Deutschsprachige Version des Artikels “Across the Non-Place” is the programmatic title of the site-specific installation created by the Spanish artist duo BYE during its Fresh A.I.R. Scholarship of the Stiftung Berliner Leben. The joint works by Borja Moreno and Esteban Ferrer consist of black spray-painted graffiti on white walls, which are also hung with black-and-white paintings on large-format sheets of paper and a black tarp covered with neon-colored sprayed patterns. The images and text in the paintings draw from the visual and symbolic repertoire of everyday culture. Fragments of advertising posters, operating instructions, and signs are reproduced in paintings and drawings and compiled into a patchwork of visual components. »Across the Non-Place« (2020), room view | photo: F. Seyfert »Across the Non-Place« (2020), room view | photo: F. Seyfert »Across the Non-Place« (2020), detail | photo: F. Seyfert »Across the Non-Place« (2020), detail | photo: F. Seyfert The two artists behind BYE in front of their room instalation »Across the Non-Place« (2020), Bülowstr. 90 | photo: F. Seyfert Artistic strategies of quotation, montage, and sampling are by no means new for this generation. Instead, appropriating and adapting by hand seem to constitute an artistic aesthetic that has long shaped visual thinking as a way of generating an aesthetic experience for the viewer. This experience is dominated be the impression of having entered a visual realm in which it is difficult to orient oneself and where one loses oneself in time and space due to the utter overabundance of visual fragments one encounters. Because the elements of the paintings merge into each other, overlap, and cancel each other out, the installation is fundamentally characterized by a sense of being incomplete and open-ended. The imagery is dominated by components of various types of architecture: in one place the structure of a gothic church, in another pieces of a brutalist high-rise, and somewhere else an antique mosque. Human figures appear repeatedly, originating from different historical contexts; many of them seem to be determinedly heading somewhere. In addition, text elements appear here and there. Like the other components, they are taken from different sources and are similarly fragmentary. One is hardly able to read them and can only guess that they likely stem from instructions or guidelines. One thereby has the feeling of being caught in a black-and-white nightmare or unpleasant memory, which is ultimately a reflection of oneself. Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube. Mehr erfahren Video laden YouTube immer entsperren 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 The title “Across the Non-Place” offers a foothold in all the confusion. BYE explicitly refers to the thinking of cultural anthropologist Marc Augé, who wrote a seminal text on urban space in 1992.(1) Augé claims that the present—the supermodern—drives the replication of non-places. Key to his analysis are recent transformations that have led to a superfluence and excess of time and space and increased individualization. Time is replicated in the way that the events we read and hear about also multiply. An excess of space is generated by the speed of our means of transport, which ultimately shrink the world, and by new technologies enabling us to learn about events in far-flung corners of the world with almost no delay. According to Augé, this supermodernity produces non-places: spaces that have no identity and that could neither be described as relational nor historic. Specifically he identifies these as transit and functional spaces, such as airports, train stations, hotel chains, or shopping centers, but also as temporary camps for migrants. Non-places are equipped with monitors, screens, and loudspeakers that convey different types of information and images; they are also furnished with signage used to regulate and direct people’s behavior. Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube. Mehr erfahren Video laden YouTube immer entsperren 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 Through their installation BYE relates and transverses these non-places. They mimic a sense of visual overload and call its meaningfulness into question. But just when one has the feeling that they are presenting an apocalyptic vision steeped in cultural pessimism, the aesthetic experience tips in the other direction, and in the spray-painted images and signs one finds references to subcultures, creative resistance, and ultimately the notion of there being something beyond these non-spaces. (1) Marc Augé, Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity [1992] (London and New York: Verso, 1995) Text: Dr. Kea Wienand About BYE BYE (Valencia, 2016) is a collective formed by Borja Moreno and Esteban Ferrer. They met in 2011 at the Polytechnic University of Valencia but it was not until 2016 when they decided to form BYE as an artistic group to reinforce their trajectories and affinities. In their work, they focus on printmaking processes and explore different artistic fields like installation, painting or video, creating a new vision about the association between unrelated images and their own meaning. For more information about the artists, please visit: Website / Facebook / Instagram The online showcase of Fresh A.I.R. #3 The online showcase offers an opportunity to get an overview of the highly diverse projects of the third group of Fresh A.I.R. artists with their different kinds of media and aesthetics. On view are video and photographic materials about the individual projects, each of which is accompanied by an explanatory text that aims to offer insights into the work’s aesthetic experience. learn more abouth the online showcase
