preposterous postcards in contemporary visual art from friedemann heckel, lee miller & david e....

Preposterous Postcards in Contemporary Visual Art from

Friedemann Heckel, Lee Miller & David E. Sherman and Burk Koller

Nida Art Colony, IP Contemporary past: Tracking a Postcard,

summer course, 18 June, 2012

Tracking a Postcard?

Päivikki Kallio asked on 15 June, 2012:

“Ulrike, what does this all have to do with a

postcard?“

Tracking a postcard

The postal route as a visual image or mental map for

• the way that experiences and ideas get transfered into a work of art

• the topographic lines of humans moving in mental and physical space

• the constant travel of knowledge and thoughts from one contextual frame to another

• the artist as postwoman/ postman of forgotten and marginalized stories

What is a preposterous postcard?

Preposterous means: • contrary to nature, reason, or

common sense : absurd• From Latin praeposterus, inverted,

unseasonable : prae-, pre- + posterus, coming behind (from post)

What is a preposterous postcard?

The preposterous postcard…• is no mass produced and ideological product• has an identifiable sender but no receiver, an

identifiable receiver but no sender or no identifiable sender and no receiver

• is not reproducing the conventional rhetorics of a postcard, it is introducing a rhetoric of difference

• is playing out the two systems of representation: text and image

• is focused on lack and absence rather than on representation

• Does not have to be an actual physical postcard it is rather a thought-image (Denkbild)

W. J. T Mitchell, What do pictures want? Chicago 2005, pp 9.

“The question of meaning has been thoroughly explored – one might day exhaustively – by hermeneutics and semiotics, with the result that every image theorist seems to find some residue or “surplus value“ that goes beyond communication, signification, and persuasion.“

Why do we need an thought-image like that?

Friedemann Heckel, This is the house from the backside and a piece of garden, framed

postcard, NOTE ON, Berlin 2012

Friedemann Heckel, This is the house from the backside and a piece of garden, close up from the invitation card, NOTE ON, Berlin 2012

Friedemann Heckel, This is the house from the backside and a piece of garden,

installation view, NOTE ON, Berlin 2012

W. J. T Mitchell, What do pictures want? Chicago 2005,

pp 34.

“Images are certainly not powerless, but they may be a lot weaker than we think. The problem is to refine and complicate our estimate of their power and the way it works. That’s why I shift the question from what pictures do to what pictures want, from power to desire, from the model of the dominant power to the opposed […]. “

W. J. T Mitchell, What do pictures want? Chicago 2005, pp 28.

“When the question of desire is raised, it is usually located in the producer or consumers of images, with the picture treated as an expression of the artist’s desire or as a mechanism for eliciting the desires of the beholder. […] I’d like to shift to location of desire to the images themselves, and ask what pictures want.“

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, 1980

“I cannot reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the “ordinary”; it cannot in any way constitute the visible object of a science; it cannot establish an objectivity, in the positive sense of the term; at most in would interest your studium: period, clothes, photogeny; but in it, for you, no wound.”

Photo: Lee Miller and David E. Sherman, April 30, 1945, Copyright Lee Miller Archives, England, 2011

Rudolf Kaesbach, Die Ausschauende, Art Déco Figure, Rosenthal, 1936

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: On the Destruction of Art – or Conflict and Art, or Trauma and the Art of

Healing, Ostfildern 2011, pp 20.

“The photograph appears to have been staged by Miller and speaks about the role of art in relation to world events or politics. It is a “traumatized“, silent photograph that suggests the impossibility of speech after what she had seen in Dachau that morning. […]“

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: On the Destruction of Art – or Conflict and Art, or Trauma and the Art of

Healing, Ostfildern 2011, pp 20.

“The same day the picture was taken. Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. On a symbolic and also on a bodily level, Miller takes his place, creates a substitution; in part she becomes the victimizer, washing herself of his crimes. It is a “mythic“ photograph – as if she were attempting to cleanse humanity of his sins.“

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: On the Destruction of Art – or Conflict and Art, or Trauma and the Art of

Healing, Ostfildern 2011, pp 21.

