May 4 to July 6
Dorit Margreiter
zentrum
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Disappearance: one-way digital and back
In the dark of the night, two handheld spotlights cast their light on a neon sign mounted above the entrance of a modernistic, one-story building in Leipzig. Twelve smooth-edged and densely aligned letters which are almost 1 meter tall, merge in a blocky object spelling out “brühlzentrum”. The letters quickly light up one by one in the gray mise-en-scène, like sparkling fireflies. The last flickering luminance is not caused by the vertically arranged neon bulbs, but by the bundled reflections of several hundred fluorescent pieces of foil wrapped around bulbs which have crumbled to white powder on the inside. This 16mm film scene is part of Dorit Margreiter’s installation “zentrum”, which also comprises a video, three posters, letter objects, and the publication at hand. The second recording, a video shown on a control monitor, disenchants the events of the night film. The video is a color recording that meticulously documents the course of the production and the process of the film spectacle. Following the rules of documentary film, the video uses a pan shot to slowly shift from the yellow logotype and the adjoining apartment buildings to a patch of green and then return to focus on the minute restoration of each letter.
The interruption of the story at the beginning of the video also seems to be “by the book”: In a short sequence, we see hands cutting out the letters’ shapes and a machine cutting the fluorescent foil.
“zentrum” is a fictitious albeit real document with several strands of narration, using the linear narratives of some mass media translations to tell the story of how a disintegrating neon sign on a façade in Leipzig metamorphed into a new typeset. The history of the logotype’s functional and phenomenological existence is fragmented in the multitude of its mediated representations and functions. The relationship between real and fictitious, analog and digital is uncovered in the parallel and entwined staging — caused by the tension between medial differences and reciprocities — of the “brühlzentrum” as a text and image. “zentrum” is the digital reproduction of an indexical process encompassing different medialities in an installation-like staging. Temperature is the distinguishing feature between the documentation of the production and the documentation of the staging. The former is shot in color and during the day, creating a crisp image. The latter is staged at night, the black and white image grainy, with tactile camera movements. The opposition between the digital quality of the first image and the cinematographic aesthetics of the second is inscribed in the juxtaposition of the physical restoration process and the industrial, modernist aesthetics of the logotype. Both recordings were shot with a digital video camera. This offers the aesthetics of its analog predecessor thereby whilst incorporating the dialectics of analog and digital within itself. The digital transmission of the cinematographic makes film’s innate quality of reproducing each gesture as a trace of light comparable to the relation of spoken words to written text and typography. In „zentrum“, the relationship between media and personal memory is a cycle that is driven by the tension between the antipodes of the analog and the digital.
The confrontation of different mediatizations inherent to “brühlzentrum” reveals the cultural temporality of the design. It isn’t the documentary in which materiality and media-centrism are indicators of realism which is unmasked but the gradually emerging quality of the logotype as a “document of its time”. As relics of modernity the original letters remain props of their environment while the symbolic value of their past and their disappearance is manifested in their reproduction and singularity in the exhibition. From the street to film, to the museum, their disappearance meets an unusual fate, namely their preservation as part of culture’s visual memory.
(Barbara Clausen)
Dorit Margreiter, born 1967, lives in Vienna and Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions: Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig (2006); Galerie Krobath Wimmer, Vienna (2006); Moravian Gallery, Brno (2006); Galerie Stampa, Basel (2006); Mumok, Vienna (2005); Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2001); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (1999). Group shows: “Exil des Imaginären“, Generali Foundation, Vienna (2007); “Dark Places“, Santa Monica Museum of Art (2006); Liverpool Biennial (2004); “Routes“, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2002); “Shopping“, Generali Foundation, Vienna (2001); “Du bist die Welt“, Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna (2001).
Julia Schäfer is curator and art-educator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig. She is the editor of the book Dorit Margreiter, “Analog“, Leipzig/Frankfurt 2006.