Location based IdentitiesThe digiticed knowlegde about our whereabouts makes us loose our sense of orientation, helps retailers to increase their turnovers and secret services to spot potential threats.
To this day it is still us who know better then anyone else, where we come from, where we have been and – in this respect – who we approximately might be. Whereabouts determine – next to our family, our occupation and individual experiences – our self-perception. This applies not only to our point of origin and the places, where we grew up, but also to those, where we stay later on.
And when it is about self-manifestation, there is hardly any more effective instrument, than the proof of having been to certain places and of living in certain neighbourhoods.
The selection location based identities incorporates works, which deal with places, their boundaries and identity-generating effects. A central piece is void machine by Gnad and Kuschmirz, a spacious, interactive installation about its author´s geographic traces. Train Time, a film by Saiz and Kuschmirz, discusses the idea of a massive monument for Europe, which would transform places along a gigantic railway track into time marks, while Magnetfelder are highlighting the emptiness at the sites of their particular installation.
Void Machine
An interactive, kinetic installation about personal whereabouts and identity. Its centrepiece was a revolving directory taken from an atlas and a projection of those toponyma, which the authors had erased from the directory beforehand. The audience´s presence speeded up the physical movement and enlarged the projected names, while their absence made the machine stop and shrank the projected typography. Void machine is the result of a collaboration of Fritz Gnad and Gregor Kuschmirz and has been made possible by Platine Festival 2013 | wood, paper, motors, kinect and other electronics, Cologne, 2013 interactive kinetic installation / kinect / location monitoring
A documentary, a book and an exhibition about an artist and his vision of building a circular track of 2400 km for a high speed train, which would indicate time through its geographic position. It is based on the idea and concept of Manuel Saiz, who was joined by Gregor Kuschmirz for the shooting and postproduction of the documentary. | Logrono, Utrecht, Cologne, 2010-2011 european identity / time and space / art and politics
1: according to Christian Schüle in DIE ZEIT, 24.08.2017 2: according to Sophia Muckle in design report, Juni 2005 3: according to Jean Baudrillard in Transparenz des Bösen, Merve, 1992
