The first exhibition of the photographic work “Trous noirs / Black Holes” features a spatial and immersive installation in the “Hors Cadre” art space.

From the outside, the glazing of the gallery is covered by an opaque, black film that immerses the interior of the room in darkness – like a “black box” – creating an intimate and sensual space. Playing with positive/negative, black/white, a small hole, type “spy hole”, enables a view from the outside in.

Visitors stroll through this darkened room and discover the works through concentrated light that illuminates the matt surface of the photo prints. The arrangement of the photographs in the room – leaning at an angle or installed at right angles against the wall, or placed on the floor – the viewer is tempted to also put themselves in physical imbalances. This instability corresponds to the series of “black holes” where the edges are the fixed point, the last stable threshold before the abyss, before nothingness, absolute blackness. At the same time, the edges contextualize the images – analogies ranging from micro to macro.

This research is a direct reference to cosmic black holes: symbolic image of the infinite emptiness, of a nothing that devours everything. Black holes are only visible through the light that surrounds them; a luminous reflection of the invisible. Starting from the cosmic black hole as a metaphor, this work deals with analogies between physical and psychological, natural and artificial spaces, like a zoom through different spaces and scales of perception.

Text excerpts and quotations between the photos on the walls accompany this exploration of very different worlds. A white sound, based on “The Sound of the Universe” takes the visitor unwittingly and almost imperceptibly into other spaces, into other universes.

work in progress 1995 – 2020
A series of portraits started 25 years ago
with a photo every 27th of the month,
project on time that fits into the body,
another time given to artistic production.

The photographs and text images visible in the entrance area on the glass façade of the ground and first floors are part of the art of building realization, which gives the building a kind of “interface”, a face, an identity.
The work refers to the spatial location in the Europaquartier, which serves as a vehicle of meaning with its name “Europaallee”, and on a larger scale to Saarbrücken as a border town in the heart of Europe.
The conception takes the diversity of Europe as a starting point, puts the human being at the center, and is based literally, as if on a pedestal, on the explanation of universal human rights. All articles are inscribed in the 24 official languages ​​of Europe as text / image / compositions on the high windows on the ground floor of the entrance area and can be read from the inside. Word fragments that are readable from the outside draw attention to the text on a large scale and are indicative of the respective language.

The leitmotif: “Freedom – Equality – Solidarity” as a connecting element is used in the sense of inclusive language usage.

Format: Facade about 13m x 6m /
10 portraits each 2m x 0.76m, 8 words / image / compositions per 4m x 0.76m

Tamashii is the Japanese name for “spirit”, “soul”.

Tamashii is the trace of a recollection, experience of an unusual procession, the return of the spirit in the temple… Immersion into another culture, between mythology and religion.
Retranscription of a situation lived by a video device where the spectator considers like a Peeping Tom through a small crack a strange procession of belligerent men returning the spirit to the temple.

«Chant de mots» («Song of words») is the winning project resulting from the contest launched within the framework of the “1% artistic” of the academy of Guadeloupe. 

“Chant de mots”, by ELZABETH CRESEVEUR & URSULA KRAFT is a contextual photo/graphic work based on the notion of language that corresponds to the mission of the academy: the notion of knowledge, exchange and transmission. In each place, a phrase extracted from the caribbean literature is mixed and confronted with an emblematic image.

Their project is divided into two interventions: one outside – on the three entrance arches – and the other inside – on the glazed surface of the lobby – creating a link and visibility between interior and exterior.

At the top of each arch is an open book and a quote – the opening symbolizes the notion of welcome, openness to the outside world, language – history – and the blank page, history to become, projection towards future.

On the glass front of the lobby, a variety of hands dialogue with the citations. 

The hand prolongs the thought, it creates a link with the world. The gesture of the hands is an universal mode of expression. The variations in skin, age, and sex of the persons imaged make it possible to identify each one of them.

more information about the installation : https//rectorat-ecuk.tumblr.com

]]> http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/chant-de-mots/feed/ 0 http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/la-femme-dapres/ http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/la-femme-dapres/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2015 14:52:49 +0000 Ursula Kraft http://www.ursulakraft.com/?p=1550

Her look and attention goes to the depth of the picture space, into the inside of the picture. Although this picture space is visible, however, he is not on account of his diffuseness, not really tangibly. A strained relation appears between this turn from-to, the specific non-visible and the blurred visible, the look of the viewer oscillates in this space back and forth.

