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Tree Travelling on the Motorway

Tree Travelling on the Motorway

Interactive works, Installations,

First installation in the Tree Travelling project.
Exhibition: November 1 – December 13, 2019: Artists for Future, Group Global 3000, Berlin.

On the screen we see images of intense car and air traffic. In front of the monitor a small tree trunk stands on a world map. Moving it slowly over the map you replace the traffic with trees that grow all over the screen.

The images were taken from a bridge over the Berlin motorway, an accidental moment on a casual day. It could be anywhere in our industrialized world in which automobiles and airplanes always move, the faster the better, the more disastrous for the environment. The clock in the picture shows the progress of time: we are rushing blindly into the future.
With my little tree trunk I invite the spectator to stand stil for just a while and reflect. Then move the trunk and let trees travel all over the world… It’s time we become aware of what trees mean to our earthly life. We can hardly do anything better than planting trees to help to save the future of this planet.

© Maria Korporal 2019

Breatheartheatre

Breatheartheatre

Recent Works & Highlights, The Breathearth Project, Interactive works, Installations, Works,

BREATHEARTHEATRE is part of The Breathearth Project and was created in June 2019 during the 36. Neuenburger Kunstwoche, the 36th Neuenburg Art Week.
As artist in residence Maria Korporal had the occasion to first develop and then present her installation on the stage of the local theater.
During her walks in the Neuenburger Urwald, the ancient forest of Neuenburg, the artist collected and photographed the leaves, flowers, twigs and insects, that were to become the living heart of this brandnew Breathearth edition.
The installation shows two projections at the same time on the stage: the smaller circle on the left has close-ups of moving insects, while the larger circle on the right shows the result of the visitors’ interaction: their gentle breath on the earth globe creates the image of colourful leaves and flowers.

Reynard the Fox

Reynard the Fox

Recent Works & Highlights, Videos, Highlights, Korporal Zoo, Installations, Works

Korporal Zoo X: “Reynard the Fox”. Video installation with 12 triangular canvases (digital prints with manual intervention), and a video projection playing with all elements.

Reynard (Dutch: Reinaert; French: Renard; German: Reineke or Reinicke; Latin: Renartus) is the main character in a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. Those stories are largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure. His adventures usually involve him deceiving other anthropomorphic animals for his own advantage or trying to avoid retaliations from them. (from Wikipedia)

The work is based on the 13th Century Middle Dutch version of the story: “Van den vos Reynaerde” (About the Fox Reynard).
The 12 triangular canvases represent 12 animal portraits, some of them major enemies and victims of Reynard. The fox himself appears in various scenes of the video, which is projected in a central space, surrounded by the canvases.
The triangle is an important feature of the video, it refers to the triangular form of the fox’s head, and is fundamental to the narrative structure as well. Each of the three main scenes is introduced by throwing a triangular dice, the result seeming to determine what will happen. The surfaces of the dice become the setting in which the story takes place, while moving lines emerge from the sides and angles, covering and connecting the surrounding canvases. The dice results are 3, 6 and 7, highly symbolic numbers which form the starting point for each of the three chosen parts of the story.

The installation is the tenth work in the Korporal Zoo project: a series of videos dealing with the relationship between animals and human beings, studied from cultural, social and environmental points of view.

photo by Dietrich Graf

photo by Dietrich Graf

First presentation of the work: Exhibition DIE NEUEN 1 in the VBK gallery, 03.02.-18.02.2018, opening 02.02.2018 – read all info.

Screenings of the video documentary:
• February 23, 2023: Screening of 12 videos by Maria Korporal in the context of Premio Borgo Video, curated by gallery La scala d’oro, Sala Dionigi (Chiesa Valdese), Rome, Italy.
• September 21, 2019: Domino Dominio | Per gioco e per davvero, Macro Asilo, Rome.

title: Reynard the Fox
technical description: Video installation with 12 triangular canvases, digital prints with manual intervention, and a video-mapping projection playing with all elements.
size and materials: The size of the whole installation is variable, it can be recomposed and adapted to a room or an environment. The work consists of 7 triangular canvases of 30x30x30 cm and 5 of 40x40x40 cm, a video projector and 2 small speakers. The entire surface (projection and canvases) is about 240×180 cm.
length of video: 7’30” in loop
year: 2018
background sound: “Village Morning” by dobroide
music: “The Screaming Jungle” (excerpt) by Fearless Super Pictures
and “The Labyrinth” (excerpt) by The New York Underground Orchestra, conducted by Assif Tsahar
all other art work, recordings, camera, image & sound processing, animation & montage: Maria Korporal

Breathearth Rebuilding

Breathearth Rebuilding

Recent Works & Highlights, The Breathearth Project, Interactive works, Installations, Works

For 48 Stunden Neukölln Maria Korporal created a special version of her interactive project Breathearth: Breathearth Rebuilding. As a background for the vegetation projection, various photos of construction sites in Neukölln have been used. At each session a different background appears, randomly determined. When breathing on the globe, grass and flowers grow on the construction site.

