Mutations 3 / European Month of Photography

EurOPEaN MONTh OF photoGrAphY 2010 / 2011

MUtAtIONs III pUbLIc IMAGes — prIVAte VIews

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MUtAtIONs III pUbLIc IMAGes — prIVAte VIews

PuBLIShEr:

café-crème asbl for european Month of photography www.europeanmonthofphotography.net CaTaLOguE MaNagEMENT:

café-crème asbl pierre stiwer / paul di Felice 2 rue alphonse Munchen L-2172 Luxembourg graPhIC dESIgNEr:

clément bec-Karkamaz www.cbk-lab.com

Photographs © The artists Texts © 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 permission in writing from the publisher.

First edition 2010

isbn 978-99959-674-0-6

MUtAtIONs III TaBLE OF CONTENTS

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cUrAtors' stAteMeNt

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sIMoN bAUer

aMBIVaLENT aMBIENCES

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MIcheLe cerA & FeDerIco coVre

ITaLY: a VISuaL arChIVE / dOCuMENTarYPLaTFOrM

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hUbert bLANZ

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public tracks

ANDers bojeN & KrIstoFFer ØrUM

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ThE SOChI PrOjECT: ON ThE OThEr SIdE OF ThE MOuNTaINS

La VIE MaTérIELLE / MaTErIaL LIFE

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eDMUND cLArK

guaNTaNaMO: IF ThE LIghT gOES OuT

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pAULA MUhr

sUsANNe wehr

TOPOgraPhIES OF ThE INSIgNIFICaNT

beNjAMIN cADoN & eweN chArDroNNet

BaNgaLOrE: SuBjECTIVE CarTOgraPhY

rob horNstrA YVeLINe LoIseUr & ArNoLD VANbrUGGeN & bUreAU L’IMprIMANte

FEMaLES uNdEr TENSION PErSONaL-VIEWS

pArtNers

AcKNowLeDGMeNts

MUtAtIONs III PuBLIC IMagES — PrIVaTE VIEWS

MUtAtIONs III VENuES

MAcro testaccio, rome 23.09.2010 > 24.10.2010 berlinische Galerie, berlin 15.10.2010 > 28.02.2011 hopkirk, chillout & culture bar, bratislava 03.11.2010 > 28.11.2010 Maison européenne de la photographie, paris 10.11.2010 > 30.01.2011 MUsA Museum auf Abruf, Vienna 29.10.2010 > 08.01.2011 carré rotondes, Luxembourg 26.04.2011 > 10.06.2011

EXHIbItION pREsENtEd ThaNKS TO ThE SIgNIFICaNT PaTrONagE OF: Mr Gianni Alemanno Mayor of rome Mr bertrand Delanoë Mayor of Paris Mr Andrej Ďurkovský Mayor of Bratislava Mr Michael häupl Mayor and governor of Vienna Mr paul helminger Mayor of the City of Luxembourg Mr Klaus wowereit governing Mayor of the City of Berlin

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MUtAtIONs III

CURAtORs' stAtEMENt MUtAtIONs III

PuBLIC IMagES — PrIVaTE VIEWS In the context of the European Month of Photography first 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 collectively at the profound changes afoot in the world, and in particular those taking place in the field of contemporary images. This was the motivation behind the 2006 exhibition entitled 'Mutations I", an exhibition focusing on technological 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 fixed and moving images and providing a sense of where contemporary art stands in Europe today.

In a context where all means of communication and artistic media are affected by globalization and digital convergence, the era of "post-medium" we are entering is a period characterized by the exploration of hybrid technology, 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 everybody 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 significance. 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 realities. artists or non-artists redefine 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 experimenting with new forms of expression regarding the net and its plethora of pictures and are aware of these new approaches to photography.

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

sIMON bAUER

aMBIVALENT aMBIENCES For many things on the Web, a single “click” suffices to All interpretations are true transform even the private sphere into a privacy-ferry.

— and no interpretation is final.

