Barn, 1997, ©Thomas Demand, VG Bild Kunst,
Bonn
courtesy: Esther Schipper
How do you choose your motifs?
I start
thinking in images before I construct the preliminary sculptural work.
It’s like in chess: sometimes there are complicated moves, but the simple
move has to be possible within the game, too. For me, it was clear that it
was about expanding the context from image to image within the pictorial
structure of my work. Take Rocket Launcher: I couldn’t have made
that piece ten years ago. Not for moral reasons, but because the image
would have been far too speculative. Now, though, it’s in keeping with
other works that examine how the media portrays events in reality – the
bathtub of Uwe Barschel, people storming the Stasi building, or the tunnel
where Princess Diana had the accident.
The images you refer to, then, are images already charged by their media
presence?
With Rocket Launcher, it wasn’t
about depicting the actual bomb, but the image of a bomb of this kind that
sticks in our minds. To that extent, all the works are a reflection upon
the media sphere of images surrounding us; I make my selection from these
images. When I open a newspaper, I encounter a two-dimensional image of
reality; in the studio, I go behind this surface by reconstructing the
concrete object and making a photograph of it. It’s a two-fold translation
of reality that says something about our collective image memory.
In a catalogue, you described the process in the following way: the works are
supposed to "literally remove the image from its appearance". Are the real
events you refer to ultimately nothing more than signs?
The
question is: how much of an object does one have to make visible in order
to create an experience of it without entering into its original function?
I try to make the objects in such as way that they remain constructions,
that they don’t refer to existing objects, rooms, or situations in a
mimetic way. You can always see how they’re made, you can always see the
marks where the parts are fitted together or folded, even on the paper.
This remains completely clear, which is why the images can never be
mistaken for real pictures.
|
Tunnel, 1999, 35mm Film, 2min, loop,
Dolby SR
©Thomas Demand,
VG Bild Kunst, Bonn
courtesy: Esther Schipper
|
With so many fissures in the material itself – why the
concrete locations?
The reproduction
quality of the events that surround us in the media on a daily basis is
completely different than in my photographs. The focus, the optical
possibilities – the images in my work are stronger than in the newspaper
photographs they refer to. Despite this, it’s about depicting these images
in their universal validity and not as evidence attesting to the events
they portray.
|
I don’t want to prove a crime in my photographs, but only
that we can talk about such crimes because we’ve made or can make an image
of them. If I speak to somebody in Argentina about the tunnel where Lady
Diana had the car accident, then he or she immediately has an image of the
situation without ever having been there.
You mean the
globalization of images?
Communication through images functions
on a worldwide basis today, that’s an experience I can’t really share with
my mother and certainly not with my grandmother. I can rely on this image
memory just as I can rely on the fact that everybody knows how paper
works. But it’s not as though I were waiting for these kinds of events to
occur. The front page of the
Stern covering the Barschel death must have been lying around on my desk
for eight or nine years before I used it, because I certainly didn’t want
to exploit the event.
Abb. 21, 1992, Deutsche Bank Collection
Where do you draw the line between the photographs you use as a basis for
your models and those that merely transport a shock effect or a scandal?
Recently, I’ve primarily been interested in the fact that news photography is
dying out. That doesn’t only have to do with almost everyone taking
pictures nowadays, but more with the fact that photographs are
increasingly being taken by people directly involved, sometimes even in
crimes. The truth content in a picture taken by a soldier in Iraq or the
truth content of a tsunami video made by a vacationer in Thailand have
become far greater than that of a
James Nachtwey, who photographed the displays in men’s boutiques
immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, where
there’s all this dust all over the shirts. These images are almost too
artistic, and far too good; in contrast, one tends to more readily accept
the authenticity of pictures taken by hobby photographers. That marks an
incredible democratization process in terms of photography.
And
what consequences has this change had on your work?
I pay more
attention to distancing myself from the image. For me, the work is only
finished when the object I’m photographing corresponds to a universal
experience. That’s a big risk, of course, when you consider that I often
work on a situation for a number of months in the studio. At the same
time, this approach offers me more security in dealing with the material.
If you cut grass for two or three days in order to assemble a lawn, then
you notice pretty soon if it’s worth the effort or not. The criteria of
choice are simply more complex, and some of the ideas get discarded purely
due to the slowness of the production process.
Abb. 34, 1992 und Abb. 62, 1990, Deutsche Bank Collection
But in the end, it all remains an illusion in your work, doesn’t it?
If you look very carefully, the works aren’t really illusionistic at all.
Fence from 2004, for instance, is a piece of paper cut in the silhouette
of a chain-link fence. The moment I’d actually imitate the weave of a real
fence would be the moment I’d fall into the illusion trap – then I could
just as easily take a real fence and photograph that.
Translation:
Andrea Scrima
[1]
[2]
|
