FORUM STADTPARK
DI-SA 20-22 pm
Opening 21 April from 8pm
I have shown a new work on a group show ''reelreelreelreal'' at Forum Stadtpark, Graz.
Seven channel sound installation titled: You Have Been Weighed and Lost.
Madeleine Dietrichstein: Alto Sax
Sara Evelyn: voice and vocal improvisations
The sound installation by Tolga BALCI assembles an ephemera of sound created by membranes and objects that are amplified by coils and magnets that deliver sizzles, murmurs, trills, rumbles, roars, and echoes of voices. In our times, is it healthier to be overwhelmed by reality than to lose all sense of the truth? The German word “Ohnmacht”, may call both situations if we take it as an involuntary state of mind. These voices refrain from these questions poetically. Singing voices carry a dialectic quarrel rhyme of two political epochs... These voices, that interchange roles, perhaps become the forces of “Potestas”, power, ability, opportunity, and authority, or “Conatus”, effort, endeavour, impulse,inclination, striving.
Radio Helsinki interview:
reelreelreelreal im Forum Stadtpark
...
Can a future anticipating extraordinary technological possibilities be the solution to the crises of the present or does it lead us to evermore problems? Can we gain renewed purpose through them or do they distract us, overwhelming us with a flood of images obscuring our access to the world happening around us?
Science fiction brought us ideas of outer space: interplanetary travel, Star Trek, Star Wars – force us to admit that their aesthetics they have partly come true. Technologies are fundamentally changing our lives and our world: Space has become finite, the planet has become a body, and the sky a mirror. The image of a cloud appears sensual and light. It consists of water particles, but also of computers, metals or dirty energy: the digital is not immaterial.
Photography, for its part, is a powerful technology. It allows us to capture fleeting moments, tell stories and change perspectives. It can show us the world in new and exciting ways and open windows to places or events we would otherwise never have seen or experienced.
"reelreelreelreal" displays a selection of videos by various artists that are projected onto the walls of the exhibition space at Forum Stadtpark using a beamer. The use of beamers as a medium for presenting images is favoured because of its supposed ecological advantages. Projecting photos and videos is often seen as an environmentally friendly alternative to using conventional displays such as televisions and monitors. This is because it generally consumes less energy and produces less waste. Projections can be directed onto a variety of surfaces that already exist and therefore do not require additional resources such as screens or monitors. However, these displays are often made from materials that are energy intensive and difficult to recycle or dispose of at the end of their life. In addition, they consume a lot of energy, especially when operated for long periods of time.
The installation shows a digital selection of international and local contributions that did not need to be physically transported or produced. Due to the technical limitations of the projectors, the contributions are hardly visible in daylight and the installation can only be perceived in the dark. It also shows how fleeting the solely digital representation is. For this reason, the local artists Tolga Balc?, Jing Hong Okorn Kuo, Yuliia Makarenko, Paola Lesslhumer, Lena Baloch, Lea Blagojevi? and Philipp Bohar will use the main room of Forum Stadtpark as a laboratory for their artistic practice during the exhibition period. The contributions from their work will be presented together with international works by Collectif Farata, Jing Hong Okorn Kuo, Issa Touma, Merdie Moyo, Landy Ndungi and Christelle Emulu Mawangi as a photo and video collage and can only be seen after dark. The artists were invited by Clara Wildberger, and the installation was conceived by her together with Peter Hutter and Tolga Balci.
The projections include photography and videos with a political or activist background that deals with current ecological and political crises seen in a global context. The individual works can be understood as a call to not avert our gaze from the very real problems surrounding us, to not let ourselves be overwhelmed by the fascination of technological innovations - but instead to actively deal with the consequences and challenges, to care about alternative solutions. It is as if we were already in the future.
Clara Wildberger, Peter Hutter, A.Tolga Balci, Collectif Farata, Jing Hong Okorn Kuo, Issa Touma, Yuliia Makarenko, Lena Baloch, Lea Blagojevic, Paola Lesslhumer, Philipp Bohar, Christelle Emulu Mawangi, Landry Ndungi, Merdie Moyo
