PRICCAPractice #4

The fourth edition of PriccaPractice consists of two parts that are substantially linked to the 2015 edition of Noorderlicht Photofestival. In ‘Constructing Realities’, the relationship between the photographic image and the (re)presented reality is central. This exhibition ties in with the exhibition DATARUSH in the Suikerfabriek. ‘Me and you and everyone we don’t know’ treats the photographic portrait in an intercultural context, and connects in this way to ‘Making oneself’, the presentation currently on show in Noorderlicht Galerie. Along with both exhibitions goes an expert meeting in which a number of participating artists engage the audience in a conversation.

The lectorate Image in Context of the Hanze University for Applied Sciences organises two expert meetings and two photo-exhibitions. ‘Me and you and everyone we don’t know’, curated by Andrea Stultiens (PhD researcher IIC) and ‘Constructing Realities’, curated by Adri Schokker (teacher and researcher IIC).

Programme 4th of September 2015
14:00-17:00 – expert meeting ‘Me and you and everyone we don’t know’
17:00-19:00 – opening exhibition
19:00-22:00 – expert meeting ‘Constructing Realities’

Location: Academie Minerva, Praediniussingel 59, Groningen

‘Constructing Realities’ was curated by Adri Schokker
Forensic Architecture, Blake Fisher (US), Steffen Kraemer (Germany) Anno Dijkstra, (Netherlands) Jerome Daly, (Germany) Margriet van Weenen, (Netherlands) Ingrid Verweijen, (Netherlands) Olya Oleinic, (Moldavia/Netherlands)

‘You and me and everyone we do not know’ was curated by Andrea Stultiens
Angelica Dass (Spain) Tijmen van Dijk (Netherlands) Nii Obodai, (Ghana) Willem Popelier, (Netherlands) Harry Bos, (Netherlands) Joachim Schmid, (Germany) Elsadig Mohamed, (Sudan) Romaric Tisserand, (France)

On Saturday September 5th Nii Obodai and Angela Dass will present their work in the Noorderlicht Galerie, with a short introduction by curator Andrea Stultiens concerning the photographic portrait. Stultiens curated both ‘You and me…’ in Academie Minerva Praediniussingel and ‘Keep the best of your life’ in Noorderlicht. Doors open at 15:00h. Programme 15:30-17:00h. Events are in English.

Participation in the expert meetings and attendance at the presentations in Noordelicht Galerie is free. Registering for the expert meetings is greatly appreciated. Send an e-mail to Ellen Dijksterhuis: e.dijksterhuis@pl.hanze.nl.
PriccaPractice is founded by the lectorate Image in Context. It is a unique centre of expertise which tries to shed light on the way in which photography (lens-based images) are being used as a form of artistic research, which helps situate us in the world. PRICCAPractice stands for: Photographic Research in a Cross-cultural and Cross-disciplinary Artistic Practice.

Twice a year we organise an exhibition and expert meetings.

For more information or images you can contact Andrea Stultiens: info@andreastultiens.nl, tel. 06 532 606 44

About the participants

Angelica Dass (Brazil/Spain), Humanae
Angelica Dass photographs people all over the world according to a tight system she devised. She is building an endless collection of people, classified by their skintones, which are coded in Pantone-colours. The collection would only then be complete if every human being was photographed. The work is developing at every presentation, which presentations do not only consist of a displayed selection of the photos, but also of taking photos of volunteers on the spot, in a studio setting. In this, Angela Dass, will be assisted by a student of Academie Minerva.

Tijmen van Dijk (Netherlands), I Found your Film
Tijmen van Dijk collects undeveloped film, which, sometimes unnoticed, is for sale in second-hand stores and charity shops. We see people pose for their friends or relatives. Neither the people posing, nor the ones taking the pictures have seen these photographs. Now, these images find an audience on a tumblr page. A selection, crossing through time, will show the strangeness of these photographs, that never fulfilled their goals, but are now leading an alternative life.

