SHOPPING IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Four different territories under occupation by different countries at different times between 1945 and nowadays: - Western Sahara - North-eastern Germany - Northern Czech Republic 21
(previous page) 1945-1992 digital photography 22
Western Sahara
Book of Wisdom 2014 henna on pergamin and leather cover with wooll thread 19 x 14 x 3 cm 26
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Blanket for allergic westerners 2014 dust of the dessert and henna on white cotton cloth (waved, sowed and tinted in the dessert by african hands) 160 x 75 cm 28
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North-eastern Germany
RE-F-LECTED NEIGHBOURHOOD Since the summer of 2015 I had been searching for the remains of textile factories in the territory of the former GDR. On a small country road I accidentally came across some military barracks, enormous, elongated and abandoned long ago almost hidden by trees and brushwood surrounding them. They belonged to some 10.000 soldiers and their families had been living here on a former air base during the Soviet occupation basically in complete isolation from their surroundings. I jumped the barriers and ran all over the place, immense and silent, soothened by the color of the German autumn. I approached the main barrack building and looked at it from the front. It had the same shape as the humble houses in the villages spread around the fertile soils in the surroundings. In spite of the broken windows its interior was dimly and full of dust. The walls in their different shades of faded turquoise green stressed the impression of desolateness of the rooms in decay. Everything was falling apart: the ceilings, the wallpainting, the windows. A crackling noise from my steps on the broken glass accompanied me walking along. And from the outside sometimes a mellow croak came to my ears from the nearby pond. Some sign of life and regeneration. An eternal hallway of quadrangular section, hypnotizing, with countless rooms on its left and right, displayed in perfect symmetry. I was thinking of those thousands of Soviet families confined into this arquitecture made by a regime measure, not human tailor made, while shooting videos and pictures at the same time. A profound sensation of loss slowly slowly crept over me: the repetitive alignment of space as the loss of individual identity. And the collocation of the rooms mirroring each other as the impossibleness to see yourself reflected in your counterpart. Or the negation of empathy.
The grain 2015 Digital photography of a flowerpot with soil and glass particles collected in the military barracks. Narcissus without reflection 2017 (detail, next page) 38
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Five energy efficient houses 2015 Bedroom 2015 video still audio 3�
five glass containers from the german kitchens of the 50s recycled paper from catalogue with new architecture programs in Germany five energy efficient light bulbs 48
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Jung said, it is closest to being a human 2017 acrylic and water color on circular hand made paper and collage serie of six 50 x 40 cm. 50
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Latched 2017 (A cal y canto 2017) digital photography lacquered metal in red and green back side of mirror 25 x 27 x 10 cm.
Impossible symmetries 2017 red and green colored pencil on recycled paper serie of three
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Northern Czech Republic
KAF
KAFKAS FABRIKEN One early autumn evening some friends who also live in Berlin came to have dinner with us. The exhibition of my Textum project in Spain had just closed and they knew about it. One of them being aware of my interest for the world of textiles as a symbol for communication and the creation of the word had brought a little book along wiht him. It was an interesting narration about young Kafka and his work as an insurance clerk with the textile factories in one-time Bohemia. Both aspects of the book incited me to take my camera and go searching for what might have been left of these factories. Interestingly it is a region in now Chechia neighboring Poland and Germany which has been invaded and occupied at different times by various powers. And that is where I have been taking some of these pictures.
Kafkas Fabriken 2015 videostill digital video 66
Also sprach Kafka 2015 digital photography serie of eight (next six pages) 67
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Berlin
I AM YOU
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SAPIENS DOMINABITUR ORBI (I AM YOU) Every day when leaving the house I find myself facing the side panel of a Berlin night bus line shelter. It is one of those glass framed postersites of large size. I usually give it a glimpse when passing by because I like the rectangular cut in the perspective of the large and empty boardwalk. I don’t use to look at the advertisements themselves, but one day it featured a poster with an enormous bold white copy on red background which immediately caught my attention: I AM YOU.* I stood still, petrified. I came closer and read attentively the further copy which appeared on the red background, perfectly laid out. And those sentences expressed exactly what I felt. As well liberty, as well revolution as well the injustice. The following day I went to see it again, but it had disappeared: somebody had shattered the security glass panel which protected the poster and torn it apart. The site had been safeguarded early in the morning. Its message had been overwhelmingly strong, as it appeared, overwhelmingly direct or provocative. Somebody did not want to be me. Somebody did not want to be You. But the particles of broken glass were left over and so I collected some of them very carefully and brought them to my studio. By time these glass particles became part of this series with the same title: I am You.
* poster for the exhibition: Gordon Parks selected works 1942 - 1972 at C|O Berlin in autumn 2016
Sapiens dominabitur orbi 2015-2017 Image: Berlin skyline and globe made in the GDR digital photography serie of three
You are wanted 2017digital photography unlimited serie, work in progress
I am You 2017 framed poster publicity glass particles from the broken postersite panel 20 x 15 cm. (next page)
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Berlin, Schmelzen 2017 digital photography 80
Thaw 2017 (I am You) glass particles on circular handmade paper serie of two 21 cm. diameter 81
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Pilar Millán is a visual artist based in Berlin. Her projects are developed in the form of multidisciplinary researches around the subject of boarders - cultural, economic, political, and their impact in today’s society. From a transcultural perspective, her work stems from the observation of transformations in industrial society’s culture, working with the landscape, the space and the community at various levels, while tracking and recovering mechanisms that generate identity and collective memory(-ies) derived from such historic processes of change, transference, juxtaposition and imposition. Myths lie often as points of departure for most of her research projects; a sort of archaeology of trascendental ideas that are inherent to humankind and their contemporary manifestations. In a material and conceptual investigation attempting to localize gaps in western systems of narration, her projects open to different participatory and collaborative processes with specific communities, being her work intrinsically linked to the places through which her fluid biography flows: Galicia, Andalucía, Cataluña, and recently the geographical boarders of former Eastern Germany), and other places she visits moved by her curricular interests, including Sahara’s territories (Algeria, Mali). This complex research approach and processes of affection find their way inside the exhibition space through several aesthetic strategies where she presents installations combining photography, video, drawing and painting, found objects and sound pieces. Her painting background (degree in Fine Arts from Seville University in 2003) leads her to pay special attention to concepts of space, rhythm, depth and composition, opening new narrative layers inside her work and allowing a multiplicity of interpretations and interactions enriched by specific collaborations with different artists on the axis of her on-going research series. The inner dynamism of such research as contemporary artistic practice reflects in a body of projects that like “Textum”, exemplify very well the multiplication of entry points to the same subject re-contextualized in time.
Since I was little I have felt a great deal of curiosity about how things start. And for the story that came later. Now I work with the challenge of trying to tell a story in contemporary terms. Only this. To tell a story. Sapiens dominabitur orbi 2015-2017 digital photography serie of three 87