Levante EMV

Hace unos días, el Instituto Ramón Llull de Barcelona hacía público el proyecto encargado de representar a Cataluña en la Bienal de Venecia. En él participa el artista valenciano Daniel G. Andújar, pero también el andaluz Pedro G. Romero y los catalanes Elvira Pujol y Joan Vila-Puig. Me alegré mucho, y no sólo por razones de amistad. También me gustó que en el proceso de selección se respetaran las recomendaciones del documento de Buenas Prácticas en Museos y Centros de Arte. Y que el prestigioso jurado haya argumentado con seriedad su veredicto, criticando con firmeza otros aspectos de la política cultural catalana. Pero lo más relevante es el significado simbólico del proyecto, que ha sido concebido, según explica su comisario, Valentín Roma, como «un intento de reflejar la multiplicidad identitaria de Cataluña». Obviamente, es posible que no todo el mundo esté tan contento como yo. Y es muy probable que donde más decepciones haya sea entre las filas del partido (ERC) que impulsó esta iniciativa. Pero la dialogante aceptación de los resultados -y de las críticas- confiere un suplemento de legitimidad a quienes desarrollan este tipo de políticas culturales. Aspecto éste mucho más perceptible cuanto más al sur de los Pirineos nos situamos.
Al contrario, es probable que desde aquí cueste más distinguir los motivos por los que gente como yo, que se ha pronunciado otras veces contra la difunta Bienal de Valencia (que en paz descanse), se entusiasma ahora con la de Venecia. Pero no hay sombra de contradicción, porque no existe apenas elemento común entre el modelo y los innumerables epígonos que cada dos años pueblan el paisaje global de la sobremodernidad. El primero es un evento consolidado, tras más de un siglo de actividad. A él acuden casi todos los Estados-nación, pero también algunas iniciativas sin Estado, para promocionar las producciones más relevantes de su cultura. Junto a la Documenta de Kassel, constituye una de las más prestigiosas citas de las artes visuales, y acudir a alguna de ellas tiene un significado parecido al de formar parte de la selección nacional -o autonómica- de embajadores culturales. El resto de bienales, salvo contadas excepciones, son simulacros de acontecimiento sin identidad. Productos de consumo masivo disfrazados, en el mejor de los casos, con algún discurso intelectual de prêt-à- porter. Salgan bien o mal, el problema fundamental es que consumen, en un par de meses, los presupuestos de un par de años.
Es este último tipo de espectáculos, que no deja poso alguno de carácter cultural, el que genera el rechazo de una parte importante de la comunidad artística, entre la que, por supuesto, me sigo incluyendo. Y la constatación de que quienes nos oponemos a ellas no erramos demasiado la constituye el deprimente destino del presupuesto de la ex Bienal de Valencia, que fue desviado hacia el tronante circo de la Fórmula 1 sin que la operación mereciera explicación alguna, ni por parte del presidente Camps ni de la actual consellera de Cultura.
Decía el filósofo Gilles Deleuze que «el artista siempre anda a la búsqueda de un pueblo». Plegando del revés esta idea, cabría deducir que todo pueblo, o colectividad que aspire a constituirse como tal, debería esforzarse también por localizar a quienes poseen la capacidad de actualizar y refundar su particular volksgeist (espíritu del pueblo); operación poco menos que imprescindible para quienes aspiren a incorporarse a las nuevas redes globales sin perecer culturalmente en el intento. Llegados a este punto, las comparaciones resultan inevitables. El razonable presupuesto de la participación de Cataluña en la Bienal de Venecia (500.000 euros) no es muy superior al de cualquiera de las ocho grandes exposiciones que este año se han dedicado al 800 aniversario de Jaume I, pero la suma de todas ellas, que cuadruplicará con creces esta cifra, no ha servido para persuadir a la alcaldesa de Valencia de la relevancia de este monarca, puesto que se niega a dedicarle la principal plaza de esta ciudad. Al mismo tiempo, la Generalitat Valenciana ha querido aprovechar la ocasión para recordar a la ciudadanía que Som Comunitat.
Pero para reforzar nuestra argamasa colectiva no ha recurrido a vinculantes actuaciones creativas, ligadas a las numerosas celebraciones históricas y susceptibles, por ello, de potenciar la autoestima y la cohesión cultural. Lo que ha hecho es lanzar una simple campaña publicitaria cuyo presupuesto, además, se ha ocultado a la opinión pública. Siendo de la mayor importancia el cuidado de las formas, como destacaba al principio, lo que peor me parece no es que se hayan fraccionado las cuentas para eludir la fiscalización de la Intervención General. Lo más duro de aceptar es la constatación de que los valencianos de nuestro tiempo somos comunidad, sí, pero de vecinos nada más.
*United artists from the Museum

