Tag: cut-up

Posted on

Naked Lunch Remix

During the past century artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians have experimented in many different ways with chopping up and re-mixing materials in order to create new expressions of reality. In the early nineties I began re-combining discarded cut-up negatives in the series Photogenetic Drafts. A few years later I was repurposing materials by developing a method of splicing up visual and textual materials through the use of an office paper shredder – putting the shreds together in new random constellations in the series Statics. The idea was to recycle materials that I had accumulated but didn’t want to use anymore, including my own photographic prints. In Naked Lunch Remix I have applied the same method on William Burroughs’ classic milestone of the cut-up technique.
2022
digital print, b/w
12.5 x 19 cm, 108 pages
softcover, sewn
edition of 100 copies
24 €


Posted on

Photogenetic Drafts


This series of 32 photographs is based on the archive of a commercial photographer who donated the negatives he didn’t need any more to the Institute for the Reprocessing of Used Photographs. The photographer cut his negatives to prevent their future use. This attempt to preclude new prints triggered the creation of photographs that would not exist without the attempted destruction. Consistent point of view, consistent light, and consistent poses allowed the combination of two negatives into one single image. The resulting photographs are portraits of non-existing persons. They are based on the genetic pool of the population of a small town in Bavaria. Like in genetic engineering, existing information was dismantled and spliced to create formerly unknown mutations, playing with genetic inheritance, age, gender, and personality. 
2014
digital print, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 36 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies

Posted on

Statics

The series Statics (1995–2003) is an artistic reply to the aggressive visual pollution and excess information in modern society. Media fall-out such as garbage photos, advertising leaflets, unsolicited mail, redundant books etc. was the raw material that was recycled. Using an office shredder, this existing (paper-based) information was sliced, turning information into meaningless matter. The resulting strips were gathered to create visual fields with specific tonalities and colours that reflect the original content.
2014 (the 2013 print-on-demand edition is discontinued)
digital print, colour
21 x 14.8 cm, 32 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies