Talks

Whether and how photography can be understood as instrumentalised showing is examined in a panel discussion. Reality as we perceive it is always mediated, and photographs always pursue a representational strategy, even as documents of our visual reality. The discussion takes as its starting point the exhibition Cairo: Open City, which uses artistic means to examine the role played by images in the Egyptian revolution and issues of documentation and testimony.
Show photography! is a cooperative project with Kunstsaele Berlin and takes place in collaboration with Camera Austria International (Graz/Berlin). With the kind support of Allianz Kulturstiftung.

A panel discussion in the Show Photography! series will examine the media character and the distribution of photographic images. In the age of rapid digitalisation, issues of originals and counterfeits, authorship and copyright are increasingly urgent, as is the issue of free access to knowledge. At the same time, the new forms of presentation follow a very specific aesthetics, but rarely question its conditions. The implications of the permanent availability of images for our appropriation of the world, and the resulting possibilities and strategies for individuals’ work, will be examined from the perspectives of the theorist, the publisher and the artist.
Show photography! is a cooperative project with Kunstsaele Berlin and takes place in collaboration with Camera Austria International (Graz/Berlin). With the kind support of Allianz Kulturstiftung.

In finely nuanced and composed colour images of deciduous and coniferous forests, all shot at twilight, Michael Lange explores the phenomenon of forest solitude. The pictures have a special quality: a secret that they keep in contemplation. Atmospherically, Lange’s subjects are permeated by a deep peace and grandeur. The forest world emerges from them as dark and present. Michael Lange talks about his works in the exhibition Wald in conversation with Dr Christoph Schaden.

The photographers Katharina Mouratidi, Berlin, and Robert Knoth, Amsterdam, present their current projects and books in a public discussion. Both of them are members of the Gesellschaft für Humanistische Fotografie, which was established in 2006. What they share is their committed, critical look at social grievances, international conflict situations and their direct effects. They report on their work on the boundary between art and documentary photography and discuss the potentials and limitations of socially committed author photography today.

The image of Sinti and Roma minorities has always been one imposed from outside. The contemporary art of the minorities, which forms the programme of the Galerie Kai Dikhas, expresses a desire to free that image from outside influence. This process can be aptly described with reference to the medium of photography. In a panel discussion with Nino Nihad Pusija (photographer), Alain Keler (photographer, Reisen zu den Roma, Edition Moderne), Cia Rinne (author of Die Romareisen, Steidl Verlag) and Moritz Pankok (curator of the Galerie Kai Dikhas) in connection with the exhibition ‘Roma è Roma’ by Nino Nihad Pusija, the participants tell about their personal experiences and about dealing with the media image of the minorities.

Der Greif (‘The Griffin’) is a magazine project for contemporary photography and literature with emphasis on photography. Launched as a regional project in July 2008, the magazine now receives submissions from all over the world. The artistic core and origin of the project is the advertising-free print magazine. Its sixth issue will be presented at Pavlov’s Dog, and the editors will share insights into the magazine’s conception and inception.

The Leipzig artist Björn Siebert and Steffen Siegel, Junior Professor of the Aesthetics of Knowledge, University of Jena, discuss Siebert’s working method. In his series of works Remakes, the artist is concerned with reproducing web photography, and recasts snapshots in an art context. He creates a semiology of cultural pictograms that asks how communication and the creation of identity function, and examines their iconographic patterns.

The IN TRANSIT project will include an evening of discussion with Dr J. Daniel Dahm (sustainability researcher), Dr Hildegard Kurt (cultural studies and Social Sculpture expert), Kerstin Polzin (artist, space researcher), Julian Röder (photographer, Ostkreuz), Sabine Schründer (artist, Loris) and others. Experts offer their views on visual languages; on photography as a documentary, artistic and political description of the world and its role in a process of social transformation; on visual overload in the public sphere and social media.

Gespräch mit Prof. Wiebke Loeper und Karen Oostenbrink

Inspired by Lars Tunbjörk’s "Vinter" series, which is currently on show at Swedish Photography, the central topic of the discussion will be the “Nordic Light“. Together with photographers from all five Nordic countries, we want to seek answers the question whether and how the seasonal changes of the lighting conditions in Scandinavia influence the photographers.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Ann-Christin Bertrand, art historian and curator at the well-known exhibition forum C/O Berlin. It will be complemented by a slide show with selected works by all five photographers. The discussion will take place in English.

Was das Foto verschweigt (‘what photos don’t say’) is the title of a sculpture by Bogomir Ecker, whose intention is to reveal the deficiencies of the medium photography. Meanwhile Ecker presents his passionately collected historic photographs in a double exhibition in photography museums in Berlin and Braunschweig in the autumn of 2012. Thus he must feel that photos say something.
In January 2014, the Akademie der Künste will open an exhibition in which Bogomir Ecker is deeply involved, Lens-based Sculpture: The Transformation of the Concept of Sculpture through Photography. This exhibition will address photography’s contribution to the renewal of the modern concept of sculpture.
Ludger Derenthal and Angela Lammert, members of the team of curators for the two exhibitions in Berlin, speak with Bogomir Ecker about the interplay of photography and sculpture.