from
Island and which she has used ever since 10 years in every exhibition
by breaking it up in
its single threats. From this
point of view the things are intertwined with one
single thread. Like the thread of Ariadne it is drawn through
exhibition halls and connects world areas in the conformation of the
finds.
4. Documents of vagabond life Besides of
other aspects the works are also reports of previous
exhibitions - in their present way of extending and in their fragments.
They
represent rooms of vagabond life. As garbage the items are no less part
of
the memory culture than the treasures accumulated in various
collections and depots. Do archaeologists not feel like kings when they
stumble upon pre-historic garbage heaps? The stuff that gets thrown
onto the road has something anarchic and uncontrollable about it
unlike the trash that collects itself and is 'disposed of' in flats or
industrial companies.
Its being untamed presents itself when individual pieces loose their original shape by smashing against the curbside, being flattened by tires or being dispersed by wind gusts. Walter Benjamin wrote about the aura in his essay about reproducibility, that it has not only been destroyed by reproducibility - as so often the essay has been abbreviated to - but the possibility for reproduction has only steered attention to the aura. (Ges. Schriften, - collected essays, vol. I,2, page 440ff). The reproduction does not only influence the aura because the work may appear at another place duplicated but generally the place that is identified with an image which hangs there as an inherited possession becomes interchangeable. Is for example a fresco in a palace or a statue on a place a rather accepted kind of fixture then these locations loose their power when art works are destroyed by wars, raids or revolutions. Most of the time the cultural destructions are more devastating than the material ones because the hit the memory and with that the identity of a person or a community. That is why Benjamin spoke of "Zertruemmerung der Aura" (demolition of the aura). Reproduction thus becomes a special case of cultural exertion of power that has always been possible. What we see here above us are the left-overs that buzz around our heads more and more ever since the possibilities of reproduction are in permanent development with the invention of photography and other media. Besides the material- and human particles that rained down onto New York the sheets and slips of paper represented only an impressive point of culmination of such a crash that was visually pre-figured in the x-times repeated explosion which ends Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Zabriskie Point". |
The
industrial production of things and images really only created the
huge existence of such things and the possibility of their
distribution. Whilst the cities that fell to ruins and ashes
under bombs in the 20th century presented a scale of destruction
unimaginable up to then the comparatively small amount of 1.2 millions
of tons of crushed matter of two buildings and two airplanes inclusive
the human beings contained in them becomes a highly visible field of
fragmentation, suffering and traumatizing. With this so far effective
aesthetic norms were surpassed.To find metaphors we therefor have to
apply cosmic measures. Within such correlations the meticulousness is
probably grounded with which Bromma does not look for ready
products but for fragments she lets raise in her installations.
You do not have to read Benjamin because the subject the philosopher has thought about is in the blood of all of us. Ever since the painters included the first finds into their paintings this work with 'Versatzstuecken' (a term originally from stage technic, meaning 'modular component'. Used in German for all kinds of 'out-of-place' pieces), hence the debris of the reproduction industry, has started. So why was the first what Picasso used in a collage not a real bast meshwork but its copy on a printed wax cloth? Ever since then artists are only conditional creators, but have become documentarists. Ever since machines have taken away from them the tasks of reproduction they collect stuff and let it circle around themselves and go down onto their works. Like materia clusters around a galaxy or a sun and then structures itself as a spiral of fog or lunar system so do objects and materials become arranged and interwoven in the cosmos of a work. This structuring work is work in continuous movement - a structuring of chaos. The acceleration and the continuous movement cannot be stopped, cannot be reversed but is decelerated, channeled into paths for the time-being, ideas and imaginations are given a temporary structure - a possibility for recognition. Like in this exhibition the transitory is fixed in place for a few days so do islands of overview and comprehen- sion arise time and again to serve for us like floating navigational aids as orientation whilst in transit to the next station. The view materializes to a certain extent. The concentration produces the document of a condition, highlights it, an understanding evolves that may be conserved by a photograph or provokes a writing. Thus something is created that can be fixed in place momentarily on our orbit between the stars. And: Besides the momentary things also those items that one has remembered are engaged. |
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