Unbenannte Seite

Ulmann-Matthias Hakert

[Dialectic Shock]

Gunda Förster's work employing light quotes from the minimalist tradition in its usage of this medium and then breaks away by redefining itself as intervention. In the slide projection > I WANNA TALK TO YOU (1997, Berlin) the soliloquy of pure form becomes a quest (in this case equally as timid as ironical) for a dialectic escape from the white cube. Förster's slide projections, installations with fluorescent tubes, spotlights or stroboscopes are neither self referential images nor simply ambient creations which offer elementary sensations of light and colour and sound. The formal and atmospheric strength of > THE DIFFERENCE OF LINES (1997, Malmö) for example, is based on definite associations. The light which leaks through doors left ajar into the darkness of the hall connotes, as perceptible seclusion, the tension between the controlled and uncontrolled. In Förster‘s more recent works, there is a drive to envelop the recipient with no chance of reflective distance; all the more so since they include sound (for the first time in > CONTRADICTION, 1998, Leipzig). Including the rhythmical and musical sensations, the will to intervene reveals a more aggressive reaction. > BLIND DATE, Förster's projected installation with light and sound for the stairway in »Moderna Museet« in Stockholm, the sole passage between the two floors of the exhibition, refers to a system of pedestrian crossings. Every 15 minutes there is a 20 second burst of bright white light with a slow rhythm of electronic sound followed by flashing light synchronized with a tock-tock-sound for 8 seconds. In a third phase, while light is turned off for 10 seconds a much harder beat of the electronic sound can be heard. In Förster‘s recent piece for the Neues Museum in Weimar (> LIGHTNING, 1999), when dusk has set in, the progress of passers-by through the museum's immediate environment illuminates the opposite side of the building as surveillance cameras trip bursts of intense light. As in > BLIND DATE, her intervention with light is solely deictic and perception is mainly characterised by the automatism of physical response and shock. Thus the challenge of opening up the art space for that communication which creates a public space is questioned.

Catalogue text
After the Wall
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2000
> BLIND DATE

<<>>