Cold Lens as a Filter E-Book

Jana Müller

• Herausgeber: EECLECTIC
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 83

Beschreibung

Diese Publikation ist eine Spurensuche der bildenden Künstlerin Jana Müller, die die materiellen Dimensionen der Fotografie in raumgreifenden Mixed-Media-Installationen erforscht. Cold Lens as a Filter vereint Müllers Werke von 2001 bis 2023 und macht die Komplexität ihrer künstlerischen Recherchen in verschiedenen medialen Ebenen sicht- und erfahrbar. In der Mailkorrespondenz mit dem neuseeländischen Künstler Matthew Cowan, die während der Corona-Pandemie stattfand, gibt die Künstlerin Einblicke in ihre fotografischen Arbeitsmethoden. Sie skizziert eine Praxis, die Fotografie als kommunikatives und dokumentarisches Medium mit Prozessen des Archivierens und dessen künstlerischer Übersetzung verbindet. Jana Müller dokumentiert unter anderem Beweismittel in den Asservatenkammern deutscher Städte, stellt die polizeiliche Durchsuchung ihres Elternhauses 13 Jahre nach dem eigentlichen Ereignis im Jahr 1990 nach und setzt sich künstlerisch mit einem Spielplatz vor dem Hintergrund seiner besonderen Geschichte auseinander. Die Verwendung von Glas als Arbeitsmaterial ist für sie sowohl funktional als auch konzeptionell ein wichtiger Filter für historische Ästhetiken, temporäre Architekturen und das Abwesende als Information. Im Rahmen dieser künstlerischen Vorgehensweisen ist Müllers fotografische Praxis eine Bestandsaufnahme realer und fiktiver Ereignisse, die sich mit dem rechtlichen und künstlerischen Wahrheitsanspruch von Objekten beschäftigt.

Leseprobe

COLD LENS AS A FILTER

Jana Müller

Works

Falscher Hase 4

Der Wolf im Schafspelz 7

Traces of Truth (A–Z | Es gibt nichts, was es nicht gibt) 8

Traces 11

Das Material der klugen Köpfe 12

Das Material der klugen Köpfe – Video 14

Fruits and Talisman 15

Little Golden America/Grand Tour 17

Never-Ending Story 18

Schmutzige Wäsche 21

It is not over until the fat lady sings 22

Sie irren sich 24

Taschen voller Glas 25

The Ladies 27

Happy Lane/ For Babette 27

Jane Doe 28

Sie hat zwei Seiten 28

Story. Kapitel I–IV/ Leichter Krimi 30

Tagebuch eins 31

Collaboration

Jana Müller and Matthew Cowan Background of the Background 33

Jana Müller and Matthew Cowan Background Scenes 35

Jana Müller and Wiebke ElzelDie Katastrophe im Kopf/Archiv Elzel/Müller 36

Jana Müller and Wiebke ElzelLand I/Land II 37

Conversation

Are your works dirty?Conversation between the artists Matthew Cowan and Jana Müller40

Appendix

List of Works65

Biographies70

Imprint71

2

Works

Falscher Hase

4

5

Site-specific installation: glass, fur coat, truck tarpaulin, window film, LEDlamps, printed window film, variable dimensions

Exhibition view: STRouX, Berlin, 2020

Work in progress since 2020

Wall installation: fine art prints framed, objects, dimension variable, online archive – http://falscherhase.jana- mueller.de

Exhibition view: Die Decke hat ein Loch (The Hole in the Blanket) Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2023

Falscher Hase

Mock Rabbit

The project takes its starting point from numerous conversations with Jana Müller’s father, who worked as a police detective in the GDR. Crime did not officially exist in this country, yet her father has much to report. Jana Müller places her father’s stories in relation to the present, in which crimes happen and can be viewed on social networks as they occur. She goes in search of clues in numerous places and archives. For example, Christchurch (NZ) and Halle/Saale (D), where terrorist attacks happend parallel to these conversations. Jana Müller was born in Halle/Saale and part of her family lives in New Zealand, on the other side of the world. By seeking out and documenting these different contexts, she tries to make temporal overlaps visible and exam-ine them. In doing so she works with traces of the past that project into the present, thus creating an individ-ual, but at the same time factual, collective reconstruc-tion of history.

On the days of the conversations with her father, he cooks meatloaf for lunch, and this ritual has given a name to the project Falscher Hase.

Der Wolf im Schafspelz

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Not everyone knows that the idiom ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ originates from the New Testament. Not only does Jana Müller’s spatial installation use a fur as a metaphor for the purely animal and unpredictable; Müller also examines the aspect of disguise or conceal-ment in her exploration of the space and its specific architecture. Unwelcoming rubber and plastic sheeting, sometimes transparent, sometimes printed or beige-opaque, create an ambivalent effect between obscura-tion and protection. It’s as if inner reflections were being sheltered and imprisoned. The current pandemic has not left Jana Müller unaffected, and so this work takes on an eerie forensic atmosphere, reinforced by the fur.

Christof Zwiener

2022

2020

6

Der Wolf im Schafspelz

7

Traces of Truth (A–Z | Es gibt nichts, was es nicht gibt)

8

9

Video: 28min, single channel, colour, sound

Mixed-media-installation: 6panels with photographs and text, framed behind glass, each 130cm × 180cm × 5cm; four pres-entation tables each 90cm × 125cm × 75cm, wood, paint, glass, printed glass panels, pieces of evidence; three pieces of evi-dence framed behind printed glass panels, 20cm × 30cm, 30cm × 40cm, 40cm × 60cm; variable dimensions

Exhibition view: Solo show Traces of TruthKunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2019

Text quoted from: Susanne Prinz, The Dead are not Real, Neither are the Living., newspaper Traces of Truth, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2019

Traces

The film Tracesshows a police training film from the 1950s, filmed in turn by the artist. Both the projector in the archive and the film itself are visible on the pres-entation level. The film ceaselessly shows evidence of fictive crimes.

Traces of Truth (A–Z | Es gibt nichts, was es nicht gibt)

Traces of Truth (A–Z | There is nothing that does not exist)

There has always been an interest in real crime scenes and forensic evidence of all kinds. In Traces of TruthJana Müller pursues this curiosity in images and installations. She takes up the fascination with scientific police work and develops it for her artistic purposes. Since 2015, she has documented countless pieces of evidence and their preservation in evidence rooms of state prosecutors. What does it mean when actual evidence appears in an art exhibition? What happens when art sets out on the trail of crime? Regardless of the particular physical con-ditions, a suggestive meta-narrative prevails through-out the exhibition, derived from the fact that all the objects originate from the realm of the amoral and cap-tivate as evidence of boundary crossing.

Susanne Prinz

2019

2019

10

Traces

11

Das Material der klugen Köpfe

12

Video: 7:29min, single channel, colour

Text quoted from: Kurt Wettengl, Vergessen – Warum wir nicht alles erinnern(Forgetting–Why We Don’t Remember Everything), Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2019

Mixed-media-installation: glass, metal, wood, paint, printed glass panels, textile, fine art prints, 270cm × 180cm × 210cm

Exhibition view: Vergessen – Warum wir nicht alles erinnern (Forgetting – Why We Don’t Remember Everything), Historisches Museum Frankfurt am Main, 2019

Text quoted from: Kurt Wettengl, Vergessen – Warum wir nicht alles erinnern(Forgetting–Why We Don’t Remember Everything), Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2019

Das Material der klugen Köpfe

The Material of Bright Minds

The archive made available by the Ludwig Edinger Foundation, Frankfurt includes a large collection of por-traits of well-known neurologists from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The general question for Jana Müller as she worked with this archive was who had been for-gotten and why. This question is especially important when it is revealed that the archive contains material on Hugo Spatz and Julius Hallervorden, both of whom were actively involved in the crimes of the National Socialist euthanasia program.

Kurt Wettengl

Das Material der klugen Köpfe – Video

The Material of Bright Minds – Video

This installation, with the ambiguous title The Material of Bright Minds, formally alludes to a dissecting table and a microscope with its long worktop and superimposed projected portraits. It is no examination of human tis-sue, however, but of the archive material of the Ludwig Edinger Foundation. Analogously to the methods of neurological examination, the projected heads are cropped and dyed. While these images are distorted by a cracked piece of glass, the many names listed in the archive, which were printed onto plates of glass leaning against the worktop, are also difficult to decipher. In her viewing of the archive, the artist has probably saved this material from its ‘oblivion in storage’.

Kurt Wettengl

2019

2019

13

Das Material der klugen Köpfe – Video

14

Fruits and Talisman

15

Little Golden AmericaPhotography: 36fine art prints, each 25cm × 36cm

Grand Tour

Photography and installation: photographic archive on 1.10m × 45m long fine-art print rolls, variable dimensions

FruitsSite-specific installation: 7objects, printed truck side canvas and textiles, 7printed signs, variable dimensions

TalismanObject: diverse found objects, plastic bag, printed postcard, 16cm × 24cm, edition 300

Documentation view: Hidden View

Project in public space, Offenbach, 2016

Text quoted from: Britt Baumann, Hidden View – Im Transit. Orte, Kunst, Relikte, Spuren und Geschichte, Verlag Henrich Editionen, Frankfurt am Main, 2017

Fruits and Talisman

In the playground in Senefelder Quartier, Offenbach (a historic site of public execution) bundles of printed truck tarpaulin and textiles hang in the trees. These Fruitsrepresent a researched history of the public exe-cutions in the city and about places of execution in gen-eral up to the present day.

The installation’s individual elements are twisted and turned in such a way as to reveal only a part of the overall picture, and so they can be seen as archaeo-logical finds that only tell a specific story in their com-position. In reference to the historical aspect of the playground, Jana Müller offers talismans supposed to bring luck to the home (if you believe in it) for purchase. The artefacts are based on rumours that the people of Offenbach once took wooden splinters from the dis-used gallows as lucky charms.

Britt Baumann

Little Golden America/Grand Tour

In 1935, the writer duo Ilja Ilf and Jewgeni Petrow travelled through the United States for the Russian newspaper Prawda. 80years later, Jana Müller, the sculptor Alexej Meschtschanow, and the writer Felicitas Hoppe follow their route almost exactly. This leads to a new inventory