Breathearth Rebuilding was presented at the festival 48 Stunden Neukölln, 14-16 Juni 2019, Leises Rixdorf – Kirchgasse 7, Eing. Wanzlikpfad 3 – 12043 Berlin

See also 48-stunden-neukoelln.de/en/event/breathearth

Songlines

Songlines

Recent Works & Highlights, Videos, Highlights, Works,

The video above is a 3-minutes trailer*teaser.
The whole video is more than 13 minutes long and has been shown in the events 17 Days Videos Series (USA), Lines in Between the Maze (Berlin) and in loop at the exhibition “Under Another Roof” in IA&A at Hillyer, Washington DC.

NEW • September 10-27, 2020: screening in loop at the exhibition Wild & Connected Plus, BBK-Kunstforum Düsseldorf.

A special 5-minutes version has been shown in FIVAC Festival Internacional de Videoarte de Camagüey, in the Screening der Medienwerkstatt 2018 in Berlin and in Kino Central, Berlin, on 26th June 2019 under the title LIFE-X-CHANGE.

NEW • October 15-25, 2020: Madatac IX, International Official Section, Cine Estudio del Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid.

Keep in touch to be informed about future exhibitions, or subscribe to the newsletter.

description:
This is a new, independent and amplified version of the video “Walkabout”, which was part of the installation “Under the Same Roof”. Click here to see the work.

In the culture of Aboriginal Australians, the long ritual walks in the desert of individuals who undertake the Walkabout* (as mentioned by Bruce Chatwin in “The Songlines”, 1987) play an essential role in allowing contact and exchanges of resources (both material and spiritual) between populations separated by enormous distances. In my work, I let myself be guided by the idea of the Aboriginal Australians to see a “territory” not as a determined piece of land, but as a dynamic network of paths, tracks, and songs – so well described by Chatwin.
In my video, this network is represented by a web of ropes on an underlying, slowly moving landscape. In four central spaces between the cords, areas of sand take form, in which different things happen: one hand digs a bone from the sand while another hand buries leaf, one pulls out a folded piece of paper, opens it and reads the word “life” which turns into other languages, one hand throws a stone from one panel to the other, new life is born out of things—in short, it is a ritual game of transformation and exchange of objects and words between the different areas. After a while everything is flooded by the sea water. The rope structure loses its geometrical form and the sand dissolves. When the flood retreats, a new network is generated and other scenes arise out of the sand.

* “Walkabout” has come to be referred to as “temporary mobility” because its original name has sometimes been used as an inappropriate term in Australian culture, ignoring its spiritual significance.

title: Songlines
technique: Experimental video and animation
length: 13’41” in loop
year: 2018
sound: kangaroovindaloo (earth) and Maria Korporal (water)
concept, camera, animation, effects and montage: Maria Korporal

Rekall Ubik @Neukölln

Rekall Ubik @Neukölln

The Rekall Project, Interactive works, Installations, Works

A screen shows a video of a small wind-up toy robot constantly crossing the roads of Neukölln: this is Rekall, the robot that guides you around the world and creates artificial travel memories. In the upper corner, the names of 165 countries flash in succession, just as many as the nationalities of the population in Neukölln. You can always click on a button in the bottom corner of the screen: click here to rekall the future. Rekall will stop and you will find your own face in the middle of the street: a postcard, like a memory of an imaginary future in another country, far and yet so close.
The postcards were shown during the exhibition on a second screen as a slideshow.
Rekall Ubik @Neukölln is part of The Rekall Project. The project is a work in progress. Several versions have already been created, with different interactive elements, like a webcam or a keyboard. Each version is represented by a new robot, as if the previous one has been reassembled.

The work is inspired by a short story by Philip K. Dick, in which people who want to travel, but due to various circumstances cannot go, ask Rekall Inc. for help. Rekall promises its customers to implant artificial memories that are indistinguishable from real ones. Although the customer is informed in advance that the “experienced” is not real, the “memories” evoke the same emotions as real experiences.
The work emphasizes the absurdity of mass tourism, the superficiality of the short long-distance trips and hasty weekend city trips, which sometimes seem to have the only goal of getting a palpable proof “that one has been there” – while the ecosystem is destroyed and the original culture is lost.

