Florian Tuercke : Nina Hurnÿ Pimenta Lima : Raul Gschrey
Vernissage/Opening: 18.02.2017, 19:00
Ausstellung/Exhibition: 18.02.-04.03.2017
Yok-Yok : Münchener Strasse 32 : 60329 Frankfurt
In his series of video-composites, „the others are we“, Florian Tuercke merges short video clips of portraits he has recorded in differnet cities. For the exhibition in con[SPACE], he has compiled the composite face of Frankfurt.
“Portrait of a Type, Type of Portrait: Composite Portraiture between Science and Art.” Raul Gschrey (Gießen, Frankfurt)
Abstact of my presentation at the conference „Doing Face“ at Goethe University Frankfurt, October 2016.
The photographic technique of composite portraiture superimposes facial views of different people in order to create a collective portrait. The frontal views of the surreal blurry figures usually look straight at the viewer and create an uncanny feeling of familiarity. In contemporary arts and popular culture we encounter a variety of these facial compositions that are predominantly digitally produced. But the origins of the technique lie in late nineteenth-century, when the relatively new medium of photography became established as a scientific tool. Presupposing the alignment of outer appearance with inner dispositions, Francis Galton, who is better known as the founder of eugenics, developed composite portraiture as an analytical technique to visualise typical appearances of groups of people. The photographic superimpositions sought to give a face to phenomena such as criminality, physical and psychological illnesses, race, but also to more positively connoted notions such as health, likeness and family resemblance. The technique enjoyed a considerable popularity in positivist scientific circles of criminology, medicine and psychiatry, anthropology, racial science and eugenics that only abated in early twentieth century. Apart from a small number of examples, the technique fell into disuse and only resurfaced in the 1980’s at the eve of another visual revolution, when media artist Nancy Burson took up composite portraiture and developed techniques of digital facial morphing. In recent years artists have questioned the explanatory value of the visual constructions, they have translated the technique into moving images and explored their potential in times of an omnipresence of self-portrayal and identification in social networks.
The paper will try to make sense of the special type of portrait and examine the nature of the visual constructions between their functions as averaging, as well as typifying devices. How was the founder of composite portraiture “doing face” and staging the “face as event” and which central impulses, preconceptions, and discourses formed the technique’s utilisation in nineteenth-century? This historical perspective will be expanded with late twentieth and early twenty-first-century artistic positions that explore the technique in times of interconnected digital media and computerised facial recognition.
“the others are we” : video composite portrait of a city
Interview with the German artist Florian Tuercke during the exhibition “the others are we” at con[SPACE] video gallery, Atelierfrankfurt, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. For the exhibition, the artist produced a composite video portrait of faces from Frankfurt and other European cities. Exhibition curated by Michaela Filla Raquin and Raul Gschrey, interview conducted and produced by Raul Gschrey. Additional material by Florian Tuercke, Nicholas Singleton & Raul Gschrey. Historical photographic material by Francis Galton, Special Collections, University College London. www. conspace.wordpress.com : www.gschrey.org : www.floriantuercke.net
Florian Tuercke : Die Anderen sind wir / the others are we con[SPACE] @ Atelierfrankfurt, Schwedlerstrasse 1-5, 60314 Frankfurt am Main, curated by Michaela Filla Raquin & Raul Gschrey
Opening: 26. 02.2016 19.00, duration: 26.02. – 04.04.2016, opening times: Tue., Wed., Thurs. 16.00 – 19.00
In his series of composite videos entitled „the others are we“, Florian Tuercke, whose participatory media art projects are usually situated in public space, deals with the human face. The artist explores, which collective features remain, when the individual visual characteristics of people are merged; the sole link being the place where they reside temporarily or permanently.
After compiling videos in Ragusa (Italien), Wakefield (England) and Schweinfurt (Germany), Florian Tuercke produces a video portrait of the ‘typical Frankfurter’ in collaboration with the gallery con[SPACE] in Frankfurt (Germany). With a posing chair, camera and lights he strolls through the urban space and asks passers-by to sit for a portrait. Every participant sits on the chair, looking straight into the camera, while the artist remains standing, equally motionless, behind the camera. Through the transparent superimposition of the individual takes, the urban backgrounds are condensed into abstract structures of colour, light and movement; the slightly fluctuating facial superimpositions dominating the centre of the composite video.