Evasion Machine /Apparat der Ausflucht
An Installation by Christian de Lutz

28 November-7 December, 2008





Projection and installation at space untitled.






Installation at Atelier Sambo-Richter.


Performance at Atelier Sambo-Richter, the artist with Kleopas Nghikefelwa, 30 November 2008.
All images copyright Christian de Lutz 2008.

more details at http://cdelutz.net/html/thumbnail%20pages/installation.htm

space untitled
Drontheimerstraße 3
13359 Berlin

Atelier Sambo-Richter
Koloniestr. 131
13359 Berlin

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Evasion Machine /Apparat der Ausflucht

An Installation by Christian de Lutz
Eine Installation von Christian de Lutz

28 November - 7 December 2008

An installation in two locations, the Evasion Machine combines video, digital print and found objects to create a space for a discussion on migration. The installation centres around two videos from the series El-Andalus Clips. Clip #3 is made of two components. The visual component was filmed on the southern Spanish coast. The sound component is made up of text fragments collected from internet blogs, written by migrants. The fragments are read by a non-native speaker, whose repeated attempts to read in a foreign language have influenced the visual editing of the piece. Clip#4, shown through a storefront window, resounds with utterance of a single Arabic phrase (Inshallah), which is elongated to seven times its original length – and accompanies the dawn.

Several digital prints provide a contrasting static component. The print petroleum lines is made up of satellite images of the Persian Gulf, Wolfsburg, Germany, Flint, Michigan and Toyota, Japan. It represents static records of moments and locations, stolen from their original purpose location, remade into a new visual system. Additionally the area(s) of the installation are covered with detritus, broken wood, wiring, building material – and also text: fragments of algorithms for calculating demographics, migration and population movement.

The Evasion Machine not only implies migrants evasion of central regulation and authority, but also points to the flourishing of cultural hybrids in exactly those regions which (for a while) provide haven for the wanderer. Yuri Lotman, while developing his system of linguistic environments (or semiospheres), divided them into centre and periphery. The centre (metalanguage) controls the environment, but is sterile, bereft of innovation. It is the periphery, ripe with multiple, outside influences, where creativity bears most fruit.

-Christian de Lutz

space untitled
Drontheimerstraße 3
13359 Berlin
Vernissage: 28.11.2008 ab 19h/ from 7PM
30.11.2008 - 7.12.2008, So 16-19h /4-7PM

Atelier Sambo-Richter
Koloniestr. 131
13359 Berlin
Vernissage: 28.11.2008 ab 20h /from8PM
30.11.2008, 14-19h /2 - 7 PM
Performance 30.11.2008, 18h30/ 6.30PM

Both exhibition spaces are located near Ubahn station Osloerstr. (U8,U9), approx 2 min. walk from each other and the station.
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New Works: Meta-Geographies



petroleum lines, 2008, archival inkjet print on paper, 110 x 200cm



petroleum lines, (detail) 2008, archival inkjet print on paper, 110 x 200cm


america is from mars and europe is from venus(2008) archival inkjet print on paper, each 170 x 110cm



america is from mars (detail), 2008, archival inkjet print on paper, 170 x 100 cm

Meta-Geographies, combines a variety of satellite images with text and other information taken from the Internet.

petroleum lines (2008) combines satellite imagery of the main Saudi Arabian oil terminal, Ras Tanura with images of Toyota, Japan; Wolfsburg, Germany; and Flint, Michigan (the headquarters of General Motors). The combined geographical image shows parts of the various motor cities partially submerged in the waters of the Persian gulf.

Source code, algorithms and charts overlay the whole picture and refer to scientific measurments of water temperature, ice melt and the effect of fire on climate change.

The series uses metaphor and metonymy to map the structures of geo-political relations and connections in the ever shrinking space of the globalized 21st Century.

America is from mars and europe is from venus (both 2008), refer to an phrase coined by the American neo-conservative Robert Kagan after the 2004 Madrid bombings. The works not only literalise Kagan’s word, placing an aerial view of the Pentagon on NASA photos of the Martian surface, and views of the European Commission and European Parliament on Venus, but also add additional layers of information in the form of source code excerpts, as well as art historical and symbolic meaning.

El-Andalus clips (2008)
is made up of five short clips, each under two minutes. The clips exist as stand alone works, or together. Three (no. 1,3 and 5) include recitations of a text collage derived from internet blogs written by migrants from the Near East ,living in Europe or North America. The narrator, uneasy in her use of English stumbles across the text. Combinations of takes and breakdowns are used as an editing device for the visual images, collected excerpts of footage from southern Spain - the ruins of a Moorish fort, the view across the straits of Gibraltar, architectural details from Alhambra - which refer to Europe's old cultural connection to the Near East. Image and text, unrelated in origin, combine and influence each others form to elicit new meanings and relations.




The soundtrack of El Andalus clip #2 (breath) is made up of the narrator's breaths, gasps and laughs between words. It forms a first intermezzo, when viewed with the other four clips




El Andalus #4 (fate) was filmed on a hillside on the SE Spanish coast. The soundtrack is one word (Inshallah) stretched out over the duration of the clip, which forms the second intermezzo, when all five clips are viewed together.

Strictly Berlin
GdK
12.04.2008-3.05.2008
Vernissage: 11.04.2008 from 8 PM



excerpt from bulbul (2006) dv,4'47"

The video bulbul (2006) will appear in the group show
Strictly Berlin 2008 - Between Fact and Fiction - Media Art from Berlin,
curated by Ingeborg Fülepp and Heiko Daxl.

GdK
Galerie der Künste
Potsdamerstr. 98
D-10785 Berlin
+49 (0)30 53060948
www.gdk-berlin.de

12.04.2008-3.05.2008, Opening 11.04.2008, 8 PM
open Wed-Sat 16-20h

stills from El-Andalus clips, 2008, dv

Christian de Lutz

Open Studio

New works: digital prints and video

Saturday and Sunday
15th and 16th of March, 1 - 9 pm

Nostitzstr 12, VH 4.-5.OG
10961 Berlin-Kreuzberg