Nii Obodai (Ghana), Anomaly (work in progress)
Photographer Nii Obodai uses his work to research the oppositions between the urban and the rural surroundings in Ghana. He always works from a personal connection to his subject, and he is greatly interested in history. Anomaly is a growing series of portraits of people that inspire the artist. Most of them are Ghanaian artists, and well-known nationally. What happens when we don’t know the ones depicted? The personal connection is missing. Do we still want to see these pictures? Are we seduced by the shape Obodai gives to his photos, and if so, how does he achieve thies? And can we still really see the human being in the photo?
Nii Obodai will be present during the opening of the exhibition and contribute to the expert meeting.pertmeeting.

Willem Popelier (Netherlands)
The portrait as a carrier of (individual) information and/or as part of a visual system which is linked to a medium. That is the main thread running through much of Popelier’s work. He investigates by ordering, classifying and imitating the visual conventions that determine the images around us, often going unnoticed. For this exhibition Popelier has created a special adaptation of his Do-it-yourselfieguide.

Harry Bos (Netherlands), A day in prison
A day in prison arose from the opposition between Harry Bos’s memories of working in a prison, and of the inmates, and the fact that nowadays these old prisons have found new uses. Apparently, these locations have a certain attraction for audiences. Bos portrays people who voluntarily sleep in a former prison turned into a hotel and who found a workspace in another one, and juxtaposes these portraits with images of prisoners who often have to stay in similar spaces for years. Justice officials demanded that the images of the prisoners be unrecognisable, so Bos asked them to rapidly sway their head from left to right, creating a blur in the images.

Joachim Schmid (Germany), ‘Menschen des 20en Jahr Hundert’
For decades, Joachim Smid is concerned with photos that play a role in daily life. He collects them, and reflects on the role thay play and could play in the way in which he orders and presents them. Out of this grow publications that he, generally, publishes himself, in small numbers or by printing-on-demand. Menschen des 20en Jahrhundert refers to the famous work of August Sander from the beginning of the 20th century, and is about the way in which media, newspapers in this instance, introduce us to people. This is being done using portraits that appeared in German newspapers in the 1980’s.

Elsadig Mohamed (Sudan), ‘Meeting Mahmoud’
Elsadig Mohamed is a young Sudanese photographer and filmmaker. He is interested in processes of fabrication. Fabrication of objects, ideas, images. His most famous work to date, is the internationally exhibited series Lab of Creation, which is about the production of ceramics, a production which first started in Nubia, in the north of Sudan. The work Meeting Mahmoud is his most recent project, and will be shown for the first time in this exhibition.
Singer Mahmoud Abdelaziz is a hero, even a god in Sudan. He died over 2 years ago, but is still omnipresent. He was a rebel, and followed his own path in a country in which the law and the traditional organisation of society infringe upon people’s freedoms. Stickers with his depiction are found on many of the buses and rikshaws in Sudan. Elsadig Mohamed explores Sudan by way of the present portraits of Mahmoud, and the people who hold him in praise.

Forensic Architecture (Steffen Kraemer, Blake Fisher) – BIL’IN
Forensic Architecture is a research project based at Goldsmith, University of London. The project has assembled a team of architects, artists, filmmakers, activists, and theorists to undertake research that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal and political forums. Its investigations provide evidence for international prosecution teams, political organizations, NGO’s, and the United Nations. The video installation BIL’IN shows a short documentary, in combination with a photo-stitch, about the reconstruction of the death of a Palestinian demonstrator on April 17 2009. Bassem Abu Rahma was shot and killed in the village of Bil’in during a demonstration against the wall, that was being build on the village lands. By analyzing photographs and video footage from different sources that were shot on location and by creating a virtual spatial model of the event, the researchers were able to identify the place and angle from which Abu Rahma was shot. The purpose was to refute assertions made by the Israeli army that the death was unintentional. The report produced by Forensic Architecture and SITU Research was initiated on request of attorney Micheal Sward who acted for Abu Rahma’s parents, and the Israeli Human Rights organization B’TSelem.

