13MB - Veronika Spierenburg

Veronika Spierenburg
Selected Works
False Bird from Paradise
2015
Video, no Sound, 3.30 min.
The video False Bird of Paradise is developed from
film stills taken from video recordings in Sao Paulo
about the architect Vilanova Artigas. Through it,
an analytical chronicle of his architecture and its
details unfolds. Artigas’ language of form has
fascinated me since I first walked into the Faculty
of Architecture building in Sao Paolo in 2011. Over
numerous visits to private houses that Artigas built
between the 1960s and ‘70s I gradually gathered
many video recordings of these structures. In
the video False Bird of Paradise I reveal my processdriven working method and present a moment’s
snapshot of the ongoing project. The work’s title
refers to the ‘false bird of paradise’ genus of plants
– the botanic name for which is Heliconia – which
Artigas frequently had planted at his buildings.
We’d rather not talk about
Ludwig
We’d rather not talk about
Margarethe
2015
Five-Channel Sound Installation,
9 min.
in collaboration with
Delphine Chapuis Schmitz
The starting point of the collaboration is the House
Wittgenstein on Kundmanngasse in Vienna, a house
which Ludwig Wittgenstein built between 1926
and 1928 for his sister Margarethe StonboroughWittgenstein. Working together, the artists engaged
with Wittgenstein’s architecture using text and
images, exchanging personal recollections and/or
imagining spaces using the medium of speech.
For their sound installation their own and found
text passages and words are linked to form thematic
sequences – about the interiors, the doors and the
windows or about how light is directed – and then
re-fragmented, repeated and overlaid in three
languages, using five sound channels. Language
undergoes the same meticulously precise refinement
that Wittgenstein practised throughout the design,
planning and realisation of the residential building –
and in his philosophy of language. The intert­wining
linguistic articulation and visual reception,
monologue and dialogue, description and reflection
result in the overlap of spatial imagination and
architecture.
Text: Anna Francke
sc r ip t E xce r p t
D – Delphine
V – Veronika
D – To enter the house...
V – Das Gebäude sieht man nicht von der Strasse.
D – To enter the house
V – There is no direct entrance from the street.
V – The house is surrounded by a white wall...
D – Hohe Mauer
V – To enter the house
D – ... and then, you have to go through the
garden.
V – Es war mal ein Park...
D – through the garden
V – ... und jetzt nicht mehr / Kastanienbäume
D – es war mal ein Park
V – with a lot of trees
D – des chataîgners / les chataîgners / once again:
V – The house is surrounded by a white wall and
then you have to go through the garden
D – le jardin
D – es war mal ein Park
V – Weisse Baukuben mit Flachdach. Das Haus
wächst direkt aus dem Boden heraus.
D – Un peu comme des cubes emboîtés les uns
dans les autres
V – Acht Fenster und der Eingang. Kein Sockel.
V – Ich folge der Kontur mit den Augen...
D – Ok, so to enter the house, you pass through
the front glass doors into a small vestibule, with
light walls and dark floor, and then you go
through another set of glass doors, up the dark
stone stairs and into the brightly lit space of the
central hall.
V – Glühbirne über der Türe
D – il s’agit d’un édifice de trois étages, comptant
27 pièces, ce qui représente une surface habitable
de 1116 m2 environ (on n‘est pas à ça près)
V – il y a des portes et il y a des fenêtres
D – il s’agit d’un édifice de trois étages, comptant
27 pièces, ce qui représente une surface habitable
de 1116 m2 environ
V – (on n’est pas à ça près)
D – il y a des portes et il y a des fenêtres / Denn ein
Haus ist ein Haus
D – des ampoules
D – Türe, Türgriff, porte, poignée, ligne, espace,
V – espace, espace, ligne espace, espace, espace,
porte, poignée
Stair Case
2014
2 channel HD Projection, Sound,
10 min.
Cedarwood Objects
The spiral staircase was made by the architect
Lina Bo Bardi for a museum in Salvador da Bahia.
Each step is fixed at its end with a log that pierces
the supporting structure. With the same wooden
construction method I created a wooden object
to serve as a musical instrument. The double
projection echoes the vertical structure of the
staircase: a musician can be seen and heard playing
the instrument in the lower image; the upper
projection shows a group of people who move
synchronously and asynchronously with the sound.
