Chorus / in vain I will away (artist statement)

Birgit R. Deubner

Chorus / in vain I will away

medium: c-type photographic print

size: full and half size editions are available

More information:

It began with Dante's Divine Comedy.. images of purgatory and hell...

Primary concerns within this work are the artist’s long-term involvement in working with the body in unconventional ways; a conversation with classical painting; a keen interest in political / societal concerns developed from an engagement with folk tales, mythology and religious parables.

To me the work is politically informed, the value of being human, the ease with which humanity is lost, dehumanizing takes place all too easily, and normality is in state of flux in which loss of identity of another easily occurs un-noticed, un-objected. My personal fear is fed when I perceive the fragility of an individual in society but I live with an undercurrent of optimism with which I believe in the strength of the potentially same individuals.

Another political position of the work is its engagement with the female body searching for ways of claiming it as universally significant body not representative of female concerns but universally human concerns. Attempting to distance a female body from the; easily falling into narrow enclosures of; feminist discourse is generally a problematic endeavor, but I am searching for ways to speak about humanity without falling into league with a gender camp. Of course feminism is in this time of recession a concern of refreshed urgency.

This project is trying to address a universal aspect of timeless and also very contemporary human condition.

Be it the literary journey of Dante through purgatory and the circles of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy or parallels in contemporary life, the ugly and the beauty of human experience and capability.

I don’t think I propose answers or fixed positions in my work, rather questions, observations, sometimes serious, at other times with elements of humor. I search and I always find more question which lead to further searches. I work at highest possible quality across a spectrum of mediums, incorporating drawing, film, photography, installation, light, ambience. I locate my practice in concerns rather than a particular medium.

If you have more questions about the work or if you are interested in the project for exhibition or purchase please contact me; birgitdeubner@gmx.net

"Wish we were where?"

performance / intervention for ArtSide in Southend On Sea, 18th July 2010

Goldsmiths Final Show / INVITATION

MFA Final Show

8th July

6PM

until Monday 12th July 7pm.

come!

Life Alone by Maisie Crowe

Life Along (click)

inches to centimeters!

http://www.asknumbers.com/InchesToCentimetersConversion.aspx

Last Seminar / the path of recent work development + influences

Butoh:

January

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March - May :

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choosing / deciding / trying:

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after initially thinking about a grand sized photographic composition resembling a National Gallery classical painting (thinking of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa and Ribera & Zurbaran's use of shadow and contrast (al la Caravagio) as reference;

I moved on to considering wallpaper for a possible installation also utilizing sound (human-animal, gutteral, breathing, out of breath, dark type sound):

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I decided that I have very strong images and a lot of strong options with correctable flaws, so I am re-staging several poses for the project. I have 2 more photo studio appointments that are in time for preparations and 2 more in June which I don't want to use for creating work for the show but rather tie up loose ends as from June 26th or so the photo studio will close.

May:

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and I was especially happy with this one:

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purgatorial = Dante's Divine Comedy

Juiseppe Ribera:

'Apollo flaying Marsayas': In the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, the terms stated that the winner could treat the defeated party any way he wanted. Since the contest was judged by theMuses,^[7] Marsyas naturally lost and was flayed alive in a cave near Celaenae for his hubristo challenge a god. Apollo then nailed Marsyas' skin to a pine tree,^[8] near Lake Aulocrene (the Turkish Karakuyu Gölü), which Strabo noted was full of the reeds from which the pipes were fashioned (info)

St Francis of Assissi / Zurbaran

Francisco de Zurbarán (November 7, 1598 – August 27, 1664) was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes.

Chiaroscuro (kiːˈɑːrə.ˈskʊroʊ, –ˈskjʊroʊ, Italian for light-dark) in art is characterized by strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for using contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects such as the human body.

Gericault - the Raft of the Medusa

... At least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation, dehydration, cannibalism and madness. ...

