The video Rauschen & Brausen V is the fifth part of a series of works based on the same initial situation: The video camera is positioned on a bridge filming the static architecture of a skyscraper in the background through the fast crossing traffic in the foreground.

In the postproduction, the temporal continuity of the source material is atomized. Each passing vehicle is extracted from the flow of images and used as a singular element, detached from its temporal context. In the montage, the passing traffic is filtered, thinned out and categorized according to various parameters. The original noise is rearranged according to alternating categories and is thus translated into a new readability. A meandering visual composition develops on the threshold between chaos and structure.

The Video Migrants deals with the topic of borders and their transgression. The starting point is the evening return of tens of thousands of migratory birds to their roosts in the Dollart, a bay formed by storm tides in the German-Dutch border region. They spend the winter months here to escape the Arctic cold of their summer breeding grounds.

In search of food, the birds daily cross the political borders that are irrelevant to them, orienting themselves instead on the great landscape lines that are constantly in motion and shifting against each other in the Wadden Sea.

In the montage, the theme of the border is taken up and transferred into a temporal grid: a cut is made every second. Within this frame, an almost continuous movement is described with the use of disparate shots: from approach to landing, from day to night and from an agricultural environment to a dystopian, post-industrial backdrop.

The city is not. Not because of a hypothetical,
physical absence—the city is well present—but
because it escapes naming.
(Johannes Binotto and Andri Gerber)

In Semiotics of the City, shots of urban situations flicker past in rapid succession. They are underlaid by computer-generated voices that enumerate the audio-visual elements they contain. The result is a close-meshed network of terms and categories whose sense of representing the depicted urbanity as completely as possible is taken ad absurdum.

The increasing staccato of numerous steps is leading us through an anonymous office building. The workers` activities as well as the protagonist`s identity remain hidden. Step by step, the exchangeable spaces accumulate throwing the architecture succcessively into a kinetic stagger.

Whiteout is a meteorological phenomenon in which visibility and contrast are severely reduced by snow and subdued lighting conditions. The horizon disappears completely and there are no reference points at all, leaving the individual with a distorted orientation. Whiteout has been defined as: “A condition of diffuse light when no shadows are cast, due to a continuous white cloud layer appearing to merge with the white snow surface. No surface irregularities of the snow are visible, but a dark object may be clearly seen. There is no visible horizon”.
(Source: Wikipedia)

The video installation Whiteout is concerned with projected images that are reciprocally superimposed on one another. The images are projected from opposing sides onto a suspended piece of transparent paper. One projection mirrors and inverts the image of the other whereby the darker areas of the one image outshine the lighter areas of the other.

In this edition of the work, the filmed shadow of a free-floating architectonic form can be seen in the projection light. This arises from the miniature scale model of the connecting doorway where the work is installed. Both projections connect the fine motions of the filmed shadows on the walls of the exhibition space to the gentle backward and forward swaying motions of the transparent paper suspended between the projectors.

The precisely corresponding positive and negative forms shift continuously against one another making an exactly matching overlay seem like a vanishing point that is constantly in reach but never attainable.

Video excerpt 1 · 1:53 min. · Bruch & Dallas | Köln | DE · 2015
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Documentation · 2:12 min. · Bruch & Dallas | Köln | DE · 2015

Video excerpt 2 · 4:39 min. · Bruch & Dallas | Köln | DE · 2015
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Documentation (Timelapse 2) · 0:41 min. · Bruch & Dallas | Köln | DE · 2015
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undisclosed is a site-specific video installation created at the Bruch & Dallas gallery at Ebertplatz Square in Cologne. For the installation, a full-format panorama of the square was projected onto the back wall of the former shop premises.

The projection was made up of four one-hour videos each filmed at a different time of the day or night. Screened simultaneously and in direct juxtaposition to one another, these staggered time interval recordings brought together divergent protagonists and atmospheres from parallel worlds or alternative realities in existence around the square.

Filmed from inside the exhibition space through the glass panes, the frames of the windows remained an evident and stabilizing part of the panorama. The installation gave the impression that the entire window front was mirrored on the back wall of the former shop and drew the viewer’s gaze into the depths of its interior.

Observing the installation from outside accentuated an inherent visual irritation: Depending on the brightness of the surroundings, the projected images of the square overlapped to different extents with actual reflections on the shop windows.
Whereas the projections were barely visible by full day light, at the fall of night they successively overlaid the progressively diminishing reflections and, a short time later, set the by then brightly lit gallery free from the darkness of its surrounds.

www.bruchunddallas.de

Documentation · 1:01 min. · Künstlerhaus Dortmund | DE · 2014
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Urban Faces is a continuous series of site-specific video projections, which will be developed and adapted for every new spatial requirement. Initially hand camera shots of urban micro structures will be made in the environment of the exhibition room. Subsequently these videos will be sorted, selected and, in a digital post-processing, arranged to modular patterns. In doing so the video frame will be duplicated, fanned out in a grid pattern and minimally offset in time. All video frames will be unfolded in the plane, so that the filmed architectural element will be expanded to an urban meta-structure. The hand cameras tiny movements lead to the impression of a slight motion of the whole image. At the edges of each individual frame the construction-lines of the collage remain visible.

The final videos will be projected onto the walls of the respective exhibition room and marginlessly fitted into the architectural structures whereby they merge with the boundaries of the room and become part of the existing architecture.

The video Passing Places is developed out of an extensive audiovisual questioning of urban space. Based on the collection of almost photographic video recordings – all shot in public places – the work creates the allusion of a walk through a city which remains anonymous. Whilst passing by architectural openings, barriers and reflections of light the stroll leads through everyday environments and thus develops a kaleidoscope of urban constellations.

The images are combined with the sound recording of a walk which starts in an interior space, continues through diverse public surroundings and finally returns to the room inside. The step’s steady sound connects the heterogeneous acoustic events and allegedly merges the scattered images to a whole.

The work was produced in the framework of the Sparkasse KölnBonn sponsorship program, supervised by SK Stiftung Kultur.

In Other Words creates a visual composition out of steady, almost photographic images. The sequence of images evokes a state of uncertainty. With each new motif that appears the previous one takes on a new colour and meaning. The composition of images is not determined by any linguistic narration but is created by the permanent overturning movement of the visual correlations and references.

The Video Migrants deals with the topic of borders and their transgression. The starting point is the evening return of tens of thousands of migratory birds to their roosts in the Dollart, a bay formed by storm tides in the German-Dutch border region. They spend the winter months here to escape the Arctic cold of their summer breeding grounds.

In search of food, the birds daily cross the political borders that are irrelevant to them, orienting themselves instead on the great landscape lines that are constantly in motion and shifting against each other in the Wadden Sea.

In the montage, the theme of the border is taken up and transferred into a temporal grid: a cut is made every second. Within this frame, an almost continuous movement is described with the use of disparate shots: from approach to landing, from day to night and from an agricultural environment to a dystopian, post-industrial backdrop.