Katya Sander
Production of Future. A Science Fiction about Counting
April 16 – June 7, 2008
Opening: April 15, 7pm
Reuchlinstr. 4b
D – 70178 Stuttgart
info [at] kuenstlerhaus.de
Katya Sander’s exhibition at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart presents a new large-scale video installation, which thematically examines the production of conceptions of the future. The exhibition is the second part of a long-term project of Katya Sander and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, which began in November 2007 with a public workshop and will be followed in autumn 2008 with the release of a publication. Katya Sander was recently part of Documenta 12 in Kassel with the comprehensive video project 9 Scripts From a Nation at War (together with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt and David Thorne).
The artist is known for interventions, drawings, photographs and especially filmic works that explore the influence of the imaginary on political issues, everyday life and historical events. For Katya Sander, the imaginary is not only subjective ideas, but also shared, collective articulations and projections of what is possible and what can be imagined. Through central facets of political thought, such as ideas of ‘public space’ or ‘the sphere of economy,’ Katya Sander’s work investigates how social imaginations are constructed, and how they influence our actions and reflections. Sander’s artistic method combines factual information and documentary material in a staged, fictitious framework. This method provides the artist with the possibility to inquire into relations between the narrative and the real, and to question how political subjectivity comes into being.
The work in the exhibition Production of Future begins with questioning how futures are calculated and described through mathematics and economy and what influence these projections have on the present. In five parallel video projections, interviews with scientists and practitioners from the fields of demography, stochastics, history of sciences and the financial and insurance industries are montaged with images of an actress, who is on a trip through various landscapes. The scenes make use of a “blue-screen”: a traditional filmic technique which allows constructions of seamless shifts between spaces and times, often used in Science Fiction movies. Another reference point of the work lies in the interview and montage films of the German filmmaker and author Alexander Kluge, where the audience takes part in a process of disclosure. The actress in Katya Sander’s filmic installation, played by Susanne Sachsse, is on an investigation. At the end, there is no conclusion, but rather lines drawn between relations and narratives developing and directing our ideas about the future.
For Katya Sander, the use of video as media goes beyond only presenting documentary facts or constructing a narrative. The relationship between subjectivity and narrative is examined not only in the video, but also through precise spatial stagings of the filmic material as well as its production of spectatorship. Sander’s installations are usually composed of one or multiple projections in specific architectural constructions, which allow for certain positions and perspectives. The installation Production of Future consists of five projections that are arranged so that each part can be viewed in various combinations. The filmic narration is only realized through the act of moving around, viewing and combining the elements.
Katya Sander (*1970 in Copenhagen) lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen. She has made projects for the Kulturbehörde Hamburg (Aussendienst, 2000) and Publik in Copenhagen (Monument, 2004), and has had solo exhibitions in MUMOK, Vienna (2005), Kunstverein München and Esbjerg Kunstmuseum (both 2004). Most recently her work was included in Documenta 12 in Kassel, together with Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt and David Thorne (2007).
The exhibition is supported by Kunstradet. Danish Arts Council.
Events:
May 8, 2008, 7pm: Talk with Katya Sander, moderated by Axel John Wieder
May 20, 2008, 7pm: Investigating Documentary Production, film program
Contact details:
Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Reuchlinstr. 4b, D – 70178 Stuttgart
Tel. +49 (711) 617 652 info@kuenstlerhaus.de
For further information visit www.kuenstlerhaus.de
