Interview Adele Röder englisch by Haus der Kunst

Nairy Baghramian Beliebte Stellen / Privileged Points, 2011 Metallstange, Lack / metal rods, lacquer, 3 Teile / parts, 48 × 61 × 14.5, 83 × 96 × 19 cm, 90 × 100 × 20 cm Installationsansicht / installation view, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Mariana Castillo Deball

mian Beliebte Stellen / Privileged Points, 2011 Metallstange, Lack / metal rods, lacquer, 3 Teile / parts, 48 × 61 × 14.5, 83 × 96 × 19 cm, 90 × 100 × 20 cm Installationsansicht / installation view, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Aquí el hombre se enfloró la cabeza (Here the man embellished his head with flowers), 2011 Wandzeichnung, Tusche / wall drawing, indian ink, 560 × 400 cm Ausstellungsansicht / exhibition view: We are Silently Illiterate, Galerie Wien Lukatsch, Berlin

Auswechselbare Polyesterfolie (3 Teile), Öl auf Mylar in Leuchtkasten / inter-

changeable mylar (3 parts), oil on mylar with lightbox, 220 × 355 × 38 cm Photo: Uwe Walter Copyright: Kerstin Brätsch Courtesy: Kerstin Brätsch, Balice Hertling, ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)

Papiermaché, Aluminiumdraht, Laserdrucke /

paper mâché, aluminum wire, laser prints, 300 × 285 × 130 cm Aquí el hombre se enfloró la cabeza (Here the man embellished his head with flowers), 2011 Wandzeichnung, Tusche / wall drawing, indian ink, 560 × 400 cm Ausstellungsansicht / exhibition view: We are Silently Illiterate, Galerie Wien Lukatsch, Berlin

Auswechselbare Polyesterfolie (3 Teile), Öl auf Mylar in Leuchtkasten / inter-

Photo: Nick Ash Copyright: Mariana Castillo Deball Courtesy: Galerie Wien Lukatsch, Berlin

Cyprien Gaillard

UNITED BROTHERS, 2012 Digitaldruck auf Tapete / digital print

Kerstin Brätsch, Upright Tanning, 2012 Aus der Serie / from the series: Glow Rod Tanning für / for DAS INSTITUT & UNITED BROTHERS

Reflejo de cien espejos tu cuerpo (Like a hundred mirrors, I reflect your body), 2011

Kerstin Brätsch, Upright Tanning, 2012 Aus der Serie / from the series: Glow Rod Tanning für / for DAS INSTITUT & UNITED BROTHERS

Adele Röder, COMCORRÖDER 50 50 wallpaper for DAS INSTITUT &

DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder)

Photo: Mariana Castillo Deball Copyright: Mariana Castillo Deball Courtesy: Galerie Wien Lukatsch, Berlin

UT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder)

fig. 4 & 5 fig. 4& 5 DAS INSTITUT DAS INSTITUT INSTITUT with Viola Ye¸siltaç, DAS with Viola Ye¸siltaç, 2011 ViolaViola / Viola with Ye¸sGhost, iltaç, 2011 Viola / Viola Aus der SerieGhost, / from2011 the series: Viola / Viola Ghost, Aus der Serie / from the It Won’t Be Me When You See/ Me Again Aus der Serie from the series: You See Me 35-mmWhen Diaprojektion / slide projection, series: When You See Again It Won’t Be MeMe Maße variabel / dimensions Again It Diaprojektion Won’t Be Me / slide variable 35mm Photo: DAS INSTITUT, Lucas Knipscher, 35mm Diaprojektion / slide / projection, Yola Monakhov,Maße Viola Ye¸variabel siltaç Maße / projection, Copyright: Adele Röder,variabel Kerstin Brätsch dimensions variable dimensions Courtesy: Balice variable Hertling and the artists

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DAS INSTITUT with Viola Ye¸siltaç, Viola / Viola Ghost, 2011 Aus der Serie / from the series: When You See Me Again It Won’t Be Me 35-mm Diaprojektion / slide projection, Maße variabel / dimensions variable

5 5 New Picturesque, 2012 6 Postkarten, Papier / 6 postcards, paper, gerahmt / framed, 20.5 × 28.5 cm

Photo: DAS INSTITUT, Lucas Knipscher, Yola Monakhov, Viola Ye¸siltaç Copyright: Adele Röder, Kerstin Brätsch fig. 6 & 7 fig. 6 & 7 Courtesy: Balice Hertling and the artists

