) exhibitions in the Nether-lands and abroad. In addition to his own work as a documentary maker, he is the founder and artistic direc-tor of FOTODOK – Space for Docu-mentary Photography.
WEBSITES
Arnold van bruggen
www.prospektor.nl
rob hornstra www.borotov.com
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
Sisters Viktoria (24) and Veronika (22) in the bedroom where they grew up in Krasny Vostok.
after finishing primary school they both moved to Kislavodsk, where they still live and work. Viktoria as an econo-mist and Veronika as a nurse in a vision clinic.
They only come to Krasny Vostok to visit their parents and get some rest.
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Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010
Milana is ready for the traditional dancing,
which is about to start in the theater
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YvElINE lOIsEUR & bUREAU l’IMpRIMANtELa VIE MaTérIELLE / MaTErIaL LIFE
La Vie matérielle is the work of a photographer, Yveline Loiseur, and a graphic designer, Bureau l’Imprimante.
It adopts many different points of view using a variety of techniques: photography, graphic design, drawing, web pages, and written text and constantly invites the web user to follow new paths, oblique perspectives, and dotted lines in houses or along the walls of the city, blurring lines of separation.
The title La Vie matérielle is borrowed from that of a jour-nal by Marguerite duras, who talked of "this free kind of writing, these return journeys between myself and myself, between you and me, in the time we spent together".
The poetic text by austrian artist alfred Kubin evokes memory and the way it constantly updates itself in the present.
The photographs offer a fragmented description of daily life, both in the public and private spheres, creating a dia-logue between the individual and the collective and focu-sing on micro-events in European capital cities.
In this set of images we find books, animals, fabrics, clothes, cars, and signs, recorded in a way that dazzles the senses by using the intoxicating shimmering of light.
On the Web, the user creates an individual "mood path" based on the text by alfred Kubin, clicking on certain words that lead to a series of images and invariably end up at the "text-house".
vIsIt tHE pROjECt WEbsItE www.wmaker.net/imprimante/materielle
The photographs are displayed thanks to a vertical scroll-bar, based on the familiar model used for everyday on-line information, and undergo various changes as they appear. akin to the fragmented memory, vague reminiscences, and indecisive trajectories of the Web user, this project also features disappearance and frustration. When you click on certain words, the path darkens, and the pho-tographs gradually disappear into darkness; elsewhere, Kubin’s text gradually takes over the images, which disap-pear under a stream of words. a little further on, the ima-ges are superimposed because of a computer bug, and become illegible.
This exuberant visual hotchpotch configures other forms of common sense and traces out a new landscape of the possible, halfway between unique images and the collec-tive imagination: it suggests little utopias.
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Images from La Vie matérielle (2010)
Lambda prints Various dimensions
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Yveline Loiseur was born in Cherbourg (France) in 1965; she now lives and works in Lyon.
She graduated from the École Nationale Supé-rieure de la Photographie in Arles in 1990, and from the Sorbonne in 1991 with a Masters de-gree on Gerhard Richter. Her multi-faceted photographic work includes installations, wall-paper and art books, and combines the experi-ence of photographing the instant with staged setups and studio reconstitutions, blurring the frontiers between reality and fiction.
Her work has been shown in Montreal (Month of Photography, 2010), Dresden (Institut Français, 2008 and 2009), Marseille (Musée d’Art Con-temporain, 2007), Pontault Combault (Centre photographique d’Ile de France, 2007), Lyon (Musée d’Art Contemporain, 2006), in Lorient (Rencontres photographiques en Bretagne, 2005), Lille (Transphotographiques, 2005), Paris (Thessa Herold Gallery, 2003) and Rouen (Pôle Image Haute Normandie, 2002).
WEBSITE
http://yveline.loiseur.free.fr
bureau l’Imprimante is a graphic designer who lives and works in Vesoul, France.
After gaining an art degree from the Sorbonne, he worked as a freelance illustrator for the French press during the ’90s while living in Paris.
Early in the new century he moved to Rouen where he set up as a designer, working on a wide range of projects including print, web, and exhibitions.
His work has been exhibited or published in London, Tokyo and Sao Paulo.
WEBSITE
www.wmaker.net/imprimante
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Screenshot of the project websiteMaterial life (2010)
Text by alfred Kubin, Quoted in 'Le travail du dessinateur',
éditions allia (1999)
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Images from La Vie matérielle (2010)
pAUlA MUHRFEMaLES uNdEr TENSIONaudIO-VISuaL INSTaLLaTION
The work explores cultural strategies in the construction of femininity, sexuality and desire, as well as normality. It questions historical (pseudo)scientific and social prac-tices reflected in historical films, photography and written material of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-tury. These historical representations are at the roots of our present-day practices of mapping and controlling the body in terms of knowledge and regulatory mechanisms. The work traces and thematises their influences on con-temporary gender discourses.
