Group exhibition, Vienna/Austria:
Übersetzung ist eine Form. | Translation is a mode.

Just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point, with this touch rather than with the point setting the law according to which it is to continue on its straight path to infinity, a translation touches the original lightly and only at the infinitely small point of the sense, thereupon pursuing its own course according to the laws of fidelity in the freedom of linguistic flux.
— Walter Benjamin

Manner, quality, version, condition, design, look, shape, arrangement, fashion, style, way, cut, type, structure and form… a quick search of any dictionary and online translation programme gives numerous results for the English term mode. The path of translation, however, is a long one when a text is to be transferred into another language and ascribed new purposes in order ultimately to learn that each new reception entails a change in meaning in the sense of interpretation — translation, a mode?

Based on philological-linguistic translation theories, the exhibition Übersetzung ist eine Form. | Translation is a mode. shows 13 contemporary positions of language-based conceptual art relating to the broad subject area of translation. The focus of consideration is, on the one hand, on translation processes inherent in the work, which are scrutinised regarding their mutual relationship at the level of the content, the medium and the form. On the other hand it illuminates context-related interpretation processes, which influence the individual works of art from a curatorial as well as from the recipient’s perspective and locate them “as an indispensable practice in the world of mutual dependences and networking.” [1] As a result, linguistically critical elements come into view that are related to socio-economic, socio-political and not least (art-) institutional contexts and transferred to the phenomenon of translation.

As early as the start of the 1920s, in his essay The Task of the Translator, [2] Walter Benjamin was already objecting to the binary nature of traditional translation methods and was promoting the idea of the transparency between an original and its translation: “It [the translation] does not cover the original, does not black its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully.” [3] The title of the exhibition, Übersetzung ist eine Form. | Translation is a mode., which is drawn from Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the subject, makes it clear exactly what the individual art works are concerned with. The German term Form and its English counterpart mode, which Harry Zohn used for his Benjamin translation The Task of the Translator [4] at the end of the 1960s, flows in an exemplary way into the range of tension between fidelity to the text, translator’s freedom and the increasing emancipation of the target text from a simple reproduction of the original. The materiality, the material and the substantial, phenomena that define the expression Form in German are loosened in the English in favour of a continually changing modus operandi of translation – mode.

With the rejection of the idea of an original, Walter Benjamin anticipated something that some 60 years later had developed into a metaphor of translation of and between the cultures. The Translational Turn, which started developing in cultural studies in the 1980s, ultimately complemented or even replaced what had long been considered the determining parameters of translation, such as original, equivalence or fidelity “by new guiding categories of cultural translation such as cultural representation and transformation, strangeness and alterity, deplacing, cultural differentiation and power.” [5] By reconnecting culturally specific forms of behaviour with the literary and linguistic category text the field of translation was finally opened up for discursive and socio-politically motivated (artistic) practices.

Against the background of Walter Benjamin’s critique of fidelity to the work and with an eye to the extension of the concept of translation into a cultural-studies understanding, the exhibition Übersetzung ist eine Form. | Translation is a mode. operates between these two poles. The selected works trace transitional situations that may be characterised as “object spaces of relations, of situations, ‘identities’ and interactions by means of specific cultural translation processes” [6] of a linguistic kind. Just as every translation is based on an original, it also comes from an interpretation that starts with the idea of a work and continues to its reception. In this respect the artwork is not understood as a finished product or the result of a completed process, but as a continuing and continually renewing process, which — as a fleeting stocktaking and aesthetic experience — “Just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point… thereupon pursuing its own course according to the laws of fidelity in the freedom of linguistic flux.” [7]

In this range of tension between specific linguistic translations and the interpretation processes that are directly attached to them, in TextEdit Textiles (2008) the artists’ duo Arend deGruyter-Helfer and Aylor Brown transform a textual structure into a material texture. The treatment of the original language material leads to the fact that in the supposed end products of this translation process it completely eludes interpretation by the observers. Jörg Piringer’s installation nam shub web (2008) also generates text material that is no longer oriented on linearity and coherence: text modifications, which have been made online by the users with a web-page processor developed for them, fall to the floor in an automated printing process and cover the exhibition room with visual poetry.

