Eye Exam
[…] For the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Cologne-based artist Doris Frohnapfel traveled to document Wittgenstein’s Norwegian getaway. Her choice collection includes a handful of digitally manipulated color and black-and-white Lambda prints, the black-and-whites numbered in a sequence that resembles the Tractatus. Prefixed with an acronym of Tractatus, or „T-LP,“ each also carries a whole value and then a tenth, hundredth, etc. Among the shots are included almost incidental images of sprawling chateaus, tilting mountains and deep, lush valleys. All have been manipulated into a harrowing blur: buildings shift and change against immovable backgrounds, creating the illusion of a perception in flux. It’s a fitting tribute. Each shot moves across the surface of the world as viewers must imagine Wittgenstein’s mind did over the problems of language and logic. […] … more >
Når forskning blir kunst
[…] Resultatet av et sånt prosjekt finner man i det lille hefte TL-P: Norway and Wittgenstein av fotografen Doris Frohnapfel. Karakterisert fra kunstsiden er det snakk om en liten samling fotografier fra Skjolden og omegn, ledsaget av en essayistisk tekst om reisen ut for at se stedet der den berømte østerrisk-engelske filosofen Ludwig Wittgenstein bygde seg en hytte og bodde et års tid like før første verdenskrig og igjen et års tid midt på 1930-tallet. Og fra forskningssiden kunne man kalle dette en tolkning av (deler av) Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (altså «TL-P») fra 1921.Weiterlesen … more >
Cités banlieues
Bruxelles 1993/2003: At the circular highway, five minutes apart from each other, there are located the two build utopias „La cité moderne“(I) and “ La cité modèle“(2). 1922 and 1958 designed and constructed close to at that time up-to-date vision of architecture and urban planning. Conceptions – for time and space – couldn’t have been more contrary. The black and white photographs I took 1993 – attracted by the prominent names of the housing projects – while visiting the sites, are description of a pedestrian not trying to depict something that a photograph cannot tell and represent. The colour photographs, taken on a visit ten years later – 2003 – are also descriptions of the objects and places – probably quite far from a thinkable final conclusion. Architectural photographs can only appeal to the viewer’s imagination and availability of world/reality.Weiterlesen … more >
From work to word
Since the explosion of theory in the seventies and eighties, image producers as well as artists have become more eloquent in their writings, while at the same time theoreticians’ texts have been extended into philosophical tours de force. Explanations appended to art works that had ceased to mediate meaning became invisible extensions of forms of artistic expression. In ideal cases they crossed and supplemented research in related or extraneous theories. „From Work to Word“ follows some of the traces left by these phenomena. Does the irritation that is felt at works of art not being able to communicate all that is needed, or even something beyond this, also apply to the theoretical appendages? Is Weiterlesen … more >
Endpunktfotografien
Klack klack, so trocken , so archaisch klingt der Kameraverschluss, wenn er dem Licht der Welt für einen kurzen Augenblick Einlass ins Gehäuse gewährt. Knapp hundert Momentaufnahmen in Schwarzweiss gibt Doris Frohnapfel als Resümee jahrelanger Reisen und Recherchen in England, USA, Italien, Deutschland preis. […] Frohnapfel erzählt spröde und kunstvoll zugleich in 14 Texten, wie sie sich mit minimalem Kostenaufwand an die Orte, die Gebäude ihrer Katastrophen-Checkliste heranarbeitet, mithilfe eines Netzwerks von Freunden in aller Welt. „Ich mache ein Foto“, sagt sie, „Klack Klack, als könnte man Fotos vergangener Zeiten machen.“ … more >
Bloomsbury Square
It does sometimes happen that I find a place without any difficulty. It was like that with 20, Bloomsbury Square. Actually, I hadn´t even looked for it. I´d made a note at some point that Gertrude Stein lived there when she was in London in 1902 before going to Paris. And since I quite often had things to do in the British Museum, Bloomsbury Square was just round the corner for me. So it´s not surprising that she would go every day to read in the British Museum´s famous library. Although the weather was awful – it was November, and didn´t really get light at all – I took photographs of the building at number 20, which unfortunately was completely hidden behind scaffolding at the time, while the gloomy, blackened façade was being cleaned. I photographed the façade and instantly dismissed the idea that came to Weiterlesen … more >
The facades are silent
[…] That’s how it is. A picture that doesn’t answer your look, wants to remain unknown. Like this grey street in Paris with the wetness of the last downpour still on the cobbles: a tired, dull mirror for the sky, which has long since closed over. The façades, impersonal and cold: Enough of that, it’s nothing to do with you. There’s nothing behind things. Why can’t you just acept that?Weiterlesen … more >
Die Fassaden schweigen
[…] So ist das. Ein Bild, das deinen Blick nicht zurückgibt. Fremd bleiben will. Wie diese graue Strasse in Paris, die Feuchtigkeit des letzten Regengusses noch auf dem Pflaster: müde, trübe Spiegel für den Himmel, der sich längst verschlossen hat. Die Fassaden, unpersönlich und abweisend: Hör auf damit, es geht dich nichts an. Es ist nichts hinter den Dingen. Warum gibst du dich nicht endlich zufrieden damit.Weiterlesen … more >
Unter Menschen
In ”unter Menschen” one gets to look behind the scenes: history, all too well-known, human namely, life then or now. And ever more strongly the weight of certainty presses upon us that we are all standing on a sediment of thousands and thousands of pictures, which constitute the true fonts of history. Some day they will come to light, but does it matter whether we see them or not? No one will know what it is that they show, who they meant something to. Which in other words simply means that the feelings of the cast of characters immortalized in the photos are whirling around lost in the atmosphere, just as the ground under our feet is littered with the pieces of paper they´re printed on, black-and-white materialities void of meaning. Both seem rather sinister. Viewed like this, ”unter Menschen” is the logical continuation of the urge that drove Doris Frohnapfel to her scenes of catastrophe: stories there, history here, the sum of all stories. … more >
Unter Menschen
In «unter Menschen» kann man einen Blick werfen hinter die Kulissen – Geschichte, allzu bekannt, menschlich eben, das Leben damals oder heute, und drückend lastet immer stärker das Gewicht der Gewissheit, dass wir alle auf einem Sediment abertausender Bilder stehen, die den wahren Fond von Geschichte ausmachen. Sie kommen irgendwann ans Tageslicht, aber macht es einen Unterschied, ob man sie tatsächlich sieht? Niemand wird wissen was sie zeigen, wem sie was bedeutet haben – was mit anderen Worten nur heisst, dass die Emotionen des damaligen Bühnenpersonals, auf den Fotos verewigt, ebenso herrenlos in der Atmosphäre herumschwirren wie der Boden unter unseren Füssen bedeckt ist mit ihren papierenen Trägern, schwarz-weissen Gegenständlichkeiten ohne Sinn. Unheimlich scheint beides. In dieser Einsicht ist «unter Menschen» die logische Fortsetzung der Bewegung, die Doris an ihre Katastrophenschauplätze trieb: da die Geschichten, hier Geschichte als Summe aller Geschichten. … more >