Stipendiatenzeit

Funded by the Foundation of Lower Saxony, the Edith Russ House for Media Art awarded the first three working scholarships (10,000 euros each) this spring. In an exhibition, Johan Grimonprez (B), Dagmar Keller/Martin Wittwer (D) and Florian Zeyfang (D) are now presenting the projects that have since been realized. The "Stipendiatenzeit" is not a thematically unified overall show; rather, three independent, strong individual positions confront each other here.

From police interrogation protocols, researched facts and their own fictions, Dagmar Keller and Martin Wittwer combined the script for their video installation "Ruhe im Schatten" ("Quiet in the Shadows"), which tells of an unsolved murder of a woman. Slowly, the camera approaches a stage with three actors. The effort to solve the crime corresponds with the actors' approach to text and character, and the attempt to scrutinize what happened is visualized in the round, rotating image. In the end, however, the search for the truth fails, the camera moves back to its starting position and repeats the journey. This time, however, it presents a completely different version of the story. – Dagmar Keller and Martin Wittwer both studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and have been working together since 1997.

Johan Grimonprez will present his project in the form of his new "zapomatik" website with video lounge. "Zapping" between channels has had a lasting impact on our (television) viewing habits. Interrupted by commercial breaks, we perceive what is shown only partially and no longer as a whole, and this has resulted in social and economic changes. Using historical material as well as digital processing on the web, Grimonprez shows how the advertising industry influences media production and consumer behavior through 'zapping' technology. – Johan Grimonprez, whose work "Dial History" was shown at documenta X in 1997, is a renowned media artist working internationally.

With "Fokussy (Fischinger Treffen)" Florian Zeyfang thematizes the works of the German animation and avant-garde filmmaker Oskar Fischinger, who - free from the dictates of typical film mechanisms - experimented with celluloid and, together with colleagues, revolutionized the language of film through animation in the 1930s. Inspired by Fischinger's abstract understanding of the image, which is characterized by geometric forms, Zeyfang investigates the production of 'artificial' images and places his expansive spiral-shaped installation in the context of the nature-illusion-reality debate. – Florian Zeyfang studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and was accepted into the renowned "Whitney Art Studies" program in New York three years ago