Katharina Sieverding Ressource Terabyte

»There exists a long tradition of thinking on photography in terms of its privileged access to the real. Unlike the painting or the drawing, the photograph was alleged to cut through the aesthetic and cultic value: what the camera produced was a document, without aura and free of aesthetic traps«.(1) The recent works by Katharina Sieverding focus on montages and interfaces of spaces, references, and protagonists carried to the extreme.

»Only then, when pushed to its limits, can it (the imago) be held still long enough to begin to ask questions of its nature. What is this thing, the imago, which stands for and yet is not “I’? And what is it that plays with the imago, which works on it from the outside, shapes it, sculpts it? For by definition it is a being that does not stand in the representation, but is external to it, is faceless, ›abstract‹ «.(2) The 23 works in the series »Ressource Terabyte 2009« are upright formats, measuring 190 x 125 cm each, for the most part divided horizontally into three parts and of intensive, complementary, polarizing colour, for example, yellow/magenta, red/green, ultramarine/orange-red, turquoise/pink, coelin/yellow, white/red, etc. The basic structure, the tectonics of this three-part structure are black/white documentaries, fragments of the obsessive recordings of systems of art, economy, history, affection, personal performances, decay.

These colours, filtered highly analogously, function like an abstracting, melting, interdisciplinary cast medium, which may rephrase the questions concerning the colour of truth of documentarisms in the field of art(3), the symbolism of the colours of truth, the affective appropriation and feelings, the »affective turn«(4), and free itself from their conventions. The concern is to establish a counter power. »Perhaps when the imago is built and elaborated this strongly, it can push back some of the forces of normalization and speak in its own name.«(5)

(1),(2),(5) in: »Katharina Sieverding: Close Up«, PS1/MoMA , NY 2004: Norman Bryson : Was, wenn wir gar keine Subjekte sind ? Über Sieverdings
Abstraktion, S.13, S.14, S.15
(3) in: Hito Steyerl , »Die Farbe der Wahrheit«, Verlag Turia + Kant, Wien 2008
(4) in: Sabeth Buchmann und Kathi Hofer: »Empfindung oder in der Nähe der Fehler liegen die Wirkungen«, Wien 2009