Press
PRESS 2007
Extract from a interview in the catalog Kunstalle Palazzo, Liestal, Switzerland, May 2007
"Katja Loher (born 1979) stages a human
game of chess with live figures. In doing so, she pulls the strings,
like with marionettes, and thus challenges the participative role of
humans. The strategic game of chess transforms into a battle between
life and death and suggests an "end game" in the tradition of Beckett."
Helen Hirsch, historian and curator, artistic director of Kunsthalle Palazzo
Liestal, Switzerland
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Extract from a interview in the catalog Kunstalle Palazzo, Liestal, Switzerland, May 2007
The performance and video artist Katja Loher (New York and Basel) talks about her newest work, Schachfeld (The Chessfield), 2007 which she exhibits for the first time as high-definition video projection in the Kunsthalle Palazzo. The 20-minute film, staged in New York with almost50 actors, shows two stylised groups of robot-like pieces on a chessboard. After a while, the actors become autonomous and provide an unexpected twist to the otherwise strongly regularised game.
Peter Stohler: You
work like the director of "big" feature films. You shot The Chessfield
with three cameras at a time and engaged professionals for a highly
artificial sound track. The Chessfield is visually very exciting and
perfectly stylised. Some parts remind usof the eccentric world of Matthew
Barney. Has it anything to do with the fact that you mainly work in
New York since 2004?
Katja Loher: It certainly
has to do with the extreme potential of this city. Many are
there ready to launch into something at once; this city motivates
unbridled thinking. The idea to work with a large group of
people came to me last year during my stay in New York. For
Video Optica I had directed a large number of people arranged
to form alphabets.
Peter Stohler: Your earlier
video works have a very “atmospheric” effect: they
evoke a very personal, playful world. On the contrary The Chessfield
is more political and revolves around very grave matters
like the uprising against established power structures: the
chessboard becomes the battlefield. Are you now staging “world theatre”?
Katja Loher: Especially today,
I consider it very important again to formulate concise statements,
as we bear great responsibility as committed artists. I ask myself
how we can make political statements with art and keep on trying
time and time again. In The Chessfield, the globe is compared
with the strategic war game of chess and multilayered, political
challenges are provided in the narration.
Peter Stohler is an art historian and
curator, Director of Centre pour l' image contemporaine, Geneva
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Katja Loher: The world as a game
In her adopted home New York, the young Swiss
shoots big art cinema about the dialectics of freedom
The chessboard and the battlefield are phonetical neighbours
in German: „Schachfeld“ and „Schlachtfeld“. This
is expressive for Katja Lohers video work, which the 27-year old just
recently put into reality with around 50 actors/actresses. In a setting
that reminds of the reduced scenery of Lars von Trier's didactic play
cinema („Dogville“, “Manderley“), and is being
populated by figures that could have escaped from a video by Matthew
Barney; Loher reproduces the relations of power and powerlessness (german: „Macht“ and „Ohnmacht“)
in the globalised world as a clear interrelation between the top and
the bottom. The strict logic of leadership and oppression leads to failure
after a while; the hegemony of the kings starts faltering, the pawns
strike and take over the lead. But they also fail it: because they never
had the opportunity to develop a sense for responsibility, which the
kings, on their part, overcame with logic a long time ago. What stays
is the vacuum – a threatening state for all the participants. „Chessfield“ – currently
to view at the Palazzo Liestal- is the most current work of the Basel
and New York based media artist, who delivers precise, aswell as poetic
metaphors on the ambivalent relation of power, freedom and dependencies
in her extensively produced videos she has been doing for a few years.
16.06.07/Regioartline/ Art Magazin Switzerland
/Dietrich Roeschmann