The picture space is an outside space corresponding mostly to the inside space of the taken person; selecting the surroundings itself for to come as close as possible to this translation. Introspective worlds find their representation by imaging exterior worlds, the crossing from inside outward.

So the serie set public and private space in relationship, devote itself to this space between. The half portrait will be life-size.

work in progress 2011 > 

In the elaboration 8 three-part works have appeared which hang as paper roads lohse in the space, taking the vertically of the Kakemonos and became as a triptych with the horizontally photos a panoramic view.

The background forms like a rushing, a texture or a sound carpet « language »: a sentence which repeats itself in German, English, French and Japanese endlessly: « remember my death ». This text picture reveals itself only from next nearness.

At the same moment the big Tryptichons divide the space and form a kind of labyrinth which lead the spectator in the inside of the installation. In this “Ma – space” the spectator can stay on a seat block in the most inner one of the installation which radiates at the same moment a “Shô” music – in the intimacy of picture and sound. “Shô” is a Japanese wind instrument which functions with the breath.

It is the meeting of two cultures, from east and west, between vertically and horizontally. It’s like a cooperation of planned interventions and found situations and objects which goes like a red thread through all pictures.

Japan is confronted with the most different disasters continually with the death, it is a ” living together with the death “. One pays tribute to him and the dead respect, he has his place and value in the daily life, is all over.

Herewith the work is about, treats the relation between landscape and soul, how inside is reflected in exterior landscapes: the translation of landscapes, the transformation of conditions to award to the empty form.

permanent sound cloud “SHO” during the installation

Kitsune,  the woman fox, is an Asian fabulous being, one of the feminine characters being a member of the series around the tales.
For C.G.Jung the tale expresses the psychological process of the collective unconscious which connects various cultures. In this sense I put my steps in the continuity of the European into the Asian tales. The video Kitsune uses another formal language as Emerentia, by being image in movement and at the same time – with its fixed centring – a kind of “tableau vivant”.
The Japanese landscape represents as for a play set and scenographic image. In the depth on three plans it is only the woman-fox who browses the image with movements of dance, precise and slowed down. The mime is reduced by the stylized mask which reminds the theater ” Nô “. At the beginning we see far away a small red character in front of a green fôret between rice fields, then, closer we perceive clearly the white mask, the black, long hair and the red kimono, then in the last appartition, very closedup, she turns outside the image. This tryptique cycle repeats ceaselessly in a loop.
The slow movement of the woman-fox and the almost “congealed” landscape, in which tree leaves move only from time to time – make reference to a dreamlike, ” supernatural ” and timeless scene.

…When Alain Bisotti invited me to create the Carte Blanche for PHPA 2013, perhaps he imagined, knowing my work, that I would lead the viewer into a universe inhabited by fabulous fictional characters…
…When I visited the hotels, I noted that the Surrealists had stayed in one of them, and that odd creatures were depicted in the wall coverings…
…When I learned that the Hôtel du Panthéon was to close for refurbishing, Alain Bisotti and I agreed that this period of transformation would be a great setting for photos. Alice travelling through the hotels could really take advantage of the space…
And so, I started imagining…
Alice settles in there and builds her nest. She passes through the looking glass and enters a fanciful world. The strange creatures – the winged girl, butterfly-nymph and other fantastical creatures – awake at night and take her into dreamlike worlds somewhere between darkness and light. Alice herself shifts between being human and animal, big or small, the mysterious Black or the innocent White.
She meets Hitchcock’s birds and brings dreams to Meret Oppenheim’s cup. Rather than follow the storyline and play croquet with a flamingo, she sleeps with a white swan, as gracious as la Belle Juliette. Black swan – white swan – twins. Just like a fairytale… opposed sisters… and when one of them shakes the cushions, like in Mother Hulda, on Earth it snows. The other becomes black as pitch, and the black feathers stick to her like a crow. To escape this nightmare, she wears a cap of white feathers, as in the tale of Donkeyskin. She heads towards the stairs, leaving feathers in her wake, leaves the hotel and finds herself… in the real world.