Translation, then, also takes place when categories and patterns of arrangement are created. With art in context – Die Kunst der Ausstellung (1995–) Gerhard Dirmoser presents a monumental interpretation system. With his research work, which is presented in the form of a diagram, the artist illustrates the multiple variation possibilities of the term exhibition, which can be transferred to ever new contexts according to usage. Aleksandra Domanovic, on the other hand, presents what at first sight is an undefined arrangement of city names. In Hottest To Coldest .com (2008) she ranks the names of international capital cities not according to the usual parameters but according to their current air temperature. The online-generated dynamic text image exercises a contemplative effect on the observers.

In the performative installation temporal translation (2005), Arnold Reinthaler provides a precise structure of his personal day and everyday actions. The transfer of time into a simple barcode on rolls of paper and their compilation in category units leads to fixed, aesthetic time pictures. In Das Buch (2009), Michael Michailov approaches the subject of translation by transferring his name into a book. With the form reduced to the minimum – the individual letters – the readers have sufficient space for the interpretation of the artist as a person. Self-analysis and self-portrayal are also central to Jochen Höller’s three-part work Bücherliste (2008) | Bücherspektrum (2008) | Soziogramm (2009). He plays with the interpretability and verifiability of ostensibly scientific texts, which on closer observation, however, turn out to show purely associative and subjective arrangements.

Annja Krautgasser’s slide installation Prologue (2007) is characterised by the deconstruction of an existing arrangement of a particular medium and its transfer to a completely new context. Cinema films are dismantled into individual dialogue sequences and rearranged so that the original works can only partly be recognised. The artist duo Miriam Laussegger and Eva Beierheimer also pursue the principle of the work within the work. In Textsynthese III (2010), site-specific exhibition catalogues are redefined inasmuch as the visitors to the exhibition can view them as an installation. Not just the form of text objects, but their content, too, is fragmented and ultimately — through artistic intervention and a process of bricolage — is turned into a new document. Veronika Schubert works in a similar way with her archive of continuously collected headlines from newspaper and magazine articles, which she interweaves with architecture photographs of the exhibition room. Ausschnitte II (2010) oscillates between language collage and text architecture, depending on the spatial distance between the observer and the work.

With the installation on translation (2009/2010), Michael Kargl makes a theme of the performative nature of the process of translation. A fragment of a theoretical text on translation is transcribed by a computer program into binary code and back again in an endless loop of ASCII characters. A deliberately installed error source confronts this continuous process with misunderstandings and the resulting translation difficulties. Johanna Tinzl / Stefan Flunger also focus on the translation process in La défense oder: (2006/2010). Two surveillance cameras on opposing and movable fixtures constantly mutually activate each other and produce an interpretation loop in a black box, which ultimately reduces itself ad absurdum. A keynote for the exhibition is not least the works by the artist duo MTAA (M. River & T. Whid Art Associates), which not only refer to the technological or media conditions of net art but primarily to questions of processuality inherent in art. Simple Net Art Diagram (ca. 1997) and Commons Art Diagram (2007) use icons to visualise the production of contemporary art and equate it with the process of translation – The art happens here.

Resources:
[1] Bachmann-Medick, Doris: Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften [Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Humanities and Social Sciences], Rowohlt: Berlin, 2006, p. 238.
[2] Benjamin, Walter: Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux parisiens, Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers, in: the same, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. IV/1, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1972.
[3] Benjamin, Walter (translated by Harry Zohn): The Task of the Translator: An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens, in: Venuti, Lawrence (eds.), The Translation Studies Reader, Second Edition, Routledge: New York, 2004, p. 81.
[4] Ibid. pp 75–83
[5] Bachmann-Medick: Cultural Turns, p. 239.
[6] Ibid., p. 246.
[7] Benjamin: The Task of the Translator: An Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens, p. 82.

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Eva Beierheimer / Miriam Laussegger, Textsynthese III (2010)
Site-specific installation, exhibition catalogues (2005–2010) of the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich

In the installation Textsynthese III (2010) Miriam Laussegger and Eva Beierheimer use exhibition catalogues produced by the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich [Lower Austria Art Gallery] in order to give them a new function in two respects. Organised as object-like arrangements, the catalogues can on the one hand no longer be read by the users of the gallery’s library, but they can be viewed by visitors to the exhibition. On the other hand, the deconstructive element of this site-specific work also reflects itself at the semantic-textual level. Individual words, sentences and passages of text from the publications are combined into ever new text units by means of highlighting in order to allow stories and alternative narratives to emerge. The way the fragments are received, however, is subject only to the interpretation of the observers or readers.

