He Only Feels The Black And White Of It
- Submitting institution
-
University for the Creative Arts
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Klenz, S. 2019. HOF
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- Filet (London), Kehrer Gallery (Berlin), Stagings of a Room (London Gallery West), Milchpavilion (Berlin), Exeter Phoenix Art Centre, Side-Program Dokumenta Athens (Greece)
- Brief description of type
- T – Other; multi-component output comprising artist’s book and exhibitions
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- URL
-
https://research.uca.ac.uk/3361/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
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2 - Fine Art and Photography Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘He Only Feels the Black and White Of It’ consists of 17 photographic images and a book with the same title. The work centres on a 1973 Associated Press archive photograph that pictures East German military guards and border police carrying out repairs at a damaged section of the Berlin Wall. West German civilians had attacked the wall in response to the sound of guns fired at fleeing East Germans.
The work embraces repetition as a technique of abstraction, creating images through a process of mutation. Multiple screen-printed images were made of the archive photograph. Due to the repeated use of the screen, each image is different. The image series is combined with equally fragmented text concerning Klenz’s father, who was black-listed for his political views and forced to develop a new persona in order to survive under the East German government and Stasi secret service. The texts highlight his difficulties and psychological pain.
Both the exhibition images and the book address complex issues of individual identity and freedom within the territorial borders of the oppressive and dictatorial political state of East Germany. The work offers political commentary through modes of repetition and appropriation used as artistic strategies. Subverting traditional photographic techniques, it invites the viewer to investigate new languages of photographic image-making in order to excavate traumatic content. The work shows an intensive interest in written and visual language that is expressed in the composition of text and image as equal elements.
The portfolio of contextual information includes evidence of the research aims, context and processes which led to new insights. It is illustrated with some of the 17 photographic images featured in the exhibition and the book. The portfolio also includes a PDF of the book in its entirety.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -