Jakob Wassermann - German and Jew
Installation, Jewish Museum Franken, Fürth
6 Lenticular Panels, A0 Format, Lightboxes
To mark the 150th birthday of Jakob Wassermann (1873, Fürth), Dreyblatt has created a series of six illuminated lenticular panels for which he has selected photographs of Wasserman taken by Jewish photographer Grete Kolliner in Vienna in 1920, as well as texts from the original publication of “My Life as German and Jew”, published in 1921. Each work contains several layers of images and texts that have been read in the film installation, both of which can be perceived as textual fragments from different viewing positions.
3 lenticular transparent prints, lightbox, frame, 160 x 230 cm
Commissioned and purchased by the Jewish Museum Munich. Exhibited as part of the exhibition: "The Last Europeans. Jewish Perspectives on the Crises of an Idea"
Containing texts in German, English and Esperanto by: Agnes Heller, Ludwik Zamenhof, Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Gkucksman, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Jaques Derrida und Jürgen Habermas
Installation consists of three lenticular prints, which Dreyblatt has chosen as an interactive means of representation. Each work contains up to six text layers, which can be percieved in fragments from different viewing positions and which "overwrite" each other as in a deconstructed "palimpsest".
B & W Print mounted on Alubond, 43 x 60 cm.
Edition of 3
Exhibited at Freehome Berlin, 2019
A0 Digital Print
Created in relation to the series of works: “Innocent Questions”, 2006 and “Innocent Questions: Dark Numbers”, 2016
Published as an insert poster (Size A2) in : Journal der Kunste 01, January 2017; Akademie der Künste
Exhibited:
“Transparent Bodies”, Group Exhibition, Galerie 21, Hamburg, 2017
”Arnold Dreyblatt: Selected Works and Documentation / Installation - Music - Performance 1974-2019”, Freehome, Berlin, 2019
5 x A3 Prints, Framed
“A Classification for Cataloguing and Arranging the Contents of a Library” is based on the original explication of Melvil Dewey’s library classification system, first published as a pamphlet in the United States in 1876. As one of the earliest reformist schemes for American libraries, it formed the basis for most library classification systems now in use. By means of erasure and juxtoposition, descriptive and organizational context has been re-imagined for a fictional library.
Exhibited: Freehome Berlin, 2019
Series of 16 Lenticular Panels, mounted on Alubond, 100 x 100 cm.
The work won first prize in an invited competition which was an initiative of the Governing Mayor of Berlin, the Berlin Senate Department for Cultural Affairs, the Senate Department for Urban Development and Environment and the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial.
Permanently installed at the on the grounds of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial (Gedenkstätte Berlin-Höhenschönhausen) the site of the main prison for internees of the former East German Ministry of State Security (MfS), or 'Stasi'.
Dreyblatt's work of art "Dossier" comprises 16 text panels for the walls of the newly designed seminar and film rooms as well as the cafeteria. These newly renovated spaces are not burdened with historical associations and are openly navigated by the visiting public.
Memories of former prisoners, official orders and contextualising texts are depicted fragmentarily in a technique on panels, which change according to the angle of the viewer. Dreyblatt uses lenticular technology as a perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which "overwrite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, varying text content appears and disapears.
"Dossier" expresses the different worlds of experience by bringing together opposing genres of text. This text collage invites visitors to reflect more deeply on the site and the experiences associated with it. The artistic power of the work lies in the reduction to the medium of language in its historical-political context.
The content texts were collected during a preliminary research phase in the extensive archive found on the grounds of the memorial. The final texts are derived from copies of secret police files and personal reminiscences.
6 Lenticular Panels, 75 x 110 cm
Commissioned by the Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück.
Lenticular Text Installation in two exhibition rooms as part of the new permanent exhibition at the Women's Concentration Camp Ravensbrück Memorial. Each series contains three works.
Room I: “Einlieferungsgründe”, Three works containing texts in the language of the perpetrators referring to reasons for admittance of female inmates into the camp. The fragments are based on documentation of the Gestapo and Criminal Police. The text fragments in the language of the perpetrators refer to the manifold justifications for the imprisonment of women in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Room II: “Sex-Zwangsarbeit in der Sprache der SS”, Three works contain quotations from letters and announcements from the years 1942-43 document the view of those responsible in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office on forced sex work.
Dreyblatt has used lenticular technology as a perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragmentas from varying viewing positions, and which "overwrite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, varying text content appears and disappears.