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notes to self:

Charon (ferrying the dead)

Spanish Inquisition

on a different note: Vishvamitra

some fragments of notes:

Butoh

link to Butoh images (from this blog)

Human / De-human

human as human commoditiy

human waste

non-identity / identity as priviledge

Zygmunt Bauman: Wasted Lives, Modernity and its Outcasts

human condition

beauty / non beauty - currently in conflict with impulse to beautify when actually addressing the non-beautiful ...

security as priviledge, withdrawn at will

State of Exemption (Giorgio Agamben)

woman = object of desire = object

personal experience when I became the 'object', object of desire in equal measures to object of despise and object of all and no value; ownable commodity, the devil's accomplice, despised object, the object that should comply and aid relief, object that should obey, should not have the right to choose.

islam (+ other orthodox faiths) = reduction of woman from human to woman

my speculation: women's rights & equality = a temporary allowance mostly bestowed upon the wealthy, to be revoked first of the poor

purgatory existence of humans who feed the consumer lifestyle which feeds itself, which expels growing numbers of humans into the human waste category...

Concerns with societal issues ranging from civil liberty rights losses to 1984 Orwellian Present rather than Future, human as commodity and expelled as waste. (I.e. violations of human rights, human rights in themselves no longer of interest as not complying with consumer culture. globalization does not profit from rights and I speculate it is about to collapse in it's present form)

abolition of slavery = myth = slavery a contemporary reality and western society, consumerism relies on this condition.

New Project (b)

New Project

I am still working on this project, this is the first completed image.

I am working on several solutions: an installation,

a large composition as well as individual images.

Wangechi Mutus

"Es geht nicht darum, Dinge auf eine originelle oder ungewöhnliche Weise in etwas Neues zu verwandeln", hat Wangechi Mutu in einem Interview für das Deutsche Guggenheim Magazine erklärt. "Es geht darum, keine Wahl zu haben, darum, ein halbwegs menschliches Leben zu führen, während einem die Menschlichkeit ständig abgesprochen wird.

Es geht darum, sich ein behagliches Heim einzurichten, während die Welt da draußen dir signalisiert, dass du eigentlich ein Krimineller oder ein Tier sein sollst. Ich versuche deshalb auch nicht, einfach so aus Spaß die Dinge nach 'Ghetto' aussehen zu lassen. Ich versuche vielmehr herauszufinden, was an diesem Impuls menschlich zu bleiben auch für diejenigen interessant ist, die nicht in dieser Armut leben müssen. Tatsächlich bin ich überzeugt, dass wir von dieser Denkweise lernen können."

Take me to Mongolia

a record of another trip through HIghlands, Lowlands, the Taklamakan and jungles, maybe even a transformation from random to certain. (who'd want such a thing!?)

You will probably find accounts of escapism

You are likely to witness my fumbling for and re-defining THAT elusive sense of purpose as a human and lover and artist.

The yellow Wallpaper

...Firstly, to the story itself. The narrative voice is a repressed woman of the late 19th century, locked in a room with horrid yellow wallpaper, expected by her husband to recover from a mysterious sickness. The more time she spends in this prison, desperate to write, the more disturbed she becomes, until she begins to see a woman crawling within the wallpaper. This is both a study of psychology and a look into the position of women of the period. ...

visa policies madness?

Let's see if I get this right: taxpayers pay taxes to the government, government distributes money to art funding, funding is thus given to project involving 19 artists from Iraq for first major show of Iraqi artists in UK.

Then Government denies artists entry (after £10.000 of aforementioned funding - government money - paid by taxpayers- is already spend on flights, hotels and visa application fees..) because they can not prove a stable bank account - now get this: because same government helped blast Iraq infrastructure.. anyone awake (in government)? What a waste of money, and I don't mean the artist's work nor the Cornerhouse for curating such a show...

23/04/2010

H2O

WATER

producing

it is very curious how exhausting it is to spend a couple of hours taking photographs in a photo studio!

Sheds / research