Made of Concrete

The Swiss project looks at photography as a space to be occupied, a space for scenography – it considers the photographic space instead of limiting itself to the physical territory of the stage. This means using photography for more than just a means of recording the scenography, but allowing the images themselves to become spaces that exist uniquely for this medium. This work evokes an imaginary world of ruins. The photographs suggest the fragile traces of a location that does not yet exist, but that already recalls the past. Experimenting with the tools and expertise of classical scenography and photography (light, stage, decoration) – Körner Union creates an aesthetic journey back and forth through time. By presenting objects from their everyday lives as ancient relics from a different, more general time, the artists create a highly personal world of anticipation, a world brimming over with nostalgia. The photographs’ intention is to invoke the descriptive dimension of documentary in order to create a topology of these ruins – a precise choice of styles and forms. The project is also a testimony of the physical and performative experience with the objects, in a real space that resembles a studio, stage or film studio. The resulting feeling is a sense of being lost within this space, a feeling that brings to mind a labyrinthine journey through an imaginary cemetery dotted with picturesque structures, each one a sort of materialistic icon revisited and altered by an apocalyptic breath of wind.

Texts by Yann Chateigne Tytelman, Samuel Dubosson

Published by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Berne, on the occasion of the 12th Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space from June 16 - 26, 2011.