(Magical) Stories by Ursula Kraft

VOIR & ETRE VU articulates in two interventions: one in the real space – fixed pictures -, and the other one in the virtual space – moving pictures -. They are placed in key spaces which allow the visibility of school on several levels of perception, the entrance of the school and the intro of the web site. The architectural face becomes with the photographic filmsinterface between the inside and outside space. A closed eye, an open eye, linked by a gradation of colors deploy on all the length of the glazed facade. The daylight illuminates the images from the outside inward with the CDI, at night the installation of artificial lights enlightens the images of the inside towards the outside, like a bright box. In the second intervention, the ” photographic eye ” becomes ” video eye “. Like a sequence in movement, the eye opens the web site of school. The iconography of eyes is universal, ” to see and to know ” are closely linked, they transmit a reflection on our contemporary world, and send back to common representations.

VOIR & ETRE VU establishes a dialogue, plays on several methods of perception, and involves the spectator physically in the space-image.

ecukworld.tumblr.com
download edition.PDF

The group is a collaboration of artists, which come from a variety of fields: photography, film, video, music, costume and set design, architecture, design and art history. The group’s interdisciplinary is its purpose – its projects are intentionally transversal and the crossing of boundaries is deliberate. Interaction takes place in the communication in the public space as well as in the exchange with other groups during the realization of national and international projects.

The name ARGONAUT is borrowed from the ancient legend, in which the Argonauts, a group of specialists from various fields, set out on their quest to find the Golden Fleece. In this sense, Argonaut has called numerous projects, actions and new experiences into existence during the last ten years, which continue to influence my work.

The tunnel experience reports to human experiences like birth and death, beginning and end of our existence, but also symbolizes a kind of passage between past and future. The definition of time is based on three parameters: light – space – movement.
This definition finds itself in the TimeTunnel : the space is represented about the architectural form, the light about the light-sculpture inside and the movement by the visitors who wears through the tunnel. The pictures projected on the insides of the tunnel translate this concept in the programming and in the contents of the pictures, and the cycle light-space- movement repeats itself endlessly.

The spectator can immerse at any time, arbitrarily long, into this cycle and becomes with it at the same moment a participant: on the one hand he can move in this picture space for experience and to a general view of the fragments – on the other hand, he is only by his physical presence active part – with his shadow he can make deep-succumbing picture shifts visible. This connection of physical presence and light / shade reports to earlier, astrale methods to make time visible. Sound and picture sequences are not synchronized, but become established after principe of coincidence. The music is based exclusively on language and answers with their composition to the choreography of the pictures.

 1992
Mobile exhibition space in public space
Architecture 40 m long, 4 m high, 5 m large
42 slide projectors + 4 16mm film projectors, loudspeakers

During the Performance Ursula Kraft reacts to the high tide of visual and acoustic stimuli with body movements deforming the 3 x 3 meter projection screen made of elastic material. Therefore she can react to the picture, as a representative of a reality, have an effect on it. The photograph is projected by different projector points of view as collage overlaying several light-images. The besides appearing general view consists from in colour, optically and to technically alienated picture segments which melt to a new composition of a picture. The pictures consist exclusively of existent admissions from family albums, TV news, old super-8 films and political videos.

The electronic music of Hartmut Seidler corresponds with the photos which stand by the programmation with the sound in direct dramaturgical connection. The saxophone live played by Wolfgang Mayer takes over the emotional reaction.

