Neues Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop - Ausstellung Riverine Bodden Zones von Philipp Geist 18.Sept - 01.Nov 2010

Neues Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop -

Ausstellung Riverine Bodden Zones von Philipp Geist 18.Sept - 01.Nov 2010

Herzliche Einladung zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung

RIVERINE BODDEN ZONES

PHILIPP GEIST - Fotografie - Video - Multimedia

am 18. September 2010 um 20 Uhr in das Neue Kunsthaus Ahrenshoop

Einführende Worte: Petra Steeger Vorstand des Künstlerhaus Ahrenshoop e.V

anschließend um 21 Uhr Audio-Visuelles Konzert

von und mit Philipp Geist und Fabrizio Nocci

Ausstellung vom 19. 09. 2010 bis 01. 11. 2010 täglich geöffnet 10-17 Uhr

NEUES KUNSTHAUS AHRENSHOOP

Bernhard-Seitz-Weg 3a

18347 Ahrenshoop

Die Projektausstellung zeigt Arbeiten des Berliner Künstlers Philipp Geist. Er präsentiert die Ergebnisse seines zweimonatigen Aufenthaltsstipendiums im Sommer 2010 im Künstlerhaus Lukas.

Unter dem Titel RIVERINE Bodden Zones erweiterte Philipp Geist sein weltweit angelegtes Video-Wasser-Projekt im Ort und der Umgebung von Ahrenshoop. Mit Unterwasser-Videokameras filmte und filmt er die Welt unter der Wasseroberfläche. Die künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit dem allgegenwärtigen Element Wasser ist ein Kontaktversuch mit unserer unmittelbaren und doch fernen Realität. Geist zeigt einen Teil dieser Realität auf, der für uns üblicherweise verborgen bleibt.

RIVERINE Bodden Zones versteht er als ein kontinuierliches Projekt, das Flüsse oder auch Seen und Meere auf Vergessenes, Verdrängtes oder schlicht Unbekanntes erforscht. Um das lebensnotwendige Element Wasser in all seinen Facetten zu beleuchten, werden dabei je nach Eigenheit des Flusses oder Gewässers auch ethnologische, religiöse, politische und vor allem umweltpolitische Aspekte verdeutlicht.

Die Installation besteht aus Aufnahmen von urbanen Flüssen, kleinen Bächen und großen Strömen in einer gleichberechtigten Gegenüberstellung, deren Ästhetik teils dokumentarisch, teils fremdartig, grob und pixelig, teils fehlbelichtet, unscharf, farbintensiv oder auch monochrom wirkt. Ohne die übliche Fernsehästhetik zu bedienen, erlauben sie dem Betrachter einen realen, aber zeitgleich irritierenden Einblick. Vormals Bekanntes wird zu einer Landschaft des Surrealen. Seine begehbare Video-Raum-Installation stellt Geist mittels großflächiger Videoprojektion dar und ergänzt diese mit Unterwasser-Videostandbildern und Fotoarbeiten. Geists Projekte sind in erster Linie gekennzeichnet durch ihre Komplexität in der Integration von Raum, Ton und Bewegt-Bild.

Auf diese Weise erfahren die in Ahrenshoop arbeitenden Stipendiaten einmal mehr eine größere Öffentlichkeit und Einbeziehung in den Ort und die interessierte Öffentlichkeit kann aktuellste Tendenzen künstlerischer Entwicklung umfangreich erleben.

Philipp Geist arbeitet international als Licht- und Multimediakünstler. 2009 bespielte Geist den königlichen Thron in Bangkok mit einer flächendeckenden Video-Mapping-Installation. 2010 zeigte er die Außeninstallation ,Time Drifts‘ am Place des Arts beim Mutek Festival in Montreal. 2008 entwickelte er am Kulturforum Berlin die Lichtinstallation 'Time Fades'. 2007 zeigte er am zeitgenössischen Museum Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rom die Video-Installation 'Time Lines'. 2006 eröffnete er den Salon Noir in der Neuen Nationalgalerie in Berlin. 2008 reali- sierte Geist die Installation 'Broken Time Lines' am ehemaligen Kurhaus Ahrenshoop. Weitere Ausstellungen und Installationen waren in der Pinakothek der Moderne (München), Three Walls Gallery (Chicago), White8 Gallery (Wien), Cantiere (Montepulciano) , Ostrale (Dresden), Sonar Festival (Barcelona), Disso- nanze (Rom), Clubtransmediale (Berlin) zu sehen.

Für die Unterstützung des Ausstellungsprojekts danken wir recht herzlich dem Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur des Landes Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, dem Landkreis Nordvorpommern, Der Künstler dankt zudem Setup Berlin, Boris Becker, Fabrizio Nocci, sowie Viola und Elian.

NEUES KUNSTHAUS AHRENSHOOP

Bernhard - Seitz - Weg 3a

18347 Ahrenshoop

Fon (03 82 20) 807 26

Fax (03 82 20) 694 14

post@neues-kunsthaus-ahrenshoop.de

www.neues-kunsthaus-ahrenshoop.de

http://www.neues-kunsthaus-ahrenshoop.de/?Ausstellungen:2010:Projektausstellung_2010

Riverine Zones Video Installation at Ostrale 27.8. - 19.9. 2010 Dresden

Ostrale 2010
Zentrum für zeitgenössiche Kunst
http://www.ostrale-zentrum.eu

Internationale Ausstellung zeitgenössischer Künste
27.8. - 19.9. 2010 Dresden

Opening OSTRALE`010

The OSTRALE`010 opens on Friday, 27th of Auguststarting 6 p.m. Untill the 19th of September 152 national and international artists show their work. On every weekend you can experience 115 performing artists in the OSTRALE.xtra programme.