One of the source materials for the work is a historical document, the book entitled 'abnormal Woman' published in 1895 by arthur Macdonald, a specialist for the u.S Bureau of Education. Mcdonald held the belief that com-plex human characteristics and emotional states can be quantified and compared. he wanted to illustrate female borderline abnormality, by studying "abnormal women outside of institutions, in the society at large." according to his definition, an "abnormal person... conforms less to the customs of the community than the average or normal person." In other words, normality was defined as typical behaviour and everything deviating from this norm was labeled as defiant and abnormal.
Macdonald defined love as an obsession, an emotional delirium and "one of the most prolific causes of men-tal, physical, and emotional aberration." Consequently, Macdonald decided that the most convenient method for studying female abnormality was by placing personal ads in several newspapers, first in the uSa, and later in Europe. When women replied, Macdonald made arrange-ments to measure their bodies, their reflexes, reactions to pain, changes in pressure and temperature. Finally, he published a book in which he made the letters of a total of 86 "cases" public.
Macdonald’s original advertisement was slightly modified in order to make it more up-to-date: "a man of high social standing (d'education europeenne) desires correspon-dence (acquitance not necessary) in german, French or English, with educated woman of high social and finan-cial position. She must tell me all about herself, i.e. give detailed account of her personality, experiences, emo-tions, views on life and describe her expectations from a relationship." More than a hundred years after the origi-nal experiment, women of different ages, professions,
nationalities and political orientation were invited to write a letter from their contemporary perspective as a reply to the above quoted personal ad. altogether eleven letters were chosen from the received reactions, and the frag-ments from each of these letters were then composed into a single unified narrative about a woman’s expecta-tions from a relationship with a man. The text is read by a computer generated female voice.
The sound recording was montaged with deconstructed film material taken from the film "how a French Nobleman got a Wife through the New York herald 'Personal' Column", which was produced by Edison Company in 1904. This is a typical example of early chase films. In this particular case, a man who had advertised for a wife is pursued by eleven women in different locations. Individual women in the original film are present only as interchan-geable specimens of their gender, yet together, through multiplication and accumulation, they represent an aver-age woman. By erasing the cause of the chase, the pur-sued man and the moment of closure with which such films conventionally end, the chase is turned into a hys-terical, illogical, neverending repetitive action. The pace of the film as well as the soundtrack are slowed down to a point where they acquire an almost hypnotic quality.
The projection is presented together with associated pho-tographic works based on the reinterpretation of histori-cal medical and scientific images of women.
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Stills from video Females under Tension (2010)17'24", b&w, with sound projection in a loop
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Images from workFemales under Tension (2010)Lambda prints Various dimensions
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paula Muhr (b. Serbia, 1977)is a freelance artist
based in Berlin, germany.
She holds a BA in Photography from the Acade-my of Arts BK in Belgrade (Serbia), and an MA in Photography from the University of Arts in Bel-grade. She studied General Literature at the Philological Faculty in Belgrade. In 2009 she completed a graduate programme as a master class student of photography under Tina Bara at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig.
Her most recent solo shows include 'Mimicry 01' at Galerie Le Bleu du Ciel in Lyon (2010),
'Highest Common Factor' at the Centre national de l’audiovisuel in Luxembourg (2009), 'Etat normal' at Delikatessenhaus Galerie in Leipzig (2009) and 'Golden Boys' at the Kunstverein Leipzig (2008). Her work has been shown in nu-merous group exhibitions, including Darm-staedter Tage der Fotografie (2010), Noorder-licht Photofestival (2009), Galerie Clairefontaine in Luxembourg (2008), Kunsthaus Dresden, Germany (2008), Musee d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain, Liege, Belgium (2007) and Gale-rie Fotohof, Salzburg, Austria (2005).
She was awarded the 1st prize at the interna-tional competition 'Trust me' in the F/Stop, 1st International Photography in Leipzig, Germany in 2007, the 'sittcomm-award 2007', and Man-gelos Production Grant in 2009. In 2007 she was also short-listed for the Riccardo Pezza Euro-pean Photography Prize.
Her photographs have been published in vari-ous magazines including Capricious (New York), Fotograf (Brno) and Purple Journal (Paris) and Waterfall (Taiwan).
WEBSITE
www.paulamuhr.de
sUsANNE WEHRPErSONaL-VIEWS an interdisciplinary web project FOCuSINg ON IdENTITY CONSTruCTION IN PrIVaTE PhOTOgraPhY
Personal-views – the title evokes views of, into or from the private life of anyone and anybody at any time, starting from the first beginnings of private photography. Whether it is a matter of families, couples, journeys, festivities, still lives or group portraits – people take snapshots of one another, their friends and their relatives, documen-ting a multifaceted "I was here" signature in the stream of time; they capture private contexts – which may equally have social relevance – in the medium of photography, like cartographers mapping a "here, there and elsewhere" in terms of place, giving rise to countless personal views.
