ON TECTONICS OF HISTORY

How and where can the influence of history be made tangible? On which intentions and politics of the image are the different ways of dealing with the past based? The exhibition ZUR TEKTONIK DER GESCHICHTE [On Tectonics of History], curated by Andrea Domesle and Martin Krenn, is trying to expose the historical traces of the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties that can be still seen in the present and to reflect on how we deal with Nazi times. The exhibits show to which extent photography and film - oscillating between construction and representation - are able to contribute to finding the truth in history and to formulate images of history that are not yet consistent with our society. 

The exhibition focuses on contemporary works of art in the fields of photography, film and video. According to Aleida and Jan Assmann, documentary photography and film act as image storage for our cultural memory. Especially since the nineteen-thirties, the technological achievements have permitted to make use of these two media and allowed for the steady increase of their distribution. The image of history in the minds of those who were born too late is based on those source images that convey illusory authenticity. Pictures of historical places, people and events have been reproduced unscrutinized in schoolbooks, television documentaries, historical museums or magazines. Not infrequently even propaganda and perpetrator photos of the Nazis have been drawn on as "image evidence" without ever putting up for discussion their history of origins.
Contrary to this, the approaches of artists, for the most part, aim at trying to learn to understand the original documents as tools enabling us to construct history. In doing so they work, on the one hand, with historical facticity and, on the other, with photography, video or film and the images of history communicated by these media respectively. This approach can either be based on historical documents or on original locations that you visit and where the view communicated by the media comes under scrutiny. Control mechanisms and points of view of the original documents are made visible. Confronting them with a different meaning within the frame of the same medium, the artists extend and adjust the cultural memory. This exhibition attempts to point out by means of which different methods and stylistic approaches this can be done.
Artists: Klub Zwei (Simone Bader & Jo Schmeiser), Grzegorz Klaman, Zdena Kolečková, Anna Konik, Anna Kowalska, Martin Krenn, Susanne Kriemann, Hans-Werner Kroesinger, Robert Kusmirowski, Pia Lanzinger, Lisl Ponger, Joachim Seinfeld, Tim Sharp, Michaela Thelenová, Maciej Toporowicz, Arye Wachsmuth, Peter Weibel, Piotr Uklanski, Artur Zmijewski.

Opening March 17th, 7pm
Exhibition is running till April 29th

Curators: Andrea Domesle, Martin Krenn
collaboration in Gdansk: Aneta Szylak

The project is supported by Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw, German General Consulate in Gdansk, Czech Center, Klamann Print, Cezex and www.3city.pl