Close Up: Katharina Sieverding
Intimacy on a Large Scale:
A Conversation with Katharina Sieverding
db-artmag.de
With her self-portraits, Katharina Sieverding is like the sphinx of contemporary art. She�s shown at both the documenta and the German pavilion of the Venice Biennale; this year she was awarded the renowned Kaiserring of the city of Goslar. In an interview with Harald Fricke , the artist, who lives in Dusseldorf, explains why she�s been working on breaking down gender identities for years.
The gaze is rigid, photo flashes and lamps are reflected in the pupils of a never-changing face. Only the make-up and hair vary; sometimes the photographs are bathed in red light or resemble negatives, having undergone the technical process of solarization . There�s no question about it, a woman artist�s staging of herself has seldom been this perfect: hundreds of large-scale photographs show one image and one image only � the frontal portrait of Katharina Sieverding. The current exhibition Close Up at P.S.1/MoMA in New York has developed a path throughout the works of the German artist, who was born in Prague in 1944, in which intimacy literally dissolves in the face-to-face situation. The viewer is surrounded by self-portraits whose individual contours blur into a tangled web in the allover of the presentation. Close Up comes across as a photographic diary kept over the years in which Sieverding�s face changes imperceptibly over time and yet, as a motif, always remains the same. Aberration and abstraction interact here in a way that is almost physically palpable: as a continuous series of transformations.
Understanding life in terms of the moment and using the series to carry this moment to the point of absurdity is the tension underlying the fascination for Sieverding�s work. Since 1967, she�s been making photographs and films of herself, arranging the visual material thus accrued into various image blocks. Stauffenberg-Block I�XVI from 1969 is an investigation into Germany�s past, and for Maton (1990) Sieverding used the image of her face as an ambiguous surface for projection. On the other hand, Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen X/VI (Looking at the Sun at Midnight, 1988) shows a face covered in golden dust and superimposed with solar eruptions in which Sieverding opens "the high cosmic oven," as the art critic Rudolf Schmitz wrote in the 1997 Deutsche Bank catalogue. "A blazing flame burns above the tableau of the many untouched, melting masks."
Katharina Sieverding has become one of the most well-known women artists of her generation with these puzzling, at times cold, but always strong compositions. She took part in documenta V as early as 1972, and in 1997 she exhibited in the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The same year, Sieverding was Deutsche Bank�s artist of the fiscal year, while the Deutsche Guggenheim gave her a large one-woman exhibition with Works in Pigment. When she received the Kaiserring of the city of Goslar in October 2004, the jury was above all impressed by the fact that Sieverding, more than any other woman artist, is a "seeker of human identity." Her own bodily experience has provided the motor throughout, and to this day Sieverding remains closely associated with the forerunners of performance and body art.
Harald Fricke: Ms. Sieverding, Elfriede Jelinek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year, and you received the Kaiserring of the city of Goslar. Is society ready for powerful women in 2004?
Katharina Sieverding: Yes, and I also find it cool that "powerful works" make it into this process of public recognition. At least it poses additional questions.
In her texts, Jelinek investigates female role clich�s, while you challenge the viewer�s perception with large-scale self-portraits. To what extent are these images exemplary for the role of women artists?
At least I�ve tried to create a life-size dimension in "repeated reflections," one that functions in a self-made visual space. These constructions have a polarizing effect when seen alongside the traditions of dominant, monumental male images.
It was once written about your photographs that they feel like a mixture between diva and drag queen � both are overlays, outlaw figures, and extreme gender portrayals all at the same time. Were you more in search of identity in the self-portraits, or aberration?
"Aberration" is indispensable to the search for identity. Identity is a continuous process of change, and so it�s a process of development as well. The interesting question here is: out of what, and where is it going?
You entered Joseph Beuys� class at the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie in 1967. Did the climate there offer you the free space you needed for your artistic development?
Absolutely. Existing power structures were discussed on a daily basis, whether it was in reference to the commercialization of culture and science or the human image in the context of the gender debate. This concept and technique of dividing power was the basic prerequisite for the "free space" you�ve mentioned.
Why did you decide on photography as your medium � seeing as how Beuys used photographs as material, but never as a finished work of art?
That was exactly the more appropriate point of departure for a dialectical art practice: away from Modernism�s dictates to using non-aural apparatuses and theories. Deconstruction of the male in art�s dominion [editor�s note: an approximation of Sieverding�s play on words "Kunst-Herr-Schaft," which isolates the word "Herr" (lord or sir) in "Herrschaft" (dominion)].
Your early works, such as "Life/Death" or "Maton" were made in nightclub environments. How important was this contact to a scene outside art?
They arose during my nighttime work, at my job, so to speak. This context became a kind of public/private sponsorship for my first film productions. Practicing this type of multiple classification of glamour, trash, art, and economy gave my work a very particular impulse.
For "Transformer," you created double-exposure photographs in 1973/74 in which your face is superimposed with that of Klaus Mettig. In those days, as in the works of J�rgen Klauke, androgyny was a theme of popular culture whose most famous proponents were Lou Reed and David Bowie. Today, your work is counted among the forerunners of the gender debate. Would you repeat this merging of the female and male portrait again today?
This possibility of changing gender identity is very popular, even among people of various generations somehow interested in the idea of reincarnation for whatever reason; it creates a general sense of relaxation � away from competing identities and towards individual responsibility. That�s a future model� Seen in social and technological terms, Transformer from 1973/74 is an expression of self-perception that does not exclude the other, a model for integration.
The studies for "Life/Death," "Maton," or "Looking at the Sun at Midnight" were photographed in 35 mm. and later blown up to six foot-high, panel-sized prints. How did you make the decision to show your face "larger than life"?
I have to correct that. The original material for Life/Death consisted of 16 mm. color film sequences, in the case of Maton it was black/white photomat passport photographs, and for Looking at the Sun at Midnight it was color Polaroids. All this image material was first reproduced onto ektachromes for site-specific installations and projects and was usually projected to wall and room size. The "larger than life" idea resulted out of an interest in using my own artistic production to investigate the entire complex of mass media and popular culture, film and optical technology and then to "develop" them in these "spaces."
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Katharina Sieverding
Berlin
Germany
Europe
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Web Links
Galerie Christian Lethert, Koln
Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin
Galerie Grimm/Rosenfeld, Munich, New York
Kunst-Werke Berlin
P.S.1, New York
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![Katharina Sieverding, Transformer-Solarisation 3 A/B [Edition 2/7], 1973<br/>A/D/A process, acrylic, steel, 2 x (190 x 125)<br/>Image © Katharina Sieverding, Courtesy Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin<br/>](../public/artists/5978/2/Katharina-Sieverding-1.jpg "Katharina Sieverding, Transformer-Solarisation 3 A/B [Edition 2/7], 1973<br/>A/D/A process, acrylic, steel, 2 x (190 x 125)<br/>Image © Katharina Sieverding, Courtesy Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin<br/>")
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