Thus emerge serv(er)ed realities, realities enriched with Oscar Wilde the "data of others" and re-staged. The leaked image as a practice of appropriation, as a building block for constructed and consumable realities, is also the point of de- The initial impression may be deceptive. It is not the toparture for a potential démontage through montage. tal picture by itself as we grasp it immediately, but only the arrangement of "secondary plots," "marginal pheno​ The pictorial support that is the living room once more mena," etc., dissolving into sub-images and recognizable serves as the exemplary framework for a simulation of in parts as mise-en-scène, that allows for a different view the private within the public, as a cabinet of one’s own of things. From this point on, the beholder determines the curiosities that sustains the virtual appropriation of real way he approaches something, the detail that is visible. presences. Shifts of perspective and changes of context produce re-compositions of proprietary spaces, trans- Today’s wealth of possibilities and forms of representaforming the private space as a stage into a "possible tion that ostensibly offer “visual support” create the space of public interest." Multiple encodings on several danger that we lose sight of the image as such, that gaps levels and a variety of possible approaches enable nuan­ are closed that should be the preserve of the beholder’s ced readings — people once again go on a journey to see imagination. pictures.

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Mutations III sIMON bAUER The Frame of Possibility (Im Rahmen des Möglichen) Internet project, 2008

Isn’t a picture that isn’t sharp often just what we need?

Appearance and disunion are synonymous.

Wittgenstein

Goethe

New technologies of photographic recording produce high-resolution imagery, but this doesn’t make the customary 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.

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 advantageous, too, as may be “losing oneself in the image.” In an expanded form, the selection of the distance from which But if we consider software such as ‘Google Earth’ or we look may enable us, for example, to process informa‘Microsoft Maps,’ which handle high-resolution imagery tion, depict time, or disrupt widespread habits of seeing by and maps on the Web, opportunities emerge that invite us inserting levels of sharpness and its absence. to experiment online with new formats of representation.

Simon Bauer Translation: Gerrit Jackson

Visit the project website http://ambivalente-ambiente.exhibid.net

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Mutations III sIMON bAUER This Page Left

Ambivalent Ambiences (Ambivalente Ambiente) website, 2010 This Page right

border-crossing 2010 Left Page

border disagreement: attached / detached 2009

Simon Bauer

Selected projects

Moving Picture (Umzugsbild / Bildumzug)

born 1974 in Linz, Austria lives in Linz

2009

2009

Simon Bauer studied experimental visual design at the University for Art and Industrial Design, Linz, between 1995 and 2002. He graduated with thesis work on 'vrGallery' – Interactive Gallery – Avatars – Multiuser.

He has worked at the Art & Tek Institute Linz since 2002 and at the University for Art and Industrial Design, Linz, Department of Graphic Design and Photography and Department of Media Technology and Education, since 2005.

berufsBILDER, interactive installation/ 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

website

www.plan9.at

Sounding Sheet of Music, installation, Albertina Wien, Vienna 2005

Quarry 3D, interactive installation, Technisches Museum Wien, Vienna

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Hubert Blanz

public tracks Write something…

"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 nonevents of my new friend. "Write a comment…", I am invited 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 declared an advertisement for a German daily newspaper in order to draw attention to the increasing presence of online 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 friendships, about the communicative habits of the Facebook generation and their casual interactions in the public and private sphere, their user profiles, forms of self-presentation 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 connected with his friends’ friends. The public tracks are honest, however, and they call the social capital of these quantity-driven friendships into question: friends become letters, lines, purely graphic elements and are ultimately reduced to mere data, lost in the abyss of the net.

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Visit the project website www.blanz.net/emop

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 professions in the public eye. Hubert Blanz thus translates the immense range of these kinds of communicative forums 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 gala­xies 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 acquaintances, 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

MUtAtIONs III huBErT BLaNz aBOVE

public tracks 07 (+ detail) 2010

C-print, diasec on dibond 147 Ă— 189 cm

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views This Page

public tracks 04 2010

C-print, Diasec on dibond 147 × 189 cm

Hubert Blanz born 1969 in Hindelang, Germany lives in Vienna.

1993-99

University of Applied Arts, Vienna Right Page

website

www.blanz.net

public tracks 08 2010

C-print, Diasec on dibond 147 × 189 cm

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Mutations III Hubert Blanz Exhibi tions/Projects (selection) 2010

2009

2007

2005

Brave New World, Austrian Cultural Forum London

Kardinal-König-Kunstpreis, Art Room St. Virgil, Salzburg

Un Space, MAK Depot of Contemporary Art Gefechtsturm, Arenbergpark, Vienna

Level Five, O.K spectral, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Linz (solo)

Blickwechsel — Österreichische Fotografie heute, WestLicht.

Showplace for Photography, Vienna

Contemporary Photography. New Positions from Austria, Carinthian Museum of Modern Art, Klagenfurt

North-West By South-East, 'Mala Stanica' National Gallery of Macedonia, Skopje

Spaciously, Austrian Cultural Forum, Warsaw

New Frontiers — Experimental Tendencies in Architecture, Design Factory, Bratislava

X-Plantation, MOMENTUM Gallery, Vienna (solo)

Fresh Trips, Festival of contemporary art aspects, Kunstraum Innsbruck

Blanzscape, Lindner Gallery, Vienna (solo)

21 Positions, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York

Junge Wiener Kunst, Storms Gallery, Munich

zeitraumzeit, Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna

Spatial Visions, Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna

Conflicts/Resolution, Essl Museum — Contemporary Art, Klosterneuburg

Dialog mit Wien II / Dialogos con Viena II, Centro de Extensión LA FACTORIA, Santiago de Chile

Simultan, Museum der Moderne Salzburg

2004

The Art of Speculation, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg

Spotlight, Museum der Moderne Salzburg

2003

2008

2006

Geospaces, Projektraum, Kunstraum Innsbruck (solo) Artists from Galerie Lindner, Vienna, Sonja Roesch Gallery, Houston 17

Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum

Topographies of the Insignificant

A site-specific and coll aborative Internet project

Topographies of the Insignificant is a description of ultralocal spaces in six different cities across Europe, six similar places with no apparent characteristics or hi­story: 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 uncharted 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 random on the table in the artist’s hotel room) set in the globalized 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 added, 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 onsite and add their own insignificant stories.

Topographies of the Insignificant is based on a collaborative 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 connections between the different points on the map.

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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, social 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 alterations on the physical sites in each of the cities, further blurring the boundaries of fact and fiction. Through collective and deliberate misunderstanding, over-interpretation and fictional connections between the six physical sites, the project reflects on the possibility of radically rethinking the city from the bottom up.

visit the project website www.insignificant-topographies.net

Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum

Mutations III Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ă˜rum Screenshots from

Topographies of the Insignificant, 2010

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

This spread

Screenshot from

Topographies of the Insignificant Vienna, 2010

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Selected Exhibitions

born 1976 / 1975 in Copenhagen live and work in Copenhagen

File, SESI' Cultural Centre,

2010

São Paulo

Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum, who studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, between 1999 and 2006 and at Goldsmiths College, University of London, between 2003 and 2004, have collaborated on numerous projects since 2002, including video, sculpture, internet and performance works. Their projects examine the field bet­ ween popular culture and alternative realities produced by science and media.

Inspired by the absurd and irrational 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 exploring complex microcosms unearthed in ordinary, everyday products and stereotypical media personæ, they create a fantastic new history for the familiar. website

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

Mutations III Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum

Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Ørum

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

www.anders-kristoffer.dk

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Benjamin Cadon & Ewen Chardronnet

BANGALORE: SUBJECTIVE CARTOGRAPHY

Metamap.fr is an on-line cartographic tool that makes it possible to create subjective maps by adding multimedia 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 effects on human society. In the "culture of disenchantment"2 upon which industrial society is founded, adopting a rational 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 cosmological 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.

certain metaphysical principle from which it makes deductions, 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 represents our possible action upon them". In this sense, then, anything that enriches our perceptions with a view to acting 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 exploration alone.

Globalization has accentuated the uniformization of human 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, artificial electromagnetic waves, noise and pollution produced 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 Lefebvre 4 accorded considerable importance to art, which he approached not as something autonomous but as the means to an aesthetic experience capable of demonstrating the unfounded nature 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 anthropological 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 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 The artistic work we have undertaken in India also uses a method that is empirical and autonomous. We use all the 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

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Visit the project website http://bangalore.metamap.fr

3 Henri Bergson, L'évolution créatrice, PUF, 1998 4 Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne, L'Arche, 1997

Mutations III Benjamin Cadon & Ewen Chardronnet Above

Screenshots from

Bangalore: Subjective Cartography Internet project, 2009-2010

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

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 supporting, 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 expressions 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 awareness of the negative influence of electromagnetic fields caused by mobile telephones (more than 10 telecom companies and as many transmitters) on the meditation of ancient sages. These ancient practices and this ancient knowledge are threatened by the ever more rapid deployment 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 relationship 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 became visible and tangible. We must preserve this ability to act upon things.

