Installation_Photography_Text
Exhibition: BENEATH THE REMAINS – Translations of Estrangement and the Politics of Survival, arttransponder Berlin 2009, curated by Vlad Morariu
Objects, symbols, words, phrases, pass through a continuous process of interpretation. Their validation is a reflection depending on time, context, discourse and the perceivers viewpoint. transformation of the little things is a personal quest, about my experiences being within a society facing a processes of political deconstructions and reconstruction. Words become pictures,symbols transform their meanings, pictures become symbols.
In this project I was working together with artist who mainly were involved directly in the political changes of 89, and because of that, felt a personal impact on their lives. At this time I was having a safe life as a West-German ?observer? who, after the wall came down, had only experienced first hand changes of the society and politics through observation and news.
With this project I wanted to question my own political position and my relations to this incident. As well I was interested in raise and fall of systems of order and ideology and individual approaches to it.
As curator Vlad Morariu states about the project Beneath the remains:
…“Its purpose is to recuperate and concatenate upon a Zeitgeist of political mistrust, uneasiness and active disobedience which stems out from the popular culture milieus of the late 80?s and which still survives in the back of our consciences.?
During a research travel to Romania, the country most of the participating artists were rooted in, I was collecting photo material and impressions concerning the topic of the ?remains?.
Interested in words as well as icons who change or loose meaning if linked to different contexts, I played with situations of disorder and de-placement.
Objects, symbols, words, phrases, pass through a continuous process of interpretation.
Their validation is a reflection depending on time, context, discourse and the perceivers viewpoint. transformation of the little things is a personal quest, about my experiences being within a society facing a processes of political deconstructions and reconstruction. Words become pictures, symbols transform their meanings, pictures become symbols.
this pictures are showing my installation „transpormation of the little things“ during the exhibtion „BENEATH THE REMAINS – Translations of Estrangement and the Politics of Survival, arttransponder Berlin 2009“.
I was interested in the today´s activity of the city of Bukarest, looking for signs of transfer and transmission, ideals and ideology.
What I found I placed as metaphors standing for the fragility of a place in the state of transformation.
I collected a series of interviews with former citizens of the German Democratic Republic about their experiences of 1989 and after.
I found Dirk, who as a young boy, had to participate as a FDJ member (GDR youth organization). He told me about his way to riot against his participation by spray painting a peace dove on the back of his uniform. I asked him to re-enact getting dressed in his old uniform
– twenty years after –
showing him now, transformed and grown out of a misfit cover.