Performance EXTREMZEIT, 20 min
Screen 3 x 3 ms, stretchable material
8 slide projectors, programers, loudspeaker

Performance multimédia with 6 dancers
Conception with Barbara Kraft
Electronic Music : Georg Stock
Costumes : Barbara Kraft

1982
> ” Super8 Festival “, “Kommunales Kino”, Stuttgart
Organization and presentation Argonaut productions

> Publication of the magazine “Raum”

> “EMOTER”, light installation and sound installation
Production and presentation LABFAC, “Project space Gutenbergstr. 62a “, Stuttgart

> publication of the wall newspaper “Argonaut”

 1984
> “ARGOSPEKTARGO” multimedial cultural festival in the central park of Stuttgart
Organization et presentation of multimedia Performances, dance, film, experimental music, architecture sculptures, symposia.

Invitation of FRIGO CODE PUBLIC, Lyons, C.Herzog, Zurich, BY FORCE, Munich, etc
Presentation of ARGONAUT PRODUCTIONS:
“KraftAkt “, multimedia Performance, ” Spark Scraps “, experimental, electronic music, “Agiturm”, architecture sculptures and ” blazing arrow “, cartoon

> “Begreifen Eingreifen” presentation of videos of the ” media workshop of Freiburg, Project space, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
> publication of the wall newspaper ” Argonaut ”

> Participation in ” Europe Copy Right “, Video festival in the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

 1985
> “Photo glass installations”, exhibition-installation with sound space
Production and exhibition Künstlerhaus Stuttgart

> “GRIDLOCK”, music Event for the rotunda of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Production and presentation of Argonaut and invited American composers

> “Film-Bilder”, cartoon exhibition, academy of arts Stuttgart
Film production and concept for the exhibition

> ” The woman in the art “, presentation of productions of artists: Video, cartoon, photograph, painting, sculptures, symposia.
Invitation of Gisela Breitling with the project ” the hidden museum “, Berlin and Jula Dech, college of the arts Berlin
Project space, Künstlerhaus  Stuttgart

1987  
> “ EXTREMZEIT ” multimedia Performance with live music of Wolfgang Mayer,
Production and presentation in the art space Filderstrasse Stuttgart, then invitation: Cantini museum, Marseilles, gallery Vayhinger, Radolfzell,
Gallery Le Bateau Lavoir, Paris

> Invitation for the symposium ” artistic production forms ” in the college of the arts, HdK, Berlin

 1988    
> “ FLUGBILD ”, production et presentation of the cartoon
Exhibition in the gallery of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart

> Groups exhibition of ARGONAUT + LABFAC in the gallery Condé,
Goethe institute of Paris.
Presentation of the installation “Caban”, park of the Cité Universitaire Paris, the multimedial Performance “EXTREMZEIT”, Heinrich Heine Haus Paris and architecture Soirée with LABFAC, Joseph Hanimann and Paul Virilio, in Gallery Condé of Goethe of institute of Paris

> ” Mr. Choclate meets Miss Milk “, short film, production and presentation
Tournée in Baden-Wurtemberg with “spring roll”.
Participation in festivals in Bilbao, Osnarbrück, Hamburg, Cardiff, Shanghai, Brussels etc.

 1992
> “TimeTunnel”,
“Gesamtkunstwerk” with architecture, photograph, film and music
Production and installation in the public space, Schlossplatz Stuttgart

So Emerentia II has many faces and takes different forms. She has, so to speak, many dresses: once the red cape offering her protection, becomes a second “skin” (refering “Peau d’âne”), once the red kimono covering herself (with the white fox’s mask in the Asian fox’s woman Kitsune) or the red dress which reminds softly like a poppy of the transitoriness, in the water as a skulpturale form around herself, floating likely as the body would have already disappeared. Here refers the picture of the drowning young woman on Shakepeare’s Ophelie in Hamlet.

It trades from the presence of the death – the brother of the sleep, the apparent death, the fairy tale death, the premonition of death – from transformations, metmorphoses, compound states, from worlds of fantasy, underworlds / interworlds, fairytale worlds – from fabulous creatures, the conversion from person – animal, from chimera and female figures.

“Unheimlich”, what we could translate by a “disturbing strangeness” is an expression just for this neighborhood between a latent fear, of a concern, and the word “Heim” which means “at home”.

