switch 2017
SWITCH SWITCH CONTEMPORARY CONTEMPORARYVIDEO VIDEOART ART
JO B QVCMJD DPOUFYU JO B QVCMJD DPOUFYU edited editedby byTriona TrionaRyan, Ryan,Harald HaraldTurek Turek
Since 2008, the switch project is a continuing investigation into place, locating art in public space in a contextually focused way. International film and video artworks are back projected for one week onto the windows of shops and other spaces throughout the town. switch locates itself outside of the big city and applies itself to the rhythm of smaller places. The film events initiate conversations between artworks and their sites.
artists and audiences,
Now in its 9th year, switch is an artist-led project funded & supported by the Tipperary Arts Office.
Foreward 2017
Who can forget the impression of seeing the landscaped metropolis of Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner for the first time? The densified, dystopian future complete with building-sized video screens mounted on tower blocks or on floating airships, selling us Pan Am or Coca Cola or trips to the Outer-worlds. Those screens may have represented the dystopic overload of viral advertising, saturat-ing all our futures, but to a teenage boy from the market town of Omagh, they were a de-fining idea of the architecture of the future that I wanted. Now. Switch You are In Nenagh. And It’s 2017. And its night-time. You are dandering down the street, maybe on your way back from seeing Bladerunner 2049 at the Ormond Cineplex, in Summerhill and Switch. : Change the position, direction, or focus You pause. Hijacked. Switch : An act of changing to or adopting one thing in place of another. Vacant premises have been swopped for mini-cinemas. Again. Your town is once again animated by… Switch : A device for making and breaking the connection in an electric circuit. And maybe this time you connect. Either to one of the eight new films, from this years se-lected artist, Holger Mohaupt or to a half forgotten memory of a previous favourite… The girl on the swing, the slow motion sack race or that older lady, remember?
Mouthing words we could not hear, words that could have enlivened, inspired, empow-ered us, but we were not listening hard enough, we were disconnected from Iris, as we are from each other, and from ourselves. That work was perfect in its failure. It connected us to the failure to connect to each other. To speak of the things that need to be heard. The screen was both a porthole to another world and a barrier, a fourth wall, a metaphor for all our connections and disconnections. A screen of rolled buttermilk on glass, its skin like her skin, blemished, textured, uneven, imperfect: perfect. Switch: an event where film and video artworks from across the world are back-projected onto the win-dows of shops and other spaces throughout the town of Nenagh, Ireland. For a fleeting moment these works offer a glimpse of the artists insistence in another way of looking, of looking at looking and pausing to dwell on the detail of things. And that’s a struggle, even in the relatively small and slowed scale of Nenagh, the publicness of such delicate sentiment gets lost in the traffic and distractions of the everyday, every night. So this year, take the time to pause and reflect on these reflections. For as someone once said all these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Peter McCaughey
Bones of the Earth
2016, HD, 2:29
A visceral poetic experience of movement across landscape where dark rock, sea and sky collide. Holger Mohaupt
Bucket & Trowel
2017, HD, 5:24
“Bucket & Trowel� is a homage to skill, communication and craft. The setting is a building site in the Ruhr valley in the West of Germany where a group of men from North Africa, Asia and Europe perform a mesmerizing delivery of their trade that transcends any border or language.
Private View
2017, HD, 4:55
Minute narratives carefully framed from memorial benches in and around an old seaside town in East Lothian. The artist is interested in exploring how landscape is informing people’s memory, not only of the landscape itself, but the people they connect to that experience.
gleichzeitig davor - Static
2017, HD, 4:10
“I wanted something ephemeral, that makes people dream and talk, and that would be all, the next day nothing would be left, everything would go back to the garbage bins�. Jean Tiguely
Wartestellen / Waiting Sites
2015, HD, 5:38
A monochromatic observation of place, time and navigation, focussing on what people do before they do something.
Not One is Forgotten
2016, HD, 1:20
A short film inspired by the Scottish naturalist John Muir, who regularly climbed to the top of trees and riding them for hours through wild storms. “The winds go to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed bole. They seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure result.� John Muir, from: A Wind-storm in the Forests
Rescued
2010, 16mm, HD, 2:26
Rescued is a short film by Holger Mohaupt shot in 16mm black & white film. It emerged from cans of damaged filmstock shot on journey to Tarifa in the South of Spain with fellow artist Simon Starling in 2001. It was made into a film during an on-line residency with “this is central station” / thisiscentralstation.com. The residency was part of ‘Social Landscape’, an on-line collaboration between David Zérah & Holger Mohaupt. The project was curated in 2010 by Patricia Fleming for Glasgow International Festival and Rennes Biennale in France.
Strawberry or Vanilla
2016, HD, 20:34
A Scottish seaside town with a van and an ice cream seller. Tidal changes of life filling the saltire flags on the beach. Queues of wooly hats in winter, tight superman T-shirt meets Goretex dad. Regular adventures in a landscape where nothing happens in saturated shades of blue and brown. The film was co-directed by Tracey Fearnehough.
Holger Mohaupt is an artist and filmmaker. Born in Germany, Holger studied visual communication and anthropology at the Art Academy in Hamburg. After a postgraduate diploma in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee Holger settled down in Scotland. His distinct lens-based work has been exhibited internationally at festivals and in galleries and broadcast on TV. His research practice is focused on place, memory, landscape and immersive technologies. He is recipient of the New Media Scotland Award and is currently working on a new digital film project called ‘Invisible Landscapes’. Holger Mohaupt, 12th October 2017
edited by Triona Ryan & Harald Turek, © 2017 switch & Holger Mohaupt published by switch 2017, www.s-w-i-t-c-h.org the switch event is co-ordinated by Triona Ryan, Harald Turek & Carol Kennedy
switch pays a special thanks to local shop owners who have supported the project by loaning the premises for the duration. the switch event is funded by
hctiws 7102
www.s-w-i-t-c-h.org