These artists present their concepts for LICHTER Streetview
!Mediengruppe Bitnik: Surveillance Chess
In their work “Surveillance Chess“, !Mediengruppe Bitnik deals with the surveillance of public space. To this end they use a jammer in order to hack into surveillance systems and to manipulate their image production. Instead of the transmitted real-time surveillance images the security personnel will be presented with a friendly invitation: How about a game of chess? “Surveillance Chess“ transforms the monitor in the control room into a video game console and invites the – otherwise invisible and apathetic – guards of the urban playing fields to join the game themselves. Thus, the hierarchies of surveillance are reorganized and reinterpreted as a “friendly takeover”.
on/off: Kopfkino
‘the divisions between the producer and consumers, makers and users of designed products and processes appear to be vanishing.’ Tom Holert
The transnational, Berlin based, network “on / off” invites artists from around the world to deal with the urban space. Their works and projects show the undeveloped potential of the city and question its reinterpretation and (re-)appropriation. The performative installation “Kopfkino“, which already caused a stir at the Istanbul Biennale, uses the simplest of materials and resources such as a car battery, a beamer and a shopping cart. The result is a mobile projection unit that allows the images of residents and passersby to be projected onto the streets and houses of the city. Thus, the moving image itself becomes mobile and mediates between the scale of the city and of its people.
Nika Radic: 3 Windows
The native of Zagreb and Berlin-based artist Nika Radic, approaches her work not without irony. She explores the blurring boundaries between public and private, between intimacy and voyeurism. Several years ago, the 3-channel installation “3 Windows“ captured the urban space in Berlin and provided onlookers with the ambivalent pleasure of observing strangers behind their curtains. A situation which could be seen as a reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic, “Rear Window“. Radic’s video works leave the safe context of galleries and exhibition spaces, to conquer the facades of the town and on them, to tell the stories of their protagonists.
Random City Intervention
Under the title, “Random Revolution” LICHTER 2012 presented for the first time a reel of short films, which was developed jointly with members of the OCCUPY:FRANKFURT video team. With “Random City Intervention” we are continuing this program, this time together with the curators of FIESER hacktivism and LIBERATION MOVIES.
“Random City Intervention“ snatches short films from their context and takes them to cinematic non-places: to public spaces. Online turns into offline, film into a clip, the short film into a public backdrop. Thereby, this intervention questions to whom the cities belong, what animates them – and what suffocates them.
Benjamin Gaulon: 2.4 Ghz
Benjamin Gaulon, also known under the name of “Recyclism”, is an artist, researcher and lecturer in art and design at the National College in Dublin. For the project “2.4 Ghz“, Gaulon taps with surprisingly little technical input into wireless security cameras and makes these recordings, using small monitors, publicly visible. In various European cities, he collects pictures of places and sites where camera signals can be received. Afterwards these images are shown on monitors, which in turn are placed in public spaces. Gaulon’s work reveals the omnipresence of surveillance systems and systems of control.
Essential part of the project is the “2.4 Ghz“ workshop in which participants actively seek out signals in their city and record the surveillance footage. Later, these recordings are edited into a film.
Thomas Eichhorn und Florian Egermann: An Strahlen
During NODE13 – Digital Arts Forum and LICHTER Sreetview, Florian Egermann (MESO) and Thomas Eichhorn (NODE) premiered the project “An Strahlen”, which shall now be continued in the context of LICHTER Streetview. In it, neither facades nor screens serve as projection surfaces but the pedestrians themselves will take on this function. A video loop can only be perceived as a beam at first but can be transformed into a moving image as soon as the audience follows the invitation and turns itself into the screen.
Mitternachtskino
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Livingdome
Livingdome is a mobile, organic dome. The form is based on the geometry of the icosahedron, a body of 20 equilateral triangles and is one of the five platonic solids by W. Bauersfeld and B. Fuller.
The construction consists entirely of renewable materials: wood, leather and hemp. The wooden poles are assembled into various shapes with leather connections, thus forming a stable dome-shaped building. By covering the scaffolding with a tarp, a versatile, safe space is created inside. Once set up, the Livingdome offers space for events and experiences of different nature.
Both, the erection and the dismantling can be seen and experienced as a participatory event, as all the participants come to relate to each other not only communicatively but also materially and visibly. The mobile structure of the dome is variable – literally transparent – and with this transparency, it does not manipulate, but provides impulses for individual concerns.
Simon Schäfer: Gazillion Gazebo
Simon Shepherd, aka “der Warst”, is a sculptor, musician, video artist and circuit bender. For LICHTER Streetview, the Londoner-of-choice returns to Germany to present his work Gazillion Gazebo. An audio-visual live performance that is inspired by the over-stimulation of the urban living environment. An ordinary garden pavilion, filled with various projections and a jumbled laboratory of modified video and music equipment, is transformed into an immersive spatial experience as well as a pulsating public sculpture.
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