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• 1998/2006
• Website with linked images
• www.irational.org/tttp/Crypto/armed1.html
• Presented in the exhibition with large-format DVD slide projection and Folder

Presented in the exhibition as an upgrade of almost 100 images, the internet project Armed Citizen shows a series of 17 small arms. No information is given on their origins. Who owns them? Are they being used as criminal evidence? Are they perhaps murder weapons? Who does the ›armed citizen‹ of the title refer to — the police? Or a citizens’ defence group that has taken up arms? Is there some allusion to the liberal firearms laws in the United States, to bloody incidents like the amok shootings that took place in Columbine High School, Colorado, in 1999, or in the Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt in 2002? Armed Citizen is difficult to pin down. But it is safe to assert that it deals with an indeterminate feeling of fear and menace, and, by association, with the growing longing for security in a world felt to be increasingly less safe. The exhibition deliberately groups Armed Citizen in a kind of »security zone« together with Heath Bunting’s CCTV and Rachel Baker and Heath Bunting’s CCTV Sabotag — further irational works pointing to the essential futility of technology — or weapons based protective measures. (Inke Arns)

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Todos usamos la tecnología: escribimos en ordenador, navegamos por la web y “zapeamos” por los canales de televisión. Damos una orden y cambia el formato de texto o salta un nuevo canal. Daniel García Andújar pone entre interrogantes ese “todos” del principio y nuestra capacidad de dar órdenes, de usar y de interactuar con la tecnología. Y lo hace desde dentro, utilizando sus mismas trampas y engaños.
Daniel García Andújar ha dispuesto en la sala central de Metrònom una enorme instalación de aparente sofisticada tecnología. Al entrar, una supuesta máquina –The Body Research Machine– realiza una especie de escáner del espectador, tomando sus coordenadas físicas y composición química. Con esos datos el ordenador procesa un interfaz para que el espectador interactúe con la instalación. Una vez dentro, cámaras, proyecciones, monitores y diferentes sensores parecen dispuestos para que provoquemos no se sabe muy bien qué efectos. El problema es que no provocamos nada. Todo el tiempo se mantiene la sensación de que nosotros, espectadores, hemos ocasionado alguna de las proyecciones, pero no sabemos ni como ni cuando. Sólo está claro que al acercarnos a ver unas imágenes fotográficas a través de unas pequeñas aberturas en la pared, la luz se apaga y se nos niega la imagen. Tampoco el videoproyector lo pone fácil, en ocasiones unos potentes focos traseros tapan totalmente la imagen. Por algún lugar se reproducen las conversaciones grabadas de otros visitantes. ¿Qué es lo que hemos visto? y ¿qué es lo que hemos hecho? Ni idea. La instalación de Daniel García Andújar está llena de trampas y el espectador lejos de ser el sujeto actuante es el objeto o, tal vez, la víctima.

Pero quizá lo más interesante de su trabajo es que, en el fondo, no tiene trampas. Simplemente ha realizado una máquina ultramoderna e hipertecnológica, con todos los elementos de fascinación que contienen, con la misma falacia sobre nuestra capacidad de control sobre ella, provocando la misma perplejidad que el navegar por la web (un lugar en el que siempre navegas, pero sólo navegas, nunca llegas a ningún sitio y si llegas no es el que esperabas) y, convendría decir, con igual inutilidad. Frente al simulacro tecnológico no ha redoblado su condición de simulacro.