Above

5 Définitions, Internationale Situationniste n°1, 1958

Microbial streets

by Neha Bat for Bangalore: Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010 Donate your eyes Extract from Bangalore:

Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010 Preparing Bakrid festival of sacrifice Extract from Bangalore: Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010 right page

DIY electricty Extract from Bangalore:

Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010 Don't use GSM in public transports Extract from Bangalore:

Subjective Cartography, 2009-2010

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Ewen Chardronnet is a French artist li­

tech­nical manager for Labomedia, an independant media lab in Orléans, France.

Through this NGO, Benjamin Cadon directs several artistic, technical and social projects linked to geolocation : 'Imaginary 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 installations using open-source real-time software and electronic devices.

ving in Paris. For the last 10 years he has been active in developing art works focusing on the cultural, social and environmental impacts of information systems, and has been engaged in numerous collaborative works such as the Association of Autonomous Astronauts, Makrolab, Acoustic Space Lab, World-Information.Org, the Spectral Investigations Collective and other collective phantoms.

His recent works include various performances, 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 curator 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.

websites

www.labomedia.org www.01xy.fr

Mutations III Benjamin Cadon & Ewen Chardronnet

Benjamin Cadon is a media artist and

website

www.semaphore.blogs.com

the web application metamap.fr is develo­ped by labomedia .org in orléans (fr )

 http: //bangalore.metamap.fr

Ewen Chardronnet (fr) and Benjamin Cadon (fr) in collaboration with the artists of the Spectral Investigations Collective: Alexander Römer (de), Loreto Martinez Troncoso (es), Hélène 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 (Orléans) with Srishti (Bangalore) with the support of Région Centre and the Alliance Française of Bangalore. project lead by

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Michele Cera & Federico Covre

Italy: 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 occurs by selecting, consciously or unconsciously, the information 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 understood only through experience, comparison, analysis, and representation.

• Can photography represent social landscape and ― following this ― those who live in it?

• Is it possible to interpret changes in terms of conflicts and differences interposing multiple identities, interculturality, multiethnic society and reinforcement of traditions?

DocumentaryPlatform is a project originating from the intent to observe what is happening in contemporary Italy at this historic moment. The reflections of various investigations conducted by photographers of the Italian territory Can we consider the contemporary landscape an emerg- and society are gathered together via the construction of ing phenomenon in which the influences of globalization a visual archive relate to our lived experience?

Documentary is the language of choice. It is an approach Over the past few decades, we have been witnessing best suited for the study of contemporaneity and its crititransformations of the world in which social, political, calities while attempting to define sets, series and relatechnological and economic issues are active agents dis- tionships within itself (M. Foucault). solving sedimented concepts. The distinction between urban and rural and the idea of border, along with phe- Through common and significant themes, it will be posnomena of human and natural alterations, are no longer sible to construct series of series in which “visual corres­ connected to national identity. In the 21st century, land- pondence” allows for the articulation of characteristics scape is an emerging form determined by globalization, and the activation of reflections on a territory as strucconflicts, and environmental changes. Global elements tured and complex as the Italian one. may be recognized anywhere in the world – elements whose continuous forms of dispersion and concentration Constructing “visual correspondences” allows for the redefine geographies and territories, deeply altering their observation, within a comprehensive scheme, of how natures. each context has been crossed over time by different settlement models, how a geographic region has been Research and investigations are conducted on these phe- interpreted and reused by different social forms, how innomena, permitting the proposal of more general hypo­ dustrial development has contributed to the alteration of theses and considerations: territory, and how the tourism industry has become the driving engine of future scenarios.

• Do forms of reading and representation capable of assimilating changes in society and the physical changes Photography, as an observer of transformations and in contemporary cities exist?​ through its widespread practice of appropriation, may play an ethical and even political role in learning how to • What is the Italian geographical identity of today? look at contemporary society.

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Visit the project website www.documentaryplatform.com

Mutations III Michele Cera & Federico Covre Screenshots from

DocumentaryPlatform Website, 2010

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views 28

Top

Fabio Barile Extract from Among Middle

Domingo Milella Extract from Paesaggi Bottom

Gabriele Rossi Extract from Litorale

Mutations III Michele Cera & Federico Covre Michele Cera

Federico Covre

born 1973, degree and PhD in Town Planning.

From Left to right & top to bottom

Francesco Neri Extract from Ritratti Michele Cera Extract from Taccone Giovanni Lami Extract from Apnea Federico Covre Extract from Dovresti esserci

born 1977, graduated in architecture at the University IUAV of Venice with a dissertation that examines the research of His main photographic interest is in hu- Bernd & Hilla Becher. man settlements and landscape representation and survey.

