Conrad has participated in two group exhibitions in Japan so far, but has yet to hold a solo exhibition, and for some reason, he is rarely introduced in the context of photography, even though his works mainly use photography. In fact, I myself didn't know much about the artist apart from the collection of works I had already collected at IACK, and judging from the visitors to this exhibition and the reactions online, most people had never even heard of this artist.
However, there is no point in lamenting such a situation. Fortunately, IACK currently has a substantial collection of Conrad's works, and recently"Roma Publications"The new book published by"Japan Works"As the title suggests, this is a work created with Japan as its theme, and it will be a rare opportunity for Japanese audiences to experience the world of this artist.
This time, we will focus on an interpretation of "Japan Works" and explore the appeal of this author who has continued to explore all kinds of things without being bound by convention.
＜Japan Works - 1＞
First, let's take a look at the new work that has been produced.
Conrad's first publication with Roma Publications was in 2011."Carrara", 2017“Schaubuch: Skulptur (Looking At Sculpture)”This is Conrad's third book, following "The Metabolist Architecture of the 20th Century" in 2019. The book is a collection of approximately 500 pages of work, and features photos of Metabolist architecture scattered throughout Tokyo, Itoigawa, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Osaka that Conrad photographed between September and October 2019.［*1］The book contains photographs of anonymous buildings that form unique urban landscapes in the surrounding areas.
What characterizes this book above all else is its simple yet bold structure. It is composed of a grid of colored pages, full-screen black-and-white pages, and interspersed text pages. According to Roger Willems, founder and designer of Roma Publications, the idea for the colored pages came to him when he first saw the thousands of photographs sent by Conrad, arranged in chronological order.［*2］The book contains the story of the author in a foreign land.monthsThe various scenes that the lens shot over the course of the book are depicted as they were, and the photographs are arranged in a timeline with file numbers so that the reader can retrace his steps.
On the other hand, the black and white pages feature powerful black and white photographs that are familiar to readers who have already seen her work. Initially, Conrad had intended to use these pages to lay out the film photographs she had been taking in small quantities alongside her digital photographs. Take a BreakWillems was attracted to the contrast between the flow of time in the film photographs, but after considering the overall volume and balance, he decided to mix digital photographs in addition to the film photographs in the composition.
The final touch, which gives the book a light-hearted rhythm, are the text pages inserted throughout the book. These texts were not written by Conrad himself, but are essay-like pieces about Metabolist architecture, Japanese culture, and landscapes written by Australian architect and Japanologist Julian Worrall. If the vast amount of thousands of photographs embodies Conrad's journey and his labyrinthine image of the city, these texts act as a guide to lead the reader by the hand to the end of the journey.
Spreads from "Japan Works" ©︎IACK, 2021
Of all the collections of work that Conrad has produced to date, this book is in some ways the one in which the element of architecture is most prominent, but is it really correct to interpret this book as a record of a journey that took him around famous buildings in foreign lands?
The answer is yes and no. There is no right or wrong way to read this collection, and it is an obvious fact that this book puts architecture at the forefront. However, the more you learn about Conrad's work up to that point, the more you feel that you are only skimming the cream of his work.
<Globalization and Photographic Practice>
Konrad was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1960. Although she did not receive any professional art education, she was interested in architecture, urban environments, and cinematography, and in her 20s she worked as a secretary at an architecture firm in Vienna. Then she bought a camera and began to teach herself photography, and gradually began to take it seriously.
At first, he mainly photographed nearby European cities, but around 1991-1992, he became interested in the ongoing globalization of the world and the parallel urban development taking place everywhere. He then began to create research-based works, which would become the basis of his subsequent production style.