Biography — Eva Beierheimer, born 1979 in Graz, lives and works in Vienna and Stockholm/S. | Degree at the Vienna Academy of Fine Art (textual sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): twilight zone – art hits design (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna 2009), worte (KroArt Gallery, Vienna 2009), in reference to… (Galleri Mejan, Stockholm 2009), extended lines (Galerie 5020, Salzburg 2008), In Fragments (Ada Street Gallery, London 2008)

Biography — Miriam Laussegger, born 1980 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the Vienna Academy of Fine Art (textual sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): homebase (KroArt Gallery, Vienna 2010), twilight zone – art hits design (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna 2009), worte (KroArt Gallery, Vienna 2009), tastes of austria (The Art Foundation, Athens 2009), Competition exhibition for the Styrian art prize (Neue Galerie, Graz 2009)

Arend de Gruyter-Helfer / Aylor Brown, TextEdit Textiles (2008)
5 pieces of cloth, cotton/rayon, ca. 40 x 50 cm | 2 colour photographs, 20 x 30 cm

Textile, mesh, binding, texture or just the structural make up of a connected surface: in TextEdit Textiles (2008), following the etymology of the word text, from Latin, Arend deGruyter-Helfer and Aylor Brown analyse varying structures and forms of networking. In a dialogic situation, one part of the artist duo uses the default Apple text-editor software TextEdit to generate text patterns based on personal messages and wishes. Then, using Photoshop picture-editing software and a digitalised “loom”, the other transfers the text works into textile patterns. The result of this process: a humorous oscillation between transient language and solid fabric, between the virtual space and its material extension.

Biography — Aylor Brown, born 1987 in Erie/Pa./US, lives and works in Philadelphia/Pa./US. | Degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago/Il./US | exhibitions (selection): Speculative Ways of Living (Eel Space, Chicago), May 23rd at Scott Projects/Real Normal Spring Collection (Scott Projects, Chicago), Magic Carpet (Sullivan Galleries, Chicago).

Biography — Arend deGruyter-Helfer, born 1987 in Austin/Tx./US, lives and works in Chicago/Il./US. | Degree at the School of the Art Institute Chicago/Il./US | Exhibitions (selection): Untitled Apartment (Something New, Chicago), Netmares/Netdreams v2.2 (Online), May 23rd at Scott Projects/Real Normal Spring Collection (Scott Projects, Chicago), Magic Carpet (Sullivan Galleries, Chicago), The Law of Economy (Dailyprojects, Seoul).

Gerhard Dirmoser, art in context – die Kunst der Ausstellung (1995–)
Poster, four-part, C-print on paper, DIN A0

Exhibition as machine theatre, exhibition as a collection of material, exhibition as ritual or as situative production: in art in context – die Kunst der Ausstellung (1995–) Gehrard Dirmoser presents an almost incalculable number of quotes, titles, terms and concepts on the subject of exhibition. The systems analyst has collected several thousand research findings from various specialist literature on the processes of exhibiting, in order to classify these with 32 semantic aspects in the form of a monumental diagram. Similar to an association cluster, the observers start to go more deeply into this multifaceted network of relations of artists, authors, providers and art institutions, ultimately lose themselves in it and, during the observation, they themselves become part of the context depicted. The study was commissioned in 1995 by the OK – Centre for Contemporary Art in Linz and includes material going back to 1980.

Biography — Gerhard Dirmoser, born in Freistadt in 1958, lives and works in Linz. | Computer scientist and systems analyst | exhibitions (selection): Ars Electronica Festival (Linz 2009, 2006, 2005, 2004), Gerhard Dirmoser, Horst Münch (Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz 2007), Eine Festausstellung (Lower Austria Documentation Centre for Modern Art, St Pölten 2006), Survival and Maintenance of Media Based Art (Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Medien.Kunst.Forschung, Linz 2006), Was ist eine Ausstellung – Symposium (OK – Centre for Contemporary Art, Linz 2005)

Aleksandra Domanovic, Hottest To Coldest .com (2008)
Screening, website on server

Ouagadougou, Buenos Aires, Bamako, Maputo, Port of Spain, Vienna… Observers of Aleksandra Domanovic’s internet-based work Hottest to Coldest .com (2008) face a not-more closely definable range of worldwide city names. The artist does not order the cities according to the usual social, political or economic significance such as gross domestic product or population but according to their respective current air temperature. The art work is provided with the latest data at relatively brief intervals by news feeds from more than 200 weather stations. However, before the observers have the chance to interpret the information displayed and to receive additional information on ecological aspects or geopolitical hierarchies, the convoluted text changes again and so primarily evokes contemplation.

