Camera Austria International
96 | 2006
- HANS-JÜRGEN HAFNER
Anna Oppermanns Ensembles - ANNA OPPERMANN
- MARINA GRŽINIĆ
IRWIN: NSK Guards - IRWIN
- REINHARD BRAUN
Martin Osterider: Self-reflective Pictures, Photographic Spaces - MARTIN OSTERIDER
- SANDRA KRIŽIĆ ROBAN
Sofija a.k.a. Silvia Potocki: Sofijas Gaze - SOFIJA a.k.a. SILVIA POTOCKI
- RUTH SONDEREGGER
Critical Theory of Social Pictures IV
Preface
“What is bare life?” is one of three topics covered by the documenta 12 magazines project, in which Camera Austria is participating together with more than seventy other international (art) magazines and to which we will be regularly contributing until summer 2007. A first contribution on the topical relevance of the social-activist and photo-political work of Jo Spence (Camera Austria No. 94) was followed by a second piece on Susan Meiselas in Camera Austria No. 95, that focused on the question of a national picture archive for Kurdistan a people without a nation on which the photographer worked for several years. In this issue we are presenting two further documenta contributions that follow on in different ways from the questions examined by Spence and Meiselas: The Slovenian artist group IRWIN, introduced in an essay by Marina Grzinic, present their “NSK Gards” work for the first time, that arose from their long-term “NSK State in Time” project, and in which they artistically deal with a fictitious state and its insignia. This state is a virtual entity, it has no territory precisely because it has always been claimed that the Balkan War was waged for territorial reasons. IRWIN formed up as early as 1983 and has contributed to a changed reception of Eastern-European art with their (cultural) political activities and artistic interventions. In the “NSK Gards” project, IRWIN lends the fictitious state of “NSK State in Time” the insignia of a nation (the flag with a coat of arms, passports) putting these into the real military context, by having these insignia guarded by real military guards of various nations.
Entries
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Anna Oppermanns Ensembles
[…] “The economic aspect”, a stand-alone ensemble since 1979, revolves around questions of mediating and marketing – not only – art. In this context, it focuses above all on the aspect of “self-marketing”. The trigger and core motif is an objet trouvé: the picture of a dealer pointing at the range of goods spread out before him. The “motif” is at the same time an “occasion”: for Oppermann a moment at which everyday observations of dealer behaviour, e.g. personality traits observed in oneself and in others, marketing strategies, conscious or subliminal, typical or coincidental, materialise, take on form and thus become representable/sayable. Against this backdrop, the artist collects and organises information of varying quality, makes it communicable in a kind of thought-space, into which she organises associatively found sources (pictures, text quotations, objects of very different provenance) with great attention to the motivation and criteria of her processes of selection and organisation, staging them by means of complex picture-text relations.
Again and again, the focus returns to the core motif: copied in whole or in fragments, staged as a photo (with friends playing the role of the dealer) that in turn offers the opportunity for post-processing, for example by overpainting. And with every new state that the ensemble assumes above all due to the exhibition context, some elements settle into place while others are subjected to a pro-cess of correction and reorganisation.
What may, in terms of material, appear to be somewhat of a painstaking task and, in terms of motivation, perhaps moralising and paraded self-education, is manifested as broken in many places when experienced in an exhibition: The ensemble oscillates between chaos and precision, the effort to achieve discursive exact-ness contrasts with humorous and (self-)ironically interspersed invective. Oppermann contrasts the segregating “either-or” with a “both-and” that is aware of difference and that, therefore, is expressed with great consciousness. And such hierarchies as larger or smaller, central or peripheral, important or insignificant, are relativised on the one hand by the form, the vertical expanse, and on the other hand by the processual-performative structure of the ensemble. For even if works such as these incorporate, immunise, so to speak, the formal and thematic layers by means of methodical self-reflection, producing their “own discourse”, that above and beyond individual ensembles and groups of works take on a kind of life of their own, they prove to be made and changeable, thus allowing critical and corrective manipulation. […]Text feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, pp. 7–18.
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ANNA OPPERMANN
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, S. / pp. 7–18.
Anna Oppermann, Methodendiagramm / method diagram, ca. 1980.
Courtesy: Nachlass Anna Oppermann estate, art agents gallery, Hamburg. -
ANNA OPPERMANN
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, S. / pp. 7–18.
Anna Oppermann, Porträt Herr S., Zustand / portrait of Mr S., State in 1984. Detail.