"When I started photographing, I spent 2-3 months in various big cities doing on-site research. You can do research from home about things that already have information about them, but you can only discover the truly unknown and newly developed by seeing them with your own eyes. As you can see from the photos, I'm not interested in flashy architecture or the latest or most talked about things, and in fact there was very little there that interested me. So I started applying for artist-in-residence programs, scanning the city with my camera and photographing anything that intrigued me."［*3］
For Conrad, photography was an act of literally scanning and collecting all the elements of architecture and cities that he experienced physically and spatially, and reducing them to a two-dimensional photograph. Furthermore, Conrad did not output the photographs he had taken in a conventional way, but instead sought ways to reduce them to three dimensions and space again.
The process of creating this series of works meant expanding his own perception of himself and space. Conrad, who had a strong interest in architecture and "space," made a series of attempts to combine architectural images with the spatial architecture of the "exhibition hall" to give viewers new experiences.
Installation view ©︎Aglaia Konrad, 2021
<Discovering new spaces>
In this way, Conrad was trying to express a connection between the urban space and the exhibition venue, but gradually"Exhibition Hall"As a result, he began to pay attention to the medium of books.
The first glimpse of this style can be seen in a group exhibition held at the Provincial Museum Hasselt in Belgium and CBK Rotterdam in 1992."Snapshotpolitics - De camera als instrument van de kunst"This is an exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition. The book is a booklet-like catalogue of only 22 pages, but the page about Conrad uses a unique design in which layers of glass, photographs, and landscapes are expressed by overlapping tracing paper.
Spread from "Snapshotpolitics - De camera als instrument van de kunst" ©︎IACK, 2021However, this is merely an accessory to an exhibition, created as a miniature version of an actual installation, and it is difficult to call it a book as a work of art in itself.Her full-scale expression of these characteristics began with the artist book series she began working on in 1995.
Among them, the one produced in 1998"Sao Paulo"Although this work has a simple binding like the catalogue mentioned above, by using inverted photographs and a unique sequence, it reverses the one-way flow of time that a book has from the beginning to the end, and makes the reader feel as if they are lost in a city. It can be said that this book marked the beginning of her full-scale challenge in her career to create works that are strongly conscious of the "space" of a book.
Sequence of pages from "Sao Paulo" ©︎IACK, 2021Creating works on the theme of a globalizing world［*4］This series of initiatives, which were strongly conscious of the space of books, began in 2002."Elasticity", and in 2005IconocityIt reaches a peak at.
Unlike the self-published series, these two books are not composed of one city each, nor do they feature each city in a chapter, but rather the photos taken in various cities are arranged in a unique layout and sequence that can literally be called chaotic. This composition, in which the photos are arranged flatly across the boundaries of each city, directly reflects the sense of globalization that accelerated as we entered the 1990s.
Above: spread from "Elasticity", below: spread from "Iconocity" ©︎IACK, 2021<Investigating more specific cases>
If the two books "Elasticity" and "Iconocity" are representative collections of works from the early part of the artist's career that deal with the phenomenon of globalization, then the works he produced later on are"Desert Cities"and"Carrara"This work marks a step forward both in method and content, moving from the larger framework to the smaller framework of individual cases.
In "Desert Cities," he revisits Egypt, a place he visited once before in 1992, and depicts the desert development and imported modernist architecture there using paper of different textures. In "Carrara," a collection of works derived from a series of video works, he depicts the mountains and quarries being cut in the Carrara region of Italy, known for its marble, using a unique layout in which photographs are superimposed on top of each other.
Spread from "Carrara" ©︎IACK, 2021While both photographers capture the fascinating shapes of architecture and their subjects, they also take up specific examples of the conflict between nature and urban development in modern society, and they have brilliantly adapted their works to the book format with more sophisticated sequences and skillful use of paper than ever before.
In the following statement about "Desert Cities," she reveals what she sees beyond the formal richness of the architecture.