Lo que plantea Daniel García Andújar es una crítica ácida a su supuesta cualidad interactiva y liberadora. Y lo hace sin denuncias explícitas, sino jugando en su mismo orden para subvertirlo, es decir, a través de la ironía. Precisamente esa capacidad irónica del trabajo es la que permite abrir el discurso. Porque no se trata de simple discurso tecnológico sino que acarrea consigo todo lo que en la actualidad está implícito en él. Su propaganda es una propaganda política que nos habla de un mundo mejor y más democrático, con absoluta libertad de información y de acceso a la información. Daniel García Andújar subraya, sin embargo, que tal acceso no es posible, que tan sólo existe la ilusión de que es posible, su fascinación a través del simulacro. Así, en la “sala B” de Metrònom ha instalado un monitor acompañado de una selección de cintas de video para consultar. El problema es que no podemos coger tales cintas, mientras que el televisor sólo ofrece publicidad. En el otro extremo del discurso, en la “Sala A” muestra una serie de imágenes sacadas directamente de internet, que van desde fotografías de Cindy Sherman hasta otras pornográficas, acompañadas de textos sobre los derechos intelectuales y de la imagen.

Daniel García Andújar reflexiona sobre los mecanismos de exclusión de la tecnología mostrando sus supuestos mecanismos de liberación. Mecanismos que no sólo afectan a los que la usamos sino, evidentemente también, a los que no tienen acceso a ella. Interface@metrònom.es (nombre que da título a la exposición) forma parte de un proyecto más amplio, la empresa virtual Technologies To The People. El propósito Technologies To The People es acercar la tecnología a los que no tienen acceso a ella, homeless, parados, drogadictos, países subdesarrollados y en general los “indeseables” de este mundo. Con ello desenmascara los verdaderos mecanismos de poder que operan bajo su falsa capacidad democratizadora.

El trabajo de Daniel García Andújar no pretende deslumbrar al espectador a través de una obra que haga alarde tecnológico, limitando nuestra capacidad de juicio por nuestra facilidad para la fascinación, sino que su despliegue tecnológico es irónico, crítico sobre si mismo, autorreferencial y abierto hacia una crítica irónica generalizada del poder.

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35 internatinal artists on four floors with more than 4,000 qm of industrial ruins
Daniel García Andújar-Siegrun Appelt-John M. Armleder-Peter Bogers-Marie Jose Burki-Diller + Scofidio-Onno Dirker-Stan Douglas-Christoph Draeger-FLATZ-Mark Formanek-Rodney Graham-Johan Grimonprez-ipfo-Christoph Irrgang-Gerald van der Kaap-Kirsten Kaiser-Leuchtstoff-Peter Land-Antoni Muntadas-Walter Niedermayr-Vito Orazem-Tony Oursler-Jose Alejandro Restrepo-Alberto Simon-Jan-Peter ER. Sonntag-Bill Spinhoven-Allan Wexler-Andrea Wolfensberger-Thomas Wrede

An introduction
Zones of Desire are sites that stage what is considered to be long lost: worlds of artificial experience, perfect machines of illusion, but also the private retreats of the individual.
Today sees the ubiquitous creation of infrastructures that make life more acceptable – the artificial adventure playgrounds of fun parks, the shopping malls of new consumer culture, zoological gardens as oases of nature, travelling to exotic worlds, but also catastrophes processed by a TV culture that ensures that the sublime shudder is experienced from a safedistance.
The exhibition Zones of Desire confronts these scenarios and deals with artistic approaches to the topographies of staged desire, somewhere between Easy Living and failed utopias. Derelict for four years, the Union-Brewery in the center of Dortmund is an ideal non-site for the project. On four floors with more than 4,000 m2 of industrial ruin, 35 international artists present video works, installations and photographs, dealing with the spaces and projections of the post-industrial era. The starting point of the exhibition was one of the desolate floors in the former brewery building. In its original state, the floor presented a panorama of ruins turned into an interior space. Amidst the debris of this inverted landscape, a green lawn was installed as central motive for the modern reservation.