Courtesy: Nachlass Anna Oppermann estate, art agents gallery, Hamburg. -
ANNA OPPERMANN
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, S. / pp. 7–18.
Anna Oppermann, Anders Sein (Irgendwie ist sie so anders...), seit 1970,
Installation: Serpentine Gallery, London 1981.
Courtesy: Nachlass Anna Oppermann estate, art agents gallery, Hamburg.
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IRWIN: NSK Guards
“NSK Guards” by the Slovenian group IRWIN is a project that consists of more than a dozen of photographs in which “local”, thus real army soldiers guard the flag of the imaginary “NSK State in Time”. The project “NSK Guards” started in 1998 when the first photograph “NSK Guard Tirana” was realised in collaboration with the Albanian Army. It was followed by collaborations with numerous other armies such as the army of the Czech Republic, the Croatian, the Italian, and the Austrian army, the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.
“NSK Guards” by IRWIN is directly connected with the “NSK State in Time” projects. The NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst or New Slovenian Art) collective has a multiform history. In the early 1980s the group of artists IRWIN, together with the music group Laibach, a theatre group best known for one of its founding figures Dragan Zivadinov, and the design group known as New Collectivism, formed one of the most powerful art and social collectives from the East of Europe, known by its German name Neue Slowenische Kunst, the acronym NSK, or New Slovenian Art when translated into English. The German was purposely used in the case of Neue Slowenische Kunst to disclose connections with the disavowed German influence on Slovenian art, culture and history. The same is true for the name of the music group Laibach; this is how Ljubljana was renamed during the Second World War when the city was occupied by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Since they were already in the process of naming, NSK thus condensed a very precise and traumatic way of dealing with Slovenian history and reality.
The “NSK State in Time” was established in the only way possible, as a virtual entity that had no real territory (as it was said that it was precisely because of territorial concerns that we were witnessing the Balkan war) but only the insignias of a real State – passports, flags, etc., – which were elaborated as artefacts. From time to time, however, the “NSK State in Time” was displayed in real space. In the 1990s the “NSK State in Time’s” embassies and consulates were inaugurated in private apartments and houses, hotel rooms, and similar places to question the politics of space within/outside the Balkans/Europe and the art institution. […] The virtual NSK State tackles ambiguous procedures of codification and the system rules and principles that serve to define historical coincidence and artificiality. This parallelism between art and the state poses radical questions about the procedures and instructions that are at the base of the formation of the art system and which are crucial for its reproduction. […]Text feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, pp. 19–29.
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IRWIN
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, S. / pp. 19–29.
IRWIN, NSK Garda, in Zusammenarbeit mit der kroatischen Armee / in collaboration with the Croatian Army. Museum of Contemporary Art, 10.12.2000.
Photo: Igor Andjelic. -
IRWIN
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, S. / pp. 19–29.
IRWIN, NSK Garde Graz, in Zusammenarbeit mit der österreichischen Armee / in collaboration with Austrian Army.
Forum Stadtpark 6.10.2001. Iris Print, 140 cm × 100 cm.
Photo: Wolfgang Croce. -
IRWIN
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, S. / pp. 19–29.
IRWIN, NSK Garde Prag, in Zusammenarbeit mit der tschechischen Armee / in collaboration with Czech Army.
MXM Gallery 15.09.2000. Iris print, 140 cm × 100 cm.
Photo: Igor Andjelic. -
IRWIN
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, S. / pp. 19–29.
Doppelseite / spread: IRWIN, S. / pp. 24–25.
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Martin Osterider: Self-reflective Pictures, Photographic Spaces
[…] In “Closed Circuit” (2001), finally, Martin Osterider refers directly to the dispositif of photography as it covers not only the public space but also still constitutes a central paradigm in the production of connections between public and private historiography, i.e. a form of constructing identity and social collective. Created in Japan, the installation starts out from large-format pictures of tourists taking photos (a global phenomenon and cliché), using them as a backdrop for a situation of taking photographs that is defined in the exhibition space. Visitors can use one of three Polaroid cameras, whose respective field of vision is displayed by marks on the floor. At the same time, these marks define the possible visual space in which the visitors/photographers can inscribe themselves. The Polaroids, finally, are added to the installation and document the enacted cycle of a photographic practice that is tautologically projected onto itself. In this respect, Osterider positions the practice of taking photos (in the exhibition space) in what has always been a photographic space. The ascertainment of a reality in which the individual may be created performatively as identitary takes place as a collective image practice, as inscription into a collective pro-cess of producing memory as an image archive, a process that takes reality as a starting point from which to construct it. Perhaps the ideological aspect of photography consists above all in this pro-cess, that has long since become a global cultural practice: to inscribe oneself into a horizon of the visual, to see photography not as a medium of appropriating, recording or making reality available, but rather as a collective practice that allows us to create an available horizon of reality by means of photography in the first place. In any case, Martin Osterider’s installation suggests that we read the dispositiv of photography with regard to this relevance in terms of cultural technique. The arrangement of the cameras that completely capture the large-format photos of the photographers as a synonym of social groups, fixing them in their field of vision, hints at the inevitability of always being captured by representation, of always being visually measured and part of the “screen”, as Lacan called it. […]
Text feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, pp. 30–37.
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MARTIN OSTERIDER
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International S. / pp. 30–37.
Martin Osterider, TOWER606, New York, 2006, Digital C-print, 100 cm × 60 cm. -
MARTIN OSTERIDER
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International S. / pp. 30–37.
Martin Osterider, XXL-Automat (Parkhaus / Car park in Tokyo), 2002. Digital C-print, 193 cm × 120 cm. -
MARTIN OSTERIDER
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International S. / pp. 30–37.
Doppelseite / spread: Martin Osterider, S. / pp. 34–35. -
MARTIN OSTERIDER
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International S. / pp. 30–37.
Martin Osterider, Closed Circuit, 2001.
Installation: "Rebound - some notes on displacement", Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan.
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Sofija a.k.a. Silvia Potocki: Sofijas Gaze
The story about Silvia Potocki (a.k.a. Sofija) could begin in different ways, let us say as a personal note about our meeting or as a summary of the comments on her photographs, but perhaps only as an observation on the calm in her messages and her distanced gaze. But “photography is elusive from the first step on, the step of classification […]”, says Roland Barthes, and therefore, I think, everyone should look at her works for himself, for only in this way can we understand the places to which they were dedicated; and, much to our pleasure, her gaze always remains constant.
In the calculating world of spectacle – and we may refer to the world in which we live as such with little hesitation – Silvia Potocki’s photographs appear at first glance to add nothing new. The scenes appear familiar, as if we had already seen or at least noticed them somewhere, in the form of other photos. The dimension of the space that the artist shows is determined by an emptiness that is hard to grasp, this being not an endless modernist expanse but rather scenes in which the concepts of place and duration lose their conventional meaning.
The “boxed” series consists of a number of paired photographs framed with dark cloth. The left and right side can be interpreted as two eyes, two gazes, two (seemingly independent) connections that the scenes create with the “centre” in which the apparatus is located that should be able to explain them. The pairs of pictures were often rearranged in the four years in which Silvia Potocki worked on the series, thus creating ever new connections. In any case “we never reach the bottom of the little chest” (after Bachelard), we can never completely control the space and place we are observing; we are not capable of completely filling them, imposing their code upon them by means of personal principles. […]Text feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, pp. 38–45.
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SOFIJA a.k.a. SILVIA POTOCKI
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International S. / pp. 38–45.
Sofija a.k.a. Silvia Potocki, aus der Serie / from the series: boxed, 2000 – 2006. C-prints, je / each 20 cm × 30 cm. -
SOFIJA a.k.a. SILVIA POTOCKI
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International S. / pp. 38–45.
Sofija a.k.a. Silvia Potocki, aus der Serie / from the series: boxed, 2000 – 2006. C-prints, je / each 20 cm × 30 cm. -
SOFIJA a.k.a. SILVIA POTOCKI
Künstlerbeitrag / Artist feature in Camera Austria International S. / pp. 38–45.
Sofija a.k.a. Silvia Potocki, aus der Serie / from the series: boxed, 2000 – 2006. C-prints, je / each 20 cm × 30 cm.
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Critical Theory of Social Pictures IV
Putting the monstrous complexity of societies into a critical overview can hardly be the task, if indeed it is a meaningful one, of critical images. For ultimately, the crucial factor from the vantage point of criticism and with regard to the cohesion of societies is how we handle the interfaces of failure. Because social criticism is sparked off on and moves along the rupture lines of such failure, it has an inherent particular and local trait that is accommodated by the structure of images. There is no visual equivalent to the linguistic expression “all”. The simplest universal proposition that all introductions to logic repeat – “All human beings are mortal” as the premise of the conclusion that all individual human beings are mortal – has no equivalent in photography or film. These pictures cannot say “all”; but rather only that this human being here is mortal or dead; and this one and this one and this one; thereby at best suggesting an open–ended “and so on”.
