[„Extra.experimental trails“, Festival for Experimental Video Art, D21, Leipzig, 2013 // „tools“, group exhibition, Molkerei Dresden, 2015 // „How to show?“, group exhibition, EGfK.European Society for Art and Research, Berlin, 2014 // „Experimenta at Jaaga“, film screening, Bangalore, India, 2010/12]
Besides the main projects I was working on in the last three years, in India, in Germany, in different cities - spontaneous interviews and experiments with media objects in typical, urban scenarios took place. The remaining material was ranging from recorded video files to small sketches on paper. Only later-on, after months, I reviewed it and transformed the material by adding textual layers or creating digital overviews: interactive websites, video documentations, animations. Each of the works is not only a work. They are called experiments, because they are part of a free and open process. No pre-fixed formats, no framed project, no preconception, no copyright.
The machine can‘t read the lines, right? 2013
Minidor. white text on backside 2013
Sketches 2012
Dina Boswank, Archana Prasad,
Kiran Dsilva, Markus Tauber
Concept and Video Editing -
Dina Boswank
Technical Support, Performance -
Jaaga Project Space (Bangalore, India)
link to video on Vimeo -
https://vimeo.com/71345232
The scanner stood on a table next to a road. Several times. Not visible, as it was surrounded by a huge crowd of curious people. And I was sitting next to it, scanning everybody, who was willing to digitize his or her hands and face. Many hands were collected.
And their owners got suspicicous. What will happen to the lines? Will the machine be able to read it? And therefore know their futures? I also got curious and noted down bits and pieces of the conversations to create a fictitous dialogue. A dialogue about the images inside the machine, the information hidden inside them and me re-using them. Besides the event itself I created a website and an animation using it, which resulted in a paradoxical videowork.
- But what is it telling you? I can not read it.
- But the machine can see the lines, isn‘t it? Yes, the lines, sure! So, please tell me about my lines? The scanner reads in lines, I mean with lines, through lines. But not your lines. Will everybody know me by now? No, I just want to screen it. No explanations. Screening my future? No, what do you mean with your future? Isn‘t it just inside yourself? I just screen the lines the scanner recorded. Yes, inside the lines. The machine knows me.
- (...) Maybe the machine isn‘t as stupid as you assume?
- You shouldn‘t underestimate the internet.
- I dont! But I will promise you with my signage, that I won‘t upload it anywhere.
- Your signage?
- Yes, handwritten. My name.
- Good.
Dina Boswank
Texts -
Florian Meyer, Nele Wohlatz, Johnny Jaganath, Julia Boswank, Dina Boswank, Mithun Jayaram, Annabel Lange
Technical Support, Performance -
Jaaga Project Space (Bangalore, India)
link to video on Vimeo -
https://vimeo.com/27195192
_urban text
While walking or driving through the city every day, several times even, again and again, one develops a certain way of perceiving the surrounding strcutures. As you walk through the city you bind spaces together in a subjective way: this can never be captured objectively, say by drawing maps to trace journeys, since it is the experience of walking or „passing by“ that counts. A simple metaphor for these ways would be „the text“, a cluster of words living along a line in space. The rhetorics of texts can be translated to one‘s personal movement in the urban structure and vice versa.
_the white text
Bangalore is quite popular for huge infrastructural problems. In the early evening it seems to be impossible to move - you are standing.
Every ten minutes the setting of persons, cars and houses change its face quickly, just to get frozen again. The common use of two-wheelers forces everyone to be really close to each other. Faces, Patterns, Parfume, Labors, Ganeshas, Music, Mobiles.
One could use the waiting time to reflect creatively - triggering one‘s mind with textual screenings happening in between all these cars, bikes and rikshaws standing in the rush hour during sunset. The screen itself was at the backside of a three-wheeler (load carrier). One projector, a laptop and a battery (Uninterrupted Power System) made up the whole equipment. As soon as the signals became red or the traffic flow was slowly enough, everything got switched on.
Short notes, imaginations, collections from similar urban agglomerations around the world were collected from writers. Most of them are artist, ethnographers or architects. They walk, use the skateboard, sit next to the street, go by underground every day - and they write about it spontaneously. On the writer‘s own daily ways, all things that are seen by him or remembering him on a far away thought, will get woven into a text, into words and questions.
Dina Boswank
Interview, Sound Editing -
Dina Boswank
Interview Partner, Storytelling -
Johnny Jagannath
link to video on Vimeo -
https://vimeo.com/47739830
Johnny Jaganath is a 33 year old man, born, raised up and now working in Yelahanka, a suburb of Bangalore. I talked to him about a film script he recently wrote and which has got the name „In Time - Pt. 2“. It is meant as a sequel of „In Time“, a film, which was directed by Andrew Niccol (2011) and is starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried.
But to keep it in a so called clear order: Johnny isn‘t a film maker, nor is he a writer. He is a software tester. And, he has got a long list of jobs he did, after getting a Bachelor in Engineering. That list is there, because he never wanted to be an engineer. Parents wanted that. Not only his parents, but almost all parents of that 30-something generation saw their children in international corporations and not enrolled in a traditional Physics Course or not so traditional Filming Class.
Johnny just did, what everybody did, when the internet connection reached his home and introduced YouTube, Wikipedia and Filesharing into his spare time. He made up connections, drew lines, got surprised, compared and found confidence to write down his little ideas revolving around physical rules, political conditions and filmic expressions. Most likely the film described in his script will never be produced, but in the course of writing he was able to express an own opinion to discuss about.
I cut the interview into a 18-min-long soundtrack and while listening to it, have been drawing the lines and worlds in Photoshop. Without a cut, in real time.