Anno Dijkstra – AfterImage
Anno Dijkstra sculpts images in order to slow down, to make the absent image present again. Modern communication media – television images, newspaper photos, computer images, fast and ephemeral, show us the farthest reaches of the world. In the intimacy of our living rooms we become witnesses of things that are far away, but precisely because of this they emphasize the physical and emotional distance to the image we look at. In his recent work Anno wonders what it means to be lifted out of anonymity and to be exposed as an image to countless invisible eyes. The work Afterimage consists of a series of life size statues made of Dutch citizens without their knowledge. Several random persons are selected based on photographs and transformed to sculptures and then exhibited. Afterimage is not just about being watched, the invasion of privacy, or the ease with which anyone’s information can be accessed, but mostly about how that data can be subsequently be used and processed.With Afterimage, the images of a person are not impersonally stored digitally; instead they are translated into a unique three-dimensional representation of clay that has been made with time, craftsmanship, and great attention to detail. To create an image of someone is to have a form of power over the other, but to manually create an image of a person requires the artist’s time, talents, and dedication. By bringing back the physical aspect, the personal commitment, and the intimacy to this process, Anno Dijkstra demonstrates the absurdity of our relationship with our image within social media.

Ingrid Verheijen – We like your hair
In her work Ingrid researches and questions the position of individuality in today’s society. There for she searches for contradictions between individual and collective aspects of our physical and digital life. The use of photography as manifestation of our self-image within social media and the Internet has a central role. As well as our physical presence in an environment predominated by structures. Her works are mainly performances and video-installations where the creation of attributes, costumes, sound, and music, are important ingredients that give meaning to the works. The video installations of Ingrid Verwijen are reconstructions and manipulations of images taken mostly from the Internet. The reconstructions are often hard to grasp and Verweijen plays with the image as an illusion. Her installations often resemble physical Photoshop manipulations that immediately question the viewer’s perception and trigger an investigation of the work. In the work ‘We like your hair’ Ingrid explores the motives of women who sell their hair through social media. Critical in these advertisements is that the persons use Photoshop techniques to make themselves anonymous. The installation shows poetic and alienating reconstructions of this online phenomenon.

Margriet van Weenen – To Nowhere & Your ground, my ground, their ground.
Artist Margrieet van Weenen will show a new installation as part of the exhibition PriccaPractice4. The installation ‘To Nowhere’ ‘Your ground, my ground, their ground’ is the first result of a new artistic research project Margriet recently started. The installation is a search to the cultural identity and historical context of Europe. It is a poetic visual research to the meaning of a Europe where refugees in a tragic way set the borders of today’s Europe.The installation consists of a collage of historical archive photos, photos of border areas collected through social media, news footage, and several physical objects. The museum and historical character of the installation shows a constellation of historical facts, today’s events and impressions of the artist that merge into a new subjective map of Europe of today.

Olya Oleinic – Universal Guide to Everything
Photographer Olya Oleinic will show her outcome of months of data mining on the internet.‘Universal Guide to Everything’ is Olya her meditation on the dazzling noise of visuals and data that we are exposed to every day. We’re told what others think we should know, where we should go, and how to think about the world around us.Through billboards, computer monitors, television and shopping shelves we absorb a message — a message that commercial society needs to push onto us to survive. It doesn’t matter how meaningless it is: it becomes a part of us anyway. It’s normal now. Most of us have never lived in a world without it. Universal Guide to Everything demonstrates this overload of commodities – both physical and mental – in the 21st century. For months Olya has been assembling and illustrating the most popular “HOW-TO” searches on internet, fashioning an item from each and every one of them. The result is a massive collection of unrelated images and articles that together represent the never-ending clutter which I am drowning in. They pose themselves as items which can make your life better, when in reality they fill your head with yet more noise. How to loose weight. How to care for orchids. How to read palms. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate. Fulfil the dream. Learn “HOW-TO” do anything you might have never thought of doing.