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Last Updated: 2024-11-13 (yyyy-mm-dd).
Title: Urs Stahel
Description: Urs Stahel Curating Editing Writing Lecturing Consulting Photography NEW EXHIBITION WHEN IMAGES LEARN TO SPEAK Conceputalized Documentary Photography from Astrid Ullens de Schooten Whetnalls s Collection Arles Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie at LUMA La Mécanique générale July September 2024 The numbers leave no doubt around 5 500 photographs by some 100 photographers collected over the past 30 years Clearly the A Foundation Astrid Ullens de Schooten Whettnall s Collection has not been looking for showpieces choosing rather to focus on ways of seeing ways of thinking and stances towards the world that they embody Collecting is seen in fact as a means to cultural mediation promoting photography and with it our ability to see and to understand the world So composed the foundation s collection also testifies to another important truth while it recognises that a single photograph can be beautiful even great it also knows that it says surprisingly little about the world Only through a precise structured conceptual approach can photographs serve to create a visual language that can be read understood and used to communicate by all The foundation s collection thus introduces us to a generation of conceptual documentary photographers whose structural approach offers us important insights into the world nature and society and into the lives of individual human beings and other living creatures Since the early 1960s the single picture rapidly became obsolete The call was now to speak to form sentences to create a block a network a grid a cloud a narrative of multiple pictorial or representational elements that on the one hand more closely reflected the complexity of the real and on the other facilitated an understanding of the images themselves and so of the underlying reality Perhaps the conceptual documentary photographers are the last generation of photographers to have maintained the old claim For have we not daily become more aware of grasping the void seeking in vain to apprehend spaces that can no longer be grasped understood through our senses The A Foundation is well on its way to becoming an impressive monument to the visual culture that could still rely on the visible Curator Urs Stahel Robert Adams 1937 Manuel Álvarez Bravo 1902 2002 Yolanda Andrade 1950 Diane Arbus 1923 1971 Lewis Baltz 1945 2014 Bernd et Hilla Becher 1931 2007 1934 2015 Juan Enrique Bedoya 1966 Harry Callahan 1912 1999 Luc Chessex 1936 David Consuegra 1939 2004 Moyra Davey 1958 Facundo de Zuviria 1954 Jean Paul Deridder 1963 Peter Downsbrough 1940 Mitch Epstein 1952 Walker Evans 1903 1975 Cesare Fabbri 1971 Hans Peter Feldmann 1941 2023 Lee Friedlander 1934 Marcello Galvani 1975 Paolo Gasparini 1934 Jim Goldberg 1953 Guido Guidi 1941 Anthony Hernandez 1947 Graciela Iturbide 1942 Gerry Johansson 1945 Tarrah Krajnak 1979 Zoe Leonard 1961 Helen Levitt 1913 2009 Pablo López Luz 1979 Mike Mandel 1950 Miyamoto Ryuji 1947 Francesco Neri 1982 Nicholas Nixon 1947 Jo Ractliffe 1961 Max Regenberg 1951 Martha Rosler 1943 Judith Joy Ross 1946 Ed Ruscha 1937 Mark Ruwedel 1954 Georges Senga 1983 Larry Sultan 1946 Ursula Schulz Dornburg 1938 Sergio Trujillo 1945 Henry Wessel 1942 2018 and Garry Winogrand 1928 1984 Photo credit Anne FaurèsNew Publications RUTH ERDT K12 SCHWAMENDINGEN ON THE PERIFPHERY OF ZÜRICH Herausgegeben von Urs Stahel Schwamendingen ist Neukölln Schwamendingen ist die Banlieue Schwamendingen ist Genova Pra Schwamendingen ist ein Code Ein Geschmack hält die Künstlerin Ruth Erdt treffend fest Auch ihre 643 Fotografien in diesem Buch führen das eindrücklich vor Augen Ja Schwamendingen ist ein Randbezirk ein Stadtkreis an der Peripherie wie viele ähnliche Orte in anderen Städten der Welt Aber da ist noch weit mehr Schwamendingen ist ein Phänomen ein Trotz ein Stolz eine Liebe Alle mokieren sich über diesen Kreis aber einmal da angekommen will fast niemand wieder weg 1934 in die Stadt Zürich eingemeindet entwickelte sich Schwamendingen erst zur Gartenstadt die das Zentrum mit der neuen Industrieansiedelung an der Peripherie verband dann schrittweise zum vielleicht zeitgenössischsten Teil des Metropolraums Zürich Mit fast 50 Prozent Ausländeranteil und vergleichsweise wenig Kriminalität wird Schwamendingen zur erstaunlich entspannten geschätzten Banlieue Die Autobahnschneise die den Kreis 40 Jahre lang entzweigeschnitten hat wird zurzeit gerade zugedeckt eingehaust wie das Großprojekt heißt das Quartier also vom Lärm von 120 000 Autos täglich befreit Die damit einhergehende architektonische Verdichtung hat bereits eingesetzt hoffentlich wartet die Gentrifizierung noch ein wenig länger Die Fotografin Ruth Erdt jedenfalls präsentiert hier einen wilden hüpfenden heiß kalten Bildertanz durch Schwamendingen den stolzen Randbezirk K12 Steidl Publishers 912 pages approx 650 images Ausstellung in der Kunsthalle Zürich 28 September 2024 bis 19 Januar 2025 New Essays Pouvoir et souffrance in Yann Mingard Les Indociles GwinZegal 2023Macht und Schmerz zu Yann Mingard Les Indociles GwinZegal 2023 Andreas Gursky Visual Spaces of Today 2023 Andreas Gursky Visuelle Räume der Gegenwart 2023 Change of Work MAST Photo Grant 2023 Das Schillern der Nacht Paco Carrascosa Jack Daniels and Mr Freud 2022 The Shimmer of Night Paco Carrascosa Jack Daniels and Mr Freud 2022 Heatwave Dongkjun Vak A New Gaze 3 2022 Heatwave Dongkjun Vak A New Gaze 3 2022 F A Einige Fantasien einige Ver w irrungen Fotografie und Architektur 2022 F A A Few Fantasies A Few Aberrations Photography and Architecture 2022 View Review Overview Screen versus Print 2021 Ansicht Durchsicht Übersicht Screen versus Print 2021 Richard