Camera Austria International

74 | 2001

  • LAURI FIRSTENBERG
    Visualizing the Contemporary Vernacular: The Photography of Doug Aitken
  • DOUG AITKEN
  • REINHARD BRAUN
    Because I'm worth it. Speculations on Visual Discourses and Consumer Cultures
  • ANN THOMAS
    "Temporary Volumes": The Cloud Photographs of Herwig Kempinger
  • HERWIG KEMPINGER
  • SUSANNE NEUBURGER
    Lisa Holzer: Test Spaces / Passages
  • LISA HOLZER
  • YORGHOS TZIRTZILAKIS
    Maria Papadimitriou: Observation as Destiny
  • MARIA PAPADIMITRIOU
  • ROLF SACHSSE
    Marginalien zur Fotografie. Vom Platz zwischen den Bildern.

Preface

Over the years, CAMERA AUSTRIA International has been follow­ing the work of Austrian artist Herwig Kempinger (cf. C. A. 23, 1987; 33/34, 1990). Upon closer inspection, the »Temporary Vol­umes« we are publishing in this issue prove to be a consistent fur­ther development of his investigations into phenomena of light, ­space, and colour, with the focus always on the transitory nature of his work and the analysis of the photographic medium. His cloud pictures, generated on the computer, show – as discusses Ann Thomas in her essay – a new developement in his work. Kempinger’s posi­tion as a »disappointed romantic« creates a tension that keeps the work alive, as the general conceptional stringency of his works and the emotionalism or contemplative mood evoked by the cloud pictures are seemingly contradictory. This apparent contradiction between conceptuality and the emotional would seem to create a loose connection to the works of Los Angeles based artist Doug Aitken. In his spread of pictures he shows a selection of his new book project Notes for New Religion Notes for No Religion, while the accompanying text by Lauri Firstenberg attempts to ascertain photographic strategies in his work. Aitken’s works show places kept in limbo, places that do not constitute a destination but rather seem to float as if weightless in the space of media: photography and film. His pictures evoke diffuse sentiments, he uses the camera as a kind of memory tool with which he invites the viewer to speculate on something unutterable which tells of the indecision and decay that accompany contemporary culture.
For her long-term work in progress »Temporary Autonomous Museum For All«, developed in collaboration with residents, sociologists, artists and architects, the Greek artist Maria Papadimitriou has found a concrete place, the Avliza district in Menidi in the west of Athens, a transit quarter for migrating populations. Impressed by the dynamism of the changeable »emotional topography« of this area – as Yorghos Tzirtzilakis describes it in his text – Papadimitriou reanimated the Museum here as a social facility that adheres to an understanding of art as a product of human relations. The young Vienna based artist Lisa Holzer creates a different kind of »test ­spaces« in her photographs. Her »Sets« show models of vacated ­scenes, but also objects that remind us how – and this is where her work is conceptually linked to Maria Papadimitriou’s social practice – real places outside of art can be appropriated as such and used for utopian memory work. But unlike Papadimitriou’s project-based work, that is very much open to processes in her ongoing collection of visual and empirical data, Holzer’s chronographical (spatial) orders prove to be self-enclosed economic and dynamic systems.

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Camera Austria International 74 | 2001
Preface

Over the years, CAMERA AUSTRIA International has been follow­ing the work of Austrian artist Herwig Kempinger (cf. C. A. 23, 1987; 33/34, 1990). Upon closer inspection, the »Temporary Vol­umes« we are publishing in this issue prove to be a consistent fur­ther development of his investigations into phenomena of light, ­space, and colour, with the focus always on the transitory nature of his work and the analysis of the photographic medium. His cloud pictures, generated on the computer, show – as discusses Ann Thomas in her essay – a new developement in his work. Kempinger’s posi­tion as a »disappointed romantic« creates a tension that keeps the work alive, as the general conceptional stringency of his works and the emotionalism or contemplative mood evoked by the cloud pictures are seemingly contradictory. This apparent contradiction between conceptuality and the emotional would seem to create a loose connection to the works of Los Angeles based artist Doug Aitken. In his spread of pictures he shows a selection of his new book project Notes for New Religion Notes for No Religion, while the accompanying text by Lauri Firstenberg attempts to ascertain photographic strategies in his work. Aitken’s works show places kept in limbo, places that do not constitute a destination but rather seem to float as if weightless in the space of media: photography and film. His pictures evoke diffuse sentiments, he uses the camera as a kind of memory tool with which he invites the viewer to speculate on something unutterable which tells of the indecision and decay that accompany contemporary culture.
For her long-term work in progress »Temporary Autonomous Museum For All«, developed in collaboration with residents, sociologists, artists and architects, the Greek artist Maria Papadimitriou has found a concrete place, the Avliza district in Menidi in the west of Athens, a transit quarter for migrating populations. Impressed by the dynamism of the changeable »emotional topography« of this area – as Yorghos Tzirtzilakis describes it in his text – Papadimitriou reanimated the Museum here as a social facility that adheres to an understanding of art as a product of human relations. The young Vienna based artist Lisa Holzer creates a different kind of »test ­spaces« in her photographs. Her »Sets« show models of vacated ­scenes, but also objects that remind us how – and this is where her work is conceptually linked to Maria Papadimitriou’s social practice – real places outside of art can be appropriated as such and used for utopian memory work. But unlike Papadimitriou’s project-based work, that is very much open to processes in her ongoing collection of visual and empirical data, Holzer’s chronographical (spatial) orders prove to be self-enclosed economic and dynamic systems.
These four monographic contributions in this issue are accompanied by a theoretical essay by Reinhard Braun in which he specu­lates on visual discourses and consumer cultures. The starting point for his observations is the fact that the interplay of discourses and visuality is increasingly entrenched in contexts of consumption, which can be ascribed to the mounting economization of private, social, cultural and political discourses. From here he attempts to establish a new concept of representation that is coupled with the consumption of commodities and with the aid of which contempo­rary life-drafts (lifestyle, fashion, music) are produced.
It is above all the international group of authors and critics, that is expanding and yet still stable at the core, that helps define the identity of CAMERA AUSTRIA, and to whom we are indebted for their co-operation in the conception of our magazine. In order to keep in touch with them and our readers, CAMERA AUSTRIA is once again taking part in numerous international events this year: we will be participating in art fairs such as Frankfurt/Main, Chicago, Basel, Berlin, Paris, Cologne and Vienna and organising a colloquium on the changing role and function of art magazines between production and the market for the Rencontres Internationales in Arles.

