odesa material

dilowe - ділове - the centre of europe /text

dilowe - ділове - the centre of europe

The village, first mentioned in writing in 1615, belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary until the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, then to Czechoslovakia until 1939. From March 1939 until the Russian occupation in 1944 it was Hungarian, then briefly Czechoslovakian again and from 1946 Soviet. Since 1991, the village has belonged to the independent Ukraine.

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odesa material /data

odesa material /data

odesa material
video series
variable length, 4K, stereo
2019-2021

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dilowe - ділове - the centre of europe /video

dilowe - ділове - the centre of europe /duration 00:02:54

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odesa /video

odesa /duration 00:11:27

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odesa - fisher /video

odesa - fisher /duration 00:04:28

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c.c.2020-21

c.c.2020-21 - ulrich polster /text

ulrich polster - c.c.2020-21

c.c.2020-21 started with the temporary closure of my gallery and the request to contribute something to their online outsourcing of the program. This impulse strengthened my intention to record this extraordinary time.

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c.c.2020-21 /data

c.c.2020-21 /data

c.c.2020-21
Video series (numbers 00-20)
variable length, 4K, stereo
2020-2021

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c.c.2020-21 - 20 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 20 /duration 00:05:12

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c.c.2020-21 - 19 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 19 /duration 00:06:29

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c.c.2020-21 - 18 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 18 /duration 00:02:42

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c.c.2020-21 - 17 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 17 /duration 00:05:27

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c.c.2020-21 - 16 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 16 /duration 00:03:47

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c.c.2020-21 - 15 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 15 /duration 00:04:27

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c.c.2020-21 - 14 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 14 /duration 00:02:54

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c.c.2020-21 - 13 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 13 /duration 00:03:58

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c.c.2020-21 - 12 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 12 /duration 00:06:16

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c.c.2020-21 - 11 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 11 /duration 00:01:10

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c.c.2020-21 - 10 /video

c.c.2020-21 - 10 /duration 00:05:29

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notturno

notturno - trailer /video

notturno - trailer /duration 00:04:59

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notturno /data

notturno /data

1-channel video/sound installation
Sound collage: Ulrich Polster
Sound mastering: Boris Vogeler
Narrators: Liis Kolle, Erman Jones
00:31:44 min, HD, stereo
2013-2015

Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
galeriewolff.com

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notturno - christoph tannert /review

ulrich polster - notturno /by christoph tannert

Ulrich Polster, who grew up in the GDR during the era of the Cold War, has traced out his aesthetic influences in his single channel projection Notturno. The artist approaches his video pieces from a painterly angle and finds it very important to convey their visual presence to the full. For this reason he decided to project the work onto a Perspex surface.
For all the ironic signals that are scattered throughout the work, the artist is in fact extremely serious when it comes to the core of socialist modernism.

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notturno II

notturno II - trailer /video

notturno II - trailer /duration 00:03:14

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notturno II /data

notturno II /data

1-channel video/sound installation
Sound collage: Ulrich Polster
Sound mastering: Boris Vogeler
Narrators: Liis Kolle, Erman Jones
00:23:48 min, HD, stereo
2017

Premiere: 22. 06. 2017, Festa dell’Estate, Villa Massimo, Rome
villamassimo.de

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notturno II /views

notturno II /3 views

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notturno III material

notturno III material - trailer /video

notturno III material - trailer /duration 00:04:30

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notturno III material /data

notturno III material /data

2-channel video/sound installation
synchronized, loop
00:04:17 min, HD, stereo
2017

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notturno III material /text

notturno III material /text

Notturno III / Material is a 2-channel video installation, perceived during my stay in Italy at Casa Baldi/Olevano. After Notturno I (2013) and Notturno II (2017), the first two parts of an autobiographically tainted trilogy about aesthetic impressions embedded into the horizon of contemporary history, Notturno III / Material will give insight into the invention of images and the backgrounds of my way of operation. It will form the starting point of the closing part of the trilogy.