Color Translucent Print (Backlit Folio), A0
Dreyblatt's work reflects on such themes as recollection and the archive, and he has created a number of artworks related to autobiographical memory: including the installations "Flashbulb Memory" (2002) and "Recovery Rotation" (2003).
This work was originally created especially as a centerfold for the 9/11 (September 11, 2011) Edition of the Berliner Zeitung.
"We have all had the experience that in exceptional moments when startling or shocking news has been heard, the brain seems to store permanently all temporal and visual information as vivid and lasting memories. The Assassination of JFK, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 9/11 are all examples of this phenomenon. As a born New Yorker, transplanted to Berlin, the actual moment and following hours upon hearing the news of 9/11, remain frozen and imprinted, while the days before and after have long lost their significance." - Arnold Dreyblatt
Exhibited:
Galerie Oqbo, Berlin, 2013
Freehome Berlin, 2019
The texts are derived from scientific texts based on the phenomena of Flashbulb Memory. Texts from: R. Brown & J. Kulik, "Flashbulb Memories", in: Cognition, 5, 1997, S. 73-99; RB Livingston, "Reinforcement, in: The Neuro Sciences", A Study Program, Rockefeller Press, New York 1967; U. Neusser, "Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Context", W. H. Freeman, New York 1982; etc.
Lenticular Text Panel, 110 x 65,6 cm., Edition of 3
Dreyblatt has used lenticular technology as a perceptually interactive means of display. This work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, varying text content appears and disapears.
Text Content (in German): 'Materials for Arcades', Fragmentary Notes and Sketches by Walter Benjamin with Franz Hessel, (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, Frankfurt, : Surkampf, 1982, pp. 1341-1347). The material was found among Benjamin's papers in typewritten and handwritten form.
1/3 from the edition is in the collection of Evan Mirapaul, Pittsburgh
Two lenticular images, laminated on alubond
Texts and diagrams from: Sigmund Freud, "Traumdeutung; VII, Zur Psychologie der Traumvorgänge (B) Die Regression", 1900
"Das Instrument" (“The Instrument”) contains two Lenticular works, each 110 x 65 cm.
The texts and diagrams are excerpts from "Traumdeutung" in which Freud proposes spatial metaphors for perception and memory, and, in a second edition, footnotes a reference to his later essay "Notiz über den Wunderblock" (1925).
Lenticular technology was chosen for this work as an interactive means of display. Each panel contains five text and image layers, which are viewable from varying viewing positions, forming a "palimpsest" of fragmentary concepts.
The works were originally shown in the exhibition “Images of the Mind” at the Hygiene Museum in Dresden in 2011 along with “The Wunderblock”, 2000 which also contains a text from Sigmund Freud.
“Das Instrument II” was purchased and is in the collection of the Hygiene Museum in Dresden.
7 Lenticular Objects, varying shapes and sizes
Dreyblatt has used lenticular technology as a perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragmentas from varying viewing positions, and which "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, varying text content appears and disapears.
The individual shapes of these seven works have been chosen from an archeological database of antique potsherds originating from ancient Greece and Rome, north and central America, the Near East and China. These shapes are the result of the "chance operations" of physical decay, a gradual historical process dating hundreds or thousands of years.
The texts are derived from Dreyblatt's original copy of the 1967 paperback edition of "A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage". The text fragments used in the work have been randomly chosen from a prepared list of all sentences in which either the words "text", "writing" or "reading" occur.
Commissioned by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2011
As my own work has become increasingly text-based both in performance and in installation, I have re-examined Cage's oevre in textual composition. In "A Year from Monday" he writes, "The thought has sometimes occurred to me that my pleasure in composition, renounced as it has been in the field of music, continues in the field of writing words, and that explains why, recently, I write so much." My own interests in the visual and audio perception of fragmentary layers of textual content are mirrored in seminal Cage works as "Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel (1969)" and in his extensive experimentation in printed text layout and vocal readings. - Arnold Dreyblatt
Hand Stamp on Paper, 4 colors, 22.9 x 31.7 cm., 2010
Created for the project "Paperfile" of the Gallery Oqbo, Berlin. Limited Edition of 12 copies of 4 color hand stamp prints.