Visitors enter the exhibition through the specially designed Café Matta-Clark. Passing by the space-engulfing video-installations along the entrance corridor, the visitors reach the elevator where they are received by lift operators. Moving from floor to floor, they enter various sections of the exhibition, each with its own
specific form and contents. The infrastructure of the exhibition, installed for six weeks only, is decidedly provisional. Simulating the fun park as well as the bel étage of the museum, it nevertheless modifies both these presentational orders, so that the presentation turns the site itself into a work on show.

Place: The Dortmunder U

The central building of the former brewery Union Brauerei, built in 1926/27, with the company’s logo – a long drawn-out Neon-U – on the roof, is commonly known as the Dortmunder U. Entering the U today one meets with an impressive sight: torn out walls, rubble and broken pieces next to fanciful tiles and well-known industrial romanticism. Undamaged rooms adjoin desolate ones, and often one encounters peculiar details such as the word RECIPIENT on a control panel. Highlight is undoubtedly the tower storey with its vaults, galleries and a spiral staircase of steel leading straight under the U itself.

Concept

The exhibition uses four storeys of the building that can be reached by elevator, taking the visitors to extremely diverse situations; from a landscape (of ruins) reversed to the interior to the almost religious feeling of the tower storey. The rooms will mainly be left in their individual state: it is not intended to implant a museum.

The invited artists show photographs, video- and site specific-installations, that balance collective and most intimate zones of desire in an ambivalence of affirmation and negation.
The exhibition concept is structured from two directions: on the one hand it argues with the place as an urban non-place, which is being declared a temporary display for contemporary art. On the other hand it focusses on approaches in
contemporary art that go beyond art-inherent questions and concern themselves with the displays of what is real.
The aim is an interaction between the place and the artworks placed in it.
Curated by: Iris Dressler, Hans Dieter Christ
hARTware projekte e. V.
c/o Sunderweg 1
D-44147 Dortmund
++49(0)231-823106 fax ++49(0)231-8820240
–> Finishing 4th October

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Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art
http://www.alberta.com/unfamiliarart/

Project:
ILLEGAL INTERFERENCE
Daniel Garcia Andujar
http://www.irational.org/daniel/pirates/Illegal.html
The name “web collider” describes web art that remixes material found on the net into a new, ready-made artwork. Illegal Interference takes email from newsgroups and secret hacker communities and mixes them together into a new, “illegal” interference pattern.

Like a packet sniffer, the device for eavesdropping on web correspondence without being detected, Illegal Interference intercepts email between hackers as they ask for stolen serial numbers or cracked software. By poking his nose into the back alleys of the web, artist Daniel Garcia Andujar offers a bird’s eye view of information as it is exchanged, misdirected, lost and stolen.

In another project entitled “Technologies To The People,” Andujar states boldly that “Access To Technology is a Human Right!” Forever self-reflexive, much of Andujar’s art focuses on how easily commercial forces might exploit such a claim.

For Andujar the corporate ownership of words and phrases–trademarks like UPS’s “Moving At The Speed Of Business,” or Lucent’s “We Make The Things That Make Communications Work”–reminds us that language, like technology, is not free. Playing with the commercialization of information, Andujar asks: Who controls information and technology?
In Illegal Interference we see the other side, where one must ask: How safe is our control over information?

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Some of My Favourite Web Sites Are Art
http://www.alberta.com/unfamiliarart/

Project:
ILLEGAL INTERFERENCE
Daniel Garcia Andujar
http://www.irational.org/daniel/pirates/Illegal.html
The name “web collider” describes web art that remixes material found on the net into a new, ready-made artwork. Illegal Interference takes email from newsgroups and secret hacker communities and mixes them together into a new, “illegal” interference pattern.

Like a packet sniffer, the device for eavesdropping on web correspondence without being detected, Illegal Interference intercepts email between hackers as they ask for stolen serial numbers or cracked software. By poking his nose into the back alleys of the web, artist Daniel Garcia Andujar offers a bird’s eye view of information as it is exchanged, misdirected, lost and stolen.

