Theories of Collection
The concept of my work is in part about the relation to what the people do to their environment and how we challenge ourselves with material that we use to realize our future. This means: the process of production, using ,and recycling ideas (circulation of material in modern life), the influence of our wishes and the result of this rushing age in urban locations effects the environment in the unconscious use and handling of materials.
If there is any possibility to do something against this problem it could be a sort of communication and education program it could also take the form of an art activity. I believe, to develop a model for communication, we need to pay more attention to consciousness and the different ways of absorbing information.
To make visible the invisible problem would be for me the first step to handle with the question of our production. My imagination of the big cities as an unknown living organ, on the surface, is equal to the organic forms like a body or a cell. Both need energy (in any form) to survive and to produce the waste material that is caused during the life process. However our personal way of using material will result in our influence on the environment. This is the socio-political aspect of our modern times that characterizes the future of our planet.
In the art context, my collection has another aspect because of the story behind each particle. They are unwanted and not contrived. They are found in different situations that my consciousness is influenced to react upon because of the period of life that I am engaged with. Not every particle that I see is going to be picked up by me. They must associate to me some certain moment or idea or they must have an emotional charm to me. The relation between visibility and personal perception has always to do with the subject of attention or focussing in consciousness.
The language of silence is the literary title of my work because of the shaping of fragments through perception. This is a form of poetry when an object can connect to another object and have a new meaning. This is the main form of using the particles in the collection when I start to use them as letters words or sentences, numbers or colours to interpret feelings or ideas.
Since I began to show my collection I recognized that my way of working focuses on contemporary visual arts practices with the emphasis on conceptual works . In the last years I became more and more interested in making installation, using video, slides and sound to express my impression about the trace of modern life on the landscape as a phenomenon of cities and their energy as circulation . However the trash of this movement has always a characteristic relative to what it is and somehow the fingerprint or trace of that civilization which produces it. What I do is in part to collect these fragments as objects themselves or in the form of slides and video images.
The next step is to arrange a working space as installation to study them and organize them as a collection of variations . I try on one hand to make a dimension visible that was not visible before . On the other hand I use my own system of ‘sign language’ to show a new order of using fragments from the past that somehow belonged to a future that is now destroyed and will be transformed and used in the process of dialogs around and within contemporary culture through the exhibition .
I normally use cameras and a magnifying glass or a microscope to give the visitors close up forms and dimensions from my perception. I think that through this technique visitors have a new possibility in their consciousness to see what is -always invisible. Finally the idea of distance (space) gives them the chance to form an aesthetic opinion or insight into beauty.
The collection is the reflection of my situation abroad as a refugee. The fragments of the collection represent the situation of all the people, which we pass by on the streets and don’t have any suspicion or idea where they are from or what they do. They look like strangers – they require time to know them and they are somehow invisible. They exist in our present and change the quality of our environment. Objects or people stay foreign to us until we pay attention to them. Attention is a bridge between on side of possibility to another side of interest. We focus on something because of our personal taste or background that provides a need for that information.
The period of exhibition takes the form of a search in my own perception with the help of familiar and unknown material. This is a form of processing with my own language and the language of the environment. It is the dialogue between what I am and what I think I am. It is a language of art in the context of social, environmental and ecological issues therefore it has not any known beginning or ending.
