THE ART OF CHRONISM

“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place,” warns the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass”. The people in front of the time-slit camera of the artist couple KOSCHIES must also move at a fast pace in order to be perceivable in static poses in their pictures. Resting or too slow objects leave nothing but horizontal stripes in this pictures. The omnipresent time pressure to which modern mankind is subjected immediately suggests itself as an association with KOSCHIES’ early black and white photographic art. 

I discovered their cycle “THE HUMAN RACE” in July 2011, when Axel and Birgit Koschies presented their pictures in a Potsdam exhibition. The series, which began in 1990 in collaboration with the Berlin performance artist Käthe Be, had already been shown in 2009 in the course of a solo exhibition at the Potsdam Academy for Film and Television. 

I was particularly taken with one of these long, narrow black-and-white pictures reminiscent of film strips, and since then it has been hanging in my office: “PONTIUS & PILATUS” from 2004. A man in a top hat rushes to the left edge of the picture with flying tailcoats, followed by his shadow. Behind it his spitting image, but this one with a “wrong” shadow cast. This irritates and fascinates, because it is by no means digital manipulation.

THE REPRESENTATION OF TIME IN SPACE

How can we visually represent space and time, make it perceptible in a new way? This was the question the artist couple asked themselves and thirty years ago they broke away from the usual methods of photography or filming. Since 1990, the two have been working with time-slit cameras; cameras without a shutter, with only a permanently open, extremely narrow slit. On the film constantly rolling past behind it, a continuous image is created, flowing from left to right. In the photographic result we see which movements took place in front of the camera slit during the recording time.
It is not possible to control the shots of a time-slit camera like with a “normal” camera. For an artistically satisfying result, therefore, in addition to careful preparation, many trials are necessary, no matter how perfectly KOSCHIES master their tools through long practice. 

Over the years the artist couple developed a working method more typical for film due to the special recording technique. However, despite the script and elaborate planning, surprises are still to come. And it is precisely this unpredictability that appeals to the couple, as it ensures a constant expansion of their artistic spectrum. 

To reconstruct the merging of the temporal and spatial axis on one picture is a great challenge. Since we have become accustomed to a certain way of seeing, it is difficult to understand that here the temporal sequence is photographed in a space.
Because we have become accustomed to a certain way of looking at things, it is difficult to understand that a temporal sequence in a room is being photographed here; that dynamics emerge from static poses and standstill from movement.

FROM BLACK AND WHITE TO COLOUR

For twenty years KOSCHIES had worked with analogue time-slit cameras and a special black and white negative film. The coarse-grained images created with this film radiate the aura of archaic camera technology and at the same time captivate through the mysterious, almost inexplicable nature of this special recording mechanism. 

In 2010 the artist couple began experimenting with colour and switched to digital recording technology. The digital time-slit camera works in principle like its analogue counterpart, except that behind the always open slit, instead of being recorded on film material, the image is now also continuously recorded digitally. “In addition to the aspect of colourfulness, we have since been able to create more detailed images,” say the KOSCHIES. “In addition, the digital camera is portable and allows us to take chronistic nature shots for the first time”. 

For their colour series “RUNNING DIRECTION” from 2011/ 2012, the couple sent fourteen directors such as Andreas Dresen, Dani Levy, Pola Schirin Beck, Strawalde, Volker Schlöndorff or Yasemin Șamdereli into their timespace. The results are crazy and dynamic pictures that transfer philosophising about time and space into poetic photo painting. 

THE HEAD AS LANDSCAPE

KOSCHIES have already been working on portraits since 2015, and with the series “SURFACES” they are currently presenting a further stage in their artistic work.
In the history of painting, drawing, sculpture or later in photography, people have always tried to capture the essence of a person in a portrait. But creating a static image of a person does not do justice to the multi-layered appearance of the human being. 

The “SURFACES” are a profession of faith in an art of portraiture that breaks up representational conventions in the depiction of the head and, in doing so, traces its secret through essential alienations. In questioning traditional representations of the human face, they refer to the influences of artists such as Picasso, Francis Bacon or Fiona Tan.

But whether painted, shaped, filmed – the decisive factor in portraying a person is always one’s own perception, i.e. that of the person creating, depicting his or her perspective, which consciously or unconsciously wants to direct the gaze to the seemingly essential.

KOSCHIES look for a different approach. With their cycle “SURFACES”, they transform the views of human heads into a flowing matter, which at first causes confusion and often also disturbance in the viewers. At first glance, the depicted faces appear distorted, they evoke associations of moulting and, precisely for this reason, emanate a particular vulnerability. 

While we instinctively try to decipher the depictions and bring them into harmony with our own world of perception and experience, the “SURFACES” release irritating sensations. They arouse curiosity and polarise, they can be attractive or repulsive. In any case, they allow a completely new view of the person portrayed. The photographs taken with the time-slit camera allow a panoramic view of the model photographed; emotional changes during the 30 seconds in which the shot was taken are mapped. 

Whereas in painting as in photography, a picture is usually already created in the head of the person depicted, which is then transferred to a surface, KOSCHIES allow themselves to be surprised. For the artist couple, these portraits are a way to get closer to the mystery of the human being. The current cycle SURFACES represents a new, important phase in their artistic work, which they have now been developing for three decades with ever new ideas and independently of short-lived zeitgeist art trends.

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Constanze Suhr