5 + collection managment
summer 2019, Brunswick - Germany
Universitätsarchiv der TU Braunschweig
4 + exposure of photographic inscriptions
spring 2018, Graz - Austria
private request
3 + Kaleidoscope - construction of objectivity
MA-thesis, spring 2016, Berlin/Jakobstad - Germany/Finland
From my perspective, an art piece is divided into two layers; the art object, the ‘thing’ which is exhibited and looked at on the one hand, on the other hand the material which the ‘thing’ is based on. I’d like to call it the mask and the substance.
The mask is, what the artist creates, what he wants to show and what he uses for communicating, this is what the collector pays for and what the curator aims to put into the right light. The substance is often forgotten, seen as an obstruction when putting up the show, as a tool to express the actual idea. However, the mask could never exist without its substance.
The substance talks to us through his chemical compounds, reactions and qualities. To get to those facts we need to use scientific methods and tools. The substance ages naturally, but also can be influenced by its environment, mostly the process of aging gets fasten by human ignorance of its needs. On the other hand it can be slowed down by the human as well. People who are able to do so, are the ones who looked at the material itself and it chemical compounds. But as any other on the world, also the substance of an art piece is not immortal.
Why using the word substance and not material for the paper? The substance talks about the material including its marks of time.
Those marks are also called patina, which brings a romanticize view with it. The feelings which a patina can evoke are needed to be ignored! With the substance I want to be more objective, it is about the material and the story of it on facts. Substance and material are the same, but the substance is not romanticized, which comes with a context. The word substance is also used in science language as the base of a material. Looking at the substance as words they are made out of letters, which would be chemical elements. Different substances create a material, different words a sentence. Many sentences create a text, materials create an object. (Esplugas 2016) If one letter is placed in a word or even sentence it is given immediately a subjective touch. The subjectivity I don´t want.
The images were shot by Jürgen Henschel (†2012) on 2nd Juni 1967 were published for the following days. The double page shows a print of the newspaper Die Wahrheit from the 6th June 1967. Henschel was a photo-journalist in West Berlin. His heritage of 3 ring folders stuffed with negatives of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain from 1962 - 67 and 1975 - 1991 was the base for the work Kaleidoscope.
Henschel himself sorted the negatives and gave them to the museum. Nobody else took a close look at them yet. The museum does not know which images they storage. By now, the photographs will be a excellent document of the history of Kreuzberg and its inhabitants. Kreuzberg is a well known district of Berlin. In this part of the city many Turkish inhabitants live since the 1950s. It is also known for its free lifestyle, artist, musicians and demonstrations. In
Kreuzberg you find a colorful mix of cultures, political active people. Kreuzberg was part of West Berlin close to the inner german wall. With my decision to only work with Henschel´s three ringfolders containing negatives in the FHXB I made a decision. I only will work with part of the material.
I exclude most of his art work. The substance got my first subjective touch. It is not the whole.
Henschel wrote an index for the three ring folders in the FHXB-museum, which helps to find images by street, event or names. The example shows the Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum, sleeve 12.
The heritage includes an index as well. Henschel used an address book which he sorted after the streets, galleries, political events, demonstrations and so on. Those can be called key words. Behind each street name you can find the number of the negative sleeve and the number of the images. Henschel´s system is to find the photographs after location and event of the shooting. Basically after the purpose which brought him to join the event.
I want to look at the cultural memory as I do through a Kaleidoscope. Trying to see it from different angles, remixing the sources and bringing them into a new order. A kaleidoscope is a cylinder with mirrors containing loose, colored objects which are most of the time glass pieces. The consumer looks into one end of it, while he holds up the other one towards the light. With the help of mirrors and the glass pieces a colorful pattern shows. The constant new arranging of the pattern and the shiny colors keep the user playing with it. Only one person can use a Kaleidoscope and he can´t share its perception with anybody else. The primary source, the junks of glass and the light are seen and read differently with every usage.
My attention lies on the physicality of the material as well as on the optical science which brings the colorful play into the kaleidoscope. These rules and the material are for each user the same, but every one sees different patterns. Second I like that the kaleidoscope forces the user to interact with it.
I want to work with abstracting people´s notion and the activation of the user. The idea of distracting perception and the interaction will be projected onto the exhibition. Abstraction people´s notion can be challenged through a confrontation with unknown or displaced elements. Interaction happens when the exhibition visitor walks through the elements of the exhibition. I see the interaction of people as a process where they improve their intellect and can gain new knowledge. The interaction can also be a sharing of thoughts with other visitors.
I want to abstract the cultural material of Henschel´s art piece with the focus on the substance and the scientific elements. The exhibition shows this substance enlarged and in a new constellation. Because of the enlargement of the heritage´s elements the visitor is able to walk through and interact with the substance.
The installation consists of gelatin, plastic, silver and pulp: the main material of Henschel´s heritage. As in a kaleidoscope I bring those into a new position, a new shape of the heritage, which the viewer can explore. The material, which actually fits into three ring folders, placed on one table in the archive, the pages which I flipped through with my fingers are abstracted and enlarged.
The visitors of the exhibition will be dragged into a world of random materials standing and hanging around. The main color of the room will be a neutral grey and silver.
Conclusion
➞ The objective substance were Henschel´s three ring folders in the archive as long as I didn´t look at them. But they weren´t an objective substance for himself. The chemical compounds of the three ring folders are an objective element of chemical science and with it an objective substance.
➞ The objective substance turned into a subjective art piece through me. I was looking for specific elements which brought me to exclude others. With the process of the decision I turned objective elements into elements with a subjective purpose.
➞ The installation and the book are subjective masks of my art piece.
➞ The material, its arrangement in the exhibition and the book are my subjective substance of the art piece. If someone else just looks at the material it could be seen as objective. It has its own natural aging process.
➞ The book contains fragments I put together while searching for the objective elements of art pieces. It shows the process of the art work. With my intention I looked for specific information. The content of the book is the second subjective substance of
the art work. With keeping the fragments partly separated from my interpretation I keep them on a more objective level.
➞ It is the process of my research which I let the consumer go through as well. His process of perception I can´t coordinate which turns again the art piece subjective.
➞ The aim of putting the focus onto the material of the art piece got lost in the moment when the choice of the materials lies in the idea of the artist. Which why I can call the content of the book the substance of Kaleidoscope - construction of objectivity.
The art work Kaleidoscope - construction of objectivity is about the process of finding objectivity in art works and keeping objectivity of these fragements. I found them but as soon as I chose and placed them they turned subjective. The word construction implies subjectivity in itself which translate the title to: Kaleidoscope - objectivity subjectivied.
2 + Aesthetic of light: A construct.
BA-thesis, summer 2011, Kiel - Germany
Perception is the prerequisite for the capacity for judgement. Without absorbing information, we are not able to think about them, compare them, forward them and judge them with wrong or right.
We only can see through light, which gets absorbed and reflected by objects and because of that fact forms them. The light seems to be white but brings colors up to the surface, which everyone percives differently. Colors can be measured and have a generality. It is fascinatiing that light is one element, which coins our perception of the environment so much and at the same time is taken for granted by us. Without light we wouldn´t have an image of our environment and we couldn´t photograph it as well. So it seems logic to me, to use photography to understand the human perception.
For catching the different facet of light I built a box out of ply wood and padded with black filt. The light sensetive material was placed with the emulsion side up. On top came to glass plates, which had wax, lamp black or ink inbetween. A soft frame pushed everything tightly together. The box needed to be prepared in the darkroom and closed with a wooden lid. After placing the box at the selected spot the film got exposed.
Two glassplates filled with pices of cole were used to create the following negative and the upper image. One part of the project was, to use different film materials, light sources and materials between the glass plates to have an equivalent to the individual perception of each individuum. With it I also tried to find something measurable datas to get an objectivity.
August Strindberg´s Celestrografie (1892 - 1896)*
August Strindberg, a swedish writer and artist, did photographical experiments, which he called Celestografien and Cristallogramme. Strindberg coated glasplates with an water emulsion, after the water evaporated crystals stayed on the surface. He placed those on light sensetive POP-paper and exposed it under sun- and moonlight. This type of photography was an early photogramme which catched amorphic structures. With the help of Celestografien he predicated that the human sees the world wrong through his round eyes. Thatswhy we see the sun as a round object.
1 + 1 matchbox, 3 films
spring 2009, Jakobstad FIN
