MICHAEL RIEDEL. KUNSTE ZUR TEXT
Recording -- labeling -- playback. Frankfurt-based artist Michael Riedel has been investigating the issue of reproduction and repetition since his first actions for the legendary "Oskar-von-Miller-Strasse 16", an art project he initiated at this Frankfurt address in 2000. This was the site of Riedel's "Clubbed Clubs" and "Filmed Films" as well as of the "Freitagsküche" (Friday Kitchen), an event at the intersection of art and life that continues to this day. Riedel works with recorded conversations, films and performances, and with the exhibitions of other artists' works. His creative method is based on the combination of these elements into ever new variations and on the transformation of one medium into another. Through the process of transcription, for example, Riedel transfers voice recordings into the visual realm, defamiliarizing and expanding them via technical means in order to ultimately reproduce them in a new reading or replay them. With KUNSTE ZUR TEXT the SCHIRN presents the first retrospective of Riedel's work.
CATALOG
In his conceptual practice, Michael Riedel (*1972) relies on a wide variety of media and formats from works on canvas, film, video, and audio recordings to artist's books, posters, installations, and events depending on the reference point of the work and the degree of its media transformation. He uses the strategy of recording, labeling, and playback. In Riedel's work, a recording is by no means a one-to-one reproduction of a club evening or reading, but a copy containing all the recording equipment's fluctuations in quality, all technical flaws. Rather than showing the mere achievement of the translation -- such as of a given text into a new text -- Michael Riedel's works reveal the possibilities provided by often just minimal interventions into the extant material. The resultant works frequently serve as starting points for new ones. The catalogue is the first overview of his work.