Berlin artist Susanne Wehr has put together a collection of photographic images from slides created between the 1970s and the 1990s. Some of these formed part of pho-tographic legacies, others were acquired by purchase. Multifarious subjects, anonymous photographers, un-known biographies, leaps in time, models and self-pre-sentations as well as constructions of individual identities throng together from one picture to the next. Yielding to a certain fascination, and sensing the potential of these anonymous personal views, Susanne Wehr launched the Volks-Bild [People’s Image] project, in which she sorts the private slides, arranges them in layers and exhibits them in new contexts. In her second project, personal-views, the selection of individual slides is accompanied by two writers – Birgit Szepanski, an artist and author, and media philosopher and author rainer Totzke – who supply text essays in dialogue on the potential points of view when looking at this half-hidden treasury of private photography.
What pictorial models are to be found, how are identities formulated and what normative structures can be seen in these graphic materials? What can be recognised as familiar or remain quite opaque from our point of view today? The essays of Szepanski and Totzke form an ap-proach to the slides that Susanne Wehr has selected and thematically grouped together. The photographs and the text complement one another, resulting in a ‘how to Look at It’ vade mecum of photography in the private sphere.
vIsIt tHE pROjECt WEbsItE www.personal-views.com
as a public project, set in a contemporary pictorial con-text, personal-views is presented as a website and on-line platform. The linking of digital private photographs found in the internet flux makes it possible for contempo-rary photographic archives (like Google and Flickr) to be thema tically included. This gives rise to countless further links, an engagement with material content and the rai-sing of questions on the theme of the private view, which is invariably located in the field of tension between the flood of images supplied by the media, pictorial stereotypes and the creation of an individual identity.
The tracking of photographic time trails, life sketches, the construction of an identity, dealing with the medium of photography, have given birth to a search for linguis-tic and visual standards and possibilities of expression in this multimedia graphic project. It is crucial to reveal the contradictions and borderlines of a controversial situation and to engage in the discussion of the consciousness of living in a world dominated by the media, and the longing for the vindication of the private world as a place of retreat.
Birgit Szepanski
SuSaNNE WEhr (PrOjECT) BIrgIT SzEPaNSKI & raINEr TOTzKE (auThOrS)
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[...] In the momentary flash of these contours, these sketches of a standard of life, these sketch-es of an ascribed person (we remember that person derives from Latin persona, a mask) double ima ges, roles are created. a playful dealing with identity... photography... [...]
Birgit Szepanski
[...] In an increasingly visual culture, really be-ing there for another person is perhaps coming ever more frequently and more insistently to mean really being in the picture. There is an increasing fixation of the image in self-perception and self-construction – so much seems indisputable. But it remains an open question, on the other hand, whether this is not as-sociated with a loss of human linguistic and narra-tive skills – a loss such as Walter Benjamin once dia-gnosed for modern times, in urgent and melancholy mood, in his essay ‘The Storyteller’ [...]
Rainer Totzke
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PrOjECT
susanne wehr (born 1960) is an artist and photographer. She lives and works in Berlin. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and art projects since 1987. In 2007 she created the ongoing internet project volks-bild.com, which has given rise to various partnership projects. She is the founder and coordinator of the per-sonal views project.
WEBSITES
www.personal-views.com www.volks-bild.com
auThOrS
rainer totzke (born 1966), a media phi-losopher of the Freie Universität Berlin, member of the Deutsche Forschungsge-meinschaft (DFG) research network
‘Bildphilosophie’ ["Philosophy of the Im-age"], postdoctoral scholarship at the DFG "Notational Iconicity" Graduate Col-lege (FU Berlin), coordinator of the per-sonal-views project, self-employed since 2000 as a columnist, author and perform-er under the pseudonym of Kurt Mondaugen.
WEBSITES
www.rainer.totzke.de www.schriftbildlichkeit.de www.kurt-mondaugen.de
birgit szepanski MA (born 1970) lives and works in Berlin. She is an artist, art jour-nalist and art historian. Currently work-ing on a doctoral thesis at HFBK in Ham-burg on the subject of 'Die erzählte Stadt' [The narrative city]. She is also engaged in the production of exhibition projects with site-specific textual and graphic in-terventions. Publications and catalogue texts for artists, press releases and cura-torial projects for various galleries.
