Armin Linke, Thongil Street, Pyongyang,
North Korea,
Courtesy
Klosterfelde, Berlin, © Armin Linke
Firstly, he selects the location of a photograph only after completing
exacting research, which he carries out prior to all his trips and
projects. It's a result of this detailed preparation that he finds the
special perspective in which reality tips over into the unreal and the
photographic aesthetic into photographic criticism. The viewer feels
anything but comfortable when Armin Linke shows Pyongyang as the very
model city that it strives to be. The way in which his photographic
aesthetic shrinks the scenery of Thongil Street into an architectural
model makes it quite clear that it's not the needs of the inhabitants that
have dictated the city's planning, but an anachronistic image of the
modern metropolis that has long since become a cliché.
Armin
Linke, Oscar Niemeyer, Ministry of Defence, Brasilia Brazil,
Courtesy
Klosterfelde, Berlin, © Armin Linke
At
the same time, Armin Linke places his images in the context of the
archive. He not only publishes the single, magnificent image of the empty
street steps in Genoa roped off by police cordons, but places it in a
larger sequence of photographs of the G-8 summit, which shows police and
demonstrators surrounded by various media camera teams until things
finally culminate in a violent clash. And then it becomes clear that these
images of Genoa are not mere melancholy views of a city.
Armin
Linke, G8 Summit, Genova, Italy, 2001
Courtesy
Klosterfelde, Berlin, © Armin Linke
|
The summit took place; Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by the
police. In terms of philosophy, events such as these only possess a truth
as facts, which, in contrast with the truth of reason, cannot be proven by
logic alone. They can, however, be reconstructed through film sequences
and photographs – through the archive, as Jacques
Derrida says. For which reason the philosopher, in his book Mal
d'Archive, transfers the opposites truth and lie into that of
archive and lie.
Armin
Linke, G8 Summit, Genova, Italy, 2001
Courtesy
Klosterfelde, Berlin, © Armin Linke
Armin
Linke's photographs seem to elaborate, differentiate, and comment upon
this thesis. His interest in the archive is mainly in how it is put to
use. One of its primary functions lies in securing and comparing sources.
Beyond this, however, in Linke's installations the archive also functions
as a laboratory in which he once again subjects his images to his own
quality test, after which he turns each image over to the viewer for
further testing.
Armin
Linke, The Holy Shrine of Imam Khomeini Tehran Iran
Courtesy
Klosterfelde, Berlin, © Armin Linke
This test can aim at finding truth, or also at aesthetic pleasure or
distraction, and, it shouldn't be denied, at an uncontrolled and
intoxicating consumerism entirely lacking in criteria. While the chronicle
of the G-8 summit is perhaps reconstructed in this test, other viewers are
satisfied with a melancholic city view. Even the large-scale color print
of the artificial blue sky that stretches far and wide over the ski slope
is experimental material, although the print has clearly codified the
photograph as art, thanks to Gursky,
Struth,
and other Becher students. Armin Linke's investigation of photography's
conditions of production, distribution, and reception demonstrates that
Derrida's idea of the archive as an antipode of the lie only carries
weight when one seeks more in it than just factual truth—namely beauty,
pleasure, or consumption.
Armin
Linke, Grand Dixance dam Sion Switzerland
Courtesy
Klosterfelde, Berlin, © Armin Linke
[1]
[2]
|
