#90: Gregor Hildebrandt on Pola Sieverding

From February 2017 onwards, KW Institute for Contemporary Art is organizing a series of monthly public talks in collaboration with various institutions and organizations located in Berlin. The series entitled “The Berlin Sessions” explores the fabric of cultural producers in the city by inviting one Berlin-based speaker to give a presentation on another cultural producer that he/she finds inspiring. The goal of the lecture series is to highlight the work of Berlin-based creatives from the perspective of their peers; to map connections between the various producers and fields and to strengthen the existing networks between locally based artists, authors, musicians, performers, researchers and other creative producers.

Videoart at Midnight invites in its issue #90 together with KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Gregor Hildebrandt to present Pola Sieverding.

With photography, video, and sound Pola Sieverding (born 1981 in Germany) investigates the physical body as bearer of historical narratives that shape a contemporary discourse on the social body. By defining the body linguistically; as an alternative to words, she exploits the classical ideal of the body as locus of pleasure and power. She is attracted to extremes and socialized emotions, something felt when the body switches between looking and being looked at, touching and being touched. Her images explore the body as an expressive element, the way we alter our behavior when we feel ourselves to be acting, performing of just being. The idea of portraiture in terms of an interpretive reading of the inscriptions of culture in the human body and of architecture as a constituent stage of performing, those inscriptions is a recurring moment in her work. Pola Sieverding is a visual artist working in the field of lens-based media. She lives and works in Berlin.

Gregor Hildebrandt (born 1974 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany) is a Berlin-based and a well cross-linked artist in town. In his work he transforms conceptually the near-obsolete relics of recording technology—like VHS, cassettes, and vinyl records—into sculptures, paintings, photographs and installations. To make his signature paintings, Hildebrandt applies tapes directly to the canvas, making impressions with them before finally adhering the cassettes themselves.

For his recent exhibition in Tel Aviv, Hildebrandt has created a foresail and mainsail, made to fit a 12-metre sailing yacht. With this boat, he, a skipper, and a crew, sailed from Cyprus to Tel Aviv. The two black sails have been meticulously woven from the tape of cassettes. The songs recorded on these tapes are dedicated to travel, the sea and sailing, e.g. “Love among the Sailors” by Laurie Anderson, “Sailor Man” by Tocotronic, and many others.