with/against the flow. Contemporary Photographic Interventions. #1 Viktoria Binschtok #2 Michael Schäfer

Whereas Michael Schäfer analyzes images from the news and entertainment, in her works Viktoria Binschtok investigates the new channels and how images work in the age of the Internet. Thus these two artists continue to pursue
visual artists’ increasing interest in the mass media since the 1970s. At once fascinated and irritated by the economic power and rhetorical force that these images exert on our society, the position of a majority of artists toward media images is a critical one. Each new generation of artists engages with the state of the art technology of their day and its influence on society. The working methods are manifold: from simple collections and appropriations to the analytical collage and staged imitations.

The constellation of the works by Viktoria Binschtok and Michael Schäfer describes a trajectory from selfmade forms of images to images that have become autonomous, from current to future potential of our world of images. Both artists intervene in these found images, manipulate the media images, and shift their structures of reception so that the latent potential of the images becomes evident. Interventions such as these render the prefabricated reality of the media visible. Furthermore, the incipient autonomy of images in a future hegemony of digital algorithms becomes apparent.

Imagine you are a photographer needing to go out into the world to take new pictures. But what does “out” actually mean these days? And how can we tell what “new” pictures are? What value does photography have as an artistic medium in an era in which everything has already been photographed and the world is awash with an incessant stream of networked images? What are the issues that need to be addressed today? And how?

The exhibition series with/against the flow. Contemporary Photographic Interventions presents artists who live in Germany, have established their own distinct visual idioms, and are now interrogating the medium of photography afresh. It is the forms that their artistic interventions take that connect their various positions. Regardless of what motivates the artists or what interests them in terms of content, in the work they do they intervene in the very substance of the image or in external reality
itself. The question remains as to whether this work should still be labelled “documentary” or is, in fact, a form of realism that spills over into fiction.

After prior consultation with ifa, the organizers will be pleased to include works of local artists in the exhibitions of this series.