Artists

Sandra Boeschenstein (CH)
Was sind deine Reste, 2004
Cycle comprising 49 drawings, each 40 x 29,7 cm
Courtesy: Private collection, CH

Often conceived as cycles, the small format drawings by Sandra Boeschenstein show figures and objects made up of fine lines. They are drafts of paradoxical spaces and spatial relations in which the real and the fantastic, the ironic and the terrifying, where scientific analysis and the absurd constantly merge with one another. Each drawing contains a short text which engages in an equally entitled dialogue with the pictures without, however, decoding these but rather subjecting them to an ambiguous perspective. In addition to the cycle "Was sind deine Reste" Boeschenstein also plans to develop a new mural drawing.

Thomas Feuerstein (A)
http://feuerstein.myzel.net
Mengenleher, 2005 - 2007
Installation
Courtesy: Gallery E. & K. Thoman, Innsbruck

The works by Thomas Feuerstein – installations comprising drawings, photographs, computer animations, objects, laboratory like settings etc. – are experimental arrangements which make in constantly different ways connections between apparently mutually exclusive fields of discourse: between art, the sciences, technology, economics, social theories and politics. He questions ideologies and the techniques of representation among the various fields of knowledge and de- and re-contextualises them in new, “conceptual narratives” (Feuerstein) which, in both an anarchical as well as in an ironic manner, bring about the collapse of the “great narratives” of modernity and their systems.

Runa Islam (UK)
Be The First To See What You See As You See It, 2005
Film installation, 16 mm, Sound, 7'30''
Courtesy: The artist

The film installation revolves around the relations between the gaze and the object, distance and desire, the factual and the possible, and between the whole and the fragmentary. The objects – cups, plates, jugs and such like – are made of fine porcelain, the existence of which is restricted more to the decorative than to the utilitarian. Arranged on a base within a gallery space, they are subjected to an observation without being touched, to preservation without having been. A young woman circles around these objects, inspects them from a distance and from close up, as a whole and in detail. In an exemplary way, she also demonstrates the perfect use of the objects. Yet, in this order of things is also implied the possibility of things slipping out of control: as if in review – or in a projection – the woman pushes the porcelain slowly but surely from the base/from the table...

Oliver Lutz (USA)
http://www.oliverlutz.com
Courtesy: The artist

Oliver Lutz’s drawings are both vehicle and intermediate data of performative thought processes. They emerge (among other things) during and as an integral part of the artist’s lectures but also as notes, reflections and commentaries of that which is listened to and read.

Eva Meyer/Eran Schaerf (D)
Flashforward, 2004
Video, 57'
Courtesy: The artists

In classical film, the act of remembering is organised by flashbacks along a linear narrative perspective. Eva Meyer and Eran Schaerf’s almost one hour video essay “Flashforward” (2004), by contrast, pursues the idea of "remembering forwards": to transfer the irrevocable to the realm of the possible. Carried by the rhythm of a camera revolving around itself, the video circles around narrative fragments which create continually new and unforeseeable connections between various temporal axes, discourses, perspectives and formats. These touch on questions of evolution, the biotechnologies, economics, information and identity politics: whereby each statement, consideration or conclusion also immediately forms the transition to another possibility.
The pictorial level – a montage of views of an undefined city, scenes from a sound studio, test pictures, documentary material and news pictures – is organised as asynchronous with the sound level. Both levels are integrated at a distance. Similarly, the camera and the actors as well as the actors among each other are both separated and connected. The six protagonists, among whom are Elfriede Jelinek, Eva Meyer and Hinrich Sachs, appear both as extras of the other participants as well as “themselves”: with their own texts spoken by themselves or by others but also in the form of inserts such as Hinrich Sachs’ video “Kami, Cookiemonster, Bert and Ernie (all together now)”.

Ana Torfs (B)
ANATOMY, 2006
Installation that interlinks large-screen slide projections with video images on two monitors. German spoken. Wireless headphones with English version by an interpreter.
Courtesy: The artist

“ANATOMY”, by Ana Torfs, is based on extensive research into the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. For this, Torfs examined, among other things, the eyewitness account involved in the murder trial (1919 in Berlin), the protocols of which are located in the Freiburg military archives. The installation refers to a selection of these records of the proceeding, which are retold by young actors in contemporary clothes, displayed on two monitors. Alternately, and in an unagitated tone they reproduce the “criminal case” from 25 different perspectives, whereby the relativity of that which is narrated becomes clear. The transition from the “historical” to the “current”, as well as the multi-voiced “statement of facts” is mirrored by the (recorded) simultaneous translation in English which can be heard parallel to the German spoken text. It is not the discovery of truth which is in focus here but its languages and interpretations.
The counterpoint to the two videos forms a large format slide projection made of black and white photographs. For this, Torfs shot a group of additional actors in the auditorium of the “anatomical theatre” at the Berlin Charité. Stage, courtroom and anatomical theatre are examined as archetypical spaces of a theatrical performance and documentary evidence of an authoritarian "sentence of truth".