JAPAN
»Even without any claim to represent or analyse a reality […], I can take a certain number of features […] somewhere in the world (there) and form a system from these features at will. And I will call this system Japan.« Roland Barthes, Empire of the Signs, 1970
Since 2005 Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber have been traveling to Japan, working on topics from subculture, surveillance to vielfältige urban topics. Since 2011 they have been developing an extensive body of work they call the Japanese Lesson. At the beginning it was a single one-channel video, dealing with the visual influence, research and overwhelming impressions of the Japanese cities, life and culture. Since then their perspective became more elaborated and several new works have been created: photo-books, different photographic series, dealing with topics like protest and activism, activists and landscape — political landscape.
From 2011, the year of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, they increasingly focussed on political activism. The exhibition illustrates the two artists‘ intensive preoccupation with subcultural and pop-cultural symbols of Japan and poses questions about social boundaries that also influence the structure of cities. In doing so, Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber utilise the full range of photographic image forms and presentation methods. Motifs appear in ever new contexts and series of works are constantly being developed further. The juxtaposition of individual images as an artistic process and the collaboration between the artists is reflected in the exhibition title, which understands these constantly new (creative) processes as a dialogue.
Also in their individual works, Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber approach various aspects of Japanese culture from their respective perspectives. Katja Stuke takes a media-critical approach to images of people in public. With his series J-Subs, Oliver Sieber continues his interest in subcultures, which he began documenting in Germany in 1999 with SkinsModsTeds. He sensitively portrays the appropriation of Western subcultures by Japanese youths. They are part of a global Imaginary Club, a fictitious community from the underground subculture in Europe, the USA and Japan, which creates the artistic vision of an imaginary club. The members of this imaginary community negotiate group affiliations and individual freedom beyond the mainstream and its offers of identity determined by origin, gender and age.
Artist Exchange
The desire to continue an exchange with Japan arose from the discourse between their own and Japanese culture in their own artistic practice. Their first stay in Osaka took place as part of the ArtEX residency grant between Düsseldorf and Osaka Prefecture. When this exchange was terminated, Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber were able to repeatedly initiate co-operations and exchanges through their own personal initiative. In Düsseldorf, often with the support of the of Cultural Office, and also with the HPZ Foundation’s WELTKUNSTZIMMER, they had a long-standing partner in the designer and curator Tetsuya Goto, who repeatedly found new (private) supporters in and around Osaka.
PHOTOGRAPHY – Photobattle & ANT!FOTO
»Regardless, in their works and activities as artists and art facilitators they have long since become moderators of a very specific photographic culture. […] Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber have become international traveling salesmen in the field of photography, who feel more at home on the road than they do in their atelier in Düsseldorf. Like no other German artists of their generation, they have portrayed the everyday culture of Japan in their works or turned the mythic locations of film into a subject of photography. […] Not least of all, they reveal the many faces and the ever migrating image forms and presentation methods of photography as a medium.« (Florian Ebner, bulletin 2011, Museum for Photograpie Braunschweig)
Tetsuya Goto also was the one who introduced Katja Stuke and Henguchi in 2010. Stuke was looking for a partner to realise the first Photobattle. They met in Konohana, Osaka, since then the central spot for all exchange activities. They agreed to walk through Namba area the next day, both equipped with small Fuji disposable cameras, capturing what they saw, using this method as a form of communication despite their two different languages and later using these images for their first Photobattle performance at Baikado and Bloom Gallery in Osaka in February 2011. Different ideas of Copy, Reality and Perception where discussed in an Performance, an One-Day-Exhibition and an Artist Talk. This was also the first ANT!FOTO event in 2011.
The idea of an photobattle was first developed by Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber for a stage set – unfortunately never realised. The view on photography, the question of communication with photography, the understanding of images as a visual language not only played a central role in the Photobattle between Katja Stuke and Henguchi. Also ANT!FOTO is constantly dealing with the different aggregate conditions of photography, the different formats of the medium, the fluid forms of photographic works, also the relevance of the process in the development of artistic works.
This website will chronologically summarise the various performances, events, protagonists and exhibitions of the Photobattle. Many other artists who played a role in the context of ANT!FOTO, the Photobattle and the exchange between Osaka and Düsseldorf will be introduced as well as all the works by Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber related to Japan.
Finally different works questioning forms of photography can be discovered here.