Per Speculum Me Video

31.10.2013 — 05.01.2014

Today digital portraits and self-portraits are omnipresent—on mobile phones, in Skype conversations, at the supermarket checkout, and on the subway platform. Not only do we produce and circulate moving images of ourselves by the thousands, but they also truly seem to hound us. But what is the significance of one’s own self-image, when it can be created at any moment and is constantly available? What is the status of a personal image and how can a viewer identify the portrayed, when every image or self-image is always available, on the one hand, and inherently capable of being technically altered and called into question, on the other? This has become a highly topical issue in contemporary video art. Numerous artists address questions in their work that deal with the visual construction of individual identity: How is identity manifested in portrait representations? What is a speaker? What is self-depiction? How is my counterpart constituted, and can I see myself in a mirror image?

The Frankfurter Kunstverein presented the group exhibition “Per Speculum Me Video” in conjunction with the B3 Moving Image Biennale 2013. In the Latin title an “I” declares that it can see itself in the mirror—with words that sound like a forgotten magic spell”

Participating artists: Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz (CH/DE, Berlin), Martin Brand (DE, Köln), Manuela Kasemir (DE, Leipzig), Sabine Marte (AT, Wien), Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (CA, Berlin), Barbara Probst (DE, New York), Johanna Reich (DE, Köln), Eva Weingärtner (DE, Offenbach), Gilda Weller (DE, Frankfurt)

Curator: Holger Kube Ventura