Gefunden — Found

The Poetry of Acquirement

If we imagine roaming through landscapes in search of images that have different meanings in different contexts, we rely on coincidences and simply assume they will occur. We trust in things foreseeable that bring into being something of value out of nothingness. Here, art does not signify the creation of something – but the recognition of it. Something already here is going to stay there – and is attributed a symbolic value. The principle of reinterpretation is imposed, the original function/role of situations, objects and places dissolved. 

Observed through this filter, the world offers art accessible to everyone with open eyes. Ready-mades, haphazardly scattered all about wait for their discovery and for being defined as such.

The eye searches purposefully and still sees randomly. Through an imposed system of a higher visual order and formal structure, unchartered landscapes and unfamiliar places are deprived selectively of their alienation, and something of one’s own is added. In a moment of recognition, this bond identifies common objects that often do not receive any attention in the everyday bustle. Abandoned, secluded places reveal spots that, superficially, do not exhibit anything spectacular – on the contrary, they are exposed to constant decay, and bear traces of transcience.

They enqueue in the chain of the forgotten, seemingly only at the mercy of time. Oases of calm and solitude, they can be called. Maybe they are fetishes of unseen rituals. 

These spots are granted their particularity by isolating them from their surroundings. The marking by a postcard demonstrates elevation and appropriation at the same time. The photographic record modulates the photograph into another order. It is what it becomes. A finely woven net unites and holds together places that otherwise do not have any association. Physical character, colour composition and geometrical organisation constitute the aesthetic particulars used to structure and oppose the selected places later, while the associations led by the eye remain the most relevant constituent. 

The placed postcard demystifies the, intially, purely visual information through the e-mail address noted on the back. Yet, an active adoption by the accidentally alert is required in order for a second adoption. Only through the use of the e-mail address, further information about what is found can be made available. The strict, self-imposed rules for this work are playfully loosened by the inclusion of human beings. The communicative element thereby coming into effect causes surprises, stories and links far from every predictability. 

Over the course of three years, photographs have been produced and collected for this book under these considerations. When we look at the pictures, it is surprising to observe how much the place itself, the country, moves into the background. The photographs give almost no indication of cultural, national origin and geographic anchors. Here and there, words in one or the other language, plants that certainly grow only there and not here. However, can we rely on these sparse hints? Or is this an indication of how, beyond the usual signs of global economy an its emblems, there is a poetry encompassing the entire world?

This work is also a calling to back-pedal in the midst of the precipitance and the fast pace of today’s life. In the small things, in the immediate proximity, one has to look for beauty, for poetry. 

This interpretation is supported by the second part of the process-oriented project, which is not documented in this book; another postcard is at the disposal of so-called agents. They choose their places, mark them with this very postcard, take a picture and send it to the person initiating the project. In a pyramid extension of the recognition of poetic places, the net can be cast much farther than by the originator on her own. 

What is and remains is a constantly growing collection of situations and places somewhere in the world that share the aura of transience. Through the gesture of recognition, they are instilled with a hint of  infinity.

text by Rayelle Niemann
photo by Mariann Landolt, Zollikon, 2007
publication, edition clandestin, Biel-Bienne / Mariann Landolt / Authors, 2009
 

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