In another project entitled “Technologies To The People,” Andujar states boldly that “Access To Technology is a Human Right!” Forever self-reflexive, much of Andujar’s art focuses on how easily commercial forces might exploit such a claim.

For Andujar the corporate ownership of words and phrases–trademarks like UPS’s “Moving At The Speed Of Business,” or Lucent’s “We Make The Things That Make Communications Work”–reminds us that language, like technology, is not free. Playing with the commercialization of information, Andujar asks: Who controls information and technology?
In Illegal Interference we see the other side, where one must ask: How safe is our control over information?

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Rachel Greene
Rhizome.org, NYC
RHIZOME_RAW: interview with Daniel Garcia Andujar of TTTP®

May 1998
Daniel Garcia Andujar an artist from Valencia, Spain. His current project is Technologies To the People®, though he has worked as an artist in other genres such as video, photography, urban intervention and installation.

http://www.irational.org/daniel/

+ + +

RG: Explain Technologies To the People®. Why form an organization?

DGA: I feel like right now there’s a real fetishization of the new technologies, but I don’t know about the kind of access people really have to them. There’s the idea that this is a democratic space and every body comes here onto an equal playing field… I don’t see it. I think that Technologies To the People® problematizes and widens the image of technological access, and questions and rethinks the related problems. It’s a metaphor — “all the people are connected” — while also acting as a public provocation. Today, increasingly, to have access to information and resources, it’s necessary to have connectivity. Who has real access to the technology? Will a new division be opened between “inforich” and “infopoor” people? How can we avoid this abyss of separation? Are we at the beginning to a new global colonization? How could it affect us in the future? What can we do to include more “classes of people” in the new information global infrastructure? These are issues that TTTP® tries to make obvious: virtuality, authenticity, copyright, sponsoring, media, power.

RG: Your cache project and the art/photo collection of Technologies To the People® is currently on exhibit at the Apex Gallery in New York City.
Can you describe your installation:

DGA: Technologies To The People® works with the media infrastructure of corporate companies; Technologies To The People® sponsors art events highlighting these representation polices. This is one of the ironic aims of TTTP®. I make jokes using publicity sentences like “Sponsoring art is not only a fantastic communications tool. It is much more than that. It is a tool for the seduction of public opinion.” I am speaking here about corporate representation, sponsorship, and relationships between art and corporations, art collections, and copyright.

In the last few months, I have been compiling a selection of the documents that appeared in the cache of my computers. As many people know, when we visit Internet pages, our computers load images, films, sounds, and other resources that facilitate and increase the speed of document reading; browser technology is designed for this. Some of these documents, sent by servers to the cache of our browsers, end up in the TTTP® photographic collection. A bigger part of the TTTP® photographic collection was shown in Spain in a collective photographic show. For the Apex show, I used around 30 photographs, printed from cache files, from the TTTP®’s collection.

RG: You once told me the next war would be started by hackers — am i right? Did I understand you correctly? Talk about information and power:

DGA:
0.
Data, information, knowledge data becomes information and them knowledge.
Knowledge is what makes mere information valuable.

1.
I meant that information warfare extends beyond the physical world and strikes at one of the most valuable resources today. It is considered a form of war in that a small state, or a small organization can fight against, and defeat, a superpower; in any event, it’s possible it won’t lose. The more technologically developed an organization is, the more
vulnerable it is.

What should be happen if a ‘bad guy’ decides to de-stabilize a country by destroying its information infrastructure? I think that governments’ services do not have the real capability to respond. Information war includes the electronics war, the tactical deceit, the deterrent strategies, the propaganda war, the psychological war, the net war, and the structural sabotage. While you’re watching me, who is watching your computer network? Who watches who? Who has real control of information?
Imagine an army of robbers or hackers all attacking the same bank, data base, corporation… at the same time.

2.
Paranoid about computer security?
Nice business for computer security companies?
A good alibi for governments to curtail rights?
We need to pay attention to all these phenomena.
Governments should recommend increased government intervention to the explosive success of the Internet and the Information Revolution.
Pay attention to the Communications Decency Act, fight against encryption liberalization, copyright law reforms, and all these ‘necessary regulations’ of address privacy, digital cash and electronic payment systems, intellectual property on the Net…

Who preserves the basic freedom of the net, our freedom (in general)?