Photo: Jochen Arentzen Copyright: Cyprien Gaillard Courtesy: Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Adele fig. 6Röder, & 7 Adele Röder, COMCORRÖDER COMCORRÖDER Adele Röder, Röder, Adele COMCORRÖDER for DAS wallpaper forwallpaper DAS COMCORRÖDER wallpaper for DAS INSTITUT & INSTITUT & UNITED INSTITUT & UNITED wallpaper for DAS UNITED BROTHERS, 2012 BROTHERS, 2012 BROTHERS, 2012 INSTITUT & UNITED Digitaldruck auf Tapete / digital print Digitaldruck Digitaldruck auf Tapete / auf Tapete / BROTHERS, 2012 on wallpaper, 528 x 442 cm digital print on digital print on wallpaper, Digitaldruck auf Tapete / wallpaper, Copyright: Adele Röder 528 442 cm 528 × 442print cm digital on×wallpaper, Courtesy: Adele Röder Detailansicht / detail view / detail view 528 × 442 Detailansicht cm Detailansicht / detail view

Dani Gal Architecture Regarding the Future of Conversations, 2008

Holz, Plattenspieler, Schallplatten, Bewegungsmelder, Lautsprecher, Siebdruck (gerahmt) / wood, record player,

records, movement sensors, loudspeakers, silkscreen print (framed), Maße variabel / dimensions variable

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DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder) DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder) DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder)

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9 9

DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder)

Nairy Baghramian Fluffing the Pillows, 2012

Stoff, Gummi, Kunstleder, Hanfseil, verchromte Stange, lackierter Aluminiumguss /

fabric, rubber, pleather, hemp rope, chromed pole, casted painted aluminum Installationsmaße variabel / installed dimensions variable (1 Behälter / silo: 50 × 90 × 130 cm, 1 Trage / gurney: 200 × 56 × 6 cm, 1 Halterung / mooring: 101 × 52 × 20.5 cm) Installationsansicht / installation view, Galerie Buchholz, Köln

UT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder)

fig. 8 fig. 8 fig. 8 Röder for Adele Röder for Adele AdeleINSTITUT Röder for for DAS Adele Röder DAS DAS & INSTITUT INSTITUT&& DAS INSTITUT & UNITED BROTHERS, Blacky Blocked UNITED BROTHERS, UNITED BROTHERS, Radiants Sunbathed Banner for Iwaki Dance Blacky Blocked Radiants Blacky Blocked Radiants Blacky Blocked Radiants Festival, 2011 Sunbathed Banner Sunbathed for Banner for Sunbathed Banner for / digital Digitaldruck auf Seide on silk, Iwaki Dance Festival, Iwaki Danceprint Festival, Iwaki Dance 990 × 135 cmFestival, 2011 2011 2011 Installationsansicht / installation view, Digitaldruck auf Seide Digitaldruck / auf Seide / Digitaldruck Seide / print on silk, Kunstverein München digital print auf on silk, digital digital print Photo: Gebert 990 ×Ulrich 135 cmon silk, 990 × 135 cm 990 × 135 cm Copyright: Adele Röder Installationsansicht Installationsansicht / / Courtesy: Adele Röder Installationsansicht / installation view installation view installation view DAS INSTITUT Blocked Radiants (for 52 52Ioana), 2012 Installationsansicht / installation view: 52 The Painting Factory, Abstraction after Warhol, MOCA, LA

Fluffing the Pillows, 2012

Lackierter Aluminiumguss, Stoff, Gummi, Kunstleder, Hanfseil, verchromte Stange /

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Adele Röder for DAS INSTITUT & UNITED BROTHERS, Blacky Blocked Radiants Sunbathed Banner for Iwaki Dance Festival, 2011 Digitaldruck auf Seide / digital print on silk, 990 × 135 cm Installationsansicht / installation view, Kunstverein München Photo: Ulrich Gebert Copyright: Adele Röder Courtesy: Adele Röder

fig. 9 DAS INSTITUT INSTITUT DAS Blocked Radiants Radiants (for Ioana), 2012 Blocked (for Ioana), 2012 fig./ 9 Installationsansicht installation view: DAS INSTITUT Installationsansicht / Abstraction The Painting Factory, after Blocked Radiants installation view Warhol, MOCA, LA (for Ioana), 2012 Photo: Brian Forrest Installationsansicht / Copyright: Kerstin Brätsch, Adele Röder installation view 53 Courtesy: MOCA and the artists

casted painted aluminum, fabric, rubber, DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder) pleather, hemp rope, chromed pole Installationsmaße variabel / installed dimensions variable (1 Halterung / mooring: DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder) 109 × 59 × 24.5 cm, 3 Behälter / silos: Mariana Castillo Deball 42 × 230 × 83 cm, 54 × 120 × 80 cm, 55 × 230 × 108 cm, 2 Tragen / gurneys:

The three layers are illuminated from behind by neon tubes in a light box. Why? My intention is to expose the painting to something it can’t actually tolerate. The light box is equivalent to a kind of “hospital for painting,” a test space within which the image is anatomized. We are witnesses to its vulnerability—you can see foot- and fingerprints, streaks, hair, dirt and traces of wear and tear. These “apparent images” oscillate phantom-like between banal bus-stop advertising and painting mausoleum.