He studied photography with Lewis Baltz, Dominique Auerbacher, Guido Guidi and His work has been featured in numerous Marco Zanta. exhibitions, including 'Ereditare il paesaggio' (catalogue published by Electa, Venice, His photographic project dealt with the 2007) and 'Global Photography' (SiFest contemplation of the landscape and re2009). flects in a more punctual way the modalities of description and classification of eleHe was awarded a prize at the Premio ments of the landscape.

Fotografico Atlante Italiano 07, organized

by Italian Ministry for Arts and Culture.

His work has been exhibited at: Fondazio-ne Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice), His work is represented in major public Galleria Spazio Paraggi (Treviso), Fondazicollections, including the Maxxi (National one Studi Ricerche Benetton (Treviso), Museum for 21st Century Arts) in Rome, Maxxi Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI the Museum of Biella Territory, Linea di secolo (Rome), Fondazione Studio MaranConfine per la Fotografia Contemporanea, goni (Florence), Linea di Confine per la The University Museum of Photography in Fotografia Contemporanea (Rubiera, RE) , Galleria San Fedele (Milan).

Bari.

He coordinates the Laboratory of Archi- He is a teaching assistant at the Faculty of tecture and Landscape Photography at Art and Design, University IUAV of Venice and he lives and works in Venice and the Technical University of Bari.

Treviso. website

www.michelecera.com

website

www.federicocovre.com

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Edmund Clark

Guantanamo: If the light goes out "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

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.

Over a year after President Obama made the closure of the camps the first policy declaration of his new administration, 180 men remain in detention at Guantanamo and there is no sign that the camps will close.

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 service, 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’.

Still-life imagery of personal space and possessions follows 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 eve­r yday 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.

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.

The details of the ex-prisoners’ homes and the environments 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 Guantanamoissue Korans are among the objects brought home and

Rather than documents to monumentalize the historical Guantanamo: If the light goes out is a study of home, of a fact of the camps, these images illustrate three experivery particular idea of home at a very particular time in ences of home: The naval base at Guantanamo which is home to the American community and of which the prison our history. camps are just a part; the complex of camps where the The work examines the tension between the personal detainees have been held, and the homes, new and old, and public. I am seeking to define people who have been where the former detainees now find themselves trying to presented to the public as violent terrorists, yet never rebuild their lives. charged with anything, through the places they call home - the spaces where they reflect on the private memories The post-prison homes illustrate the contrast between the shared humanity of their domestic interiors and the and trauma of their experiences. spaces of the prison camps. Motifs of imprisonment and For eight years the American naval base at Guantanamo entrapment are present in both, resonating with the Bay on the island of Cuba has been home to hundreds prisoners’ experiences (and coming to terms with them). of men, all Muslim, all detained in the aftermath of the Glimpsing the evening sun through a window is a simple 9/11 attacks on suspicion of varying degrees of compli­ thing but readjusting to having the freedom to do so may city or intent to carry out acts of terror against American not be so simple. Like a net curtain, memories can obscure the view. interests.

30

Mutations III Edmund Clark kept. Items of clothing that are still worn or an image of a Daily responses in the form of comments, documents, solitary confinement cell carried on a mobile phone are articles and photographs will be added by individuals most directly affected by or involved with Guantanamo: ways for some of regaining a sense of control.

Ex-detainees, lawyers, writers, psychologists and even On the naval base an American community lives sur- ex-Guantanamo guards. These additions may relate to the rounded by razor wire in the last enclave of the Cold War. specific images or to wider themes (such as detention, inThis is small-town America with a high school, golf course, terrogation, home, identity or intercultural isssues). a mall and familiar fast food chains; a small town chosen precisely because it was thought to be not America, a I will also invite contributions from members of the public place where hundreds of men could be held beyond the with an interest or connection to the subject such as fa足 mily or friends of detainees. 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 interrogation 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.

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.

Each day for a month a new image from my series will be The work for the Mutations III is drawn from the imagery of added to the website. the artist's book 'Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out' which is published in October 2010 by Dewi Lewis Publishing.

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足 gacy of disturbance such experiences exert on the minds and memories of these men.

