
Bildwelt Ruhrtiennale 2023
PHOTOGRAPHY
Poster motifs (6)
Photo series with 33 photos (festival catalogue)
As a part of Ruhrtriennale 2023
Concept and realisation and photographers: Michael Loeken, Ulrike Franke
For the Ruhrtriennale 2023, the film collective loekenfranke has created its very own visual world, while they embarked on a documentary journey with bird watchers in the Ruhr area. Observing the birds awakens memories in people and makes them reflect on their own situation, but while people are observing the birds, they are actually searching for something else entirely.
The resulting images form the foundation for the entire festival communication. With an extensive series of images, the artistic work also appears in the festival catalogue for the Ruhrtriennale 2023.
Text: Ruhrtriennale / Judith Gerstenberg (excerp)
CATALOG / EXHIBITION
2023 — Ruhrtriennale (Festivalcatalog)
2024 — Bookshop Transfer (Exhibition), Dortmund-Hörde, Germany
PICTS








TEXT
In 2023 we have asked the duo of documentary filmmakers loekenfranke, which have developed a sharp eye for structural change and its consequences that is unrivalled, to capture the current state of the region in their unique visual language. The results are images of almost mythic power.
As if in some distant time, when human beings sought guidance from the skies and read auguries of the will of the gods from the patterns of birds in flight, we can recognise little groups of people of various ages in the pictures, armed with telescopes and binoculars, lost in a natural landscape, their rapt gaze pointing in one single direction. They are expectant. Evidently they trying to make out something in the distance. Human order can be discerned in the background, but it is no longer decisive. Instead their attention is pointed towards something that they wish to establish contact with, towards something that defies easy availability, towards something that – despite everything – is still here. Or maybe has returned?
It is noticeable that the light which the time of year or day has provided, a light that has no permanence, that lasts no longer than that brief moment, that offers a promise that the attempt to make contact with this reclusive entity might perhaps succeed – is a moment removed from the timescale of the working day.
For many years, films by the duo have portrayed processes of social transformation, the metamorphoses of landscapes, the closer relationship between culture and nature, and the role of human beings in all of these.
It is no coincidence that birdwatching is becoming a more popular obsession at the present time while we are experiencing a series of disasters. The literary scholar Tanja van Hoorn explains: »Birds are a conspicuous, self-reflective mirror that transcends the boundaries between nature and culture, as well as an epistemological figure that is called upon in an atmosphere of uncertainty and critical examination of one’s own abilities.«
Birdwatching is an indicator of our awareness that the absence or presence of other species will be decisive for our own survival – and that there are other orders besides those made by humans. The fact that it also cultivates the formation and practice of aesthetic perceptions gives it a tender affinity with the arts.
Text: Ruhrtriennale / Judith Gerstenberg (excerp)
CREDITS
Bildstrecke Ruhrtriennale 2023
PHOTOGRAPHY
2023
Poster motifs (6)
Photo series with 33 photos (festival catalogue)
As a part of Ruhrtriennale 2023
Concept, realisation and photographers: Michael Loeken, Ulrike Franke
Concept, realisation and photography: Michael Loeken, Ulrike Franke
Dramaturgie: Judith Gerstenberg
Colourgrading: Thomas Haselau (Staudt Lithographie Bochum), Ole-Kristian Heyer
Thanks to: Thomas Griesohn-Pflieger (Birdingtours), Tobias Rautenberg, Patrick Kretz, Uwe Frey, Max Huemer-Uffermann, Hermine Kittsteiner, Stefan Mücke, Verena Niehuis, Bernd Oehler, Danial Hutter, Sophia Hutter, Theodor, Alvar, Anabel Putz, Antje Schlieper, Kirsten Schlimm, Thies Wiechert, Hannah Kurau, Renate Zinke, Bettina Grosse, Jürgen Mauritz, Mischa Leinkauf, Christa Marek, Sabine Hartmann, Jörg Adams, Leonard Putz