Interview with Adele Röder & Kerstin Brätsch (DAS INSTITUT) by Patrizia Dander DAS INSTITUT (DI) is often associated with artistic (self-)marketing strategies and branding. You tend to reject this reading. How would you describe DI?

In your work there’s a constant fluctuation between an analytical, conceptual view of painting and a surrender to processes immanent in the medium.

DI is an entity as which and for which we have been working since 2007. It emerged from an ongoing interchange and the wish to establish a dimension that Brätsch and Röder could occupy simultaneously, that was open to the world, and could encompass different figures, situations, and structures (or phenomena and people). Our respective work forms the background for that of the other. DI is the writing tool that can transpose Ä and Ö. DI is also Räder und Brötsch.

This liminality is exactly what interests me. The contradiction is already formulated in the image. It is as ironic as it is vulnerable, as much of a pose as it is meant seriously. Images can’t be viewed today without a context—I want to subject the definition of image to a process of expansion. This also means that you’re continually extending the contexts in which your paintings are used—recently as elements of performances. What are you concerned with here?

Is this about disbanding clear ascriptions? DI is our vehicle for developing a non-definable practice in which medium, subject, and object blur into one another. A tremendous multiplication (and thus creation, concealment, and endless annihilation) of the self. DI means becoming the phantom. DI is a court jester (irony and self-reflection).

I’m interested in the relationship between process and product, whereby the product is painting. The process, on the other hand, is kept open enough to be able to include studio work, collaborations, and participations of various kinds. Through the performative activation of the image and the creation of contexts, painting becomes a social body, the matter of a community.

In terms of content you’re interested in different ways of approaching images—with painting, or more generally with signs. What are the issues DI is concerned with? What is a painting? What is a digital de-sign? What is a sign? What is en-sign?

Adele, in contrast to Kerstin you work with digital means. For two series you only used the tools of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator—not to process existing images, but to create new images/designs. Why? Because I only use the elements in the program, I don’t really make a Photoshop “image” any more, but turn the program as such into a tool. The point is to use the specificity and substantiality of the program in order to be able to go beyond this into the non-apparent and unknown.

Kerstin, what was the starting point for your Mylar paintings, on transparent polyester film? Generally speaking, an interest in establishing a serial system within painting that is a call to override the individual with the social. The underlying question is: How can I show that painting is a (social) body? When Franco Berardi speaks about the problem of the body, he refers to our current inability to experience emotional, not merely intellectual, solidarity through taking pleasure in the body (also space) of others. (Aesthetics: from αίσθάνοµαι aisthanomai: “I perceive, I feel, I sense.”) The Mylars are a search for the possibility of expressing physicality in and through the image. They are temporary painting objects that embody a perseverance in an in-between state—since they are permanently alterable. I’m interested in a declination of the body, without illustrating it. The movement of the hand initially brings about a three-dimensionality in the brushstroke, and this accumulation of effects gives rise to body-like remnants: fish bones, spines, ribs, feathers . . . These “effect samples” then coalesce into grotesque anthropomorphic or mask-like formations (quasi psychics). Then follows a relative component: the assembly of the image from three different levels. And finally it exists within a social environment, in a performative extension through collaboration or activation. I’m interested in a demystification of painting, and at the same time I want this quasi canvas to be able to develop a witch-like humor. The body of the painting is a predominantly magical notion, and is degraded and ill-treated—for example in performances or the extended active scope of images.

While Kerstin is interested in directness and physicality, your digital designs are characteristically cool. Is that intended? It’s true that the physical is important to Kerstin, and to me the exact opposite, the ephemeral. And that’s probably what comes across from the work. What does ephemeral mean in this context? For me it’s about a call for immateriality; using materials/objects/persons/encounters to find a form for working immaterially. How can I produce something that is materialized but not matter? How can I produce objects that don’t illustrate a condition but are the condition or notion? I’m not interested in the object per se; I see it as a screen on which to project a psychic space. Every embodiment, every materialization is speculative, manifests a temporary moment, has a hypothetical past and future, and is the possible development of an idea. It’s about self-scattering and claiming the disembodied as a potent space, not as negative hysteria. Ephemeral doesn’t mean to elude, but to mutate. Every step points to the next and the one before, which are always present as phantoms. This way of thinking appears in virtual space. The basic element of the digital is projection. How can I use this mode, unfold the virtual in multiple forms, and project its ephemerality onto different social spaces? Is it possible to cultivate a universal presence or form of appearance?