Above

Camps: Detainee's Cell in Camp 5 from 'Guantanamo: If the light goes out' (2010)

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Above & right page

Images from Guantanamo: If the light goes out (2010)

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Mutations III Edmund Clark

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 Photography International Photography Award for 2009 for his ongoing series about Guantanamo Bay, a 2008 Terry O’Neill / IPG Award for Contemporary British Photography 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 University of Sussex and The University of Paris, La Sorbonne before working in international research for five years. He went to The London College of Communications in 2004 for a postgraduate diploma in Photojournalism. After working as an editorial photographer he now concentrates on longer-term fine art and documentary projects. website

www.edmundclark.com

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen

The 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, because 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.

>

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.

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 reason 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

34

visit the project website www.thesochiproject.org

Mutations III Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen Top left

bottom left

Top right

bottom right

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2009

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010

Cows on the way to Krasni Vostok.

Retired police man Husey Aibasov (55) standing besides his car.

Head of the lamb which was thrown on one of the sheds near the house of Stella and Georgi.

Blossoms near the road in Krasny Vostok.

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views 36

Top left

bottom left

Top right

bottom right

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2009

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2009

A tribute to deceased soldiers in the school of Krasni Vostok.

The school has his own war museum.

WWII veteran Mohamed Kardanov (83) in his house in Krasni Vostok.

Murat (11) in the corridor of the school in Krasny Vostok.

He wants to become a police officer.

Children are preparing a huge harvest celebration.

The celebration will be held in the canteen of the school of Krasni Vostok.

Mutations III Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen The story of how documentary photographer 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 question: “I’m going to Abkhazia in two weeks. Do you want to come?”

top Left

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 economist and Veronika as a nurse in a vision clinic.

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 contact with worlds that they do not, or scarcely, know. Their interests co­ ver a wide range of topics. In addition to The Sochi Project, for example, Arnold is also making a film about Texel, the island where he was born; while Rob is working on a personal account of his neighbours 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 independent 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 corners of the earth, particularly Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His written and filmed documentaries have been publi­ shed in newspapers and magazines and shown at festivals and on television. His articles reflect his personal engagement in and love for the tragic absurdity of the documentary 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 international newspapers and magazines to produce documentary series. He has also taken part in numerous (solo) exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad. In addition to his own work as a documentary maker, he is the founder and artistic director of FOTODOK – Space for Documentary Photography.

websites

Arnold van Bruggen www.prospektor.nl Rob Hornstra www.borotov.com

top right

Krasny Vostok, Russia, 2010 Milana is ready for the traditional dancing, which is about to start in the theater of the school.

They only come to Krasny Vostok to visit their parents and get some rest.

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Yveline Loiseur & Bureau l’Imprimante La Vie matérielle / Material Life

La Vie matérielle is the work of a photographer, Yveline The photographs are displayed thanks to a vertical scrollLoiseur, and a graphic designer, Bureau l’Imprimante. bar, based on the familiar model used for everyday on-line information, and undergo various changes as they appear.

It adopts many different points of view using a variety of Akin to the fragmented memory, vague reminiscences, techniques: photography, graphic design, drawing, web and indecisive trajectories of the Web user, this project pages, and written text and constantly invites the web also features disappearance and frustration. When you user to follow new paths, oblique perspectives, and dotted click on certain words, the path darkens, and the pholines in houses or along the walls of the city, blurring lines tographs gradually disappear into darkness; elsewhere, Kubin’s text gradually takes over the images, which disapof separation. pear under a stream of words. A little further on, the ima­ The title La Vie matérielle is borrowed from that of a jour- ges are superimposed because of a computer bug, and nal by Marguerite Duras, who talked of "this free kind of become illegible. writing, these return journeys between myself and myself, This exuberant visual hotchpotch configures other forms between you and me, in the time we spent together". of common sense and traces out a new landscape of the The poetic text by Austrian artist Alfred Kubin evokes possible, halfway between unique images and the collecmemory and the way it constantly updates itself in the tive imagination: it suggests little utopias. present.

The photographs offer a fragmented description of daily life, both in the public and private spheres, creating a dialogue 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".

Right Page

Images from La Vie matérielle (2010) Lambda prints Various dimensions

38

Visit the project website www.wmaker.net/imprimante/materielle

39

Mutations III Yveline Loiseur & Bureau l’Imprimante

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Mutations III Yveline Loiseur & Bureau l’Imprimante 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 degree on Gerhard Richter. Her multi-faceted photographic work includes installations, wallpaper and art books, and combines the experience of photographing the instant with staged setups and studio reconstitutions, blurring the frontiers between reality and fiction.

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.

Her work has been shown in Montreal (Month of His work has been exhibited or published in Photography, 2010), Dresden (Institut Français, London, Tokyo and Sao Paulo.