Mosse Drawn to Image Spectacle Drawn to Forensic 2021 Richard Mosse Vom Bildereignis zur forensischen Analyse 2021 JH Engström Alles ist Leben Vieles wird Fotografie 2021 JH Engström Tout est vie Beaucoup devient de la photographie 2021 New Read Ecology and Technology On Emidio Battipaglia s Synaptic Dialogues We are at a critical juncture Our lives as human beings for the past 5 10 000 years since we first constructed settlements have brought us to a point where we are facing problems that we cannot readily solve or even ever solve Using the capacities that define us as human beings our powers of comprehension and reasoning we in the West have created a world that we no longer seem able to control despite those same powers of reasoning Human beings are part of nature yet they reason that they are superior to it What s more given this belief that humankind is more important than nature backed up by the Old Testament notion of dominium terrae i dominion over the Earth human beings have persistently subjugated nature A long drawn out ultimately painful even fatal double bind Nowadays we recognize that we are living in a world that we have largely fashioned ourselves The dualism of humankind and nature as we know it in the West is ebbing away in the realization that the natural world we now inhabit is not natural any more nor is it another nature It has become our nature precisely because we have so radically altered it reshaping and cultivating it transforming and appropriating it inscribing our will our desires our hubris into it Week after week the total weight of what we produce exceeds the entire weight of humankind The expectation is that by 2040 the sum total of all that humankind has produced will outweigh all of the Earth s natural features 1 At the same time in just a few decades we can use up raw materials that nature has taken millions of years to produce Concrete and plastic our everyday materials now pervade all kinds of sediments The knock on effect is so extreme that these days microplastics are omnipresent even in our origins not only in the sources of our rivers but in our own brains too At last very late in the day we are starting to realize that we have become a major potentially crucial geologic factor Accordingly around two decades ago the term Anthropocene started to gain traction as a designation for the present epoch which is primarily characterized even dominated by the impact of humankind 2 The exploitation of nature its transformation is now so extensive that life on our planet is being fundamentally redefined The global population explosion from one billion around 1800 to eight billion two hundred years later in tandem with huge technological advances and an economic system that is constantly incessantly urging us to buy and throw away has led to the Great Acceleration 3 that is to say a gigantic perilous increase in human activity At the same time others talk in terms of the Capitalocene Jason W Moore pointing to the fact that the benefits of that exploitation have been privatized and the costs and the consequences are borne by wider society In other words taking a historical global view for the last 250 years the Western world has siphoned off the profits of exploitation and has imposed the costs on the rest of the world above all the Global South In the early modern era res cogitans and res extensa res the thing or matter cogitans thinking questioning and extensa extended were the core concepts in the dualism expounded by René Descartes This ontological distinction between thinking substance and extended substance between mind and matter decisively affirmed the precedence given to human self interest over nature Consequently we have long exploited nature and are still doing so today 4 How can we supposedly rational human beings have allowed things to come to this Unfortunately as the philosopher and theologian Gert Scobel recently remarked reason is not our only faculty our senses desires determination search for happiness greed and morality laws often contribute much more than pure reason to the decisions we make 5 So we are at a turning point and have to ask ourselves Where do we go from here Can we still change course How can we save our own lives and other lives on this planet The answers to these questions are as diverse as humankind Yet three main responses come to the surface 1 The response from the fatalists and the cynics They will continue as they are because they believe that we can t change anything anyway and because any such action would be too detrimental to their own lives 2 The response from the self critical moralizing cohort They admit that we human beings are neither omniscient nor unique on the contrary we should recognize that nature has its own purpose its rights and will that it is not merely a fund of raw materials and a garbage dump 3 And the response from the optimists including the techno optimists They agree that yes using our powers of reasoning we have created problems that are now beyond us But perhaps we have also already created precisely the technologies that surpassing our own intellectual powers may assist us in finding a way out of this predicament Perhaps new technologies such as AI will help us to develop instruments that will set the right course in and for the future of our planet This third category is the backdrop to Synaptic Dialogues Emidio Battipaglia s project for A New Gaze 4 He introduced his submission with a clear unequivocal statement In the pursuit of a sustainable and thriving future Synaptic Dialogues investigates the powerful synergies formed through cooperation between human and non human agents By fostering collaboration among diverse entities such as humans technology and the environment the project