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Künstlerhaus Stuttgart

Katya Sander: Production of Future (Videostill), 2008

Katya Sander
Production of Future. A Science Fiction about Counting

April 16 - June 7, 2008
Opening: April 15, 7pm

Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
Reuchlinstr. 4b
D - 70178 Stuttgart
info@kuenstlerhaus.de

http://www.kuenstlerhaus.de

Katya Sanders exhibition at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart presents a new large-scale video installation, which thematically examines the production of conceptions of the future. The exhibition is the second part of a long-term project of Katya Sander and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, which began in November 2007 with a public workshop and will be followed in autumn 2008 with the release of a publication. Katya Sander was recently part of Documenta 12 in Kassel with the comprehensive video project 9 Scripts From a Nation at War (together with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt and David Thorne).

The artist is known for interventions, drawings, photographs and especially filmic works that explore the influence of the imaginary on political issues, everyday life and historical events. For Katya Sander, the imaginary is not only subjective ideas, but also shared, collective articulations and projections of what is possible and what can be imagined. Through central facets of political thought, such as ideas of ‘public space’ or ‘the sphere of economy,’ Katya Sander’s work investigates how social imaginations are constructed, and how they influence our actions and reflections. Sander’s artistic method combines factual information and documentary material in a staged, fictitious framework. This method provides the artist with the possibility to inquire into relations between the narrative and the real, and to question how political subjectivity comes into being.

The work in the exhibition Production of Future begins with questioning how futures are calculated and described through mathematics and economy and what influence these projections have on the present. In five parallel video projections, interviews with scientists and practitioners from the fields of demography, stochastics, history of sciences and the financial and insurance industries are montaged with images of an actress, who is on a trip through various landscapes. The scenes make use of a “blue-screen”: a traditional filmic technique which allows constructions of seamless shifts between spaces and times, often used in Science Fiction movies. Another reference point of the work lies in the interview and montage films of the German filmmaker and author Alexander Kluge, where the audience takes part in a process of disclosure. The actress in Katya Sander’s filmic installation, played by Susanne Sachsse, is on an investigation. At the end, there is no conclusion, but rathe
r lines drawn between relations and narratives developing and directing our ideas about the future.

For Katya Sander, the use of video as media goes beyond only presenting documentary facts or constructing a narrative. The relationship between subjectivity and narrative is examined not only in the video, but also through precise spatial stagings of the filmic material as well as its production of spectatorship. Sander’s installations are usually composed of one or multiple projections in specific architectural constructions, which allow for certain positions and perspectives. The installation Production of Future consists of five projections that are arranged so that each part can be viewed in various combinations. The filmic narration is only realized through the act of moving around, viewing and combining the elements.

Katya Sander (*1970 in Copenhagen) lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen. She has made projects for the Kulturbehörde Hamburg (Aussendienst, 2000) and Publik in Copenhagen (Monument, 2004), and has had solo exhibitions in MUMOK, Vienna (2005), Kunstverein München and Esbjerg Kunstmuseum (both 2004). Most recently her work was included in Documenta 12 in Kassel, together with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt and David Thorne (2007).

The exhibition is supported by Kunstradet. Danish Arts Council.

Events:
May 8, 2008, 7pm: Talk with Katya Sander, moderated by Axel John Wieder
May 20, 2008, 7pm: Investigating Documentary Production, Filmprogram

Contact details:
Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Reuchlinstr. 4b, D - 70178 Stuttgart
Tel. +49 (711) 617 652 info@kuenstlerhaus.de
For further information visit http://www.kuenstlerhaus.de

Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Peter Wegner Terra Firma Incognita 2007
Installation view
Digital prints on card
A Dunedin Public Art Gallery Visiting Artist
Project supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa

Peter Wegner: Terra Firma Incognita
Until 6 July 2008

Dunedin Public Art Gallery
30 the Octagon, Dunedin, New Zealand
+64 3 474 3240
dpagmail@dcc.govt.nz

http://www.dunedin.art.museum

Terra Firma Incognita is a monumental new work by American artist Peter Wegner that fully occupies the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s main 7 x 23 meter foyer wall. Each of 2,000 circular inkjet prints has been printed with an enlarged detail from a physical relief map of the world. Wegner rearranges these circular units in a radiating composition that suggests a range of metaphorical associations – a test used to determine color blindness, a physical explosion glimpsed in progress, a rising or setting sun.

In this new world order, everything is an island unto itself. Alliances are unpredictable and aesthetically opportunistic: a piece of New Zealand coastline next to Middle Eastern desert next to European Alps.

The name Terra Firma Incognita suggests that the known world remains, in some sense, unknowable. “We know the world as we know ourselves,” Wegner says, “in pieces that don’t quite add up.” Both abstract and concrete, analog and crudely digital, Terra Firma Incognita suggests a world gone dangerously awry.

Wegner’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Los Angeles. His paintings, artist’s books, drawings, sculptures and photographs can be found in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Yale University Art Gallery, among others. In February, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art unveiled a major new commission by Wegner. The creator of eight limited-edition artist’s book, Wegner is himself the subject of a recent monograph, P,E,T,E,R,W,E,G,N,E,R, published by W.L. Griffin Editions/Los Angeles.

Kunstverein in Hamburg

Installation view Andrea Fraser, Retrospective 2003

International open call to fill the position of Director at Kunstverein in Hamburg
Kunstverein in Hamburg
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
+ 49 40 32 21 57

http://www.kunstverein.de

The Kunstverein in Hamburg invites applications for the position of Director, with tenure to begin on January 1, 2009.

Duties include artistic and commercial management of all activities at the Kunstverein (exhibitions, catalogues, editions, lectures, art tours, public relations, etc.). The Director will be expected to develop and implement an independent exhibition program focused on recent international contemporary art, in order to maintain and consolidate the Kunstverein’s unique and distinctive profile. The Director will also be capable of supplementing the Kunstverein’s existing basic funding by raising additional funds.

We offer the appropriate candidate an opportunity to pursue a substantive and independent position at a prominent and highly respected institution of the visual arts at a commensurate salary based on category 1A of the German civil service pay scale (BAT). Demonstrable experience in the museum and/or exhibition world is required.

Applications in German or English should be submitted by April 30, 2008
to: Vorstand des Hamburger Kunstvereins (Board of the Kunstverein in Hamburg), Klosterwall 23, 20095 Hamburg, Germany