Various wooden objects are spread on the ground
before and beside the projection.
Aus-Höhlen
2014
HD-Video, Sound, 8 min.
Caves were the first human dwellings; they offer
protection from an exterior – whether this be nature
or civilization, or represents hostile attacks and
threats. In Georgia, monks have dug complex
cloisters into soft sandstone since the 6th century,
creating retreats far from the noise of the city for
ascetism and meditation. From a distance these
artificial caves are scarcely visible at first, as they
are set into organic chasms and folds of the rock;
only from close up can the net-like structure of cave
entrances and a system of paths be recognised.
The contrast between natural spaces and designed
architecture is particularly appreciable from within
the caves: scored marks on the walls and finely
chiselled subterranean spaces in which the monks
would retire for day-long meditation and fasting
physically demonstrate how life was in these caves.
The cave mouth is key to the spatial structure:
it creates the entrance and exit and can be stepped
through; at the same time it serves as a source of
light that is otherwise missing in the spaces one
can move through; and as a window it enables the
exterior to be observed from within.
This video work is arranged at this point
of intersection of cave topography. Long takes are
filmed with a fixed camera in various monks’ caves
from within, looking out. Its sight directed towards
the mouths of the caves, the camera nestles within
the cramped, domed interiors and, with time, opens
up views towards the distant landscape. A perspective is thus adopted that is reminiscent of the pla­tonic view from the darkness of the cave into the sun.
In the video work this viewpoint is investigated
in relation to its structural and material properties
in particular: as the interplay of interior and exterior
space, of light and shade, of proximity and distance,
of natural and designed architecture and of vegetation and stone. Through these correlations corpo­
reality and seeing also coalesce: if, on the one hand,
thanks to the camera’s placement in the interior
the video enables a physical, sensory experience of
the cave and its darkness, narrowness and materiality,
on the other hand the view that opens from the cleft
of the cave mouth enables an expansive perspective
that floats, almost weightlessly, into the distance.
The cave mouth ultimately structures the
image form of the video work itself. By focussing on
various cave entrances, the principle of framing and
opening viewpoints within the filmic image recurs
as a struc­tural feature of the image. Like virtual
entrances and exits, long takes enable the viewer
to be carried from the interior of the exhibition into
the exterior of the Georgian landscape. This tableau-like effect is underlined through the presentation on a large format flatscreen monitor.
Text: Kristina Köhler
Zur Palme
2014
Video, 4 iPads, no Sound, 2 min.
in collaboration with Walter Furrer
On iPad screens installed parallel to one another
are shown four slow camera tracking shots that
scan the architectural structures of Zurich’s first
high-rise building: Hochhaus zur Palme. The video
journeys are installed so they travel in opposing
directions; the video camera is fixed to architect
Walter Furrer’s wheelchair.
Ecke, Hoek, Hörn
2014
Publication, edition fink
74 Pages
This publication appears on the occasion of the
Manor Kunstpreis exhibition and contains, as
an insert, the photographic work, Ecke, Hoek, Hörn,
which consists of four photographs of corner situations, each taken in a room of the Kunsthaus Glarus,
the Boijman’s Museum and the Östergötlands
Museum. The publication also contains the text
work Licht, Licht, Ljus bound between textual pages,
which features isolated terms regarding light
and lighting techniques ordered typographically.
Zig Zag
2014
Installation, Acrystal
300 x 1190 x 2 cm
The folding screen-like sculpture is based on
a drawing by Swiss architect Hans Leuzinger
(1887-1971), in which he proposed the zigzag
pattern as a potential arrangement for temporary
walls in museums. That which was originally
conceived as a carrier for artworks is turned into
a freestanding object from poured acrylic sheets
that can be physically explored.
Chairs from the Kunsthaus Glarus that have
become worn over the years are newly assembled
into geometric structures through simple rotating
and stacking. The photographs are presented on
drafting tables tilted at different angles. As a result
table and photograph interlock in different ways.