]]> http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/emerentia-1/feed/ 0 http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/nymphalis-antiopa/ http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/nymphalis-antiopa/#comments Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:28:34 +0000 Ursula Kraft http://www.ursulakraft.com/?p=77 Nymphalis antiopa  (2007/2008) – the Latin term for the butterfly more commonly known as Mourning Cloak or Camberwell Beauty – shows an elfish girl, covered and surrounded by a cloud of still and fluttering black fringed butterflies. The butterflies spread across the stretched out naked body of the vulnerable sleeping or dreaming child. Only they show signs of life and movement. The girl’s body is just gently stirred by her own breathing, now and again one can see her eyelids slightly twitch. Both living spheres emanate an atmosphere of delicateness and fragility.Since Antiquity the iconography of the butterfly has been culturally connected to the human soul. For example during the Hellenistic period where memorial stones pictured butterflies leaving the skulls of the deceased as symbols of their souls.

The video work runs in an endless loop of extreme slow motion, long shots alternate with details of the butterfly-covered child’s body. The body seems like a mysterious landscape, and the butterflies like bizarre, slightly eerie flying objects beyond time and scale. The fading in and cross fading in the video produces unreal moments: butterflies disappear or appear from nowhere, materialising and dematerialising with an almost hypnotic effect. With its capacity for imagination, hypnosis opens an inner realm between waking and sleeping, in which people show a heightened concentration.

Inner and Outer Space
Art vibrating between new media, the body and a search for identity
by Angelika Beckmann

Vidéo HD projection art center Stuttgart Sindelfingen ]]> http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/nymphalis-antiopa/feed/ 0 http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/traum-a/ http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/traum-a/#comments Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:28:00 +0000 Ursula Kraft http://www.ursulakraft.com/?p=75 Traum = T – raum = Traum – a
The Deeper meaning behind the words
By Anna Mohal

The viewer stands face to face in front of life-size images of moving chests. Surrounded by a circle of video monitors, he or she has become the centre of a planetary system, with monads circling around their own axes, turning away, against or parallel to each other, following the law of chance and necessity. The circling movement encircles the viewer; the instructions of the Memory game – works of the artist, which preceded the installation – by conceiving their own story from the components, thinking it through spatially, staying on track with the temporally disparate events, he or she becomes wrapped in a beguiling and disturbing rondo.

Rose, oh true discord,
Desire, to be nobody’s sleep
between so many eyelids.

Three women, a girl, a boy, two men. Their eyes are closed, naked reality presents itself in front of a dark background, time stretches out, moves in slow-motion, as if hypnotised.

We are life’s driving force. 
But the pace of time,
easily claims
any power to endorse.

They seem related: mother, father, daughter, sister, brother in law, but appearances are deceptive. Seemingly corresponding elements are only related formally: the man’s bald head and the boy’s bald head each dream different dreams, and enclose two different traumas. That these seven people appear less as individuals than metaphors for different stages of life, can probably be explained by the artist’s serial approach: same detail, same posture, same repose.

It is as if the beginnings of photography, where relatives and neighbours sat as models for Julia Margaret Cameron, are being combined with contemporary artistic practices, such as the combination of photo and video and the oscillation between of reality and simulation, i.e. in the apparent pleasure of slowness. But how should these riddles be solved: photographs that look like video stills, inner and outer connections between the figures despite their temporal and spatial dissociation, a physical presence that simultaneously slips into a mental black box, the freezing of movements, the shift from joy to pain?

Death is enormous.
With laughing mouths,
we are his.
When we reckon ourselves in the midst of life,
he dares to cry,
right inside us.

Life is a finite and infinite loop! According to Deleuze, each moment mirrors perception in memory. This idea can be found in the seven protagonists reflecting each other, which opens a positively traumatic hall of mirrors, into which the viewer is involuntarily drawn. Let go, slowly tense up, then relax just as slowly! Take time, make room for dreams! For memories, pain, trauma. And be reminded of Kundera’s “existential mathematics”:

The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

* In the german word „Traum“ (dream) is included „Raum“ (space) and in „Trauma“ (trauma) is included „Traum“ (dream).