illuminates the transformative potential of these interconnected relationships As novel symbiotic communities emerge they contribute to a collective sense of belonging inclusivity and shared purpose all of which are vital for addressing pressing global challenges 6 Battipaglia has constructed a dynamic situation combining a natural system and an artificial system the ensuing merger is controlled by both human and non human forces The model he has created alerts the viewer to the fine fragile balance between technological progress and the need to protect the world s ecosystems a model that can potentially demonstrate new ways forward In concrete terms Battipaglia juxtaposes the natural self sufficient endangered system of the Brazilian rainforest with the artificial system of AI server farms in a data center To this end he took photographs in the rainforest as it happens during an unusually protracted drought in the fall of 2023 and in a data center He then fed these images into an AI program that generated new images mutations of the rainforest and the data banks composites and midway hybrids or rather summations of natural and artificial forms These images are on view in the exhibition together with an installation of plants that react to the presence and touch of human beings The reactions of the plant systems are recorded and projected onto the wall In the newly generated images wire mesh structures server cabinets and bundles of data center cables mingle with the organic forms of climbing and trailing tropical vegetation from the rainforest Geometric lines take on plant like features and vice versa which in turn leads to a new formal language of motifs that may later evolve into a new way of thinking Harsh juxtaposition becomes togetherness interconnecting and communal Server modules stand tall like temples in a jungle and wire mesh storage units allowing the air to freely circulate become balcony gardens even botanical gardens At the same time different color spectrums intermingle Cold hard glowing colors from the world of synthetics and plastics come up against soft warm colors and gentle blended greens from the rainforest These colors and shapes symbolize different intelligences As Emidio Battipaglia has put it The title Synaptic Dialogues mirrors the project s emphasis on interconnectedness and communication between human and non human agents referencing synapses the junctions between nerve cells that facilitate information transmission The dialogues in this project evoke synaptic connections accentuating the importance of collaboration and co creation in generating innovative artistic expressions and solutions to environmental challenges 7 As viewers we find that we ourselves influence the installation and we discover that different intelligences and processing systems are intertwining here This networked thinking and these thoughts about networks are now regarded by some leading lights as central even crucial to our ability not only to understand the world today but also more importantly if we still want to avert a climate catastrophe as crucial to our ability to change the world to instigate better changes to undergo change ourselves In his latest book Ways of Being Beyond Human Intelligence 8 the British artist and writer James Bridle presents the reader with an unfamiliar unconventional view of the world a view that no longer distinguishes between nature and technology In his view intelligence is not confined to what human beings and some machines do On the contrary it is up to us to recognize the impressive truly incomprehensible diversity of intelligent forms that exist on our planet from mimosas and gibbons to crab computers and satellites and hence to question the overvaluation of human intelligence For Bridle everything ultimately comes down to one thing How can we build a livable future a world in which trees animals fungi human beings and AI can peacefully coexist and communicate with one another on a deep level And one might add how can we as a functioning community grasp reality as a whole and act accordingly Will such bold compelling views some of which originated centuries ago but have never been taken seriously be acted upon in time For sure in Emidio Battipaglia s installations But in The World that much bigger installation it is vital that views of this kind go hand in hand with behavioral change Because presumably in the end this is purely a matter of to be or not to be plain and simple Change your ways or die So does that actually mean that the self critical cohort and the techno optimists should join forces Translated from the German by Fiona Elliott 1 https www 3sat de wissen scobel scobel mit widerspruechen leben 100 html Accessed April 21 2024 2 The term Anthropocene proposed as the name for a new geochronological epoch during which human beings have become the dominant influence on biological geological and atmospheric processes on Earth is derived from the Greek ἄνθρωπος ánthropos human being and καινός kainós new In 2024 the International Commission on Stratigraphy approved the vote to reject the proposal for an Anthropocene Epoch as a formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale https stratigraphy org news 152 Accessed April 23 2024 3 Will Steffen et al Global Change and the Earth System A Planet Under Pressure The IGBP Book Series Berlin Heidelberg and New York Springer 2004 4 https www spektrum de lexikon philosophie res cogitans es extensa 1782 Accessed April 20 2024 5 https www 3sat de wissen scobel scobel mit widerspruechen leben 100 html Accessed April 21 2024 6 Unpublished project papers 2023 7 Ibid 2023 8 James Bridle Ways of Being Beyond Human Intelligence London Allen Lane 2022
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