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GABRIELE LEIDLOFF
Gabriele Leidloff works with video, film, photography and image generating techniques. Having directed a discussion platform for science and art for over 10 years, Leidloff’s installations combine medical apparatus for producing and processing images and advanced visual technologies used by electronic media. She explores the relationship between art and medical technology – the image on the retina, in memory, in language and on material carriers. Leidloff collects documentation of exhibitions, lectures, video conferences and debates that exemplify the gradual fragmentation of the scientific field under the influence of special research interests. Her mise-en-scene is designed to counter this process while simultaneously questioning common practices of the visual arts.
Leidloff’s works are included in a number of museums and universities, including the Museum for Contemporary Art | ZKM Karlsruhe, the Berlin Academy of Arts, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Georg Kolbe Museum, Goethe-Institut Berlin, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, National Centre for Contemporary Arts Moscow, Yale University Digital Media Center for the Arts, Columbia University, New School University and New York University Faculty of Arts and Science. Reviews and essays on her art have been published in numerous books, such as Video, ergo sum, video cult/ures, Theater der Natur und Kunst, Bild und Einbildungskraft, as well as in catalogues and magazines, e.g. Kunstforum, CIRCA, Gehirn&Geist, Deutschland and NY Arts. Gabriele Leidloff lives in Berlin.
IN PURSUIT
2007, Video, Digital Loop, Silent, 17 min 17 sec
Though starting from the point of diagnostics, Leidloff’s aesthetic content largely resides in her editing processes. Her donated digital-video installation “In Pursuit” is based on official eye-tracking software. Using her own eye, she seeks to escape the track as it follows her movements.
This in turn generates a sense of anxiety for the viewer, not least because of the concentration on the eyeball, which at time is reminiscent of Bunuel’s famous pre-incised eyeball in “Un Chien Andalou.” Leidloff’s tracking machine, borrowed from the Center of Human-Machine-Systems, stresses both the immediacy of technical engagement and the “escaping eye” as the source of artistic perception.