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notturno III material /views

absence

41.8606 N 13.0312 E - excerpt /video

41.8606 N 13.0312 E - excerpt /duration 00:03:00

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absence - trailer /video

absence - episodes /duration 00:07:55

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absence /data

absence /data

Absence 1 (sound installation: Boris Vogeler)
Light/sound object
14 fluorescent tubes, mirror, microphones, amplifier, 166x2656cm
2019

41.8606°N, 13.0312°E
Video
00:10:00 min, 4K, 4 channel sound
Sound: Ulrich Polster/Boris Vogeler
2019

Absence 2
2 channel Video/sound installation
Acrylic glass, 2 mirrors, sound
00:01:55 min, H, loop
2019

Absence 2
7 C-prints on Fujicolor paper, 28.5x41cm
2019

Absence
7 collages, C-print on Fujicolor paper

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absence - hajo schiff /review

ulrich polster - absence - photography, prototype, image and narcissus /by hajo schiff

Berlin based artist Ulrich Polster shows in his fifth solo show at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff moving and restaged images that mirror his recent Italy experience. As a guest in the hide away of German romantic Olevano Romano and triggered by the death of his mother, classical landscape and art became quiet an ambiguous and fractured observation in which beauty and sorrow meet. In between meditative film projection and interactive photography extensions up to existential image markers in a twin projection image experiences are challenged and enlarged.

In the mirror of the self onto the discovered world, found and his own inner images mix and find their metaphysical suspension in a magically talking light installation.

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absence /views

markale

markale|2016 - trailer /video

markale|2016 - trailer /duration 00:04:58

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markale|2016 /data

markale|2016 /data

2-channel video/sound installation

00:26:48 min, HD
2017

03.06.2017-02.07.2017
waschhaus, Kunstraum Potsdam
waschhaus.de

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markale|2016 - ulrich polster /text

ulrich polster - markale|2016

The video-collage Markale|2016 is a unification of recordings from the years 1992-95, 2006 and 2016 as well as live broadcastings in Europe during June/July 2016. In its genesis this video work refers to two former works of the artist - MISH (2006) and REPORT (2016). MISH is a travelogue about the Balkans and REPORT a recherche labor about the coverage of the balkan wars and their documentation, starting from the 10-Day war in Slovenia 1991 up to the peace treaty of Dayton in 1995.

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report

report - documentation /video

report - documentation /duration 00:03:39

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report /data

report /data

7 channel video/sound installation
02:01:02 min, SD synchronized, loop 2015

1.10.2015-16.1.2016
TELE GEN
Kunstmuseum Bonn
kunstmuseum-bonn.de

19.2.2016-16.5.2016
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz
kunstmuseum.li

Catalog: TELE GEN, Hirmer Publishers 2015

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report - dieter daniels /review

ulrich polster - report /by dieter daniels

Seven monitors transmit excerpts from television reports on the Yugoslav wars, the ten-day war in Slovenia in June 1991, and the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. For his work, Polster recorded relevant repeats of the German news program Die Tagesschau twenty years later, as transmitted by digital station tagesschau24 (still named ARD EinsExtra until 2012). He selected the reports on Yugoslavia from roughly 200 hours of material to present them in a condensed montage on all seven monitors simultaneously.

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report /views

report /8 views

report-1
report-2
report-3
report-4
report-5
report-6
report-7
report-skizze-1
Report Draft

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mish

mish - trailer /video

mish - trailer /duration 00:05:16

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mish /data

mish /data

1-channel video/sound installation
Sound: Christine Scherrer
00:35:20 min, HD, stereo
2009

15.9.2015-29.11.2015
DIE ZEIT DRÄNGT
Neue Sächsische Galerie Chemnitz

neue-saechsische-galerie.de

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mish /views

mish /5 views

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flusz

flusz - trailer /video

flusz - trailer /duration 00:04:59

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flusz /data

flusz /data

4-channel video installation
00:19:57 min, HD-SD, synchronized
2010

Installation views: USB Bank, Frankfurt/M

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flusz /concept

flusz /text

“The willow sees the heron’s image… upside down.”

This Haiku of Basho gives the parable of the hypothetical construct of world view and our individual anchoring in it.
On a ride through foreign places, the glance on cultural identity separates into its fragments. The fragments arise from interior, medial, dreamt pictures, fed on yearnings, projections and surfaces. Sequences occurs which allow complex layering: the token picture is the picture of the picture of the picture.

