NON-PLACE 2007-9
In my actual work I researched the „transient spaces”, the frontier zones which separate Nature from the city or the historical city from the suburban/industrial areas and at the same time connect them respectively in contemporary photograpers’ works and in my own series of photographs. My series entitled Ostia presented the temporarily abandoned places, the city seashore in winter, but my videos like Angelique Says Yes, 2003 and Urban Moments, 2004 where I made reports with inhabitants of a series of various different city areas to focus on the intimate sides of our urban environments were also parts of my dissertation.These invisible frontier zones are sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent and very often the city areas are separated from Nature by traffic lines. Municipal housing areas usually stand totally separated in terms of the wholeness of the city; their various possible views represent various different contexts as seen from the inner city or vice versa. The connection of cities to large industrial areas will produce yet another possible context.
In my videoinstallations and series of photos in this year I build ordinary, everyday materials and objects like pieces of oilcloth, travelling bags and plastic place mats together with my videos and images, which, in this plastic milieu would acquire a totally different meaning from a detached, theoretically pure perception of them „as films” or „as photos”. The sometimes ironical, sometimes playful frame itself is a possible source of new meanings for the images, balancing, refining or strengthening their tone respectively.
I’ve long been collecting and using kitschy plastic objects, I like to contrast and even clash them in my projects with non-everyday situations for a colloquial and easy impression and as a source of humour, but also as symbols of reality around us. Sometimes it is as kitchy as that where we live, where we go shopping or entertain ourselves, it is this kitchy world that surrounds us in our everyday lives, still, in these very same situations we often happen to witness much more emotional or dramatic moments than we’d have expected. This ubiquitous mingling of qualities informs the urban space as well as our surfing on the Internet or among the TV channels for certain pages and programmes, commercials and contents sensible or sentimental, kitschy or classy.