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ISABELL HEIMERDINGER
SI LIBRARAY
NOVEMBER 13 - DEC 20, 2003

 

Regards Croisés (Slides taken to and in Abidjan in January 2001)

2 slide projections of 80 slides each
Dimensions variable
2001

Regards Croisés, “crossed gazes,” is the title of Isabell Heimerdinger’s slide projection work. The slides projected onto 2 orthogonal walls from 2 projectors tell at least three different stories. The 80 slides to the left are images of photographic works of well-known European and American artists, such as Wolfgang Tillmanns, Rineke Dijkstra, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bruce Nauman et al. Heimerdinger brought these pictures with her to Abidjan, invited by the Goethe institute to teach a workshop on photography. The second projection shows slides the artist took during her stay in the Ivory Coast: tourist pictures, snap shots, documentations of the daily life of this West African metropolis, shaken as it was by frequent military coups.
The third story emerges from the juxtaposition of the two sets of pictures. At first glance the viewer is taken in by the discrepancy between the well-composed staged photographic images, and the quick snapshot-style slides. But in time, the artistic photographs seem more and more artificial, their differentiation from Heimerdinger’s less clear, and a simple dialogue between the staged and un-staged (the content and purpose of the workshop), between Europe and Africa, seems less and less possible. We are confronted with the same questions Heimerdinger was confronted with in Africa, namely, that of mediation, and the difficulty of assigning (role) models.
After a short period of being presented with the Western art images, the students in Heimerdinger’s workshop (professional photographers from West African countries) split into two opposed groups. One refused to participate, resisting the “colonialization of the gaze,“ and hence making it clear that the imported role models were of no relevance to them. The others seized the occasion as an opportunity to broaden their view. The artist, hoping for a stimulating collaboration, was not only confronted with a high-pitched emotional conflict, but also attacked for assuming a position she had never consciously taken. The idea to engage this polarity of positions in a work came to her towards the end of her trip, after most of the pictures had been taken. She was surprised how accurately the dual slide projections were able to raise multiple questions: of educational models; relevance; the failure of communication; teaching and learning; and art and real life.