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flusz /views

antonov

antonov - trailer /video

antonov - trailer /duration 00:01:52

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antonov /data

antonov /data

Video/sound: Ulrich Polster
00:11:34 min, SD
1995

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antonov /views

antonov /3 views

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bih

bih - trailer /video

bih - trailer /duration 00:05:14

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bih /data

bih /data

(Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, 44º5´N, 18º57´O, 04:36 h) 00:01:58 min, HD, loop
2008

KOW Berlin, Antirepresentationalism2: Trouble with realism
www.kow-berlin.info

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bih - astrid mania /review

bih /text

The complexity of this exhibition [Trouble with Realism] and its mental correlations might best be condensed in this short video by Ulrich Polster. For a few minutes we see, greetings from Claude Monet, a heystack. Wether we are looking at a freeze frame or a cinematic shot is hard to tell. One thinks to observe how haze scraps are slightly moving, but this might be as well an illusion. This reference to art history is broken up by the title of this work: Bosnia and Herzegovina (Han Pijesak, Republika Srpska, 07.08.2007).

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bih /views

bih /2 views

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fracht

fracht - documentation /video

fracht - documentation /duration 00:11:48

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fracht /data

fracht /data

1-channel video/sound installation
Sound: Thomas Christoph Heyde
Field recording: Thomas Christoph Heyde / Ulrich Polster
00:11:48 min, HD, stereo
2015

9.2.2016-11.2.2016 Werk II, Leipzig
fzml.de

Premiere: GfZK, May 2015

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wir sind das volk

wir sind das volk - documentation /video

wir sind das volk - documentation /duration 00:03:55

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wir sind das volk /data

wir sind das volk /data

4-channel video/sound installation
4 video displays, projected 4-channel audio
00:04:49 min, HD, stereo
2014

Location: Leipzig, Dietrichring (Innenstadtring, close to Mainstation)
Time: 9.10.2014, 18-24 Uhr

www.leipzig.de

Catalog: Lichtfest 2014, LTM GmbH, Leipzig 2014

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wir sind das volk - wir sind das volk interview /audio

wir sind das volk - interview /duration 00:05:29

Broadcast: 09.10.2014, mdr Kultur - Figaro, interview by Andreas Höhl

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wir sind das volk /concept

wir sind das volk /concept (excerpt)

It is myself I have never met,
whose face is pasted
on the underside of my mind

Sarah Kane, “4.48 Psychosis” 2000

This video/sound installation examines the slogan “We are the people” with regard to its social relevance in 1989 and today, focusing on its inherent meaning in the light of the misuse it experiences from society and the media, on the one hand, and its romantic idealisation on the other. At the same time the piece inquires into the current state of affairs in Europe and discovers the local in the European context, and vice versa.
The fascination of this installation comes from the way it depicts a backward gaze with a melancholy hue, a poetically transformed reality, and the contradictoriness of life in Europe in the year 2014.

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wir sind das volk /views

wir sind das volk /11 views

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wir sind das volk /text screens

wir sind das volk /8 text screens

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stalker material

stalker material - documentation /video

stalker material - documentation /duration 00:07:22

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stalker material /data

stalker material /data

7-channel video/sound installation
Sound: Boris Vogeler / Ulrich Polster
Field recording: Sylke Blumstengel / Ulrich Polster
00:40:00 min, HD synchronized, loop
2015

Catalog: STALKER/MATERIAL, Neue Sächsische Galerie, Chemnitz, 2015

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stalker material - making of stalker material /video

stalker material - making of stalker material /duration 00:20:22

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stalker material - arvo iho - painted with light /text

painted with light /by arvo iho

“People now nothing of their subconscious desires.”
Where they are now building on the ‘boiler’ was the gate to the Zone in the film ‘Stalker’ by Andrei Tarkovski. In the industrial estate between Old Narva and Leningrad Avenues all the trips using the flatbed railway truck were filmed. At the bridge over the River Pirita the flatbed truck halted, that’s where they got off and headed in a northerly direction. The Zone itself started in the riverbed of the Pirita. There were four tanks standing there that looked as if they’d been destroyed, a few machine guns and a couple of armoured vehicles. On top of one a soldier’s skeleton was placed behind a machine gun. This was the world of the Stalker where none of the soldiers dared to enter any further.

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stalker material - claus löser - dormant images /review

dormant images /by claus löser

On 1 May 1981 of all days Andrei Tarkovsky‘s movie Stalker opened in some cinemas in the GDR. The news of this curious, cryptic, philosophical and in every respect unusual work spread like wildfire in the circles of people seeking ways out of the intellectual dilemma of everyday existence under really existing socialism. How was this possible? The fact that it was from the Soviet Union of all places that a film reached us that struck these hidden chords in us? Because the amazing thing was that we immediately felt at home in this apparently hermetically sealed world of the Zone. This was by no means because occasionally in common parlance the GDR was still called the Zone! This banal connection didn‘t even occur to us. Rather it appears as if through this film sentiments were formulated that had long slumbered within us, as if through the Stalker more or less dormant images were being awakened. It is quickly said that a single work of art could be in a position to characterise a whole generation. There it would first have to be clarified how this generation is to be defined. Nevertheless, it appears to me that such a characterisation exists here. There was life before Stalker. And there was a different one afterwards.

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stalker material - matthias lindner - captive in time /text

captive in time /by matthias lindner

“The machine-gun-man on the … motorcycle.” The projection opens with words from the contemporary witness Arvo Iho, the only comprehensible speech in the video installation. The former intern on the set bears witness in this way to the starting point of Polster’s video – the former locations of Tarkovsky’s Stalker. In the course of the 40 minutes Polster will modify additional typical Tarkovsky scenes and ambiances/environments: the train trip and the waterfall, the large areas of fog, fire, landscapes full of ruins. For Tarkovsky the aesthetic point of departure was always the idea for a movie, the tale of a character with its insoluble captivity in time. He sought cinematic images which follow a poetic logic because they are based on observation: “In my view poetic reasoning is closer to the laws by which thought develops, and thus to life itself, than is the logic of traditional drama.” (Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 1984, eng. University of Texas reprint 1986, p.  20)

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stalker material - hajo schiff - going behind the images /review

going behind the images /by hajo schiff

JOURNEY
Everything starts with an image – and it will also end with this image. What expands in between to a 39-minute 7-channel video projection is a stream of associations, interpretations and effects derived from it. An extremely subjective world of images carries you off, not unlike its cinematic model, Tarkovsky’s Stalker, after a train journey into a ZONE which can never be exactly comprehended behind the image and between the images. And there everything is not just what it appears to be. Strange explanations, rapid tracking shots and many quite, often idyllic moments carry us off into a world where the resigned weariness of knowing the score, of always having seen everything before is no longer valid, Because perception becomes questionable. What is it that is to be seen there?

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frost

frost - trailer /video

frost - trailer /duration 00:02:55

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frost /data

frost /data

Video
00:05:19 min, SD
2002

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frost /views

frost II

frost II - documentation /video

frost II - documentation /duration 00:02:55

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frost II /data

frost II /data

3-channel video/sound installation
Sound: Thomas Christoph Heyde
Cello: Andrzej Bauer
00:23:20 min, synchronized
2005

Performance: Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig

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frost II /views

frost II /8 views

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frost III

frost III - trailer /video

frost III - trailer /duration 00:03:02

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frost III /data

frost III /data

3-channel video/room installation
Sound: Thomas Christoph Heyde
00:20:50 min, SD, synchronized
2005

Installation views: Liste, Basel

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frost III /views

frost III /2 views

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versprengung

versprengung - trailer /video

versprengung - trailer /duration 00:07:39

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versprengung /data

versprengung /data

1-channel video/sound installation
00:23:33 min, HD
Video: Ulrich Polster
Composition: Juliana Hodkinson
julianahodkinson.net

Music: KNM Orchester Berlin
www.kammerensemble.de
Singing Berlin: Marc Weiser
Preview: Radialsystem V, Berlin, April 2011
www.radialsystem.de

Singing Aarhus: Jacob Bloch Jespersen
www.jakobbloch.com
Premiere: Spor Festifal 2011, Mai 2011, Aarhus, DK
www.sporfestival.dk

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versprengung /concept

versprengung /text We started off our collaboration with a common will structure. We began with a formal vision that was to bring our individual processes together, and give us clarity and security. But our tendency to quote, to recycle our own sounds ans images, and the pursuit of each our own artistic handwriting changed the structure and eventually dissolved it comoletely. At the end of this process there was a pause, a concentration on the Versprengung, the scattering, which allowed us to let something arise that was outside each of our separate worlds.

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versprengung /views

versprengung /7 views

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versprengung - making of /video

versprengung - making-of /duration 00:04:15

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made in usa

made in usa - trailer /video

made in usa - trailer /duration 00:15:39

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made in usa /data

made in usa /data

2014
Installation, mixed media
5 VHS players, 5 TV sets, photographies, working sketches
Size: variable

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made-in-usa /views | c-prints

made in usa /5 views | 4 c-prints

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made in usa - making-of /video

made in usa - making-of /duration 00:02:59

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