News to News (Ashes to Ashes)

CR 114. Year 1995

News To News Jochen Gerz Cr 114 Web 2

The last words, illuminati

Perception is inseparable from individual history, memory, and experience: however, perception is determined increasingly by our reliance on news media — the nomadic content of magazines, television, and tele-communications — which nurture a global familiarity by eliminating "elsewhere" as a presence that can be distinguished from our own.

Gary Dafour 1994

On many occasions, Gerz appears to oppose life and culture, or nature and culture, most explicitly in the series Blue or real life (1988), with is based on the intersection of his texts, "stories" and photographs of nature in which the mimetic (imitative) aspect of the picture is almost completely obscured. In the installation News to News (Ashes to Ashes), 1995, where paths through which life is recycled (renewal by the fire) are placed in position of the world of technologically distributed "truth", the same antagonism seems to be present.

Bojana Pejic 1995

Categories

Installation

Iron construction, 16 monitors, video recorder, video disc, black vinyl letters, total size 300 x 360 x 70 cm

16 monitors are installed as a rectangular block, their screens facing the wall, at a distance of 36 cm from the wall. All of them show a recording of a fire in a fireplace. The crackling sounds of a fire are audible. A text is placed on the wall.

Nationalgalerie SMPK Berlin

Exhibitions

Paris 1995. Warszawa 1995. München 1998 (Berlin 1998. Düsseldorf 1998. Seattle 1998), Berlin 2011

Bibliography

I: Villeneuve d’Ascq 1995, pp. 23-24. Warszawa 1995, p. 11a. München 1998, pp. 142-144

Access general bibliography

My name is Jochen Gerz