38 | 1991/1992

This issue features part two of the contributions to the SYMPOSIUM ON PHOTOGRAPHY XI during the 1990 “styrian autumn” festival and will conclude the discussion of the symposium’s theme WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS OF EXISTENCE- OBJECTS/SIGNS/COMMMODITIES. Two articles by Mchael Wetzel and Peter Weibel serve as a theoretical basis (and as a link to the contributions published in issue 37). In his text “Dealing With Things” Wetzel discusses the principal concept of object and existence in the work of Heidegger with a special view to the achievements of the photographic medium- “Photographs show an object as its trace, which wipe out what they make us sense and track down” -,of its fetish character, the “Pleasure in Loss” which photography brings into our dealing with objects. As a pint of departure of his programmic contribution “Objects, Signs, Commodities”, Peter Weibel has chosen the claim that philosophy and aesthetics have developed under the pressure of the industrial revolution and under the consequent transformation of the world of objects. He has the consequent transformation of the world of objects. He has attempted to demonstrate that photography and, consequently, the media of film, compute and video, have been the primary factor in effecting the loss of the IDENTITY OF THE OBJECT  and , causally connected to it, the IDENTITY OF SELF. In conclusion, we have published excerpts of the debate raised by the symposium theme. At that point we ask our readers to refer back to the contributions published in issue 37.

Ways of dealing with objects are also exemplified in contributions by artists: With his “Erroneous Models”, Rolf Walz demonstrates that models must refer to real objects in order to be recognized as either erroneous or correct.  Thomas Locher brings into play systems of order that direct the viewer’s awareness to his own ordinal urge: Door leaves and locking mechanismns are numbered according to seemingly logical yet indiscernible systems. As “cloud systems” they defy any attempt of “penetration”. In their contrition, Horáková & Maurer have exploreed the effects and semantics of objects of varied rigid appearing in a variety of media, as real objects or as factualitied translated into photography, film or literary language. In “Perpetual Photos”, Allan McCollum demonstrates the reduction of factual visual information to a sign: As in the artists “Individual Works” or “Plaster Surrogates”, the significance of original and copy is equally addressed here: By the “Source image” and by the copy acting as original.

The upcoming issue 39 of CAMERA AUSTRIA will be dealing, in a very broad sense, with the theme “The Family- The Factory”: There will be Nan Goldin’s work about her friend Cookie Mueller, who has died of AIDS, Pierre Schoellkopf’s images of groups of people and the work by Moscow artist Wladimir Kuprijanow referring to a collective “image memory” (with an accompanying text by Julian Schutting) as well as an essay by Hildegund Amanshauser on Jeff Koons. An essay by Herta Wolf on Kurt Talos’ photo works will continue our series on important positions in Austrian photography of the past decades.

We owe an apology to our readers for the delay of this issue. Involuntary modifications of our schedule are the results of a very small them struggling with occasional production setbacks. We express our thanks to the artists and the theorists who have contributed to this issue, and we thank our readers for their abiding interest in CAMERA AUSTRIA.

Christine Frisinghelli