We hear too much about increasing government intervention, building a model cyberspace, preserving, controlling, developing international guidelines, government access to encrypted communications, censorship and encryption
restrictions, regulation, supervision, centralize, Internet policy…

Being informed does not mean being a criminal!
Access To Technology is a Human Right!. TTTP® says.

RG: You are one of the current net.artists who posts somewhat regularly to American Express, and you are doing shows, exhibitions etc. You are, in other words, increasingly successful and visible. Could you talk a bit about your background, artistic and political. Has working on the net made you more fashionable, more chic? What is appealing about net.art to
you? What sucks about it?

DGA:
For a long time now, I have been dedicating attention to media, to the relationships between power and the simplifying mechanisms of society.
For the few last years I have been working on projects with photography, video, urban interventions, installations, texts, multimedia, Internet works, and computer graphics. I have tried to keep the contents, the subject, the reasons of the work, so that they connect with the audience using direct language. Society is, now more than ever, accustomed to
very sophisticated techniques of representation — on account of technology and new media.
Evidently these are transforming different ways of living, working, watching, buying, be related, enjoying or even understanding identity. At the same time, they appear as new threats since they substitute reality with illusion — and real conflicts are caused by empty virtual shams of content. I have worked to make my work keep pace with these kinds of realities.

I’m working on the net now, and like many other artists, I worked in video in the early eighties, photography before that… There are a lot of parallels at the moment between video and the net. Discussions among video artists in the eighties covered formats, techniques of representation, distribution, fashion…

I have a classic artistic background, though I never went to university.
I left school went I was 18, and this has meant no academic art studies.
This is atypical in Spain, and this means I have to work against a lot of structures, and that sometimes I feel displaced in official artist contexts (universities, official grants, traditional infrastructures).

RG: Tell us about your European Tourism project http://www.irational.org/daniel/banderas/tourist.html. Was that
influenced by the situation in Spain in which lots of Europeans have moved to coastal towns, impacting the culture? In some cases have being elected officials while not even speaking Spanish? Do you see parallels with multiculturalism on the internet?

DGA: Well i think Spain is a multicultural society, though mostly in the Mediterranean areas which have varied historical influences and mixed cultures. Curiously, we never use the term “Spanish” for the language of Spain, we use “Castillian” to differentiate from other languages of Spain like Catalan (Gallego, Euskera). I think in bilingual areas, people are especially receptive to other languages, and have an historical inclination to assimilate different cultures.

But there is a special situation on the European continent with the English language — sometimes you are with several people (from different European countries) in a private meeting speaking English, though nobody is a native English speaker! Maybe you are speaking very bad English but everybody understands you. Why don’t we learn German — they have a very powerful influence in EU with more that 100 million German speakers? Finally this has a perverse effect, for we are subverting the English language — maybe in the future we’ll have a special variation of English.
But I don’t see really multiculturalism on the internet: the English language dominates. It’s not a technological impediment. ‘Globalization’ ?
(Americanization?).

RG: What is going on with art in Valencia?

DGA: Right now is an especially delicate time in Valencia, since in the last few years there has been a lot of political change. Spain and particularly her institutions are very vulnerable to political changes. The conservative policies of the PP (Popular Party) have resulted in impoverishing the already deteriorated artistic and cultural scenes. An example of this is the deterioration of the IVAM, Valencian Museum of Modern Art, an institution that enjoyed deserved international prestige, and that was an example to the rest of our national institutions; it is now practically inactive. Several of its principal curators have moved to prestigious European institutions outside of Spain.

Official aid has disappeared, and there are no longer plans or policies that support and promote for young artists (grants, trips…). A few local curators who are working for the government control artists politically. I think there is enough money, but the problem is how this money is spent. Big exhibitions for protected, established artists, expensive free publications, rented commercial spaces to host publicity-generating exhibitions in foreign countries… no money for
the rest.

RG: How did you get hooked up with irational.org?

DGA: I met Heath Bunting at an exhibition in Hamburg in 1996 (discord.Sabotage of realities/Kunstverein and Kunsthaus Hamburg). A few months later he proposed the idea of collaborating by having irational.org host the Technologies To The People® project.

+ + +

Technologies To The People®
http://www.irational.org/daniel/

Technologies To The People Foundation /irational mirror/
http://www.irational.org/daniel/TTTP/

TRY
http://www.irational.org/daniel/pirates/Illegal.html
http://www.irational.org/daniel/Crypto/armed1.html

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Presented on a monitor » Like every other company Technologies To The People (TTTP) is highly aware of (the value of) its public image and how this image is presented through different media. In this promotional video a number of international tech-economic experts praise the values and ethics of TTTP. However, originally the experts were not hired and paid by TTTP but by its market rivals — global corporations like Dell, Microsoft, and so forth. The promotional video strings together sequences hijacked from corporate PR videos and the abstract concepts they use to deliver ultra-positive descriptions of their companies’ imagined role in the world. Thus, it adopts the language and visuals of business to promote the rival notion of a human-centred and common culture, subtly and humorously confronting the viewer with the question of which of the two cultural economies one wants to define ›freedom‹, ›the future‹, and not least ›access to technology‹. (Jacob Lillemose)

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Presented with DVD Footage of a swinging suspension bridge with a car on it is accompanied by a heavymetal guitar riff. Suddenly the driver is seen to switch off his car stereo, the music stops, as does the swinging of the bridge, and one hears birds singing. All is peace. The guy looks into the camera and with a silly grin on his face says, »Sorry.« The video is a smart piece of advertising, a precise illustration of the way irational rocks our mental and physical infrastructures with a delicate balance of danger and humour. The video was originally used by a corporation dealing with technology. (Jacob Lillemose)

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Im Rahmen der Ausstellung “Reservate der Sehnsucht” in der ehemaligen Union Brauerei wurde die von Daniel García Andùjar entdeckte Fotosammlung der einstigen Brauereiangestellten Wilhelm und Manfred Beutel präsentiert. Die Sammlung dokumentiert historische Ereignisse aus Dortmund, die im öffentlichen Bewusstsein der Stadt heute nur wenig präsent sind: die Jahre des deutschen Faschismus sowie die fast vollständige Zerstörung der Innenstadt während des Zweiten Weltkrieges.

Der wesentliche Beitrag von Andújar bei der Präsentation der Sammlung bestand in einem eigens entwickelten geografischen Informationssystem, kurz GIS, mit dem sich von jedem einzelnen Bild der exakte Zeitpunkt der Aufnahme sowie der Standort des Fotografen ermitteln lässt.

Auf jeder Fotografie erscheint die Union Brauerei an einem falschen Ort: Sie wurde jeweils leicht verschoben, deplaziert. Wilhelm und Manfred Beutel sind zwar keine fiktiven Personen, haben jedoch nie in der Union Brauerei gearbeitet. Tatsache ist vielmehr, dass der Widerständler Wilhelm Beutel in Dortmund von den Nazis umgebracht wurde. Andújar hat sich während eines Stipendiums in Dortmund eingehend mit der Nazi-Vergangenheit dieser Stadt beschäftigt und deren Abwesenheit im öffentlichen Raum bemerkt: Kein Platz, keine Straße, die etwa nach dem Widerständler Wilhelm Beutel benannt wäre… In diesem Sinne ist die Präsentation der angeblichen Fotosammlung nicht in erster Linie ein “Fake”, sondern eine Hommage an Wilhelm Beutel sowie eine Revision der Dortmunder Stadtgeschichte, die jenseits der schicken Simulationen durch GIS liegt.

Iris Dressler

Daniel García Andújar: The Manfred and Wilhelm Beutel Photo Collection, 1998

Daniel García Andújar: The Manfred and Wilhelm Beutel Photo Collection, 1998

Daniel García Andújar: The Manfred and Wilhelm Beutel Photo Collection, 1998

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