Securing evidence (art)

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Securing evidence is a form of conceptual art in which artists work according to methods similar to those used in the history and social sciences .

term

The Locard's exchange principle says that at the touch of two objects always on both a track must remain. Therefore, in the start Kriminalistik the investigations typically the search, detection, documentation and securing the tracks; then their evaluation follows.

In 1974, the German art critic Günter Metken applied the term to conceptual art for the first time: he used it to characterize a group exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg , which he curated under the title of Evidence Protection: Archeology and Memory . This exhibition then went to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus .

This is not a movement or an artist group. The term generally encompassed a new position after the end of the 1968 movement , “after the disappointment that the new beginnings were draining away”.

Exhibition 1974

In 1974 Günter Metken brought together the works of six artists from Germany, France and Italy in the exhibition at the Hamburger Kunstverein:

The artists were between thirty and forty years old in the year of the exhibition and they presented the results of their research: The French artist couple Poirier showed their panorama of ruins (11.4 × 5.75 m) of the Roman settlement Ostia Antica as a work of individual view of archaeological research. The Italian Claudio Costa was guided by ethnological research and had put up skin color tables. By collecting 238 objects from a Bavarian Götte family, Nikolaus Lang had imitated a typical working principle of everyday history and local museums . The two French artists Didier Bay and Christian Boltanski documented their personal search for identity primarily through photography, which made the entire area of ​​any memory culture the actual topic in the concept of forensic evidence.

Exhibition 1977

As co-responsible curator, Günter Metken summarized spatial works and series of works by these artists in 1977 for “documenta 6” in the left wing of the Museum Fridericianum :

At the same time, Günter Metken published a publication in 1977 with the title " Spurensicherung" , in which he documented the new artistic practice of the then still young artists under this heading. Metken explicitly referred to the concept of an individual mythology that Harald Szeemann had realized at documenta 5 .

Positions

The artists who pursue forensic evidence have doubts about the belief in technical progress and the one-dimensional view of modern media. Instead, they rely on introspection : they deal with old, largely forgotten cultures, try to capture traces artistically and gain statements about human existence from individual relics of real or invented cultures. Some artists also do field research : they examine their personal closer environment and their own feelings.

Overall, the artistic approach is similar to the methods of archeology and ethnology . Forensic evidence deals with both externally perceptible temporal deposits as well as with inner deep layers. In doing so, she mostly works with fictitious archaeological evidence, with material collections that are processed according to apparently scientific criteria, but actually only achieve a special effect with a suggestion of objectivity, research and historical reflection. Collected objects are, for example, inventoried, carefully classified and displayed in showcases. Different finds are presented:

  • Stones, leaves, pieces of wood, snail shells, bones;
  • Clothing, facade parts;
  • Photographs, text fragments, diaries.

The collection of all objects of an artist including his conceptions and ideas can result in a complex total work of art.

Subjects of forensic evidence are also individual mythologies and the examination of anthropological-philosophical questions, such as the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss as a representative of structuralism had thematized.

literature

  • Günter Metken: Securing evidence. Art as anthropology and self-exploration. Fictional Science in Art Today . DuMont, Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-7701-0945-6 .
  • Art as a social process. Kunstforum International , Vol. 27/1978.
  • Construction of remembering. Transitory turbulence I. Kunstforum International, Vol. 127/1994.
  • Between remembering and forgetting. Transitory turbulence II . Kunstforum International, Vol. 128/1994.
  • Günter Metken: Securing evidence. A revision. Texts 1977-1995 . 1st edition, Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996, ISBN 3-86572-419-1 .
  • Lambert Schneider: The Pathos of Things. From the archaeological perspective in science and art . In: Bernhard Jussen (ed.): From the artistic production of the story: Anne and Patrick Poirier . Volume 1, Wallstein, 1999, ISBN 3-89244-347-5 , pp. 51-82.
  • Claude Levi-Strauss: Myth and Meaning . 1st edition, Suhrkamp, ​​1995, ISBN 3-518-22197-3 .
  • Michael Wetzel : The time of development. Photography as securing evidence and a metaphor. In: Georg Christoph Tholen , Michael O. Scholl: Zeit -zeichen. Delays and interference between end time and real time. VCH, Weinheim 1990, ISBN 3-527-17713-2 , pp. 265-280.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Metken: Securing evidence. Art as anthropology and self-exploration. Fictional Science in Art Today . DuMont, Cologne 1977, pp. 11, 19.
  2. ↑ Communication from the Kunstverein in Hamburg from July 2, 2010.
  3. ↑ Memory in the box . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1974, p. 120-121 ( Online - Apr. 15, 1974 ).
  4. ^ Günter Metken: Securing evidence. A revision. Texts 1977-1995 . Verlag der Kunst, Berlin 1996, p. 9f.
  5. ^ Günter Metken: Securing evidence. A revision. Texts 1977-1995 . Verlag der Kunst, Berlin 1996, p. 10.