Biography — Aleksandra Domanovic, born 1981 in Novi Sad/SRB, lives and works in Berlin/D. | Degree at the University of Ljubljana/SLO (architecture) and at the University of Applied Art, Vienna (graphic design) | exhibitions (selection): Image Search (P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York 2009), Padiglione Internet – collateral event of the 53rd Venice Biennale (Venice 2009), Doing Boundless (Platform 3, Munich 2009), The Real Thing (MU, Eindhoven 2009), Real Talk (Gallery Seventeen, London 2010)

Johanna Tinzl / Stefan Flunger, La défense oder: (2006/2010)
Kinetic installation, camera modules, movement detectors, motors, metal rods, cables, gearwheels, wooden block, clamps

In La défense oder: (2006/2010), Johanna Tinzl / Stefan Flunger draw the viewers’ gaze to a translation process that ultimately, however, remains invisible. Two opposing surveillance cameras attached to movable fixtures are in constant movement, as one is activated by the vibration of the other. The video images of a movement recorded by the surveillance cameras are transformed into further movements in a freely accessible technological translation apparatus — black boxes (detectors) — and generate an interpretation loop which seems to reduce itself ad absurdum. Based on the crossover point of the lemniscate sign for infinity, the artists’ duo negotiates their concern with media archaeology in the form of a kinetic installation.

Biography — Stefan Flunger, born in 1969 in Zams, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the University of Innsbruck (history of art) | exhibitions (selection): CRW – Contemporary Reflections on War (BKS Garage, Copenhagen/DK 2010), essential charm — In der Kubatur des Kabinetts (Fluc am Praterstern, Vienna 2010), unORTnung V — Ankerbrotfabrik (Vienna 2009), Personae (Atelier Operngasse, Vienna 2009), Living Spaces — Living Forms (Galerie 5020, Salzburg 2009)

Biography — Johanna Tinzl, born 1976 in Innsbruck, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the Mozarteum University Salzburg (sculpture) and the University of Applied Art, Vienna (transmedia art) | exhibitions (selection): CRW – Contemporary Reflections on War (BKS Garage, Copenhagen/DK 2010), essential charm – In der Kubatur des Kabinetts (Fluc am Praterstern, Vienna 2010), unORTnung V – Ankerbrotfabrik (Vienna 2009), Personae (Atelier Operngasse, Vienna 2009), Living Spaces – Living Forms (Galerie 5020, Salzburg 2009)

Jochen Höller, Bücherliste (2008) | Bücherspektrum (2008) | Soziogramm (2009)
3 drawings, collages on cardboard, framed, 100 x 70 cm, 70 x 80 cm, 80 x 80 cm

At first glance Jochen Höller’s works Bücherliste (2008), Bücherspektrum (2008) and Soziogramm (2009) could be categorised as kinds of academic texts. Only on close observation does it emerge that the board, the list and the diagram are not objective information but the visualisation of the artist’s subjective thought clusters. Bücherliste reflects the artist’s powers of memory based on his own experience of literature and in Bücherspektrum he relates this to the reading habits of his immediate social and occupational environment, while Soziogramm transfers Höller’s personal network structures — similar to those familiar from social media platforms such as Facebook — onto paper. The artist shows snapshots from life. The subject of the portrayal is he himself; the picture he had drawn betrays a lot – even if never everything.

Biography — Jochen Höller, born 1977 in Amstetten, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the Linz University of Art (sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): Visual Poetry / Concrete Texts (Vasarely Museum, Budapest 2010), Chaos (Galerie g.a.s-station, Berlin 2009), Ausstellung Walter Koschatsky Preis (Museum of Modern Art, Vienna 2009), Portrait (Galerie g.a.s-station, Berlin 2009), Memory Circus (Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg 2008), Unsichtbar – Widerständiges im Salzkammergut (Strobl 2008)

Michael Kargl, on translation (2008/2009)
Custom-made computer, printer, wooden box | performance documentary, video, ca. 2,50 min.

So what is the main task of translators? Michael Kargl goes into this question by having a custom-made computer programme translate a text fragment from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Translator’s Task. The object on translation (2008/2009), which results from a performance, focuses on the translation process itself and, as a never-ending transcription process between ASCII signs and binary code, analyses fundamental concepts of the translation discourse such as fidelity and freedom or authenticity and original. The processual and performative element of this transcription from one sign system into another has been intensified by the artist’s incorporation of a random variable — a translation mistake, a misunderstanding. Chance and free will are just as inevitable as they are immediately coupled to the person of the translator — their main task: interpretation.

Biography — Michael Kargl, born in 1975 in Hall, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the Mozarteum University Salzburg (sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): On Gaps and Silent Documents (STUK arts centre, Leuven 2010), Quasi dasselbe . . . ? Diskurse mit poetischer Funktion (Tyrol Künstlerschaft Art Pavilion, Innsbruck 2010), Interzone/Economy (Galerija Galzenica, Velika Gorica 2009), anti-bodies (Art & Social Technologies Research, Plymouth 2009), Paraflows – Utopia (MAK-Gegenwartskunstdepot, Vienna 2008)

Annja Krautgasser, Prologue (2007)
Slide projection, looped, 84 (42 x 2) pieces, black-and-white slides, seating

You’re ok? – Do me a favour. Just be nice, ok? – Are you sure you are ok? No sound, no picture, just white typography on a black background, familiar dialogues between a man and a woman, which nevertheless sound somewhat strange. On the principle of deconstruction, in Prologue (2007) Annja Krautgasser dismantles individual dialogue sequences from classic films by directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni and Claude Sautet, but also by young film makers such as Vincent Gallo and Gus van Sant. The artist translates and writes down the spoken sequences in order to present them as recombined and thus fictional dialogues in the exhibition room. The original forms of the film medium are only vaguely recognisable in the new work, an endless loop of text images. The audio footage can no longer be heard inside the cinema auditorium but can be read in the exhibition room as a moving-image dialogue.

Biography — Annja Krautgasser, born in 1971 in Hall in Tyrol, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna (digital art) | exhibitions (selection): Asymmetrical Focus (Galerie Stadtpark, Krems 2009), …what remains… (Andechsgalerie, Innsbruck 2009), Cineplex (Secession, Vienna 2009), Looking inside: Interiors (Institut Municipal d’Acció Cultural, Mataró 2009), The house is on fire, but the show must go on (Kunstraum Innsbruck 2009)

Michail Michailov, Das Buch (2009)
Installation, book object, 100 pages, 28.5 x 36.2 x 2.5 cm, print run of five copies

In Das Buch (2009) Michail Michailov approaches the subject of translation by simply transferring his own person, the artist subject – his “self” – onto the pages of a book. The name of the artist is written, scattered across the individual pages of the object, but it is only when they have read the whole book that the observer can identify and reconstruct the artist’s name, which is distinguished through the doubling of the sounds and letters: M – ich – a – i – l – o – v. The artist’s identity, reduced to the minimum of text, solidifies with the reception of each individual letter and increasingly resembles a signature or a business card, and not least an (auto) biography — there is sufficient free space for interpretation between the lines and letters.

Biography — Michail Michailov, born in 1978 in Veliko Tarnovo/BG, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the University of Veliko Tarnovo (fine art) and at the University of Vienna (history of art) | exhibitions (selection): ICH FERGEBE DIR (das weisse haus, Vienna 2009), Imagineering (Forum Stadpark, Graz 2009), KunstKunst (Galerie 5020, Salzburg 2009), Value point (Hilger Contemporary, Vienna 2009), Common history and its private stories (Museum auf Abruf, Vienna 2009)

MTAA (M. River & T. Whid Art Associates), Simple Net Art Diagram (ca. 1997) | Commons Art Diagram (2007)
Installation, web page on server | paper poster, black and white

Two computers, linked by a cable with a flashing red spark sign on it captioned The art happens here. As early as 1997, with Simple Net Art Diagram (ca. 1997), the artist duo MTAA (M. River & T. Whid Art Associates) were visualising the fundamental processual approach of internet-based art. Their diagram, however, is not just an attempt to relate to the technological and media conditions of net art, but also to the questions that are immanent in art, which had already been posed by predecessors in the 1960s/70s. If in Simple Net Art Diagram it was just two computers illustrating the network, in Commons Art Diagram (2007), produced ten years later, it is a strictly market-regulated commercialisation system in which internet-based art “happens” today. Again, The art happens here is the accompanying text to the spark, but this time it is surrounded by symbols for music, data, moving images, texts and logos of alternative copyright licences.

