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Editors: Frits Gierstberg, Bas Vroege Experience Design: Harmine Louwé and KesselsKramer,Specially bound, illustrated (colour and b/w), 240 pages, size: 24 x 17 cm NAi Publishers in cooperation with the Photo Biennale Rotterdam V, Nederlands fotomuseum, Rotterdam
Experience includes the work of Chantal Akerman, Big Brother, David Claerbout, Claude Closky, Bijlmer Crash, Rineke Dijkstra, FAT, Andreas Gursky, Alfredo Jaar, Osamu Kanemura, Gerald Van Der Kaap, KesselsKramer, Ralph Kämena/Schie 2.0, Tara Karpinski, Magazines: i-D, Purple Tank, Blag, ADDICT!, Bruce Mau, MONDOPHRENETIC, MVRDV, Geert Mul, Philips, Stefan Römer, Joachim Schmid, Thomas Struth , Francis Summers, Verify, Video Games, Bill Viola and Markus Weisbeck. |
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Our image of the world, our conduct and our thinking is to an increasing degree influenced and even determined by visual media. Every day we have an ever larger amount of images and media messages to process. To cope with all these images, people have developed a mental filter that excludes unwanted visual impressions. In order to break through these 'mental filters', constantly new and unexpected media strategies are conceived. These developments have led to the rise and use of techniques that are geared to the 'immersion' of the 'viewer'. These involve the simultaneous stimulation of multiple senses. Like multimedia installations, where you are cut off from the everyday world and placed in a theatrical setting where you enter into a mental and physical dialogue with media. The great appreciation shown by the art world for contemplative, minimalisticly styled, classic photo work (Rineke Dijkstra, the Becher School) would seem to be a contradiction to this. These images, placed in the right environment, counterbalance the agitation of visual culture, offering rest for the eye and the potential for a voluntary immersion, meditation, concentration and focusing the mind. The Photo Biennale Rotterdam has chosen to confront these positions with one another.
