ART, TIME and WOLFGANG STAEHLE

Wolfgang Staehle was born in 1950, in Stuttgart, Germany.
He is a recognized pioneer of new media art, art.net and the creator/director of 'The Thing' - an interactive web arena for artists and curators to challenge, express and define ideas about art. The Thing is a concept of modern Art, based on forms new media and techonology to create connections between artists, curators, people and ideas.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-thing/images/1/

Wolfgang's work are founded by the idea of technology as a centralizing or situating force that makes interaction with far reaches of the world possible.
In works such as Empire 24/7 1999 and Untitled 2001 the audience is offered with a disorientating connection to parts of the world that are not immediately tangible to them, by means of the internet.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger discusses a concept of being-in-the-world, which is the idea that no human being can be taken into account without acknowledgment that they are 'there' in relation to all the other elements that constitute the world.
For heidegger the world 'is', it is 'now' and everywhere around us, we are contingent on it and it on us.

In Wolfgang's 1999 work Empire 24/7 this idea of place and object as a relational entity is made apparent through his video projection of the Empire state building, streamed live from New york to a gallery at ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany. The projection is constantly updating itself every four seconds, showing the audience a constinuous 'real' time projection of the building that they are presently disconnection from, demonstrating what technology and the Internet has done to object availibility.It is also a reference to Andy Warhols 1964 silent Black and white film Empire, which is focused of the activity of the Empire State building from dusk till dawn. Warhol's film explores 'real' time as a naturally unfolding event, much the same as Wolfgang's Empire 24/7 which is offered as a constant producted convienantly offered to the audience 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-thing/images/2/

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/empire24-7/images/3/

His works are an exemplification of the ability we now have to connect simultaneously to all different part of the worlds through the use of modern technology and media, while displaying them as he does calls to question our conception of time, what the idea of 'REAL' time means, and our roles within this constant NOW, TODAY, HERE of real time.

The 2001 project Untitled further illustrates these new abilities we have to connect and experience that which we cannot physically grasp simultaneously.
The work was comprised of three live video feeds projected onto the walls of the Postmaster Gallery in New York city, each containing a image of places that without the use of technology we could never see as a synchoronous event.
On one wall was an image of a tevelvision tower in Berlin, another featured a monastery in Comburg and the third was a diptych image of Lower Manhattan - including the World Trade district and Twin Towers, all images were live web feeds that were, as with Empire 24/7, still shots updated every 4 seconds to give a constant seemingly unchanging documentary of each individual place.

http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/moore/moore9-29-01.asp

http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/moore/moore9-29-01.asp


http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/moore/moore9-29-01.asp

The three images also reference three major element of the modern world; telecommunications, religion and commerce.
The exhibition ran from the 4th of September to the 11th of October 2001 and was meant to be a panorama of eventlessness - eventlessness when observed in frequent intervals over a small period of time, as opposed to the linear compression of history which is fraught with turmoils, prominent moments and 'happenings'.
However we are all aware of the jarring and tragic events that unfolded on September 11th, which of course inadvertently transformed the exhibition, although how or what into is not a question one could fully answer.
The uncanny thing about this work is that by the sheer coincidence of over lapping events in time, that were once unknown to each other, it captured and embodied exactly that which it stands for - life, our perception of 'The Real' and the idea of time as a never ending NOW.
How could one explain or even try to digest the event they had just witness, let alone if you had witnessed it as a live projection on the wall of a gallery space.

In all staehle's works there is a powerful suggestion of both the rapidly changing modern world and the slow, constant natural world that, dispite all the technological advancements, is still powerful over us. For no matter how many towers we can build, how many places and things we can see, how many buildings we can destroy, at the end of the day the sun we still set and we will still be governed by nature to rest.

Bibliography
History Asks, "What Then?" - Alan Moore, 2004 artnet
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/reviews/moore/moore9-29-01.asp (accessed 08/04/2009)

Empire 24/7 - Wolfgang Staehle, 1999 Media Art Net
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/empire24-7/images/5/ (accessed 10/04/2009)

Real-Time Futures: Five Noteson the Work of Wolfgang Stahle - John Menick
Last updated: 2008-07-01 04:07:03
http://www.johnmenick.com/writing/realtime-futures-five-notes-on-the-work-of-wolfgang-staehle (accessed 07/04/2009)