WEBSITE
www.birgitszepanski.de
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1 from the series personal-views – dyed flowers photographer unknown, ca. 1950
2 from the series personal-views – sunday 3pm photographer unknown, ca. 1965
3 from the series personal-views – ideal home photographer unknown, ca. 1980
4 from the series personal-views – displaced photographer unknown, ca. 1960
5 from the series personal-views – picture composition photographer unknown, ca. 1970
6 from the series personal-views – encyclopediaphotographer unknown, ca. 1980
LEFT PagE
7 from the series personal-views – halfway there photographer unknown, ca. 1975
8 from the series personal-views – behind curtains photographer unknown, ca. 1990
9 from the series personal-views – whispers photographer unknown, ca. 1960
10 from the series personal-views – projection photographer unknown, ca. 1975
11 from the series personal-views – blind faith photographer unknown, ca. 1970
12 from the series personal-views – voices photographer unknown, ca. 1950
13 from the series personal-views – double exposure photographer unknown, 1963
14 from the series personal-views – unsteady light photographer unknown, ca. 1960
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15 from the series personal-views – continuous recording photographer unknown, ca. 1979
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bERlIN
KuLTurPrOjEKTE BErLIN gMBh:
oliver bätz Project Manager
thomas FriedrichCurator European Month of Photography Berlin
thomas Friedrich, oliver bätz, Katharina brünnerCurators 'Mutations III'
Katharina brünner, Ieva Akuleassistant Project Managers
bRAtIslAvA
CENTraL EurOPEaN hOuSE OF PhOTOgraPhY BraTISLaVa:
Vaclav MacekChairman of FOTOFO director of Month of Photography Bratislava
Zuzana LapitkováCurator SEdF / Central European house of Photography, Curator 'Mutations III'
MUtAtIONs IIIParTNErS
lUXEMbOURg
CaFé-CrÈME aSBL:
paul di Felice & pierre stiwerCurators 'Mutations III' directors of European Month of Photography Luxembourg
MINISTErY OF CuLTurE:
Guy Dockendorf director of Cultural affairs, Ministery of Culture
IN aSSOCIaTION WITh:
carré rotondes / espace culturel, Luxembourg
ParTNErS OF ThE EurOPEaN MONTh OF PhOTOgraPhY IN LuxEMBOurg:
centre National de l'Audiovisuel
centre d'art Nei Liicht Dudelange Pantone 2935c
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pARIs
MaISON EurOPéENNE dE La PhOTOgraPhIE:
jean-Luc Monterossodirector
jean-Luc soretCurator 'Mutations III'
barbara wolfferProject Manager
ROME
zONE aTTIVE:
emiliano paolettidirectorCurator 'Mutations III'
Luca carosellaProject Manager
vIENNA
dEParTMENT FOr CuLTuraL aFFaIrS OF ThE CITY OF VIENNa:
Gunda Achleitner, berthold eckerCurators 'Mutations III'
EYES ON - MONTh OF PhOTOgraPhY VIENNa:
thomas LicekManaging director
Agnes reinthaler, Alex KamenskiProject Managers
MOsCOWassociated partner and member of the board
MOSCOW hOuSE OF PhOTOgraPhY:
olga sviblovadirector
ekaterina KondraninaCurator
Mikhail KrasnovProject Manager
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CItY Of bERlIN
André schmitzState Secretary for Cultural affairs
Volker heller head of the department for Cultural affairs
dEuTSChE WOhNEN ag BErLIN:
We would like to thank deutsche Wohnen ag Berlin for its support of the project 'personal-views'
BErLINTaPETE:www.berlintapete.de
LEFELMaNN COMMuNICaTION dESIgN:
Thanks to Christian reister (weblog adjustment) and Fabian Lefelmann (design concept)
www.lefelmann.de
CItY Of lUXEMbOURg
Lydie polferhead of the departmentfor Cultural affairsCity of Luxembourg
christiane sietzen Chief executive of Cultural affairsCity of Luxembourg
ACKNOW-lEdgMENts
CItY Of pARIs
christophe Girarddeputy Mayor for Culture
pierre schapiradeputy Mayor in charge of International relations, European affairs and French language and culture abroad
dEParTMENT FOr CuLTuraL aFFaIrS:
Laurence engeldirector
catherine hubaultassistant director of the Patrimony and history
CItY Of vIENNA
Andreas Mailath-pokornyExecutive City Councillor for Cultural affairs and Science
bernhard Denscherhead of the department for Cultural affairs of the City of Vienna
The project 'Topographies of the Insignifi cant' is sponsored by the danish arts Council Committee for Visual arts.
www.lefelmann.de Kommunikationsdesign
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First edition 2010isbn 978-99959-674-0-6
Printed in Slovakia
ISBN 978-99959-674-0-6
www.europeanmonthofphotography.net
www.europeanmonthofphotography.net