2008 and 2009), Marseille (Musée d’Art Contemporain, 2007), Pontault Combault (Centre website photographique d’Ile de France, 2007), Lyon www.wmaker.net/imprimante (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

This Page

Screenshot of the project website Material life (2010) Text by Alfred Kubin, Quoted in 'Le travail du dessinateur', Éditions Allia (1999) Left Page

Images from La Vie matérielle (2010)

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Paula Muhr

FEMALES UNDER TENSION audio-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 practices reflected in historical films, photography and written material of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 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 contemporary 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 complex 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.

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 fragments from each of these letters were then composed into a single unified narrative about a woman’s expectations 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 average woman. By erasing the cause of the chase, the pursued man and the moment of closure with which such films conventionally end, the chase is turned into a hysterical, 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.

MacDonald defined love as an obsession, an emotional delirium and "one of the most prolific causes of men- The projection is presented together with associated photal, physical, and emotional aberration." Consequently, tographic works based on the reinterpretation of historiMacDonald decided that the most convenient method for cal medical and scientific images of women. studying female abnormality was by placing personal ads in several newspapers, first in the USA, and later in Europe. When women replied, MacDonald made arrangements 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'éducation européenne) desires correspondence (acquitance not necessary) in German, French or English, with educated woman of high social and financial position. She must tell me all about herself, i.e. give detailed account of her personality, experiences, emotions, views on life and describe her expectations from a relationship." More than a hundred years after the original experiment, women of different ages, professions,

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Mutations III Paula Muhr Stills from video Females under Tension (2010) 17'24", b&w, with sound projection in a loop

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views This page & Right Page

Images from work Females under Tension (2010) Lambda prints Various dimensions

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Mutations III Paula Muhr Paula Muhr (b. Serbia, 1977) She holds a BA in Photography from the Acade- She was awarded the 1st prize at the internais a freelance artist my of Arts BK in Belgrade (Serbia), and an MA in tional competition 'Trust me' in the F/Stop, 1st based in Berlin, Germany. Photography from the University of Arts in Bel- International Photography in Leipzig, Germany

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 numerous 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).

in 2007, the 'sittcomm-award 2007', and Mangelos Production Grant in 2009. In 2007 she was also short-listed for the Riccardo Pezza European Photography Prize.

Her photographs have been published in various magazines including Capricious (New York), Fotograf (Brno) and Purple Journal (Paris) and Waterfall (Taiwan).

Website

www.paulamuhr.de

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

Susanne Wehr

Personal- views an interdisciplinary web project focusing on identity construction in private photography

Susanne Wehr (project) Birgit Szepanski & Rainer Totzke (authors)

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.

As a public project, set in a contemporary pictorial context, personal-views is presented as a website and online platform. The linking of digital private photographs found in the internet flux makes it possible for contemporary photographic archives (like Google and Flickr ) to be thema­tically 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.

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 photographic legacies, others were acquired by purchase.

Multifarious subjects, anonymous photographers, unknown biographies, leaps in time, models and self-presentations 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.

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 linguistic 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.

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 approach 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.

46

visit the project website www.personal-views.com

Birgit Szepanski

Mutations III Susanne Wehr 4

1

[...] In an increasingly visual culture, really being 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 associated with a loss of human linguistic and narrative 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 2

3

5

[...] In the momentary flash of these contours, these sketches of a standard of life, these sketches of an ascribed person (we remember that person derives from Latin persona, a mask) double ima­ges, roles are created. A playful dealing with identity... photography... [...]

Birgit Szepanski

6

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Mutations III Public Images — Private Views

7 11

8 12

9 13

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Mutations III Susanne Wehr

Page 49 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

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from the series personal-views – picture composition photographer unknown, ca. 1970

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from the series personal-views – encyclopedia photographer unknown, ca. 1980 Left Page

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from the series personal-views – halfway there photographer unknown, ca. 1975

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from the series personal-views – behind curtains photographer unknown, ca. 1990

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from the series personal-views – whispers photographer unknown, ca. 1960 from the series personal-views – projection photographer unknown, ca. 1975

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from the series personal-views – blind faith photographer unknown, ca. 1970

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from the series personal-views – voices photographer unknown, ca. 1950

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from the series personal-views – double exposure photographer unknown, 1963

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from the series personal-views – unsteady light photographer unknown, ca. 1960