Table-Chair
2014
Digital C-Prints 82 x 109.5 cm,
9 drawing tables
Suspension Attachment
2014
Installation, Metall
The installation Suspension Attachment consists
of former mounting devices from the Kunsthaus
Glarus. The work draws attention to historic
strategies of presenting paintings, at the same time
using them to enact the architectural qualities of
the museum space. The dated and bent metal rods
had been kept in the Kunsthaus storage space
and were so taken, unchanged, into the installation.
...as it is
2014
2 Channel-Video Projection, Sound,
11 min.
The video …as it is focuses on the architectural
structures of three museums: the Kunsthaus
Glarus, the Östergötlands Museum and the Museum
Boijmans. During my research I discovered from
travel accounts by the architects that each had been
influenced and inspired by other museum buildings.
These interconnections are researched formally
and associatively in video. Stairrails, ventilation
shafts and brick walls, with their different material
and formal qualities, emerge as an abstract fabric
that makes an experience of the spaces and their
varying moods possible.
Die Rampe
2013
Video Projection, Sound, 10 min.
The spiral concrete ramp of the Migros Herdern
operating centre in Zurich is engaged with in film
using a split-screen process. On the left hand side, the
camera travels up the ramp, on the right, down. The
disjoined camera movements produce a disorienting
effect, so that the architectural structure of the ramp
can be appreciated as a dynamic relationship between
two spiral movements.
In Order of Pages
2013
Publication, Kodoji Press
21,6 cm × 28 cm, 504 Pages
The publication In Order of Pages presents a compendium of pages found in books at the Sitterwerk
art library. To create my own inventory of this
resource, I scanned more than 3000 pages during
my research there. From this resulted a publication
with 450 illustrations, each ‘found’ page arranged
according to its original pagination. The volume
presents a selection of topics about art history that
ranges from art and crafts to material science and
fabrication techniques.
Das Leserad
2013
Steel, Rotating
220 × 220 × 80 cm
in collaboration
with Karl Rühle,
Tobias Lenggenhager,
Gianfranco Bronzini
The reading wheel for the Sitterwerk library
in St. Gallen is linked to the work of the engineer
Agostino Ramelli (1531–1600). Ramelli drew the
plan for a mechanical reading aid around 1588,
which was published along with 194 construction
drawings in the book Le Diverse et Artificiose
Machine. My interpretation was guided by the idea
of making the reading wheel as serviceable as
possible, so that it is appreciated as a functional
object and can be used. For this I had it produced
in metal with a simple mechanism.
The reading wheel has already been exhibited
in various libraries in Switzerland and actively
used by their visitors. These stations have included
the Swiss National Library in Bern, the Basel Music
Academy’s Vera Oeri Library, the ETH Zurich and
at the public library in St. Gallen.
Looking Through the Structure
2012
Video Projection, Sound, 6 min.
The video concentrates on three buildings from the
architect Lina Bo Bardi: art museum in Sao Paulo,
the museum for modern and folkloric art and the
theatre Gregório de Mattos, both in Salvador da
Bahia.Using minimal choreographic movements
that plays with time and space, the video picks
out the architectural structures. A first draft from
Lina Bo Bardi is shown on the wall next to the video
to indicate the idea of the art museum in Sao Paulo
as a pyramidal construction. The skateboarder in
the video refers to the draft while he tries to drive
a triangle on the floor.
‘Linear time is a western invention; Time is not
linear, it is a marvelous tangle where at any moment,
points can be selected and solutions invented without
beginning or end.’
Lina Bo Bardi
Wasserkirche
2012
Book
384 Pages, 46 Images
During research into the Wasserkirche in Zurich,
I found various drawings and photographs relating
to the municipal library that was located in the
Wasserkirche for almost 300 years.
I collected all the visual material that I could
find in archives and ordered it chronologically in
a book that visualised thechanges to the interior
of this significant building over time.
Crossing of a Horizontal
Body with a Vertical One
2011
Video Projection, Sound, 12 min.
With minimal gestures, a dancer explores the
struc­ture and material in the architecture of
the Palacio Gustava Capanema in Rio de Janeiro.
Her subtle movements enact the physical and
mobile human topographies inherent in the
architecture. The building was designed by a team
under the guidance of Le Corbusier. It is regarded
as the first example of Modernist architecture
in Brazil.
From Right to Left
2009
Video Projecion, Sound, 16 min.
The video begins with a pan from above to below
in the reading room of the Finnish National Library
in Helsinki. Twenty-eight people are sitting on
chairs lined up in four rows; each one cradling a
book on their lap. Synchronously, they leaf through
the pages; the rustling of the pages builds a loud
rhythm that also makes the acoustic of the library
space audible.
Veronika Spierenburg
1981
Education
Group Exhibitions / Performances
Publications
2005 – 2006
• MA Fine Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design, London
2015
• Pasquart, Stipendium Vordemberge-Gildewart, Biel
• Stadtgalerie, Nicht Neues, Bern
• Helmhaus, Stipendien der Stadt Zürich, Zurich
• sic! Raum für Kunst, Comment, please, Luzern
• Kunsthaus Glarus, Interieurs aus der Sammlung des
Glarner Kunstvereins, Glarus
2014
• Ecke Hoek Hörn, Edition Fink, Zurich
2002 – 2005
• BA Photography, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam
Solo Exhibitions
2015
• MoCA Pavilion, Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai
• Le Foyer, We’d rather not talk about Ludwig / We’d rather
not talk about Margarethe, Zurich (in collaboration with
Delphine Chapuis Schmitz)
2014
• Aargauer Kunsthaus, Manor Kunstpreis 2013, Aarau
• Infozentrum, ETH, Das Leserad, Zurich
• Vera Oeri Bibliothek, Das Leserad, Basel
2013
• Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek, Das Leserad, Bern
• Bibliothek Sitterwerk, Between Handle and Blade, St.
Gallen
2011
• lokal-int, Cover-Up, Biel (in collaboration with Daniel
Lehan)
2010
• Station 21, Ausverkauf, Zurich
2009
• Kiasma, K like Kaktus, Helsinki
2008
• Roger Smith Lab Gallery, Audience to Audience, New
York (in collaboration with Sophie Loss)
• Shed-and-a-Half Gallery, For Two Voices, London
2006
• Window Gallery, Colored Skin, London (in collaboration
Phoebe Hui Fong Wah)
2014
• Werkschau 2014, Zurich
• Alte Fabrik, Unendliche Bibliothek, Rapperswil
• Herrliche Zeiten, Zug
• Forum Schlossplatz, Le Mond Attend, Aarau
• Dienstgebäude, Ensemble, c’est tout, Zurich
• Herrmann Germann Contemporary, Fair Shake of the
Whip 1, Zurich
2013
• ArSwiss Focus, New York Art Book Fair, New York
• Fondation Les Urbaines, Lausanne
• Museum Bärengasse, Twisted Sisters – Reimaging Urban
Portraiture, Zurich
• Doom, Zurich
• Corner College, This Book 3, Zurich
• Corner College, This Book 2, Zurich
2012
• Aargauer Kunsthaus, Auswahl 2012, Aarau
• Corner College, This Book 1, Zurich
• Helmhaus, Stipendien der Stadt Zürich
• Taktung Festival 2012, Zürich
• Zementfarbrik, die Fabrik ruft!, Brunnen
• K3 Project Space, Art Auction, Gibsmir Family, Zurich
2011
• Gibsmir, Collective Show Tree Structure, Los Angeles
• Aargauer Kunsthaus, Auswahl 2011, Aarau
2010
• Aargauer Kunsthaus, Auswahl 2010, Aarau
• Art Basel, Action Auction, Gibsmir Family, Basel
• Galerie Lucy Mackintosh, Back Yard, Lausanne
• Claudia Groeflin Gallery, Afterpiece: performance art on
video, Zurich
2009
• Aargauer Kunsthaus, Auswahl 2009, Aarau
• message salon downtown, About Now, Zurich
• Format Festival, Photocinema, Derby
2008
• Aargauer Kunsthaus, Auswahl 2008, Aarau
2007
• Lethaby Gallery, Red Mansion Art Prize Exhibition,
London
2005
• Nederlands Fotomuseum, Steenbergen Stipendium,
Rotterdam
2013
• In Order of Pages, Kodoji Press, Baden
Curatorial Projects
2010
• Gallery Lucy Mackintosh, Back Yard, Lausanne
2009
• message salon downtown, About Now, Zurich
• Suomenlinna Treasure Hunt, HIAP, Helsinki
(in collaboration with curator Anna Colin)
Artist in Residence
2016
• Genua, City Zurich, 6 months
2015
• Shanghai, ProHelvetia, 3 months
• Residence, FAAP, Sao Paulo, 2 months
2014
• Travel Grant, Japan, Aargauer Kuratorium, 3 months
2011
• Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, Aargauer Kuratorium,
6 months
2008
• Suomenlinna, HIAP, Finland, 3 months
Awards, Prizes
2015
• Kunst am Bau, Justizvollzugsanstalt Lenzburg
2014
• Bursary Award, Canton Zurich
2013
• Manor Art Prizes 2013, Aargau
2012
• Bursary Award, Aargauer Kuratorium
2009
• Bursary Award, Aargauer Kuratorium
2008
• NAB Kunstpreis, Aarau
2006
• The Red Mansion Art Prize, London
• VSB Fond, Amsterdam
my works in detail
The point where bodies and architecture,
movement and space meet is central aspect of
my work – I research these connections with
various media, each time from a new perspective. In video works and performances I gene­
rate experimental situations that make the
physical and acoustic experience of spatial
conditions possible. Using minimal series of
gestures, which are closely linked to architectonic structures, I try to place fixed and mobile
bodies on a shared sensory level. A reduced,
geometric language of form is common
throughout my work. This exists in a dynamic
relationship to the sometimes ‘epic’ research
from which the ideas have crystallised. I see
these research processes as a starting point
and part of the system of work; nonetheless,
the work itself should stand alone.
Many of my video works are motivated by my
fascination with the interplay of architecture,
bodies and film. Thus the design principles of
Brutalism and Functionalism, which I research
in various filmic experiments, interest me in
particular. For me these experiments are always
about making visible the fields of tension that
are within architecture to dissolve its supposedly rigid structures – be that through moving
bodies crossing the spaces, as for example was
the case in the video work Crossing of a Horizontal Body with a Vertical One (2011), in which
a dancer investigates the structures, surfaces
and materials of the Palacio Gustava Capanema
in Rio de Janeiro using minimal gestures, or
be it by setting the space itself in motion. In this
the camera plays an important role: on the one
hand the filmic approach makes spatial structures apparent through its static, almost clinical
placement; then hypnotically floating tracking
shots dynamise the spaces and make their
spatial dimensions ‘accessible’. With this it is
possible to experience the architecture as
both stage and experimental field for mechanical vision. I have tested these visual-filmic
approaches to architecture using different filmic
principles: in the work Die Rampe (2013),
for example, a spiral concrete ramp in Zurich
is approached filmically using a split-screen
experience. On the left hand side the camera
travels upwards, on the right downwards.
Viewed as a whole, the movements become
interlaced and in so doing make pos­sible an
experience of architecture as a fabric of inter­
related movement and tension. In some of
my videos I orchestrate serial, almost meditative
processes, in order to create an experience of
time structures. Their aim is an effect of timelessness, which sets in after viewing the work
for some time.
In an exhibition different media can be re­la­t­­ed to each other conceptually, so that they
are both individually active and as a group, so
that associative ideas emerge. For my first
solo institutional exhibition at the Kunsthaus
Aargau I designed a kind of ‘choreography’ for
the museum space: an exhibition concept that
engaged with the user-oriented arrangement
of museum buildings and focussed on the
museum space as such. In this I concentrated on
various aspects such as light entering the space
and lighting systems, materiality, furniture
and presentation strategies. In the site specific
sound work Shaped Light (2014) the museum
could be experienced not least as an acoustic
space, with attention drawn to a striking architectural feature of the Kunsthaus Aargau: the
sonorous hum of the aluminium blades that
are attached to the Kunsthaus’ pitched roof and
which regulate via sensors how much sunlight
can enter, was played back inside the exhibition
space over loudspeakers – thus a noise which
the building itself produces, one which the
visitor is normally scarcely aware of, becomes
audible. The mechanically generated noise also
served as the sound track for the video work
…as it is (2014) which could be seen in the
next room.