12.Nov.2012      8pm

On Liquidized Photographs After Images and The Holy Veronica

Johannes Förster in conversation with Nico Anklam 
(art historian)
__

Von verfluessigten Fotografien Nach Bildern und 
der heiligen Veronika

Johannes Förster im Gespräch mit Nico Anklam 
(Kunsthistoriker)

Johannes Förster in conversation with Nico Anklam 

Vernissage of 'Liquid Archive' on Thursday, the 08th NOV from 6pm-10pm.

A unique photographic archive.

At a moment when the visual clarity made possible by digital photography is being viewed by amateurs an impediment to authenticity and feeling, this exhibition throws the current trend for syntheses of analogue imperfection into relief. Showcasing an extensive personal collection of images by the young German photographer Johannes Förster, produced during his formative years, Liquid Archive displays the sublime visual results and intellectual questions that have resulted from what might be described as an ‘act of god’.

Vernissage Liquid Archive

VERNISSAGE - featuring work by Elodie Pong, Nicolas Provost, Harm van den Dorpel, Artie Vierkant and Art 404

SEP 06 || 19.00-22.00

IMPORT projects
Keithstrasse 10
10787 Berlin
U Wittenbergplatz


Say Goodbye to Hollywood explores the changing face of broadcasting, intellectual property, and filmic (re)production in our networked age. Throughout, the impact of digital technologies – facilitating rapid distribution of content, the breakdown of production-consumption hierarchies, and the dismemberment of the moving-image – is in focus. The featured artworks announce the wrack of the Twentieth Century entertainment industry in the download era. In so doing, Say Goodbye to Hollywood alludes to the future of contemporary global cultural production. The exhibition features an international selection of artists working at the forefront of new media.

“Where once the experience of cinema was that of receiving an absolute, fixed icon—a definitive copy, inaccessible and precious— this is now far from the case. Cinema now becomes encapsulated, transferrable and transformable in the same vein as everything else, a “file” to be treated with all the levity we reserve for any other file.” – Artie Vierkant

Vernissage Say Goodbye To Hollywood

VERNISSAGE - the inaugural exhibition at Import projects. Featuring work by Steve Bishop, Ed Fornieles, James Howard, Shana Moulton and a special screening of films by Ryan Trecartin.

May 25 || 18.00-22.00

Trecartin screening 19.00-20.00 
Roamie View: History Enhancement & The Re'Search 
(Re'Search Wait'S)


Vernissage Technicolour Yawn

09 NOV - 07 DEC 2012 || OPENING TIMES  THUR - SAT 12 – 18 H 

VERNISSAGE 08 NOV | FINISSAGE 07 DEC | 18 – 22 H


A unique photographic archive.

At a moment when the visual clarity made possible by digital photography is being viewed by amateurs an impediment to authenticity and feeling, this exhibition throws the current trend for syntheses of analogue imperfection into relief. showcasing an extensive personal collection of images by the young German photographer Johannes Förster, produced during his formative years, Liquid Archive displays the sublime visual results and intellectual questions that have resulted from what might be described as an ‘act of god’.

Förster documented his world with great enthusiasm during his youth. Candid vignettes from childhood and teenage life, from reading porno magazines in scout camp to his friend Walter’s first marijuana crop, were captured with all the intimate spontaneity of an young man. the outcome was an extensive biographical archive in photos. so far, so normal. A lot of people have private photo collections in their attics, for instance. Förster kept his in the basement of his Neukölln home, to protect them from renovation work, eventually forgetting about them. that is, until a couple of weeks ago when heavy rainfall flooded the whole room, enveloping and forever changing the material store of memory he so treasured – not just the prints but the negatives too.

A whole life document destroyed. Well, nearly. What first looked like a disaster proved to be something more ambiguous. some of the prints survived, changed – the water making their colours run and bleed in places, sometimes obliterating all pictorial image but more often than not leaving some piece of figure behind – framing a face, a hand, in expressive scratchy hues; recompo- sing the whole photograph. the resulting images – and there are hundreds – are painfully beautiful. As we see it, exhibiting these prints allows us to think about mortality and the fragility of the analogue photographic print as a store of memory. Perhaps, also, to speak about chance and the importance imperfection plays in life. With Liquid Archive viewers are invited to dive into the ebb and flow of memory, and the tran- sience of its material and immaterial forms.

“A couple of weeks before all this happened I was talking to one of my close friends who asked me to imagine the worst thing that I could lose. I mentioned health, family and friends. then he asked what I would think if I lost my photos. I said that this would indeed make me sad, but that they aren’t an essential part of me. the images were assigned to a physical medium and they brought me to where I am today as a photographer and as a human being. But the past is only a construction upon which to build the future. It’s a means to an end, and perhaps something like this can bring me closer to the world. Everything disappears, what remains is random – even in photography. People want to be engaged, and my interest in light, perspective and subject matter remains. Loss can be an exemption, a new challenge.”

