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Zürcher Hochschule der Künste

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Reflecting Locations

 
Picture: Reflecting Locations

Reflecting Locations

Hanz Au Lok Hang; Diana Morena Buser; Karen Hau Ka Lam; Allison Hun Yun; Linda Lai; Chung Lee Kai; Jelena Pavlovic; Thomas Schärer; Katarina Stefanovic; Birk Weiberg; Joanna-Yulia Wierig; Winnie Yan Wai Yin

      Title
      • Reflecting Locations
      Project title in German
      • Reflecting Locations
      Lecturer / head of project
      • Thomas Schärer, Birk Weiberg
      Author
      Date
      • 2015-2016
      Keywords
      Genre / discipline
      Description
      • The increasing ubiquity of live video feeds from all parts of the world has a similar effect as the legendary Blue Marble photo, which NASA produced and distributed in 1972. In both cases one’s immediate perception of the world is challenged by images that suggest different scales. But while the orbital view has remained a privileged one, the possibility to see in full color, motion and real time what is happening at the other end of the world has become available for everyone who is equipped with a computer or smart phone and has access to the Internet. Satellite transmissions of foreign correspondents on television used original backgrounds to attest themselves credibility. And the fact that these sites were often added by technical means changed little about this. Today live video has turned into a casual add-on for private conversation over Skype. Google Streetview or Google Earth deliver images of even the remotest parts of our planet. The fastest growing part of the internet are (moving) images. We seem to have access to as much visual information as any generation before. As different international protest movements in the last years have shown, this also has a political dimension because of the affective power and the solidarity, but also the control and misuses that may come with it.

        Reflecting Locations is a research project with students from Hong Kong and Zurich that reflects on the ways that such dispositifs shape our understanding and our imagination of places where we have never been. Which mental images do we develop of the “other” (places)? On the basis of which information, projections and imaginations? How are these mental images related to media images we are getting of the physical and historical world? And what are the effects of the confrontation between mental images, media images and a physical presence on the “real” site where images (or in the case of compositing parts of them) have been shot?

        Starting points for this inquiry are on the one hand the artistic practices of the participating artists and on the other hand historical trajectories that can offer alternative view on the implicitness on contemporary media practices. One of the relatives here is the genre of ethnographic cinema, which pursues the scholarly method of participant observation of more or less familiar cultures/ethnicities by audiovisual means. This is contrasted with the practice of commercial Hollywood cinema to engage small teams (so called second units) to produce moving backgrounds for studio sets. In the course of second unit practices two locations, two perspectives are merged into a single moving image. The emerging images of “the other” are necessarily projections or collages and not or only partly a result of an involvement with the other. This is exactly what the ethnographic cinema strives for. But also here previously conducted research, assumptions, and scales of values take effects. The filmmakers inscribe themselves through their perspectives, formal decisions, and selections into their images of the other. Both practices of dealing with the other have sustainably informed our visual memories when it comes to the represented places and people and may serve to bring our contemporary forms of audiovisual telepresence into question.

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          • Cages

            Picture: Cages

            Name that can easily go onto 2 lines

            Author that can easily go onto 2 lines as well

            Author
            Date
            • 05.02.2016 - 06.02.2016
            Keywords
            Description
            • This installation displays different sortes of cages we found in Zurich and Hong Kong:

              Inside, outside, mental, physical cage.

              On the audio track we added personal reflections by the participants of the project while they were visiting the opposite location.
            Copyright holder
            • ZHdK
            type
            Study path
            Project title in German
            • Reflecting Locations
            Lecturer / head of project
            • Birk Weiberg, Linda Lai, Lee Kai Chung and Thomas Schärer
            Imported on
            03.03.2016
            Parent sets
            1

            • Cages

              Picture: Cages

              Name that can easily go onto 2 lines

              Author that can easily go onto 2 lines as well

              Author
              Date
              • 05.02.2016 - 06.02.2016
              Keywords
              Description
              • This installation displays different sortes of cages we found in Zurich and Hong Kong:

                Inside, outside, mental, physical cage.

                On the audio track we added personal reflections by the participants of the project while they were visiting the opposite location.
              Copyright holder
              • ZHdK
              type
              Study path
              Project title in German
              • Reflecting Locations
              Lecturer / head of project
              • Birk Weiberg, Linda Lai, Lee Kai Chung and Thomas Schärer
              Imported on
              03.03.2016
              Parent sets
              1

              • Cages

                Picture: Cages

                Name that can easily go onto 2 lines

                Author that can easily go onto 2 lines as well

                Author
                Date
                • 05.02.2016 - 06.02.2016
                Keywords
                Description
                • This installation displays different sortes of cages we found in Zurich and Hong Kong:

                  Inside, outside, mental, physical cage.

                  On the audio track we added personal reflections by the participants of the project while they were visiting the opposite location.
                Copyright holder
                • ZHdK
                type
                Study path
                Project title in German
                • Reflecting Locations
                Lecturer / head of project
                • Birk Weiberg, Linda Lai, Lee Kai Chung and Thomas Schärer
                Imported on
                03.03.2016
                Parent sets
                1

                • Off the Map

                  Picture: Off the Map

                  Name that can easily go onto 2 lines

                  Author that can easily go onto 2 lines as well

                  Author
                  Date
                  • 05.02.2016 - 06.02.2016
                  Keywords
                  Description
                  • Driven by the desire to play with our everyday
                    and trusted places, we decided to have a psychogeographic game.

                    We superimposed the map of Zurich on the map of Hong Kong and vice versa in order to find our own worlds in the other. The identical scales allowed us to transfer places of personal relevance to the the other city while preserving the original distances.

                    Both of us chose five places:
                    1. the house we live in
                    2. the school where we study
                    3. the film shop where we buy our supplies as photographers
                    4. our favourite street
                    5. our favourite bar
                  Copyright holder
                  • ZHdK
                  type
                  Study path
                  Project title in German
                  • Reflecting Locations
                  Lecturer / head of project
                  • Birk Weiberg, Linda Lai, Lee Kai Chung and Thomas Schärer
                  Imported on
                  03.03.2016
                  Parent sets
                  1
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