The project has been exhibited at the Preview Art Fair, Berlin and is in the collection of the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Residenzschloss, Dresden
C-Print mounted on Alubond, 80 x 53 cm
A digital LED display in a Sicilian village square, loses access to it's memory chip. Photographed by the artist in 2002. Edition of three available at Gallery e/static, Torino
Exhibited:
Gallery e/static, Torino, 2007
Galerie Oqbo, 2013
Permanent installation: 16 Lenticular Panels, 110 x 110 cm
Permanently installed in four meetings rooms within the new Ministry of Agriculture, Nutrition and Consumer Protection (BMLEV), Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin, and dedicated in 2010. Winner, 1st Prize, Invited Competition, Federal Ministry for Buldings and Public Spaces (BBR) Berlin, 2008
>>> Museum der 100 Orte Website
Inscriptions is concieved as an interactive textual dialogue with the employees of the Ministirium who will pass through, meet and work in four meeting rooms. Lenticular printing technology was chosen as an perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which seem to "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest". As the viewer moves about the room, different text content appears and disapears, allowing one to 'create' one's own narrative about the history and workings of the BMELV Ministry. In this way the employee should become participants in a dialogue with the work, which can only be 'completed' through movement and reflection.
Text excerpts are chosen as content for the work from the following themes:
a) the history of the BMELV Ministry; b) the historical and architectural context of the building; c) descriptions of activities and goals relating to the work of the BMELV Ministry; d) historical and contemporary quotations from literature and science on subjects such as agriculture, nutriton, etc.
A theme has been concieved for each of the four meeting rooms:
1. Wilhelmstr. Nr. 54, history of the building housing the Ministry; 2. Agriculture: texts from Marcus Porcius Cato (234 v. Chr. - 149 v. Chr.), Albrecht Daniel Thaer, (1752 - 1828), Johann Heinrich von Thünen, (1783 -1850) ; 3. Agricultural Politics and Policy in Germany; 4. Consumer Protection
lenticular image, 120 x 70 cm.
Created for the Exhibition, "Sex Brennt - Magnus Hirschfeld's Insitute for Sexual Science and the Book Burning", in the Berlin Medical Museum of the Charite
The text image is based on a Sexual Questionaire developed and used by Magnus Hirschfeld representing possible sexual categories.
Source: Hirschfeld, Magnus: "Das Ergebnis der Statistische Untersuchungen über den Prozentsatz der Homosexuellen“, Verlag von Max Spohr, 1904
lenticular image frieze, panels in 25 cm x 120 cm sections
"Speak Stones' is presented as a high-tech frieze in three sections and is intended to be experienced in lateral movement by the viewer. The fragmentary stone inscriptions are given a "voice" in our perceptions as we navigate the space.
Lenticular technology was chosen for these works as an interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest".
Texts are derived from ancient roman epigraphic inscriptions and an anonymous early latin text on memory-technics, 'Rhetorica ad Herennium', often atributed to Cicero (1st Cent. B.C.).
Exhibited: Gallery e/static, Torino. Artissima 14 Art Fair, Torino, Galerie Oqbo, Berlin
“the magic square tuning system and how i got there”, 2007
Series of 27 b/w and color prints; size A4; printed on discolored antique paper and enclosed in a black box. Edition of 3.
The first edition was created for for Konrad Sprenger.
The contents, which traces the development of Dreyblatt’s early music theory and research, is based on a lecture given at Wesleyan Univeristy in 1981.
Exhibited:
Solo Exhibition: “Lapse”, Museolaboratorio, Citta’ Sant’Angelo, Italy, 2018
“Selected Works and Documentation / Installation - Music - Performance 1974-2019”, Freehome Artist to Artist, Berlin, 2019
Series of 15 lenticular images, 120 cm x 75 cm, 2006
Comissioned by the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin
These fifteen lenticular text images refer to Benjamin's famous essay, "Ausgraben und Erinnern" (Walter Benjamin, Ausgraben und Erinnern, in: ders., Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. IV.1, hg. von Tillmann Rexroth, Frankfurt a.M. 1972, S. 400 f.), The texts are derived from online epigraphic databases of ancient inscriptions maintained by European and North American Archaelogical research institutions (list below). Commentaries to thousands of papyrus, stone, clay and wax inscriptions were collected from these databases, specifically chosen for content referring to readability and fragmentation. Lenticular technology was chosen as an perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which seem to "overwite" each other as in a "palimpsest".
