Input & Reservoir Spillway <mis en bouteille a la propriété>, 2000
two photographs in: Romantische Strategien, Copyright, Berlin, no. 3, September 2000 (edition of 600 copies)

image: pp. 8–9

Ende September 2000 wurde auf dem ART FORUM BERLIN die 3. Ausgabe von © mit dem Titel ROMANTISCHE STRATEGIEN erstmalig der Öffentlichkeit präsentiert. Thematisch orientiert sich diese Ausgabe an der Entdeckung der Künstlichkeit und Entwicklung künstlicher Maschinen und untersucht weitergehend künstlerische Strategien des 20. Jahrhunderts. Für das Cover fertigte Susi Pop einen Original-Siebdruck an. Für den Mittelteil hat Urs Lüthi eigens eine Arbeit für einen farbigen Centerfolder entworfen. Weitere Beteiligte Künstler sind u.a. Florian Merkel, der spanische Maler Pablo Alonso, der jedes Exemplar mit einem Original versehen hat, die niederländische Künstlerin Mirjam Kuitenbrouwer u.v.m. Textbeiträge kommen u.a. von Werner Künzel, Medienwissenschaftler aus Berlin, und Bernhard Balkenhol vom Kasseler Kunstverein.
 

See also:
Reservoir Spillway <mis en bouteille a la propriété>, 2000
c-print on panel
20,3 x 26,8 x 1,3 cm

work / text
> text

This c-print version of Reservoir Spillway <mis en bouteille a la propriété> differs slightly from the black and white one that featured in the ‘Romantische Strategien’ issue of the Berlin magazine Copyright, September 2000. I was invited by the founding editors Ute Lindner and Patrick Huber to put up an artist contribution for this thematic edition.

Excerpt from an email to Ute Lindner, August 25th, 2000:
I’ve been reading and writing a bit on the subject ‘Romantische Strategien’, since I returned from Berlin. I noticed there isn’t really a clear definition to be found on ‘romanticism’. Every single book expounds another (contradictional) view. For this reason it’s a good editorial strategy not to present a fixed description to the future contributors. And so I’ve been reading around the subject, mainly on the literary-historical meaning of romanticism. I enjoyed Walt Whitman’s poems for instance, but also a (difficult) philosophical study on ‘The romantic desire’ (1990) by the Dutch cultural philosopher Jos de Mul. After gathering many obscure sources I couldn’t do anything else but add my own ‘theory’ to it all. As a result of depicting the topic by writing, I discovered the link from the theme to my own work. When it came to the issue of summerizing my notes, I started photographing. This maybe was a unconscious Romantic Strategy itself. I’m not really a strategist, but far more a excessively structured individual. And I seek after images that one by one comprise a summit of intensity, concentration or lucidity. This way, you can imagine I was alleviated to discover a single shot amongst the photos, which represented my notes ‘at once’. This photo I redid about a hundred times, with very slight shifts, chasing the ideal exposure. It was quite complicated to get the magnifying glass, as well as the reflection of the view from the dormer window on the sky in it, and the funnel and the bottle neck focussed at the very same time, without any digital post processing tricks.
My contribution to the Copyright Magazine therefore is a (digital) black and white photograph: Reservoir Spillway <mis en bouteille a la propriété>. Because I realised myself when I started this letter, bringing up the Secession catalogue, that the photo is a ‘Reservoir Spillway’ itself. And it’s a distinct illustration of a romantic strategy as well.

image: WDB 18 / 25.08.00 Reservoir Spillway <mis en bouteille a la propriété>, inkjet print

Excerpt from an email to Ute Lindner, August 28th, 2000:
I’m writing you today because I’ve drawn up a second additional contribution to the Romantic Strategies: a spread page with two black and white photographs: ‘INPUT/OUTPUT’.
The right image shows the view from the dormer window which already appeared in the reflection of the magnifying glass from ‘Reservoir Spillway <mis en bouteille a la propriété>’. The window is now half opened, the top of the pane is covered with raindrops, so that half of the view is blurred. The top of the windowframe is curved like an eyelid. The left image shows a close up of my eyeball catching the sight of the dormer window, with at the spot of the pupil an incredible sharp reflection of this outlook, with the window shape and the skyline in it. The eye is looking in an upway direction, similar to the position of the windowpane. These two photographes show the similarity between panes and lenses. In the ‘Reservoir Spillway’ photo these items have been concatenated. The new double page might enrich and clarify the first one.

image: WDB 18 / 26–27.08.00, Input - Output, photocopy

image: WDB 18 / 01.09.00, Input - Output, inkjet print