“Time has stopped. It is a photo of the camps, but indirect, without the literality of body horror.“

A preposterous postcard from Prinzregentplatz by Lee Miller &

David E. Sherman• The visit of Dachau, the stay in his apartment and

the bathing in Hitler’s bathtube are experiences which get cristallised in this image

• The preposterous postcard as “thought-image“ helps to grasp that

• She act of washing, an action which meant death to many of Hitler’s victims, gets staged

• A “dirty“ female uses his lobe, his chair, his bathtube, his bed and his image is witnessing

• She invades his personal sphere like he broke in the lives and private spheres of millions of people

W. J. T Mitchell, What do pictures want? Chicago 2005, pp 10.

“We need to reckon with not just the meaning of images but their silence, their reticence, their wildness and their obduracy. We need to account for not just the power of images but their powerlessness, their impotence, their abjection. We need […] to grasp both sides of the paradox of the image: that is is meaningful – but also meaningless.“

Anna Janser & Till van Daalen, Paris-Huttwil, Museum of Art and Ideas, Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg 2009

A preposterous postroute from Paris to Huttwil by Anna Janser &

Till van Daalen• The artists repeat the curatorial gesture and add

two more objects to construct their work of art• „Paris-Huttwil“ represents the struggle of

institutions to get “the best part of the cake“• The potato masher and the head massager both

struggle for the croissant• Both are not able to digest it, one is able to fix it,

the other one can't• This transnational “exhibition“ represents a

widespread institutional dilemma: the growing competition

Between Space and Content, exhibition view, Museum of Art and Ideas, Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg, 2009

Between Space and Content, exhibition view, Museum of Art and Ideas, Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg, 2009

Between Space and Content, exhibition view, Museum of Art and Ideas, Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg, 2009

Between Space and Content, exhibition view, Museum of Art and Ideas, Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg, 2009

Burk Koller, Broken Webcam Live, Ein Spaziergang auf dem Brocken, April 22-23, 2012, Bergfest, Brocken, Harz

W. J. T Mitchell, What do pictures want? Chicago 2005, pp 10.

“To ask what do pictures want is not just to attribute them life and power and desire, but also to raise the question of what it is they lack, what they do not possess, what cannot be attributed to them.“

Post-Studio Tales, A residency-as-exhibition, curated by Friedemann Heckel, John Beeson and me, District Kunst- und Kulturförderung, Berlin 2012; photo: Heiko Schaefer

Post-Studio Tales, A residency-as-exhibition, curated by Friedemann Heckel, John Beeson and me, District Kunst- und Kulturförderung, Berlin 2012; photo: Heiko Schaefer

Burk Koller, Mobile Fogmachine, Ein Spaziergang auf dem Brocken, April 22-23, 2012, Bergfest, Brocken, Harz; photo: Burk Koller

Burk Koller, Broken Webcam Live, Ein Spaziergang auf dem Brocken, April 22-23, 2012, Bergfest, Brocken, Harz

Post-Studio Tales, A residency-as-exhibition, curated by Friedemann Heckel, John Beeson and me, District Kunst- und Kulturförderung, Berlin 2012. Photo: Burk Koller

Post-Studio Tales, A residency-as-exhibition, curated by Friedemann Heckel, John Beeson and me, District Kunst- und Kulturförderung, Berlin 2012. Photo: Heiko Schaefer

Burk Koller, Webcam image live, Ein Spaziergang auf dem Brocken, 2012

This is a preposterous postcard because…• It was made during the trip, meanwhile the

action was happening• It has some factual but rudimentary

information• The experience gets and gets not depicted• This image is strong and weak at the same

time• It has a desire to show the landscape and

the weather rather than people

Blog: http://post-studiotales.district-berlin.com/