Sources: Die digitale Papyrus-Sammlung der Universitäten Halle - Jena - Leipzig; Papyrussammlung Universität Trier; Catalogue of Paraliterary Papyrus, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; The Egypt Exploration Society und Center for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University; Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions Database, University of Chicago; Cuneiform Inscriptions Database, University of Minnesota; Cuneiform Digital Palaeography Project, University of Birmingham
Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin (as part of the exhibition; "Translation: Text as Image" within the frame of the Walter Benjamin Festival, Berlin), 2006-2007
Wood Frame, Plexiglass, Microfiche, Lens
12 works, 90 x 70 x 5 cm. are hung in a series on a long wall. Each work contains a wooden frame, a wooden panel, a layer of reflective plexiglass, a miniature lamp, a magnifying optic, and an adjustable microfiche/microfilm holder. The optics have been adapted from the 'Pentakta HL100 microfiche hand reading apparatus' ('Mikrofilm-Handlesegerät im Taschenformat') which were produced by Pentacon Dresden for use in scientific research and by the State Security System (the STASI).
In the center of the plexiglass-covered wood panel, one finds a small hole with a lens, from which light is emanating. One peers into the 'peephole' lens which magnifies a small circular image of documents from the full collection of 98 pages which have been printed on Microfiche in miniature. One's eyes gradually focus on an illuminated miniaturized text which has been magnified to the limit of perceptual readability.
The twelve texts are derived from the German and Austrian Bureau of Standards for data destruction: 'Vernichten von Informationsträgern',Deutsches Institut für Normung, Berlin, and 'Aktenvernichtung',Österreichisches Normungsinstitut, Vienna. While much of Dreyblatt's work often reflects on the process of collecting, storing and archiving information, here the text speaks of the technical and planned disapearance and destruction of our collective memory by institutions and governmental agencies.
Exhibited:
Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, 2005
Galerie Maniere Noire, Berlin, 2017
C-Prints, Wall Text, 2003
25 Color Prints positioned in a grid and layered over a wall of text. The photographs were taken in an east european botanical garden. Plants are marked by a labyrinth of small signs, from which the text has been removed or is unreadable. The wall text is an excerpt from the "Preface" to Stages on Life's Way" (1845), Søren Kierkegaard, an essay on memory.
The work addresses quesions of readablity through interruptions created by image as a reflection on the attempts of the mind to access and navigate fragments from the past.
Exhibited:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, Berlin, 2003
Collection of italian Visiting Cards, Framed, Individual Mounts
Collection of 81 individual visiting cards, acquired in Venice, August, 1992; white frame, 140 x 105 x 4 cm., individual mounts.
Originally exhibited as "La Scalinate di Piazza d'Italia", 1994:
A staircase in an decaying back house in East Berlin. A collection of one hundred Italian visiting cards from the turn of the centruy, which the artist discovered in a junk store in Venice, each with only one name and no address or phone number, are encased in individual transparent plastic envelopes and nailed to the underside of 100 steps, arriving to the highest landing in the attic. As the public ascends, each card gradually appears at eye level, a collection of 100 faceless vanities of Italian royalty.
Exhibited:
"Index", 1998:
Foreign Ministry, National Parliament, Oslo, Norway (Permanent Collection)
Galerie Bleibtreu, Berlin, 2004
Galerie Kai Hilgemann, Berlin, 2003
"La Scalinate di Piazza d'Italia", 1994
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1994
84 chronological archival documents, plastic envelopes, format DIN A4, nails with spacers
'The T Documents' is one of a number of related works derived from over 4,000 intelligence documents from State Archives in Europe and North America from the inter-war period which have been collected by the artist.
These documents reveal the life of 'T'., (b. 1879 Paks, Hungary - d. 1943 Shanghai, China), a forgotten Central European historical figure whose multiple identities span three continents (Europe, North America and Asia) and touch on many of the most important events of the pre-war period. The collection contains daily reports and correspondances between 1915 and 1943, forming a vast communication network in which the official traces and observations of the individual are cross-referenced to historical events, international personalities and geographic locations.
In the installation 'The T Documents', the artist's personal selection of 84 original archive documents have been digitized and faked by specially developed printing techniques applied to the reverse side of postwar East German archival pages, posing question about the identity of both the subject's personality and the authenticity of the documents themselves. The documents are displayed in chronological order in transparent envelopes hanging on metal hooks. Selected excerpts are translated and typed in German on small strips of paper which has been inserted into the envelopes.
In a related work, "T-Mail" (1999), thousands of documents have been entered into a database and are displayed by computer projection. A realization for the World Wide Web was prepared in collaboration with the University of Lüneburg, Department of Cultural Studies in 2005.
Sources: The Public Record Office and The British Library, London; The National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Bundesarchiv Koblenz; Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Bonn, etc.
Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
Hudobné simulakrá. Jozef Cseres, Bratislava 2001
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2005
Gallery e/static, Torino, 2007
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2010
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