Sylvia Ballhause

 

Das Münchner Daguerre-Triptychon

The Munich Daguerre Triptych showed a person in a photograph for the first time: a shoe-polisher’s customer, he stood motionless during the more than ten-minute exposure time on the footway of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. We have William Henry Fox Talbot to thank for the fact that this motif of Daguerre’s has not vanished from the collective visual memory. With the aid of the negative-positive process he developed, numerous reproductions of the view of the Boulevard du Temple could be made, which are preserved to this day and have become an icon of historical photography. However, merely traces of the motif can be made out on Daguerre’s original photographic plate: Environmental influences and faulty restoration measures brought about the destruction of the Munich Daguerre triptych. Sylvia Ballhause uses the enlarged photograph of the original’s current state to point, on the one hand, at the vanishing of analogue photography from practice and, on the other hand, at the beginning of a new visual culture.

 

*1977 Halle a.d. Saale, Germany

 

 

 

 

Daniel T. Braun

 

A 1000 Rainbows

For “A 1000 Rainbows”, Daniel T. Braun has arranged photographs of rainbows found on the Internet into a video sequence, without further manipulation. The superimposition of the individual images means that no image within the sequence is motionless – each image melts into the last. The beholder is barely aware of the slow alteration of the unchanging motif taken from virtually the same viewpoint.

In his artistic practice Daniel T. Braun uses the medium of photography not as an end in itself, but in order to use the medium’s phenomenology in support of his idea of an image. For him, ephemeral emotions, attitudes, yearnings are interesting vehicles for orbiting a photographic theme, because photographs in themselves are ephemeral as well.

 

*1975 Pforzheim, Germany

 

 

 

 

Christoph Büchel

 

Tomorrow’s Pioneers (Farfour)

Tomorrow’s Pioneers is an interactive children’s television programme broadcast weekly by the official broadcaster of Hamas, Al-Aqsa TV. Its protagonist, Farfour, could be Mickey Mouse’s twin brother. In the children’s programme he has a role as a member of the Islamic-Palestinian resistance, which is directed equally against Israel and American imperialism. Christoph Büchel shows the found footage as a critically ironic commentary on media-based propaganda. In the face of the indoctrination of the originally addressed child audience by the man with the badly-fitting mouse’s head, grown-up visitors to an art exhibition might ask themselves what cultural heritage means in the various national and religious contexts, and who has the power to decide what it should look like.

*1966 Basel, Switzerland

 

 

 

 

Márcio Carvalho

 

The Era Of Involuntary Memory

Carvalho’s artistic activity places its focus on collective technologies and memory practices, and deals with the issue of how these influence remembrance of past events. He is interested in the various types of public commemoration, primarily in mnemonic symbols and systems from our daily life, such as monuments, films, books, photographs, which represent specific narratives of the past. In the series “The Era of Involuntary Memory”, Carvalho overprints portrait photos of persons unknown to him with motifs from traditional Portuguese ceramic tiles, which recall the Portuguese colonial age across generations.

*1981 Lagos, Portugal

 

 

 

 

Hadia Gana

The Flip Flop System

According to Wikipedia, a flip-flop is an electronic circuit that is able to occupy two stable states and hence store a data quantity of one Bit for an indefinite period, as well as a sandal with toe thong and diagonal straps, the onomatopoeic name of which is presumably meant to describe the sound that it makes during walking. Hadia Gana refers to both definitions equally in her installation and performance “The Flip Flop System”. Via the performance, which takes places at Port25 – Raum für Gegenwartskunst on the opening evening, she enters into contact with the audience via the stamping of a document. The installation, which will be in place for some time afterwards, formulates the use and abuse of power through the relicts of the act: seemingly insignificant objects such as a flip-flop, a table, two chairs.
 

*1973 Tripolis, Libya

 

 

 

 

Andreas Hachulla

#Digitaldrawings

Hachulla’s digital drawings are made during his strolls through Berlin’s clubbing and night life. In most clubs, where the sound architecture is composed of a system of samples and copies, taking photographs is prohibited. Hachulla uses his mobile phone as a sketchbook and records his impressions of the club scene in drawings. Fleeting elements, such as the flashes of light that reveal the architecture for a fraction of a second, are of precisely the same interest to him as the architecture itself. The mobile drawing app simulates both the properties of drawing instruments and the artist’s/user’s style. Within the exhibition, Andreas Hachulla’s series represents a post-digital artistic practice that, while not based on the digital, is impossible without digital technology connections.

*1980 Leipzig, Germany
 

 

 

 

Abdellah Hassak

Makan Projects:
Le square d’en bas
Think Tanger

With his sound installations, Abdellah Hassak explores the possibilities of digital technology. His topical reference point is primarily geo-cultural change.
The works “Le square d’en bas” and “Think Tanger” are soundscapes of the urban and simultaneously describe the recollection and thoughts of the flâneur; of the wanderer through the real and the intellectual and emotional space alike.

*1984 Casablanca, Morocco

 

 

 

 

Guido Münch

 

K2, Manipulator, Doppelstern, Elemente

Guido Münch copies found objects using a consistent strategy of appropriation. In doing so, he concentrates primarily on everyday design phenomena. Industry designs, logos, icons from pop music no longer need to be invented, they just need to be selected, enlarged as an emblematic image and painted on canvas. For this purpose, Guido Münch predominantly uses industrial paints from the RAL colour charts. Without performing precise colour matching, he remembers a shade and selects a standard colour that comes as close to it as possible. In this manner he conveys logos and signets of utility art, which often enough had their references in fine art, back into the art context. Every image functions as a module that can be combined with other modules at the same time.

* 1966 Essen, Germany

 

 

 

 

Ülkü Süngün

Transitional Objects

On the basis of her ambivalent relation to Turkish quarters in German cities, Ülkü Süngün develops a photographic series about transcultural experiences and questions of cultural identity. She takes everyday objects from Turkish businesses in Stuttgart and composes them in new relationships to one another to form temporary installations. Her action is borne by questioning of her own position in relation to the objects and their photographic portrayal.
Precisely on account of their two-dimensionality, the photographs of the installations point to new and distinct structures and ornaments. Süngün’s intention with her photos is to tell stories about various aspects of the Turkish community in Germany. This narrative can be followed best by those who are familiar with the objects; to others, they remain oddly alien.

*1970 Istanbul,Turkey

 

 

 

 

Stephanie Syjuco

 

Ornament and Crime (Villa Savoye)

The departure point for the 22-minute video is the digital model of the Villa Sovoye by the architect Le Corbusier, which, because of its consistent realization of the architecture manifesto, “Five Points Towards a New Architecture”, became one of the iconic residences of the western-influenced modern age.
Suyjuco’s video roams through the modernist structure, which is draped with traditional textile patterns from the former French colonies Morocco, Algeria and Vietnam. In the form of a remix of publicly accessible files, this new version of the Villa Savoye attempts to transfer the colonial and cultural history of a western icon onto itself, as though it were an empty housing that can be re-read and, in a certain way, re-colonialized. The video’s title refers to the text of the same name by Adolf Loos, in which he substantiates the supremacy of the modern age as against an ornamental tradition.

*1974 Manila, Philippines