Künstlerhaus Bethanien

Current residents working with moving images:
Mark Soo | Reiko Kanazawa | Julien Grossmann | Soda_Jerk | Mai Yamashity + Naoto Kobayashi

Mark Soo
By what terms is it possible to discuss cultures rather than culture? Animated by this question, Mark Soo’s work explores the intersections of perception and the dynamics of social space, often through unexpected juxtapositions, shifting points of view, doublings and divisions, and across other latitudes. These projects reflect upon themes ranging from events of past to future tense to the subjectivities of place and frictions of lived experience. By combining varied references, while examining slippages between their cultural values, Soo’s works present spectators with the potential to reconsider assumptions of form and representation.

Reiko Kanazawa
My recent work focuses on artworks in an everyday context. Using various media including installations, videos, sculptures, photography and drawings, I try to allow for a new perspective on ideas by putting them into unexpected shapes. My aesthetic choices often contain a trivial or ironic aspect, which aims to subvert established meanings. The work in progress Nekonome (since 2008), for instance, consists of a two-channel video film about artworks from the early 20th century shot on location in Japan. This footage is combined with subtitles partly based on a well-known Japanese novel about a cat that observes and comments on the world of human beings. Standing in front of the video projection is the sculpture Moeder met kind (Mother With Child) by the Belgian artist George Minne. Belgian sculpture from the early 20th century is in fact very similar to Japanese sculpture from the same period (both betraying the influence of Auguste Rodin). The staging of the installation is reminiscent of a museum setting, addressing the influence of European culture on world history and the history of art. To the extent that it adopts the perspective of a cat and exhibits copies of artworks, this installation can be seen as a satirical comment on the art world.

Julien Grossmann
My work consists mainly of installations that involve a wide variety of mediums and techniques ranging from video projections and sound systems to architectural models and raw materials. Coming from a joint background of music and visual arts, I have always been interested in the borderline between these two artistic realms and, more generally, in the relations between essentially different elements. Over the years my focus has shifted to another level, and in my recent installations, I have been exploring the infrastructures of representation, while trying to create new possibilities for media to physically engage with their content. I investigate the underlying mechanisms of image and sound broadcasting systems by emphasizing their tangible presence and challenging their narrative power in theatrical settings. My works tend to have a destructive edge as they often include fragile, ephemeral or worn-down elements, or objects whose very existence is dubious, while playing with the rules of physicality or perverting cultural codes.

Soda_Jerk
Soda_Jerk are two collaborative artists since 2002, who work exclusively with audiovisual samples to create new narratives. By atomising and reassembling recorded culture they aim to manufacture counter-mythologies of the present. In their work sampling becomes a means of synthesising distinct space-times, making explicit the inherent ‘science-fiction’ of recorded media. Their work at Künstlerhaus Bethanian includes the completion of Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop, a four-channel video installation that draws on the cultural theory of Afrofuturism. Mixing fictional sources and historical facts, this work proposes a radical historiography that is part documentary and part sonic fiction. Soda_Jerk are also currently experimenting with the material manipulation of celluloid in ‘The Dark Matter Cycle’, a series of videos set at the conceptual intersection of recorded media, the passage of time and death.

Mai Yamashity + Naoto Kobayashi
Mai Yamashita + Naoto Kobayashi are a Japanese artist couple and started to work together in 2000. After graduating from the Tokyo University of the Arts they moved to Germany, where they have been living and working since. Their mostly performative works are condensations of everyday life, whose simple structure and deliberately absurd methodology allow them to complete seemingly impossible ‘tasks’. In Candy (2005), for instance, the artists licked a huge ball of candy every day over a period of weeks or months until it had been reduced to normal size. In Infinity (2006) the duo is seen jogging day after day over a ‘course’ in the shape of the sign for infinity (?), which thus slowly inscribes itself on the grass. The artist’s seriousness in performing these seemingly purposeless tasks is infused with a distinct sense of humour, while making viewers reconsider the many meaningless rituals that dictate their daily lives. Yamashita + Kobayashi’s work has been exhibited among others at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki and Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (MARCO).

Künstlerhaus Bethanien