Why Photography? About Hive (E)
2020
related works
Hive
das Eck
Has your background in
communication design informed your artistic practice?
In my
undergraduate studies I delved into the world of graphic design and
this was also when my interest in places and our built environment
started. How can we narrate their stories in an engaging, uncommon
way?
How do we use public space? Those were some of the
questions I researched in my thesis and practical works.
At
first glance your work seems to be concerning architectural and
spatial issues, but your main focus lies within its communities and
public space, would you agree?
I am interested in how we
perceive spaces, both contextually and visually. My works
simultaneously reference my personal perception of these spaces and
their histories, while also speaking in a more general sense of the
ways in which architecture affects behavior, emotions, and memory
and, ultimately, a collective identity. I find it striking to see how
public and private spaces intertwine and how these spaces shape us
and we shape them in return.
The series Hive is based on a
photographic work shot throughout Melbourne RMIT’s New Academic
Street. The reconstructed contemporary education buildings are
designed to provide spaces that are felt as common ground and spaces
for knowledge sharing. They are meeting and learning environments for
students. For me, these maze-like spaces work as a metaphor for
orientation and alienation in our globalized world. Eclectic
interiors draw links to retro computer games that require the player
to advance from level to level. Other spaces within the buildings
feel alive with the potential to enclose those within them, and some
look like three-dimensional comicstrips or a fun house.
Through
manipulations of my photographs I highlight my responses to these
physical spaces, which allows me to also reveal the playfulness, the
absurdity, the artificial and uncanny that exists within them.
There
is an ambiguity to this academic environment. On the one hand, it
seems very creative, positive, flexible and diverse; on the other
hand it is clearly programmed for education in global neoliberal
times and shows hints of gamification.
I like to question how
architecture can have a performative power, and to what extent it can
determine human behavior and change our way of living.
Hive also works like a placeholder for modern architecture, which was built to be photographed in order to share such photographs on various social media channels. This seems to be a pop cultural trap and makes it harder to grasp modern architecture’s ideas and controversy. On the one hand, it seems to be very playful, positive, creative, on the other hand it is already programmed, artificial, and loud. My images themselves also tackle those spatial-pictorial issues, and are an ongoing research in how architecture is pictured in the medium of photography.
Can you elaborate on the term Anti-Architecture and how this is transposed in your work? You could say my work is kind of an emotive anti-architectural photography, hovering between the familiar and unfamiliar; realism, illusion, and abstraction. I like the concept of ‘making things strange’ to lead to a new approach towards a familiar place. My pictures sometimes appear as straight photographs, paintings or collages. With the help of these various techniques I am focusing and reinforcing certain elements.
How would you say the philosophies of the Bauhaus school have influenced your way of seeing architecture through a camera? The Bauhaus taught its members a love for ongoing experimentation and curiosity. And it fostered an interdisciplinary approach. They had so many different styles in photography and architecture, but of course, I was early aware of the iconic abstract stuff of the New Vision movement. The great thing is, that they also tried to translate their emotions towards society in pictures.
In your series titled Das Eck you seem to transit into a more sculptural way of presenting your work. How did this change emerge and will you be evolving more in this direction? Through the act of folding certain architectural elements, I mimic the process of taking a photographic image: you’re constantly moving to finally freeze an image. In front of the objects, you need to do this again in an obvious way. Currently, I am testing more architectural sculptural elements with photographic archival material.
Do you only manipulate your collages by analogue techniques? Or is Photoshop also a part of the process? Usually, I start with analogue techniques. In the series Hive I’ve moved towards collage; and worked on manual sketches, which I used as models for reconstructing the images in Photoshop. I love the various options of masking, copying and multi exposure in this program, algorithms which reference back to the analogue processes.
Why
photography?
Because of its link to reality and its ability to
transform it.
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