Rekall Ubik @ Neukölln made his first appearance at the festival 48 Stunden Neukölln, 14-16 June 2019, in Polymedialer Ponyhof – Kienitzer Str. 11 – 12053 Berlin.
See also 48-stunden-neukoelln.de/en/event/rekall-ubik-neukölln

 

© Maria Korporal 2019

Interrupted – Video Art Event

Interrupted – Video Art Event

News

The above video is a teaser made by Dee Hood, the curator of the event.

On April 2nd, 2019, from 6:30 – 8:00pm, the Firehouse Cultural Center will host their 1st International Experimental Video Art program, with works by artists from around the world who share a passion for experimenting with art and technology.

Participating artists: Hiroshi Atobe, Sandra Bouguerch, Santiago Echeverry, Dee Hood, Maria Korporal, Muriel Paraboni, Lisi Prada, Hiroya Sakurai, Erick Tapia, Kent Tate, Mohamed Thara, Angelina Voskopoulou, Tushar Waghela

website of the event

Maria Korporal participates with her videos Third Eye Flying and Breathearth (the documentary).

April 2nd, 2019
6:30 – 8:00pm
The Firehouse Cultural Center
101 1st Ave NE
33570 Ruskin (Florida)
USA

 

Rekall Golem @Praha

Rekall Golem @Praha

Between Golem and Robot, The Rekall Project, Interactive works, Installations, Works

Rekall Golem @Praha has been shown in the exhibition ZEITVERSCHIEBUNG, 1-14 April 2019 in Gallery VBK in Berlin.

Rekall Golem @Praha is a 2019 continuation of Rekall Ubik @Berlin, the first city trip of Rekall, travelling in the streets of Berlin. The work has been exposed in Prague on occasion of the exhibition POSUN V ČASE in May 2018. During the stay in the Czech capital, Rekall took inspiration for his next city trip, which resulted in this new installation.
While the interactive element of the first Rekall versions was a webcam with which people could make a selfie-postcard in the country or the street of their choice, Rekall Golem @Praha deals with language: people are invited to type a text on a round keyboard, which does not have all the letters of the alphabet. It is not easy to express what you mean – like being in a foreign country knowing only a few words of the language. Rekall however is willing to learn every word, reading it out loud and repeating it endlessly on the screen, among all the other texts which were typed before: a Babylonian non-sense.

The project started in 2016 with the first installation Rekall travelling around the world. The work is inspired by a short story by Philip K. Dick, in which people who want to travel, but due to various circumstances cannot go, ask Rekall Inc. for help. Rekall promises its customers to implant artificial memories that are indistinguishable from real ones. Although the customer is informed in advance that the “experienced” is not real, the “memories” evoke the same emotions as real experiences.
The work emphasizes the absurdity of mass tourism, the superficiality of the short long-distance trips and hasty weekend city trips, which sometimes seem to have the only goal of getting a palpable proof “that one has been there” – while the ecosystem is destroyed and the original culture is lost.
The robot “Rekall” is a small wind-up toy robot. While the first “Rekall” ran on a small globe and made the earth spin around under its feet, letting the visitors select a country from a list of all countries in the world, “Rekall Ubik” is a city traveller, continuously running in the streets. The visitors can click any time on a button in the right corner of the screen: “click here to rekall a memory”. Rekall will stop and the visitor will find his or her own face in the middle of the street. Like in the previous version, a virtual postcard will be sent to the system. All stored postcards are printed by the artist and collected in THE REKALL BOOK, which can be seen during the exhibitions of the work, or in the artist’s studio.

Breathearth Building

Breathearth Building

Recent Works & Highlights, The Breathearth Project, Interactive works, Installations, Works

Short film about the project Breathearth, with the two versions “Breathearth Building” (for large projection) and Breathearth (for monitor).
“Breathearth” is an interactive installation made with a Raspberry Pi, a small earth globe with encapsulated microphone and a projector or monitor.
People are invited to breathe in the earth globe. With each breath, grass, leaves and flowers appear, until they cover the whole surface with colours and life. When the breathing stops, after a short time the vegetation disappears: the earth needs our breath to stay alive!
With each new session, other combinations of vegetation appear. It is always a surprise which flowers will be produced by our breathing.

Presentations of Breathearth:

NEW: 24th to 27th October 2019 in 100% Female, Grote Kerk Alkmaar
24th to 30th June 2019 Breatheartheatre in the Neuenburger Kunstwoche
14th to 16th June 2019 Breathearth Rebuilding in 48 Stunden Neukölln, Leises Rixdorf, Berlin.
28th September 2018 in the Video Festival II in den Mühlenhaupthöfen, Berlin.
24th August to 19th October 2018 in Group Global 3000, Berlin.
12-22th July 2018 in GEDOK Gallery, Berlin.