I Am Another

At the Stiftung Starke, Catrine and Olaf Val are showing a selection of their works and
presenting the new installation “I Am Another” (“Ich bin ein Anderes”). Complementing the exhibition, the workshop “YouPrompt” will also take place on 13 June 2009 between 11 am and 5 pm.

Amplifier (Verstärker)
In the work
“Amplifier”, the interplay of light and designed interaction comes to the fore. In this way, everyday dealings with electric light become the subject. In “Amplifier”, an ordinary light bulb is used as a feedback medium. The display is reduced to a lamp that goes on and off, to a single pixel that grows brighter or darker. This reduction is made in favour of the input medium. With its tactile appeal and sculptural qualities, the PlayStation keyboard becomes the real attraction of the exhibit.

Display
The wall installation “Display” consists of ready-made LED modules. These are standardised components that we encounter every day in many areas of life. Each of these dot-matrix displays is fitted on its back with a circuit developed specially for the wall installation. In this way the modules become small autonomous computers that show pre-programmed patterns. As the individual displays communicate with one another by means of electrical impulses, an endless number of variations of these flashing structures emerges.

DIGIGRIPPER
The Moloch motif from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, in which the workers vanish into the jaws of the
machines, is transferred to the
digital world in this elaborate interactive sculpture. “DIGIGRIPPER” is a human-sized 5 x 7 dot-matrix
display that becomes a climbing wall. The individual dots of the display protrude slightly from the wall. Sequences of letters or words can be entered via a terminal and are then shown on the display. The dots that light up provide footholds and handholds for the climbers, while those that are switched off give way and make the climbers slip. The wall can therefore be climbed only by those who have memorised the letter sequences.

MONKEY_UP
To investigate a new urban sense of the body, dominated by notions from the world of computer games, the video work “Monkey Up” was developed. The seven-minute video revolves around the playful movement of bodies in architecture, real and virtual alike. In the double projection, footage of parkour runners, female gymnasts, skaters and virtual figures is woven together associatively.

I Am Another (video installation)
In 2008, a vote on the “most beautiful woman in the world” was held online for the first time, via the video platform YouTube. In their video messages, the young candidates differ not only in their outward appearance but also score points through intellect, voice and likeability. It remains an open question whether the video message of a Miss India, Miss Russia or Miss Bolivia corresponds to her true identity. In the video installation “I Am Another”, Catrine Val transforms herself in turn into all eight finalists. Through the direct, mirror-image juxtaposition of original and copy,
the individual appearance of the young women is demystified.

SAMPLE POPS
The large-format watercolours of the cycle “SAMPLE POPS” are composed associatively from found image material. In the collages, media role models drawn from youth cult and glamorous flashbulb storms merge with the technical achievements of our hypermodern society. The key to the concept lies in the anachronistic use of watercolour. What becomes palpable are the moments of overload in a painting process that is overexposed in the
information age. What remains is painting full of self-irony about the imperfection of our personal understanding of global complexities. As lecturers at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Catrine and Olaf Val research media-critical positions, in theory and in practice. They repeatedly involve
the viewer in their reflection on media processes. They are currently developing, together with a team, the “YouPrompt” internet portal, which is still being built, a kind of “speech karaoke” for YouTube. In the “YouPrompt” workshops they invite participants to re-enact YouTube videos and to publish these reinterpretations online as video responses.
The focus is on political speeches. The aim is to examine whether embodying authority and appropriating rhetoric with the tools of the entertainment-and-fun society can give important impulses for a contemporary politicisation of “user-generated content”.

The exhibition is supported by Galerie König, Hanau / Berlin.