Exhibition
Monitoring provides a space for film and video-based installations and other time-based media works of recent years that require presentation formats beyond the classic cinema screen. This year, the jury has selected sixteen works out of 292 international submissions: including works by artists from Belgium, Germany, France, Canada and the USA. The submissions followed an open call, without pre-set topics or restrictions concerning content or technical media. The works were chosen upon their ability to enfold in a spatial setting and the contemporary relevance of their topics. All works in the exhibition are nominated for the Golden Cube award for the best media installation, which is endowed with 3,500 €. The award is donated by the software company Micromata GmbH.
Monitoring 2014:
Geographical places and symbolic spaces may be perceived as many things: as a reminder of historical events, as an atmospheric composition or digitally generated simulation, as a point of reference for our desires or an allegory of the dystopian – these themes run through the very different installations of the exhibition Monitoring like a golden thread: We experience discomforting as well as alluring spaces, digitally animated CI-environments and the mystery and threat of military bases. The artistic concept of the installation and films on view go far beyond merely documenting a place – rather, the places give rise to other topics and issues. Thus, Daniel Laufer depicts the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee, where traditional Jewish funeral rites were still being held during the Nazi period and where persecuted Jews found shelter. The reason for this extraordinary situation was – as rumor has it – a superstition of Berlin bureaucrats about the legend of the Golem, a creature made from a piece of clay that will take vengeance on anyone who harms a Jew. But, in REDUX, the legendary cemetery merely initiates a reflection on intertextual bifurcations, film as a medium and the power of historical narratives. FAREWELL, SWEET MEMORIES by Valerian Blos deals with the obliteration of memories and stories. Beneath a glass dome, a tape from the documenta Archive in Kassel is played, but the recording will only exists as long as someone listens to it. A magnet within the apparatus deletes the information once no one has listened to the tape. The radical loss of history in Blos’ work finds its ironic opposite in NOTHING TO RETAIN. Julia Weißenberg’s camera captures shots of an architectural model, designed in 1930 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for a golf club in Krefeld. Due to the financial crisis, the building was never realized. But in 2013, a Belgian architectural firm built a temporary replica according to the original plans at the designated site – just a field of turnips today. The tracking shot along the desolate model gives account of a surreal and almost tragicomical situation. Elsa Fauconnet focuses on stereotypes and cliché desires that can be linked to geographic places. In her work GREEN OUT, western perceptions and ideas of the tropics as the exotic other culminate in the artificial imitation of objects and settings with alleged geographical and cultural authenticity. While Fauconnet turns to the illusive connotations of a place, in RESTRICTED AREAS, Wim Catrysse depicts a place that is more than real, but just as hard to grasp. We see images of military bases in the Kuwaiti desert that are restricted to the public. The military is only present indirectly, but hidden in the depths of the desert far beyond the camera’s reach. UNMANNED DISTANCES by Betrand Flanet uses images known from the military context. On a split screen the viewer follows the love story of two women that share the same reality but perceive it quite differently. Kalki is a drone pilot. She perceives the world as images of a thermal imaging camera that oversees conflict areas. Maline’s and Kalki’s conversations give account of the multiple perspectives on places that are generated by technological inventions and the difficulty of finding oneself within this confusion. STREET VIEWS by Annie Berman blurs the line between the real and the virtual world. Her protagonist wanders along avenues, passing people that are frozen in a moment and forever captured in the timelessness of Google Street View. Guy Debord coined the term derivé for aimless wanderings in a city. The artist wanders through the virtually conserved city looking for a trace of something human. The artists Tilman Aechtner, Carolin Liebl, Yoonsun Kim and Nikolas Schmid- Pfähler focus on the direct experience of space and methods of image production. A complex set up of screens, kinetic objects, LEDs and videocameras create multiple shadow images that atmospherically fill the exhibition space. GEWANDEL 4 by Kristina Berndt also works with the space, although in an indirect way. Rhythm, choreography and uniforms are the core elements that make the protagonists march across four screens. Their movement starts on one screen and continues on the opposite one. Their marching thus progresses through the exhibition space. The works presented in this year’s Monitoring exhibition go beyond the traditional cinema screen, and interpret space in new ways – thematically as well as artistically. They prove that along with new forms of presentation and experience, new concepts of space are created that coexist very well with our traditional perspectives and ways of looking. (Text: Ann-Charlotte Günzel / Translation: Malte Forstat)