From February 14 to March 15 2015, the Galerie Patrick Ebensperger and the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival establish a special cooperation. Already in 1997 an exhibition of media installations and sculptures called Monitoring was initiated to extend the festival’s cinematographic range. The distinctive feature of Monitoring is the open call for entries without any thematic constraints. Around 300 artists apply for the exhibition every year. The seven members of the commission primarily select artistic works that comprise new tendencies in installation and media art.
In spring 2015, a selection of five installations from the last exhibition will be presented in the Galerie Patrick Ebensperger. This selection focuses on the core aspects of the thematic discussion and points out key positions. The cooperation that is planned to be long-term, promotes one of the main purposes of the exhibition Monitoring: to introduce international emerging artists to a wide audience and demonstrate how problems and developments of the present can be designed with artistic means.
Under the title Monitoring – an exhibition between dystopias and classification systems, last year’s exhibition dedicated itself to different positions that attempt to examine and rearrange the scopes and realities of our present. The new perspectives on our surroundings enabled by the technological progress, create a wide range of different perceptions of the same reality.
In UNMANNED DISTANCES (Bertrand Flanet) the view of the drone pilot Kalki roams the Afghan desert while her friend Malines fastens her eyes on the street in front of her. The two lovers are close to each other, in the same city, but nevertheless in different realities. Each time you click the protagonist of Annie Berman’s installation keeps wandering through the streets of the big city frozen in timelessness, passing by pixelated faces, looking for something human on the digital display of STREET VIEWS. The work REDUX (Daniel Laufer) deals with the extraordinary history of the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee. However, the physical location fades into the background and becomes a thought-provoking impulse for intertextual condensations, reflections about the medium of film and the power of historical narratives. Other forms of spatiality are explored by the works AM RANDE DER ZEIT (Lukas Thiele) and GEISTERBAHN (Merlin Flügel, Stephanie Kayß, Dominik Keggenhoff, Elena Jill Osmann, Marc Rühl). While the former one makes the beginning of film in the form of zoetropes tangible and translates it three-dimensional with an impressive machine, Geisterbahn uses latest developments of the VR technology (virtual reality) to let the visitors immerse in various animated 3D experiences.
Although these positions vary greatly, they all trigger questions about the construction of reality and the perception of space. In which reality is the drone pilot moving while she is examining the Afghan desert through the lens of the drone? Which spatial and temporal structures are created by technologies such as Google Street View or latest developments in virtual reality technologies? Which complex stories wind itself around locations and how do they change our spatial perception? How can a new and relative sight of supposed constants provide a platform for artistic work?
Exhibited works:
Annie Berman: STREET VIEWS
New York 2013
Bertrand Flanet: UNMANNED DISTANCES
Alma (Québec) 2013
(Winner of the Golden Cube 2014, endowed with 3,500 € and sponsored by the Kassel located software company Micromata GmbH)
Merlin Flügel, Stephanie Kayß, Dominik Keggenhoff, Elena Jill Osmann, Marc Rühl: GEISTERBAHN
Offenbach 2014
Daniel Laufer: REDUX
Berlin 2014
(Honorary Mention Golden Cube 2014)
Lukas Thiele: AM RANDE DER ZEIT
Kassel 2014
Further information:
The opening will take place on February 14, 2015 from 7 –10 p.m.
Galerie Patrick Ebensperger
Plantagenstraße 30
13347 Berlin-Wedding, Germany
+52° 32' 47.00", +13° 21' 58.64"
office@ebensperger.net
+49 (0)30 46065821
Opening hours:
Sunday, February 15th from 12 –6 p.m
afterwards
Tuesday to Saturday, 12 –6 p.m.
