Susanne Weirich: The Word Wolke

09.03.2001 - 29.04.2001

In the spring of 2002, three work stipends (10,000 Euro each) were granted by the Foundation of Lower Saxony to the Edith Russ Site for Media Art for Johan Grimonprez (B), Dagmar Keller/Martin Wittwer (D) and Florian Zeyfang (D). We are now pleased to present the results of their project proposals in the exhibition „Stipendiatenzeit“. Although all three artists work with video, their works are three independently strong and individual positions.

Dagmar Keller, Martin Wittwer: Video-still from: "Ruhe im Schatten" (2002)

Dagmar Keller und Martin Wittwer (D) combined police reports, researched facts and their own fictions in writing the storybook for their video installation „Ruhe im Schatten“ (Peace in the Shadows). The unsolved mystery of a woman’s murder in the 1950s unfolds while the video image slowly zooms in on a stage with three actors. The attempt to solve the crime corresponds to the actors approaching their text and characters. The round, slowly spinning image visualizes the attempt to more closely inspect the past events. In the end, the search for the truth fails and the camera quickly moves back into its starting position in order to begin again. This time, however, another version of the story is told. Dagmar Keller and Martin Wittwer both studied at the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie and have worked together since 1997.

Johan Grimonprez: "Detail from: "zapomatik" (2002)

Johan Grimonprez (B) presents a new „zapomatik“ website and video lounge on the subject of „zapping“. With historic material as well as a digital work off the Internet, Grimonprez takes up the ad industry’s influence on media productions and consumer behavior. Channel-zapping has changed our (tele)visual habits: This project confronts the fact that commercial interruptions cause us to only partially perceive what we are watching, inducing social and economic change. Grimonprez, whose work „Dial History“ was shown in 1997 at the documenta X, is a renowned artist who frequently exhibits internationally.

Florian Zeyfang: "Fokussy (DV heißt Dziga Vertov), Part 3" (2001)

With „Fokussy (Fischinger Treffen)“ (Fokussy – Fischinger Meeting) Florian Zeyfang (D) investigates the work of the German animation and avant-garde filmmaker Oskar Fischinger. He and his colleagues of the 1930s revolutionized the language of film through their experiments with celluloid, which were free of any of film’s typical mechanisms. Inspired by the abstract and geometric forms which characterize Fischinger’s images, Zeyfang analyses the production of ‚artificial‘ images and places his spiral-formed installation in the context of the nature-illusion-reality debate. Florian Zeyfang studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, as a member of „Botschaft“ e.V. in Berlin and took part in the 1999 „Whitney Art Studies“ program in New York.