Your Mylar paintings are presented in layers of three. But the order isn’t determined by you.

What does universal presence mean for you?

The three-part Mylars only exist in variable configurations. The idea behind this is a deconstruction of the image, but also an image that can continually change; a reversible figure. The work is only completed when the “user” (re-)assembles it. This creates, and not only implies, a real space for response.

DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder)

I don’t allude to modernist concepts, such as the Gesamtkunstwerk or the Bauhaus, or to capitalist branding. Ignoring the boundaries between genres is one possibility to situate yourself where the non-functional, the unnamable, and the non-logocentric can exist. A place of instability, ambivalence, and circularity as the site of connection and relating to the world. 57

How did you come to use fabrics as image carriers? I was looking for a flexible way of working, where the form of the object was connected to the moment and could shift. Fabric is material, but it opens out in many directions; it’s potentially transformative. What’s important to me is that in whatever form it always refers to human existence. The media I use aren’t exclusive however; they’re variable tools. I work with a specificity of thought and a non-specificity of practice. Basically, my work is homeless. The idea of homelessness means that I allow space to generate ideas without (initially) thinking about materiality.

Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Deutschland

Redaktion / Editing

Eine Ausstellung des ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Stuttgart, Deutschland /

Louisa Schmitt

Contemporary Art from Germany

An exhibition by the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Stuttgart, Germany www.ifa.de

Do you see your designs as ideas that can be temporarily reproduced on different media? Not only does one and the same sign system mutate in endless transformations and distortions on different information carriers; the identity of the motif itself also shifts (from abstraction to symbol to pattern), pressing itself into differing contexts or hovering above them.

Lisa Berndt, Sabina Husiˇci´c

Redaktionelle Assistenz / Editorial assistance Lektorat / Copyediting Tanja Milewsky (Deutsch / German), Greg Bond (Englisch / English)

Englische Übersetzung / English translation Burke Barrett, Greg Bond, Chris Michalski, Andrea Scrima, Michael Turnbull Deutsche Übersetzung / German translation

A number of the things we’ve been talking about come together in Viola /Viola Ghost (V/VG): the “transformation” of Adele’s fabrics in the sense of shifting identities; the phantom nature of painting; but also references to art history, particularly old-master portraits and vanitas motifs, and thus an oscillation between original and imitation. What is V/VG for you?

Stefan Barmann Verantwortlich / Responsible

Elke aus dem Moore

Kuratoren / Curators Angelika Stepken, Philipp Ziegler

This series of slides is a holistic discourse and positioning on photography, painting (portraits/panel painting), object, body, gender role, advertising, jewelry and design, cartoons, character and the grotesque, a deforming illusion, trompe l’oeil . . . It’s neither nor, and yet everything.

Realisation und Organisation /

Realization and Organization Lisa Berndt

Technische Realisierung / Technical Realization

Matthias Merker

Gestaltung und Satz / Graphic design and layout Axel Feldmann, Luca Rosean, objectif Verlagsherstellung / Production Martina Buder, Verlag für moderne Kunst Schrift / Font

F-Grotesk, Plantin

Druck und Bindung / Printing and binding DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg GmbH, Altenburg

Herausgegeben von / Published by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. (ifa), Stuttgart, Deutschland / Germany; Elke aus dem Moore www.ifa.de im / in

Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg GmbH Königstraße 73 90402 Nürnberg Deutschland / Germany Tel. +49 911 23 73 100 0 Fax +49 911 23 73 100 99 www.vfmk.de

Verlag für moderne Kunst books are available internationally at selected bookstores. For more information about our distribution partners, please visit our homepage at www.vfmk.de. Buchhandelsausgabe / Trade edition: Gebunden /

Hardcover, ISBN 978-3-86984-453-4

Museumsausgabe / Museum edition: Broschur /

Texte / Texts Jennifer Allen, Dirk Baecker, Angelika Stepken, Joseph Vogl, Philipp Ziegler

Printed in Germany

Interviews mit den Künstlerinnen und Künstlern /

Interviews with the artists John Beeson, Patrizia Dander, Hans-Jürgen Hafner, Elke aus dem Moore, Kito Nedo, Susanne Pfeffer, Bert Rebhandl, Angelika Stepken, Astrid Wege, Adnan Yıldız, Philipp Ziegler

reproduced works by the artists, unless otherwise stated (see list of works); VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn for Antje Majewski, Nasan Tur, Clemens von Wedemeyer

Konzeption / Concept

Angelika Stepken, Philipp Ziegler

DAS INSTITUT (Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder)

244

Softcover

Das ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) wird gefördert vom Auswärtigen Amt, dem Land Baden-Württemberg und der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart.

The ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) is funded by the German Foreign Office, the State of Baden-Württemberg and the City of Stuttgart.