Curated by Anja Henckel & Nadim Samman

Johannes Förster - Liquid Archive

Artists:	
Art 404 (USA), 
Elodie Pong (Switzerland), 
Nicolas Provost (Belgium), 
Harm van den Dorpel (Netherlands), 
Artie Vierkant (USA)

Vernissage:	19.00-22.00. 	Sept 6 (2012)
Open hours:	12.00-18.00 	Wed- Sun, 
                                         Sept 7 – Oct 19 (2012) 

Curator: 	Nadim Samman 

Say Goodbye to Hollywood explores the changing face of broadcasting, intellectual property, and filmic (re)production in our networked age. Throughout, the impact of digital technologies – facilitating rapid distribution of content, the breakdown of production-consumption hierarchies, and the dismemberment of the moving-image – is in focus. The featured artworks announce the wrack of the Twentieth Century entertainment industry in the download era. In so doing, Say Goodbye to Hollywood alludes to the future of contemporary global cultural production. The exhibition features an international selection of artists working at the forefront of new media.

“Where once the experience of cinema was that of receiving an absolute, fixed icon—a definitive copy, inaccessible and precious— this is now far from the case. Cinema now becomes encapsulated, transferrable and transformable in the same vein as everything else, a “file” to be treated with all the levity we reserve for any other file.” – Artie Vierkant


SAY GOODBYE TO HOLLYWOOD

open Tuesday - Saturday 12.00 - 18.00

closing day 20th June

TECHNICOLOUR YAWN is a transatlantic take on networked self-exposure, consumer mysticism and indifference. It is also the inaugural exhibition of Import projects – a new non-profit project space in Charlottenburg.

TECHNICOLOUR YAWN sets the (multihued) tone for a group exhibition featuring some of the most exciting young artists working in the United States of America and United Kingdom today. The title links sensorial overload (associated with technologies of representation) to boredom. Beyond this well-known relationship it also highlights the themes of compulsion and distaste – as a ‘techinicolour yawn’ is a euphemistic expression for a forceful bout of projectile vomit.

An axis of excess, indifference and convulsive (self)exposure is an all-pervasive feature of our contemporary culture. In accordance with this ‘real’, the featured works invoke incessant pseudo communication and the theme of questionable revelation and bodily discipline. Within their various media, profusion of visual and aural noise is the surface rule and the possibility of an exclusive inner space or life is unsettled.

TECHNICOLOUR YAWN features an extensive series of newly commissioned banners by James Howard, and a new multimedia installation by Ed Fornieles alongside a Listerine sculpture by Steve Bishop and films by Shana Moulton and Ryan Trecartin (special screening).

curated by Nadim Samman


ARTISTS

Steve Bishop’s (b.1983) sculptural practice engages the history of minimalism, frequently incorporating the material qualities found in contemporary consumer products. Listerine (coolmint) His contribution to Technicolour Yawn emphasizes the slippage between object and a vessel. This double function relates to the history of idolatry, where a form is both a representation and manifestation of its subject. His work has been exhibited at the Zabludowicz Collection, Stephen Friedman, A Foundation and the Saatchi Gallery, London, amongst others.

Ed Fornieles’s (b.1983) work addresses the performative dimension of social media, exploring the creation of new subjectivities, roles and commercial archetypes. His recent projects have also questioned the boundaries between virtual selves and offline identity, blurring distinctions between the two. His work has been featured at Modern Art Oxford, Barbican Art Gallery, Kenneth Anger Institute of Art, Royal College of Art and Guest Projects, London.

James Howard (b. 1981) is fascinated with spam emails whose intent is fraudulent or which attempt to sell questionable consumer products. A student of internet scam strategies and an aficionado of the low-grade communication often associated with them, his recent work samples texts and images hijacked from real emails in his junk folder. The resulting collages are displayed as posters and screen grabs. The effect is a litany of enticement, preying on our perceived insecurities, and a garish portrait of the background/marginal commercial communication of our day. His work has recently been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery and X in Frankfurt.

Shana Moulton’s (b.1976) installation and performance practice begins with her fictional alter-ego, Cynthia, a hypochondriac housewife fixated upon miracle cures, tv-shopping products and New Age rituals. Although Cynthia believes in the unity of the universe, she lives in a social vacuum. Nevertheless, the sculptural setting in which the videos are presented involve the viewer in her vision. For a brief moment the audience partakes of her low-tech Pop fantasy life in which objects and consumer products are at once banal and uncanny. Her video work has been screened and exhibited internationally, including at Art in General, New York, Migros Museum, Zurich; Contemporary Museum of Art, Uppsala; Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin, Paris; Aurora, Edinburgh; Dark Light Festival, Dublin; Impakt Festival, Utrecht; Internationale Kurzfilmtage, Oberhausen; Broadway 1602, New York; and Gimpel Fils, London. Moulton's performances have been presented at venues including The Kitchen, New York; PERFORMA 09, New York; Aurora Picture Show, Houston; Electronic Arts Intermix, New York; The Bluecoat, Liverpool; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York; among others.

Ryan Trecartin (b.1981) writes, directs and stars in unorthodox low-budget epics for the YouTube generation, in which fragmentary narratives move at hyperspeed with all the non-subtlety of viral videos, multi-screen instant messaging and the laughter of wannabe reality stars. The recent recipient of the New Artist of the Year Award, presented at the Guggenheim Museum, and the Jack Wolgin International Prize in the Fine Arts, awarded by Temple University in Philadelphia, Trecartin has had solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, PS1 (New York) and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

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