KATHARINA
SIEVERDING
NORAD I / XVIII
/ 80, 1980
Ed 1/7,
2009
C-print,
Acrylic, Steel
300 x 375
cm
3 parts, each
300 x 125 cm
Image copyright
Katharina Sieverding, Courtesy Galerie Sabine Knust,
Munich
It is not only form and
shape that peel off as distinctive characteristics from the
underground of photographic layers, but rather, it is the
opposing pairs of colours which, in their juxtaposition, make
the intellectual fruitfulness of the confrontation and
combination visible. Thus, substantial and formal decisions
weave together into the image, into the creation of an image
which does not pay homage to the pure reproductive character
of the photographic medium, but transposes photography into a
contemporary method for discovering meaning and
form.
The vis-à-vis here is not
one's own in the other as a face or figure, but the world and
its formalization of pleasure and danger, threat and
protection. In NORAD I a mysterious woman climbs out of the
depths of a garish green semicircle that lies like a cape
around her shoulders, the guardian of death in female form
from Cocteau's Orphée. She is standing in front of the tunnel
entrance to the NORAD data-reception headquarters. NORAD —
North American Aerospace Defense Command — is the still active
facility of the United States and Canada to protect against
intercontinental missiles and attacks from space.
KATHARINA
SIEVERDING
RTB 01,
2009
C-print, Acrylic,
Steel
190 x 125
cm
Image copyright
Katharina Sieverding, Courtesy Galerie Sabine Knust,
Munich
In NORAD I, the thematic
interrelations oscillate in their references to protection and
threat. The angel of death becomes the Madonna in a protective
robe; the omnipotent military power disappears as a small jeep
with helmet in the depths of the portrayal.
The absurdity and tragedy
of the dwindling omnipotence of the superpowers is treated not
least of all by David Foster Wallace in his book, Infinite
Jest. Here, in a not too distant future, the United States,
Canada and Mexico have united to form O.N.A.N., the
Organization of North American Nations. The former
U.S.-Canadian border area has been evacuated and transformed
into an enormous garbage dump. (The fallout in tax revenues
through the loss of territory is compensated by selling to
corporations the right to name years.) Some French-Canadian
separatist groups have extended their operations to former
U.S. territory, in particular, the wheelchair-driving
Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents (A.F.R.). They would like to
employ a video cassette as a weapon: the film, Infinite Jest,
the last work of the director, James O. Incandenza. Anyone
viewing this film is irrevocably set back to the intellectual
age of a small child within a few minutes and does not want
anything anymore other than to watch this film over and over
again.
Installation view © Siegfried Wameser,
Munich
The NORAD cycle has
to do with the mechanisms of fear and danger, protection and
aggression, perhaps also with love and betrayal. In the second
NORAD work in the exhibition, pleasure and danger seem to be
transposed into the private sphere. In monumental size, a male
figure is bending over a female figure whose head turns away.
Turning-toward and affection permeate NORAD III; on the left
of the picture, another female figure seems to be crouching,
turned away from the scene. Buried in the sand and formed out
of mud — formalization of existence, of interaction, genesis
and passing away of human being and figure. The human being
disappears like a face drawn in the sand on the
seashore.
In the
works of the Resource Terabyte cycle from 2009, a tripartite
division of the panel transfers the syntax of the expression
onto three elements. Three elements joined into a work; work
and viewer follow the author's intention. The assembly of the
image-spaces, architectures, persons is extremely dynamic,
urgent, resembling more a call to action than the recording of
a state of affairs. The basic structure of these tripartite
articulations are records of a visual kind from art, society,
history, systems of art, economics, biographies, performance.
To bear witness to how the controlled guidance of the series
of images revises the 'death of the author' is a call to
active participation, is the fulfilled necessity to fill the
standpoint of the observer with
vitality.
Katharina Sieverding
lives and works in Düsseldorf and Berlin.
Installation view ©
Siegfried Wameser, Munich
Galerie Sabine
Knust
Ludwigstr
7
80539
Munich
Germany
T: +49 89 2916
0703
