Bauer, Z. M., in: G. Leidloff: "l o g - i n / l o c k e d  o u t", in: O. Breidbach, K. Clausberg und K.P. Dencker (Hg.): Video, ergo sum, Hamburg 1999

Personally logged-in

The starting point for the preoccupation with narration was the digital compilation via sampling: in other words totally non-narrative, more of a hunter and collector in collating unconventional narrative material. These potentially narrative building blocks have been stored on a recallable medium-desccibed in detail and archived in reference works - just like a language's vocabulary in a dictionary. Marked by an aesthetic of organizing, arranging, repeating, scanning and quoting, exemplary narrative patterns were finally tested in the form of media samples: methods were developed as to how the strongly diverging sample materials (from everyday noise garbage to visual snapshots all the way to body-linguistical movement patterns) can be thematically set and formally reformed into which structures and according to which specific rules. Accessing non-textual thematic pieces is regulated through orchestral scores, i.e. metalingual coding systems that are capable of making ever non-conventional topics tangible by drafing symbol-lingual abstraction systems, topics such as hard-to-describe, diffuse qualities like 'the emotional'. Here in particular is where the tangential points of contact with Gabriele Leidloff's project l o g - i n / l o c k e d  o u t can be found, a project which-when viewed in an interdisciplinary way - shifts these special forms of language and frontiers within the communication process to make them the focal point.

Zorah Mari Bauer
Artist, University of Essen