Accordingly, if they refer negatingly to society at all, pictures are multifarious, definite and never total, abstract negations of “the system”. Hence, it is not possible to say much in general about them. However, one thing does tend to catch the eye again and again – also with regard to the few practitioners of visual social criticism that I can discuss in the following: Questionable social structures seem to come to the fore critically particularly when their effects on individual subjects become visible.Text feature in Camera Austria International 96/2006, pp. 62–63.
Forum
FRANZISKA KLOSE
KATHERINE NEWBEGIN
YOLANDA DEL AMO
ANNA LEHMANN-BRAUNS
JENNIFER LONG
DEBBY HUYSMANS
DONATELLA DI CICCO
DANIEL GASENZER
Exhibitions
Who is the Quenn?
Das Achte Feld. Geschlechter, Leben und Begehren in der Kunst seit 1960
Museum Ludwig Köln
GISLIND NABAKOWSKI
Herkulische Hysterie. Isa Genzken
Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck
REINHARD BRAUN
Verrottender Luxus. Isa Genzken
Secession, Wien
MAREN LÜBBKE-TIDOW
A.C.A.D.E.M.Y: Exhibitions, Projects, Lectures, Symposia
Kunstverein Hamburg; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst; Antwerpen; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
ANNETT BUSCH
Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation
Japan Society Gallery, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fotomuseum Winterthur
WOLFGANG BRÜCKLE
Graz: Ausstellungsrundgang steirischer herbst
ULRICH TRAGATSCHNIG
Gefährliche Kreuzungen. Die Grammatik der Toleranz.
Künstlerische Interventionen im öffentlichen Raum, München
SØNKE GAU
Fiona Tan: Mirror Maker
Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense; Landesgalerie Linz am Oberösterreichischen Landesmuseum; Bergen Kunstmuseum; Pori Art Museum
MAREN RICHTER
The Atlas Group (1989 – 2004). A Project by WALID RAAD
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin
RAINER BELLENBAUM
Human Nature. Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video: Ecotopia
International Center of Photography, New York
RACHEL BAUM
Spectacular City. Photographing the Future
Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam; NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft, Düsseldorf
STEVEN HUMBLET
Bas Jan Ader. Please don’t leave me
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Jan Verwoert: Bas Jan Ader. In search of the Miraculous
Afterall Books (One Work Series), London 2006
YOANN VAN PARYS
Conceptualised Performative Space. Stephen Willats, Gillian Wearing
Victoria Miro, London; Maureen Paley, London
NIELS HENRIKSEN
Books
John Gossage: Berlin in the Time of the Wall
Loosestrife Editions, Bethesda 2004
CAROLIN FÖRSTER
Heinrich Schwarz: Techniken des Sehens
Fotohof edition, Salzburg 2006
ROLF SACHSSE
Eva Munz, Christian Kracht, Lukas Nikol:
Die totale Erinnerung. Kim Jong Ils Nordkorea
Rogner & Bernhard bei Zweitausendeins, Berlin 2006
KRYSTIAN WOZNICKI
Martin Paar, Gerry Badger: The Photobook. A History
Phaidon Press, New York
FRIEDRICH TIETJEN
Ingeborg Strobl: Photo Roman (2). A Photo Novel by Ingeborg Strobl
Fotohof edition, Salzburg 2006
RUDOLF SAGMEISTER
Aftermath. World Trade Center Archive by Joel Meyerowitz
Phaidon Press, New York 2006
CARLO MCCORMICK
Michael Diers: Fotografie Film Video. Beiträge zu einer kritischen Theorie des Bildes
Philo & Philo Fine Arts (Fundus-Bücher, Bd. 162), Hamburg 2006
VERENA KUNI
Imprint
Publisher: Manfred Willmann. Owner: Verein CAMERA AUSTRIA, Labor für Fotografie und Theorie.
All: Lendkai 1, A-8020 Graz.
Editors Graz: CChristine Frisinghelli, Tanja Gassler
Editor Berlin: Maren Lübbke-Tidow
Copy editing: Marie Röbl
Translations: Wilfried Prantner, Richard Watts, Aileen Derieg, Irena und Benno Meyer-Wehlak, John Doherty, Don Mader, Margret Berki, Marina Miladinov.