"All my works speak of us, how we interact with the environment around us, and ultimately of both humans and the environment. Even if we are not present in the image, we are the main subject, and the presence of the structures I photograph is closely related to and derived from our existence. My intention is not to convey moralism, but to observe a subject that interests me personally, and then to open a wider dialogue related to humans, architecture and landscape. I am neither an artist/anthropologist, nor an artist/geographer, nor an artist/journalist. The perspective of the Desert Cities project is mainly based on the foundations of my own artistic beliefs: it is a reflection on architectural and urban phenomena, clarifying my views on the constitution of society from the experience of my photographic practice. Although my projects are very different in terms of their respective aims, they are all rooted in the same activity, which has allowed me to accumulate a rich collection of images, forming an archive that may cover much of our efforts to live together in the built environment."［*5］
In his early works, people were depicted as part of the city, but since "Desert Cities," Conrad has focused on architecture. This is because architecture, which is created as part of human activities, naturally reflects the ideas, values, and climate and culture of each region. As he explores the city, Conrad uses his camera to capture its surface, and by connecting these fragments with the exhibition space, a new space appears before us. This is what architecture is to Conrad, and what photography is all about.
<Freedom from Established Meanings>
Another important element that characterizes her work, as mentioned in her previous comment about Desert Cities, is that it is "open to a wide range of dialogue." Conrad has attempted to achieve this in various ways in her collections of work since Desert Cities and Carrara.
A collection of works published in conjunction with a solo exhibition held at M Leuven, an art museum in Leuven, Belgium in 2016.『Aglaia Konrad: From A to K』was created based on the unique idea of replacing "A to Z" (meaning everything or complete works) with the initials of his name, "A to K." The fragmented words arranged in a row do not have a clear meaning on their own, but depending on which words the reader picks up as they read, a different image of the work will be formed for each of the three readers.
Spread from "Aglaia Konrad: From A to K" ©︎IACK, 2021
And in 2017, he created a collection of photographs that resembled personal notes taken at various museums in Europe."Schaubuch: Skulptur (Looking At Sculpture)"While indirectly indicating a continuity with his previous works, the book allows the reader to interpret the work freely by not revealing details about each sculpture.
Spread from "Schaubuch: Skulptur (Looking At Sculpture)©︎IACK, 2021What these works have in common is that, unlike the thematically fixed works "Desert Cities" and "Carrara," they do not tie the photographs or subjects to specific meanings, but are more open to all kinds of interpretations.
Since works are presented as works, they must be completed at some point. But at the same time, they do not necessarily need to be fixed in that place forever. Conrad freely spins new contexts by taking in and out materials from the archives, as if rearranging building blocks. In this way, he frees the photographs and their subjects from fixed meanings, leaving room for the viewer to interpret them, making it possible to view them from various perspectives.
＜Japan Works - 2＞
Let us take another look at Japan Works, taking into account the many experiments she has undertaken in the medium of collections up to now.
Conrad had already visited Japan briefly in 1990 and 2000, and this time he came to Japan after conducting thorough research in advance in order to conduct further research. In the sense that he revisited the places he visited in the 1990s, this book can be positioned as a variation of "Desert Cities." However, while "Desert Cities" clearly contrasted nature with urban development/globalization, this work does not show such a contrast.
The color photographs arranged on a grid that characterizes this book certainly serve the function of tracing Conrad's journey chronologically, but in light of the previous works, they can also be seen as a collection of photographs that are non-static and open to interpretation, reflecting the artist's subjects of interest as they are.
By arranging the photographs in chronological order as they are, the reader is exposed to the pure shifts of Conrad's gaze. These photographs may or may not be exhibited or developed into artworks in the future. This represents both the infinite possibility of development that comes with bare photographs that have not undergone the essential production process of selection, and the openness to all kinds of interpretations because they are non-deterministic.
This characteristic is also seen in the black and white photographs. These photographs are more "finished" than the colored ones, but if you look closely, you will notice that similar shots or different angles taken at the same location are intentionally inserted in succession. This is an experiment in sequencing that continues from "Sao Paulo" by taking advantage of the characteristics of the book medium, and at the same time, it gives a non-fixed impression to the depicted architecture.