+ Riverine Zones
Videoinstallation von Philipp Geist

http://www.riverine.videogeist.de

Riverine Zones

Water and time are the constants of Philipp Geist’s oeuvre. The artist, autodidact and Berliner by choice works on an international level in a range of media, including video-installation, audio-visual performance, painting and photography. Much of his work deals with the integration of space, sound and the moving image.

The room-sized video-installation Riverine Zones takes the viewer on a discovery through international rivers. Geist’s work allows us to encounter a familiar world from which we are simultaneously removed. Using an underwater camera he explores the various parts of the river: its surface, the riverbed and the deep and shallow waters. With a view from the water he also includes the riverside or „riverine“, which lends its name to the project.

Rivers are part of our environment. We see them from cars, experience them on pleasure boats or sit on their banks. We have an idea of what they look like beneath the surface. Documentaries on fish and underwater plants supply us with the images. But who knows what really happens in their depths, when no one is collecting data, recording documentaries – when the camera’s viewfinder is not hunting rare species and geological formations. Riverine does not focus on photorealist imagery or on capturing nature in real time; it only follows a partly documentary approach. Whoever encounters the Riverine Zones’ video installation is captivated by an alternative place and time with its own laws and movements.

Nevertheless, Geist’s films do not show random details of life in a river or fortuitous recordings. Philipp Geist stands by the riverside or on a bridge and guides the camera. It goes down a long rope and floats in the waves of the river. Currents and eddies have a strong influence on the camera’s activity, so pan shots and movements that are regularly used on land are not possible in this situation. However, the artist views the camera’s take on a monitor that stands next to him and can therefore decide on how long and how to film.

Used in this way, the camera encounters many creatures, stones and debris, or simply looks into the void. We see floating particles, bubbles or just impenetrable grey. To a certain extent, these images have a documentary aesthetic and are rather alien, crude, pixelated, blurred, colour intensive, but also monochrome. The camera takes us into an underwater world we never knew, a world that is created by the camera itself. Besides the particular recording and operating methods, it is also the use of diverse underwater cameras, which with their rather simple design and occasional use of light emitters portray the underwater world in an alienated way. Geist’s cameras achieve an entirely novel colouration and overexposure of the created images.

We feel cut of from life above the water, plunged and submerged into an immediate parallel world. Even when Geist films the riverside with his camera submerged halfway, the otherwise known environment becomes estranged through this change of perspective and since the familiar sounds from the outside world are missing. The artist adds a monotonous underwater sound to his images. While viewing his work the viewer feels like a swimmer, resurfacing repeatedly, still disoriented due to unfamiliar sounds and a diagonally upwards perspective.

Through this perspective the well-known cityscapes are experienced anew. From the recordings of 19 rivers to date, which are part of this long-term project, some films show capital cities or major cities in Europe and North America. Streams, rivers and small creeks get treated equally within the installation project that is to be extended with rivers from other continents, notably Asia and Africa.

Philipp Geist contrasts underwater worlds from different cities and places: the clear water of a river contrasts with a canal full of discarded objects, including cans, street signs and even bikes. Like a searcher, Geist traces creatures and plant life with his underwater cameras. His films bring to the fore aspects of how humans handle the precious water resources in different regions of the world. The timeliness of environmental issues and the impact of environmental protection are not being told with a wagging finger, since this has already even caused some people to stop trying. Geist shows in an unfamiliar and subtle way how nice, puzzling and worth protecting the environment is, which we are poisoning.

Apart form the confusion created through unfamiliar combinations of movements and perspectives, the viewer’s orientation is being complicated further by the way how the video recordings and stills are presented. Geist’s exhibition concepts make it possible to plunge into the visual world of various streams and rivers simultaneously. Especially, the wall encompassing projections with several video projections create this scenario. The familiar bodily connection to a place is disturbed and the partly realistic impression of the image gives the viewer the sensation of being in two places at once.

The project is always perceived anew for each exhibition space. Therefore even in smaller spaces the films can be shown on monitors, which are placed on top of each other or next to one another. This way a new spatiality is created. The geometrical, fixed and technical format of the monitors gives the river, respectively the water with its typical traits of naturalness, fluidity and intangibility, a frame and a shape.

Other modes of presentation make it possible to integrate video stills as photographic works. They can support the space in various ways. For example video stills can be strung together in such a way, they create wallpaper made of river images, presenting in its density a kaleidoscope of snapshots of the river. Again the organic motifs are contrasted with a structure that allows complete immersion and creates simultaneity. Time is frozen and the water has come to stagnation. In this way we can quietly observe what the eye cannot perceive normally. Structures and formations of movements, but also play of light and random forms emerge that would not have been discovered without the camera. Once again photography has captured the ephemeral in a wider sense and not only time, but also the water.

Another component of the project is the use of Google Earth satellite images. They mark the place where the camera was let into the water. A relatively precise localisation of the underwater films is being made, with the area close to the river also shown from a bird eye’s perspective. The shots are presented in a meandering formation on the wall. This way Philipp Geist illustrates the idea of a network he follows when he is collecting his rivers. One river literally flows into the other, as the cuttings of the respective rivers are joined together. Monitors are placed in-between – in sizes no bigger than the photographs – to complement the macro perspective of the satellite imagery with a micro perspective from the underwater pictures.

The video stills are published as editions. For further information please view:

Text by Viola Fissek

(Translation: Julia Gwendolyn Schneider)

The Author

Viola Fissek studied European Ethnology and English language and literature in Berlin and London. She works as an author, travel writer and translator in Berlin. Her main interests lie in the history of cities, fashion and everyday life and in biographical studies.

Besides working for a Berlin advertising agency and for an art book publisher she writes project- and press texts about Philipp Geist’s works since 2003 and supports his installation projects in terms of content and concepts.