︎ MICHAELA PUTZ

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Works

Extinction Ballads

2021

“The digital works include found-footage footage of recently extinct or endangered plants. Michaela Putz translates the evidence of former diversity into a transfiguring baroque aesthetic, interrupted only by the smudgy traces of the often inconsequential scrolling we find on our tablets and smartphones. In the work, the artist refers to a conspicuously invasive-destructive element of human action as well as to the increasingly evident futility of fleeting ‘gestures’.” ( from a text by Esther Mlenek)

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PALINOPSIA

Artist Book | published by XYZ Books
2021

Author: Michaela Putz
Editing and Sequencing: Michaela Putz, Tiago Casanova, Pedro Guimarães
Design: Tiago Casanova
Text: Fabian Knierim
Translation & Proofreading: Georg Bauer
Prepress: Pedro Guimarãe
Printing: Gráfica Maiadouro

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LETHE

2020

The works from the series LETHE are constructed objects of photographic memories. Digitally documented pieces of porcelain figurines, glass and other objects were rebuilt and shaped into new pieces with a life and history of their own.

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Gloom of Mnemosyne

2019

In Greek mythology, the water of the underworld river Mnemosyne, when drunk, brought about the remembrance of the already forgotten. Its water poured itself into the voids of memory, which tends to lose events from its past. In our digitalized time, the endless stream of images stored in the cloud fills these gaps: In the sense of a transhumanism, virtual memories complemented the imperfection of our human memory and let us forget fewer and fewer events from our own biographies. The project “Gloom of Mnemosyne” attempts to reappropriate this technological form of memory.

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Screen Romance

2018-2020

How do we relate to each other emotionally, physically, and romantically in times of flat surfaces? Skin (thus: surface) and gesture are crucial elements of love and intimacy – as well as for how we connect digitally. This work examines the relation between the cloudy memories of our human nature and the detailed, informative memories of our digital images. In a process of zooming into and re-touching intimate pictures of a past relationship, these series reveals the underlying structures of technology.

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Narcissus’ Ponds

2018-2020

These objects were once liquid, now solidified: Poured from synthetic resin, their shiny black surfaces reminisce on one hand the pond in Greek mythology, in which Narcissus reflected himself and fell in love with his self-image so deeply that he was thus unable to detach from it. On the other hand, they remind of smartphone screens, who also lure their users into obsessive occupation with what’s on and behind its surfaces.

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Follow Me

2019

The work Follow Me is an aluminium urn, engraved on it is my instagram account. It raises the question of how the virtual persona is connected to the ‘real’, private persona. How does the virtual self, the one that is shared on platforms like Instagram, relate to and influences our personal lives. What happens to our most private and intimate data once we die, and how strong can the ‘death’ of the online representation of ourselves hit us?

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Obscure Mirrors

2018

The motif of the Black Mirror is deeply rooted in human history. The works from the series „Obscure Mirrors“ take into account these traditions of the usage of black mirrors, which nowadays are the screens of our smartphones. Like the black obsidian, they also act as a tool to connect different realms: they bridge the gap between the physical and the virtual world. And as many other „magical“ tools, they need to be touched, demand to be activated, through tapping, swiping, and stroking. These interactions of the human body leave traces of fat and dirt on their cool and sleek surfaces, becoming one in the process of documenting these with the means of photography.

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On The Water

2018

The work On The Water explores how we deal with the endless stream of news about human tragedies in the digital age. The piece takes found footage images of tragides collected online and recreates the gestures of conscious disregard – the gesture of swiping the image to continue the flow of information: one image is substituted by the next one in a constant stream that transforms attention into disaffection.

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Black Mirror Portrait

2018

Our smartphones are cameras, storage media - and black mirrors: From their screens, we reflect back on ourselves, like Narcissus did, when he was falling in love with his own image. But the screens are dirty and our images stained, lured by technology and prone to merge with virtuality. Is there a danger in feeling attracted to all these digital surfaces reflecting back onto us?

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Traces of Seemingly Insignificant Gestures

2017

Not only did the use of technology like our smartphones change the way we communicate with each other; it also produced a whole series of new gestures. Our typing dynamics can be seen like our personal handwriting, our fingerprint. In a process of recreating those movements of writing, a series of photograms have been produced to make traces usually volatile traces visible and permanent. They show a new way of writing, a new kind of script – brought forward by technology. But also do they question the mechanisms of power related to the constant monitoring and analyzing of our actions.

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Mirrored Landscapes, Imprinted Memories

2017

To be seen on the photos is the hill behind my family‘s house where I used to spend a lot of time as a kid. Nowadays, I usually don‘t go there. I only look at it from the distance. Some paths we don‘t walk anymore. I took the photos while they were reflecting on my smartphone screen. And so it became one with the traces I left on its surface – fingerprints, fat and dirt. The landscape of my childhood looks distorted and smudged. A bit unclear, out of focus. The way my memory changes my past.

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Stained Landscapes

2017

While the romantic scenery of this park in Vienna was reflecting on the surface on my smartphone, I recreated this process by taking pictures of the landscape mirroring on the screen. The stains I had left on my screen, due to touching it, change the scenery and give it a washed out look. The picture doesn’t look as perfect like all the images that we see on Instagram since the messiness and the dirt of our bodies interfere with this approached perfection.

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LINDA

2017

What if we could swipe through our personal memories like we do with the pictures on our smartphones? Could we bring people back and swipe them away again? Gestures that are related to the use of our smartphones, such as the scrolling through images, have been re-enacted with color on these analog photographs from my private archive. They show a skiing vacation with a lost friend of mine. Volatile gestures become visibly documented. Do people disappear behind the traces we leave on them?

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2021
© All works are under the
copyright of Michaela Putz

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