Photo Delphine Bedel, 2001
For "The Experiment 8", Delphine Bedel has been invited to stay in Vienna for a month as Artist in Residence. The central themes of her investigations in Vienna are her own continuous movement in the city, the rhythm of the city itself, and its physical and psychological boundaries. The artist conjoins urban collective memories with the respective current surroundings, thus conveying suggestive, public perspectives in an assessment of the "private gaze".
Photo Delphine Bedel, 2001
Bedel places her artistic work in the context of a confrontation with the city and the charged fields of entertainment, public space and subjective experience. The theoretical roots of her investigations are located in Norman Klein's discourse of the "social imaginary", Lieven de Cauter's writings on the "archaeology of the kick" and his analysis of the panorama in entertainment culture.
Photo Delphine Bedel, 2001
Bedel uses an expanded text concept, which analogously considers the diverse material and imaginary signs of the city as the signs of language, making this the point of departure for possible interpretations or disclosures. According to this understanding, the text of the city includes not only writing or images, but also movement, for example, noise, entertainment and ideas of space. The question is, which readings can be applied to the city. Bedel arranges her works according to this pattern of polyvocality.
In the course of her daily forays, the process of visual and acoustic sifting and collecting that is characteristic for Bedel's work, also integrates the stories of city dwellers and their view of what is familiar. Local strategies of representation are queried in relation to concepts such as attraction, popular culture and architecture.
As a flaneur, she explores the terrain, is a researcher, wandering through the city, experiencing the city as a theme park. As a storyteller, she constantly shows viewers something, but she retreats, also in terms of narrative, behind what is seen and heard, allowing it to affect others, refraining from a value judgment or appraising commentary.
The development of her process of interpretation is reflected through the use of diverse media, from moving image to sound and text works. In addition to the poster and catalogue, in which she examines and displays text and language as seemingly socially connecting occurrences in the context of urban architecture, for her exhibition at the Secession, the artist also develops a sound and video project. In this project, the celebrated view of the panorama is linked with the attraction of the extreme vertical experience, in other words the relationship of perception and speed to entertainment and event culture.
BIOGRAPHIES
DELPHINE BEDEL(F) lives and works in Amsterdam. Her works have been exhibited in Holland (Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, 2001; Scripted Spaces, Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2000; CBK Marres, Maastricht, 2000) and Italy (Fuori uso, Pescara, 2000). In 1998 she was invited to realize a permanent work in the Ministry of Education, Hendrick Conscience Building, Brussels, Belgium. From 1994 to 1997 she was curator for the art space Etablissement d'en face in Brussels and from 1998 to 1999, Artist in Residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.
BARBARA CLAUSEN (A) lives and works as an independent curator in Amsterdam. While working as Curatorial Associate at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York from 1997 to 2000, she curated various exhibitions and screenings in Europe and the United States. After taking part in this year's Curatorial Training Programme at De Appel Stichting in Amsterdam, she curated Matthew Buckingham at Schnitt exhibition space in Cologne. She is currently engaged as co-curator for the exhibition Thin Skin for ICI (Independent Curators International) in New York and the exhibition series Cargo in Amsterdam.
PUBLICATION
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DAS EXPERIMENT
8 Delphine Bedel 6 pages authors: Delphine Bedel, Barbara Clausen, Patrick Dax, Matthias Herrmann, Carola Platzek ___________________ available in the shop |
| AUSGETRÄUMT....
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EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2001 |
For further information and photographic material please contact:
Tamara Schwarzmayr
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at