“Translantics”
by Britta Thie
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Römerberg
60311 Frankfurt
Germany
Project website: www.schirn.de/translantics
www.schirn.de
Online magazine: www.schirn-mag.com
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“Translantics” is the most recent art project produced exclusively for the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt by Britta Thie. In the series presented online at the Schirn website, the artist looks at how concepts of self, emotions, and human interaction have changed under the influence of global developments in digital technology over the past 20 years. Working with numerous fictional characters and real people, including artists, friends, and actors, she paints a portrait of a generation whose members have learned to exploit the advantages of virtual presentation yet recall the analog media of their childhood years with a sense of nostalgia.
“The Internet is taken for granted as a source and a platform for artists. For many of the artists born in the 1980s and 1990s, it has become their natural working environment. Such terms as ‘digital’ and ‘network art’ are symptomatic. One central aspect of these artforms is the struggle to come to grips with the changing relationship between the human being and communication. Britta Thie examines the consequences of this trend in an ironic and aesthetically striking manner in her works,” explains Schirn Director Max Hollein.
In the six episodes of “Translantics” released at three-week intervals, Thie describes the attitude toward life of this digitized generation by interweaving 3-D animations, video essays, virtual works of art, theoretical discourse, and documentary photo and film material at different visual levels. Against the backdrop of the pulsating metropolis of Berlin, three young women move constantly back and forth within a complex web of differing circles of friends, acquaintances, and social classes. In the process, they waver between feelings of homesickness and conquest, playing themselves or merely one of many versions of themselves. Hearts are broken day after day in the overstimulated world of relationships in social networks and automated updates. But what becomes of genuine intimacy when emotions, affections, and ideas become products traded in an insatiable marketplace? In “Translantics,” relationships unfold in a pastel-colored shopping mall in Neukölln, on the way to small home towns in outlying regions, in semi-successful galleries featuring imported New York art, and amongst the skyscrapers in Frankfurt’s banking quarter.
“Translantics” is a joint project presented by the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and the ZDF in cooperation with ARTE CREATIVE.
In an effort to respond to the vital development of art in digital space as an institution, the Schirn is focusing on exclusively digital artistic positions in 2015. Artists make use of the tools, phenomena, and techniques of the digital society to create the new, the unknown, and the unusual. With “Translantics,” the Schirn is presenting a position that exemplifies the vitality and creativity of art in the digital realm. Britta Thie (at age 27) belongs to a generation that experienced biological puberty and the “digital puberty” of our society at the same time and has since found itself in a state of “in-between” in a number of senses: between “digital native” and “digital immigrant,” between their native German language and the English that has practically become the lingua franca of the capital city, as expatriates commuting between continents to work, live, and travel, and between freelancing and civil service status.
Britta Thie (b. 1987), whose art is concerned with the influence of innovative digital technologies on everyday life, emotions, and human interaction as well as the possibilities offered by virtual self-representation, lives and works in Berlin. She studied visual art under Hito Seyerl at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and was a master student in her class. She was awarded a DAAD scholarship to Cooper Union in New York City in 2010/2011. In recent years, Thie’s works have been exhibited at the Anthology Film Archives (New York), Auto Italia South East (London), and the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), among other venues.
Director: Max Hollein
Coordination: Fabian Famulok
Press contact: Axel Braun (Head of Press/Public Relations):
T (+49 69) 29 98 82 153 / F (+49 69) 29 98 82 240 / presse [at] schirn.de
Press material:www.schirn.de (texts, images, and films for download under PRESS)