Biographies — Michael Sarff (M. River), born 1967 in Iowa City/Ia./US & Tim Whidden (T.Whid), born 1969 in Elyria/Oh./US, live and work in Brooklyn/NY/US under the name MTAA (M.River & T.Whid Art Associates) | exhibitions (selection): 2Live (The Electronic Gallery at Salisbury University, Maryland 2009), Theater of Code (Light Industry, Brooklyn/NY 2009), Camera/Chimera (Gallery Aferro, Newark/NJ 2009), The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now (SFMOMA, San Francisco/Ca. 2008), LIVE (Beall Center For Art + Technology, University of California, Irvine/Ca./US 2008)

Jörg Piringer, nam shub web installation (2008)
Installation, web page on server, printer

In its original version nam shub web installation (2008) was a processor for websites that Jörg Piringer had programmed to create visual poetry and on which users could modify the representation of texts. If a dynamic website is used as a source of text, the result — the visual poem — changes in parallel with the changing content. In the exhibition room the texts that have been worked on appear as printouts on paper. At brief intervals the transient results of this automated procedure are printed out according to the principle of chance and cover the floor of the exhibition room. Nam shub web installation borrows from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash: in this story, Nam-Shub was one of the first Sumerian precursors of the Babylonian jumble of languages and is understood as a neurolinguistic intervention against the standardisation of society. Jörg Piringer doggedly continues this project as a “computer-linguistic hack”.

Biography — Jörg Piringer, born in 1974 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree in computer science at the Technical University of Vienna | member of the Institute for Transacoustic Research and of the Wiener Gemüseorchester | exhibitions (selection): Wiener Gerücht: Das Private und das Öffentliche (eop, Emergence of Projects – Museum auf Abruf, Vienna 2009), Fluten 09: Work:Space (Wasserturm am Wienerberg, Vienna 2009), Im Prinzip, zeitbasiert – In der Kubatur des Kabinetts (Fluc am Praterstern, Vienna 2009), ARTmART (Künstlerhaus, Vienna 2008), Entscheidungen sichtbar machen (eop, Emergence of Projects – Museum auf Abruf, Vienna 2008)

Arnold Reinthaler, temporal translation (2005)
Installation, endless paper tape, 772 x 10 cm

The medium for Arnold Reinthaler’s temporal translation (2005) is a narrow roll of endless paper. With a manual typewriter the artist records his personal day and everyday actions on it in twelve categories — like a daily ritual. The transfer of the time he has lived into a simple barcode on rolls of paper and the arrangement of the individual code elements into different category units can be read as a meticulously recorded diary: one bar stands for an hour of lived time, to which categories such as eating, sleeping or communication are assigned. The translation of biographical into semantic-lexical units may lead to the artist “remembering forward” one day’s data that was collected by temporary stocktaking and in this way living according to an aesthetic image – that is, according to interpretation.

Biography — Arnold Reinthaler, born in 1971 in Wels, lives and works in Vienna. | Degree at the Linz University of Art (sculpture and cultural studies) and the Vienna Academy of Fine Art (sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): Quasi dasselbe…? Diskurse mit poetischer Funktion (Kunstpavillon der Tiroler Künstlerschaft, Innsbruck 2010) tweakfest – dock 18 (Alte Börse, Zürich 2009), dinnershow – dock 18 (Rote Fabrik, Vienna/Zürich 2009), Lachhaft. Über das Komische in allen Lebenslagen (Oberösterreichische Kulturvermerke, Gmunden 2009), Die Zeit und ihre Pulsschläge (Traunkirchen International Academy 2009)

Veronika Schubert, Ausschnitte II (2010)
3 photographs, C-print on Dibond, 75 x 75 cm

Sentence construction, word formation and sign combination — newspaper and magazine headlines cut out over a long period of time, collected, and finally digitalised and archived are the starting point for Veronika Schubert’s Ausschnitte II (2010), in which linguistic and spatial structures combine with each other. Using digital picture-editing processes and taking account of the sharpness of the observable contours, shading and light elements, photographs of architectural details of the exhibition room are filled with innumerable text fragments from the artist’s archive. Veronika Schubert makes collages that turn sentences and empty phrases from everyday journalese into a mosaic of small parts, which depending on distance can be read either as a text collage or as an architectural view — text architecture.

Biography — Veronika Schubert, born in 1981 in Bregenz, lives and works in Lustenau and Vienna. | Degree at the Linz University of Art (experimental visual design) and at the Zurich University of Art and Design /CH ( new media) | exhibitions (selection): Galerie Hollenstein (Lustenau 2010), Heraus mit der Sprache (Museum auf Abruf, Vienna 2009), das weisse haus (Vienna 2009), Kunsthaus Bregenz (Bregenz 2009), Poolbar Festival (Feldkirch 2009)

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