In other words, this book is a compilation of the artist's month-long photography trip on the themes of Japanese cities and Metabolism, but it also skillfully reflects the experimental techniques and production processes that Conrad has attempted up to now, making it a truly worthy collection of his work.
Spread from "Japan Works" ©︎IACK, 2021<The organic world and legibility>
First of all, why did Conrad become interested in Metabolism? The concrete buildings she has photographed give off a rather artificial and inorganic impression. However, as she has stated that the existence of buildings is closely related to and derived from the existence of humans, Conrad has continued to focus on themes such as architecture and urban development as part of human activities.
Such images of architecture and cities are most evident in the aerial photography that Conrad has been working on since the beginning of his career and continues to this day. Originally, aerial photographs are taken for the purpose of surveying and mapping, but many of Conrad's aerial photographs are taken on 35mm film, so the images are blurry and do not show the detailed terrain. Through this abstraction, the roads that are the core of infrastructure are depicted as veins crawling through the earth, and the reality of the city emerges as if it were a giant living organism.
It was perhaps only natural that Conrad, who viewed cities from this perspective, would become interested in this architectural movement that aimed to "organically" change architecture in response to social change.
Spread from "Iconocity" ©︎IACK, 2021
Aglaia Conrad is an artist with an astonishingly smooth skill in connecting photography as a physical experience/research with the process of spatial expression based on the archives. Her greatest characteristic and appeal is that she does not restrict the meaning of the subject she focuses her lens on or the work, but rather develops it one after another, making it possible to read her work from any perspective. This is evidenced by the rich variety of genres in the group exhibition and related books brought together this time.［*6］
As I flipped through the pages of Japan Works, a question akin to "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" came to mind. Do these buildings shape the city, or do the city and land shape the architecture? Conrad's work transcends the frameworks of humans, architecture, cities, and society, making us keenly aware that everything exists on an extension of them. They are intricately intertwined, forming the everyday landscape that surrounds us. The landscapes included in this book are familiar to the Japanese. However, when we look at these familiar landscapes through her filter, we unexpectedly catch a glimpse of ourselves.
-
[*1] Metabolism is an architectural movement that was developed in the 1960s by young architects such as Kurokawa Kisho, Kikutake Kiyonori, and Maki Fumihiko. Based on the idea that architecture and cities should change organically in response to changes in society and population, just as the human body changes to adapt to its surroundings, a variety of experimental works were created. The Nakagin Capsule Tower Building, designed by Kurokawa in 1972, is known as a representative work of this movement.
[*2] Roger Willems, Camera Austria international 2021, 155, talking book: Erik van der Weijde in Conversation with... Roger Willems, 2021, pp.84-85
[*3] Niccolò Fano, " calamita aglaia konrad and sand interview by Niccolò Fano, https://calamitaproject.com/aglaia-konrad/ (accessed on 30 October 2021)
[*4] The existence of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War (1961-1989)Establishment of the EU (1993), etc.For Conrad, who was born in Austria in 1960, the concept of "borders" must have been a very familiar topic.Perhaps this is the background against which Japan's strong interest in globalization stems.
[*5] Niccolò Fano, " calamita aglaia konrad and sand interview by Niccolò Fano, https://calamitaproject.com/aglaia-konrad/ (accessed on 30 October 2021)
[6] Conrad's work is discussed across a wide range of themes, including cities and architecture, contemporary photography, contemporary art, cartography, history, and ecology.What makes such narration possible is that her works are structured to be open to dialogue.
Title: Japan Works
Artist: Aglaia Konrad
Roma Publications, 2021
Softcover with flaps, Otabind
260 x 202 x 30 mm
496 pages
Text in English
First edition
¥6,500 + tax
The product page isHere
[Aglaia Konrad Archives Online]
Date: October 17th (Sun) -
*The deadline has been extended to coincide with the publication of this article.
https://www.iack.online/collections/aglaia-konrad-archives-online
