Auto-Luminograms (1977-2019)

2019

Digital photographs

45cm x 30cm (six)

(from left to right)

 

east-southeast

south-southeast

south-southwest

west-southwest

west-northwest

north-northeast

In Schlesischer Park, Berlin; stands one of the few remaining Watch Towers used during the times of the German Democratic Republic which acted as a lookout and deterrent for those looking to cross the Berlin Wall from the surrounding ‘death strip’.

 

On the first floor are a number of small fold-down rectangular ventilation hatches used to aerate the Watchtower guard’s living accommodation. Since the Tower’s completion in 1977, the hatches facing outwards towards the death strip have become sun-bleached, colour-faded and graffiti splattered, creating a series of memorialised auto-landscapes. These auto-luminograms complicate notions of witnessing and representing sites of trauma in the present. 

 

Each photograph is designated and displayed according to its orientation: from east-southeast to north-northwest. 

 

Inter-regnum-um-um, CheLA/ Art Basel, Buenos Aires. September 2019