Christine Frisinghelli Maren Lübbke Manfred Willmann, May 2001

Entries

Forum

KYUNGWOO CHUN

IMMO KLINK

PETRA GERSCHNER

HEIDI CZIPIN

OLAF UNVERZART

SYLVIA DE SWAAN

KLAUS VILS AUDERER

KAREN STUKE

RICOH GERBL

ESTER THYMÓ

MARTIN KRENN

Exhibitions

Annie Leibovitz: Women
Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.; The Miami Art Museum, Miami; et.al.

Photosynkyria 2001
Thessaloniki, Griechenland
ROY EXLEY

Bernhard Fuchs: Portraits in Farbe
Museum Folkwang Essen

Zoltán Jókay: Der Die Das
Städtische Galerie Ravensburg
CAROLIN FÖRSTER

Luigi Ghirri: Zwischen alter und neuer Welt
Patrimoine Photographique, Hôtel de Sully, Paris; Fotomuseum Winterthur
JULIA GARIMORTH

Shopping
Generali Foundation, Wien
SØNKE GAU

The short century:
Unabhängigkeits- und Befreiungsbewegungen in Afrika 1945 – 1995.
Villa Stuck, München; Gropius-Bau, Berlin; et al.
MICHAEL HAUFFEN

Berliner Hackepeter: Remake Berlin
Fotomuseum Winterthur; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein und daadgalerie, Berlin
THILO KOENIG

Philip-Lorca Dicorcia: Streetwork
Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen
MAGDALENA KRÖNER

Joan Jonas: Performance – Video – Installation 1968 – 2000
Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart; Neue Gesellschaft f. Bildende Kunst, Berlin
VERENA KUNI

Wiedersehen mit Familie Billingham
Brno House of Arts; Hasselblad Center, Göteborg; Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven
MARIE RÖBL

inSITE2000
San Diego / Tijuana, Mexiko
SANDRA WAGNER

Berlin Biennale
Postfuhramt und Kunst-Werke Berlin
MAREN LÜBBKE

Erwin Wurm: Indoor-, Outdoor-, One-Mintue-Sculptures
Galerie Krinzinger, Wien
RAINER METZGER

Books

Jeff Burton’s Dreamland
powerhouse Books, New York / Galerie E. Perrotin, Paris, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
CARLO MCCORMICK

Rosalind Krauss’ neue Medien. Ein Blick in die jüngsten Publikationen der amerikanischen Kunstkritikerin
Diverse Verlage
STEFAN NEUNER

Osamu Kanemura: Spider’s Strategy
Osiris Co. Ltd., Tokyo
DONALD RICHIE

Weniger ist mehr. Heidi Specker: ABC
H. Imschoot, Gent
KERSTIN STREMMEL

Die Vieldeutigkeit der Bilder. John Berger, Jean Mohr: Eine andere Art zu erzählen
Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M.

Rosalind Krauss: Die Originalität der Avantgarde
Verlag der Kunst, Dresden
Das Photographische. Fink Verlag, München
MICHAEL WETZEL

Vladimir Birgus (Hg.): Tschechische Avantgarde-Fotografie 1918 – 1948
Arnoldsche, Stuttgart
TOMAS POSPECH

Imprint

Publisher: Manfred Willmann. Owner: Verein CAMERA AUSTRIA, Labor für Fotografie und Theorie
Sparkassenplatz 2, A-8010 Graz

Editors: Christine Frisinghelli, Maren Lübbke, Edith Winkler, Anja Rösch
Translations: Tony Moser, Wilfried Prantner, Richard Watts