The poem excerpts are taken and translated from Rainer Maria Rilke, Ausgewählte Kostbarkeiten and the closing quote is from Milan Kundera, Slowness, Faber and Faber

view in the circulary vidéo installation, art center Stuttgart Sindelfingen ]]> http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/traum-a/feed/ 0 http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/memory/ http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/memory/#comments Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:51:36 +0000 Ursula Kraft http://www.ursulakraft.com/?p=73 rule of the game

The series references to a children’s game named «memory». The rule of the game is to locate the double of an image, to refind a « déjà vu » and is thus used as a methaphore for recollection and disappearance.
As in the game the 25 realized square elements are disposed in a mosaic and assembled to create a global composition. The disposition allows various lectures.
The collector shares with other persons a « collective memory. » He positions himself with the help of a «memory-map», a kind of general over-view, showing the global composition of a « memory » on a reduced scale, with names, locations and dates connecting the participants.
As all the images are originals, the « memory » gradually disappears from the place where it was originally put on show in order to be rebuilt in space.
On the other hand, the edition enables the collector to fit all the pieces together again in an unlimited range of combinations. The “memory map” serves as a sort of over-view map, to orientate and thus to rediscover the original composition.
The plastic realization demanding a physical action from the beholder articules with a CD-Rom which offers a mental dimension. Its purpose is to probe a network of relationships or overlaid periods of time which are bound together by the various “memories.”
The participating player plunges into a mesh of memory relationships. Within this system of relationships he allows references or sources (pictures, sound, video sequences or texts) of the different parts of a “memory” to appear, in the same way as he is able to plunge down into the depths of the strata of each “memory”.
Through varying scales of perception the confrontation of a number of types of game in the “memory” installation demonstrates the ability of the “memory” to change and to execute processes.

« work in progress » entre 1998 / 2008

]]> http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/memory/feed/ 0 http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/timetunnel/ http://www.ursulakraft.com/en/timetunnel/#comments Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:51:20 +0000 Ursula Kraft http://www.ursulakraft.com/?p=71 The series external production TimeTunnel takes in content subjects of the temporally limited installation “TimeTunnel” and develops new, independent compositions. A starting point is the confrontation of photographic and digital picture. Photographic analog picture can still be called like a subjective cut of reality, the digital picture is, as information, dematerialized, and already a synthetic picture which can be manipulated arbitrarily. In this connection and, first of all, before the background of the development of ‘ virtual reality ‘ the question positions itself about reality and their perception.

The “technological transformed view”, just as the « microscopic and orbital view », is shown with a zoom shot by different protection sizes. Photographic grain and electronic pixel are confronted – both dissolve the pictures in abstract forms and colors. Large-size prints translate this relation into the relationship between observer/distance/image. Zooms show body fragments alternating with monochrome colour surfaces which, taken in the picture, report to oversize pixel, pictures of absolute dissolution.

Under water taken body studies put the body in the center of the series. The condition in the water is originally and ‘futuristic’ at the same time: It reminds of the prenatal stage in the belly of the mother, just as the body movements of astronauts in the condition of simulated weightlessness as training for their stay in the space. In thinks of Marey and Muybridge these ‘body studies’ show the changed observation of space and therefore changed movement.

The ‘look outwardly’, stands towards to the ‘look inwards’: the visualization of the reality which allows to appear as a picture, about the retina in the brain a picture, and the virtual picture, which appears in the dream directly in the brain. The rapid eye movement as a reflex on the speed which can perceive only distraught pictures faces the rapid eye movement with closed eyes which appear with the dream phase REM (rapid eye movement) also as a reflex on these virtual picture worlds. “Eyephones” again steer the ‘ look outwardly ‘ in ‘ look inwards ‘, while they mount the screen directly with the eyes to replace for the real space with the virtual space.

Communication reduced on a phatische linguistic function, the word ‘hello’ represents by the rerum serves exclusively of the establishment of contact and the paradox of the ” touch on distance ” are contents of the work ‘KON-TACT’. The word ‘ contact ” means on one hand ‘ physical touch ‘, as well as ‘ human connection ‘ and, on the other hand, ‘ the touch by which a live connection is produced’.

 Complexe multi-pièces, format variable

1990 / 1997