15 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 personal views project. websites

www.personal-views.com www.volks-bild.com

Authors

Rainer Totzke (born 1966), a media philosopher of the Freie Universität Berlin, member of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) research network ‘Bildphilosophie’ ["Philosophy of the Image"], postdoctoral scholarship at the DFG "Notational Iconicity" Graduate College (FU Berlin), coordinator of the personal-views project, self-employed since 2000 as a columnist, author and performer 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 journalist and art historian. Currently working on a doctoral thesis at HFBK in Hamburg 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 interventions. Publications and catalogue texts for artists, press releases and curatorial projects for various galleries. website

www.birgitszepanski.de

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from the series personal-views – continuous recording photographer unknown, ca. 1979

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MUtAtIONs III PuBLIC IMagES — PrIVaTE VIEWS

MUtAtIONs III

ParTNErS bERlIN

lUXEMbOURg

KuLTurPrOjEKTE BErLIN gMBh:

CaFé-CrÈME aSBL:

oliver bätz Project Manager

paul di Felice & pierre stiwer Curators 'Mutations III' directors of European Month of Photography Luxembourg

thomas Friedrich Curator European Month of Photography Berlin thomas Friedrich, oliver bätz, Katharina brünner Curators 'Mutations III' Katharina brünner, Ieva Akule assistant Project Managers

bRAtIslAvA

Guy Dockendorf director of Cultural affairs, Ministery of Culture IN aSSOCIaTION WITh:

carré rotondes / espace culturel, Luxembourg

CENTraL EurOPEaN hOuSE OF PhOTOgraPhY BraTISLaVa:

ParTNErS OF ThE EurOPEaN MONTh OF PhOTOgraPhY IN LuxEMBOurg:

Vaclav Macek Chairman of FOTOFO director of Month of Photography Bratislava

centre National de l'Audiovisuel

Zuzana Lapitková Curator SEdF / Central European house of Photography, Curator 'Mutations III'

50

MINISTErY OF CuLTurE:

centre d'art Nei Liicht Dudelange

Pantone 2935c

MUtAtIONs III ParTNErS pARIs MaISON EurOPĂŠENNE dE La PhOTOgraPhIE:

jean-Luc Monterosso director jean-Luc soret Curator 'Mutations III' barbara wolffer Project Manager

MOsCOW associated partner and member of the board MOSCOW hOuSE OF PhOTOgraPhY:

olga sviblova director ekaterina Kondranina Curator Mikhail Krasnov Project Manager

ROME zONE aTTIVE:

emiliano paoletti director Curator 'Mutations III' Luca carosella Project Manager

vIENNA dEParTMENT FOr CuLTuraL aFFaIrS OF ThE CITY OF VIENNa:

Gunda Achleitner, berthold ecker Curators 'Mutations III' EYES ON - MONTh OF PhOTOgraPhY VIENNa:

thomas Licek Managing director Agnes reinthaler, Alex Kamenski Project Managers

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MUtAtIONs III PuBLIC IMagES — PrIVaTE VIEWS

ACKNOWlEdgMENts CItY Of bERlIN

CItY Of pARIs

André schmitz State Secretary for Cultural affairs

christophe Girard deputy Mayor for Culture pierre schapira deputy Mayor in charge of International relations, European affairs and French language and culture abroad

Volker heller head of the department for Cultural affairs dEuTSChE WOhNEN ag BErLIN:

dEParTMENT FOr CuLTuraL aFFaIrS:

We would like to thank deutsche Wohnen ag Berlin for its support of the project 'personal-views'

Laurence engel director catherine hubault assistant director of the Patrimony and history

BErLINTaPETE:

www.berlintapete.de CItY Of vIENNA

LEFELMaNN COMMuNICaTION dESIgN:

Thanks to Christian reister (weblog adjustment) and Fabian Lefelmann (design concept) www.lefelmann.de

CItY Of lUXEMbOURg Lydie polfer head of the department for Cultural affairs City of Luxembourg christiane sietzen Chief executive of Cultural affairs City of Luxembourg

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Andreas Mailath-pokorny Executive City Councillor for Cultural affairs and Science www.lefelmann.de Kommunikationsdesign

bernhard Denscher head of the department for Cultural affairs of the City of Vienna The project 'Topographies of the Insignificant' is sponsored by the danish arts Council Committee for Visual arts.

First edition 2010 isbn 978-99959-674-0-6 Printed in Slovakia

www.

european month of photography .net

ISBN 978-99959-674-0-6

www.europeanmonthofphotography.net