twiceastranger.org

Katja Loher

Born in 1979 in Zurich,
Lives and works in New York, Berlin and Basel.
www.katjaloher.com

In her work Katja Loher merges her ongoing exploration of language and visual form with sophisticated technology and dramatic sculptural awareness.

The award winning New York based artist orchestrates a variety of mediums and collaborators from around the world. She seeks to deliver precise, as well as poetic metaphors on the ambivalent relationships between power, freedom and dependency. Loher configures the video, technology and sculpture to meticulously elaborated Videosculptures. In her weather balloon series, bird’s view choreographies of crowds are projected onto the round surfaces and thereby transformed into Videoplanets.

Loher’s work has appeared at international galleries, art fairs and institutions around the globe. In 2004, Katja Loher was the recipient of the TPC CreaTVty Award from the Swiss TV Production Center. In the last years she received several artist in residences, awards and grants including 6-month artist residencies in Berlin, Beijing and New York.

Proposal for Twice A Stranger:

Videotellurium

For the purposes of gaining a wider, critical perspective – and enabling an inclusive dialogue – I am interested in providing the viewers of the proposed work a perspective that allows them a view of our planet from outer space.

For Istanbul 2010 I plan to create a “Videotellurium” a grand, full-scale sculptural representation of a solar system – a mechanical model of “Videoplanets” and orbiting video projectors that suggest satellites or moons and project video images onto the planets, themselves created by weather balloons.

“The Videoplanets orbit a sun located in the center of the room, at different speeds and in different directions.
The projected video, shown on the surface of the weather balloons, consists of a bird’s-eye view of seemingly anonymous crowds of people that begin to perform intricately structured choreographies. As if under a microscope we can study them for meaning, and as we begin to perceive meaning in their movements we begin to see that they have formed letters and questions. “Videotellurium” inserts those questions into the DNA of the planets and seeks to preserve them as artifacts for the future.

The “Videotellurium” that I plan to create for Istanbul 2010 is an effort to contribute dialogue to Turkey’s position as a fulcrum between Europe and the larger Islamic world.

The sun in the centre of the solar system represents an established body of though. Questions projected onto the orbiting planets identify and illuminate information that can be added to this dialogue. Every planet in this created solar system has its own strategy to enable the information that lives upon it to spread, and therefore dissimilate its unique coding to surrounding environments. This is done through the value these ideas have as intellectual properties, and the value they have to a community of viewers.

katja-birdview

Videotellurium, 2009, Stills from video

katja-birdview2

Videotellurium, 2009, Stills from video

katja-schachfeld

Schachfeld, 2007, Video installation

Education
2004 Diploma dept. of Art and Media Art, Art Academy Basel, FHBB HGK
2001 – 2004 FHBB HGK, Fine Art Academy Basel, Switzerland
2000 – 2001 ESBA, Fine Art Academy Geneva, Switzerland

2008
Visual Drugs, Christinger Contemporary | Zürich | Switzerland

C = Catalogue | P = Publication

Awards
2009 Artist in Residence | Beijing | iaab (International Exchange & Studio Program Basel)

2007 Artist in Residence | New York | Galapagos Art Space

2006
Alexander Clavel Foundation Cultural Development Prize | Riehen | CH
Artist in Residence | New York City | iaab (International Exchange & Studio Program Basel)

2004
TPC CreaTVty Award (Main TV Production Center Zürich, Switzerland)
Artcredit Basel-Town Award | Department Free Art Project | Basel

Katja Loher

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