Patchworks Of The Past
Patchworks Of The Past started not with an idea but with the material – photo slides and film negatives from my grandpa. Each specific slide – for example from our 1978 journey to Berchtesgaden, Bavaria – can be seen as a symbol. It contains memories about a certain period of my life. It contains or stimulates a reconstruction of me, a question maybe: how have I been? The Slides contain pictures of public places, people passing by, elements of nature like mountains and trees, relicts of civilisation. Each slide represents a slice of time. So the obvious question to me was: what kind of representation is established by all of these slides? And how can I ask this question as an artist?
I began playing with the slides, cutting them into slices and recombining them, mashing them up. The people and times and stories intertwined. I revealed unknown and new relationships, an untold history, and a possible past. The new recombined slides are containing gaps- gaps of knowledge and meaning. I drew attention to these gaps by “marking” them with monochrome slices.