Georg Klein (composer)

For other people named George Klein, see George Klein (disambiguation).

Georg Klein (1 March 1964 in Germany) is a sound, video and media artist and composer. Based in Berlin, he also lived in Rome, Los Angeles and Istanbul.

Interactive Sound-Video-Installation TRASA, simultaneously in Warsaw and Berlin

Art Work

With a background in composition, Georg Klein has developed a multi-faceted artistic practice, in which he works with sound, video, text, and photography. In his installations and interventions – in particular those in public spaces – he intensifies the visual, acoustic, situational and political aspects into an area of tension, in which visitors become involved, either on an interactive or participatory basis. The point of departure of his work is the investigation of sites and situations. He focuses on their inherent contradictions, which he transforms aesthetically so as to become a topic of discussion and deliberation. The theme of borders and their transgression, in psychological inner space and in political public space, plays an important role in his work, both in terms of content as well as form. With his site-specific installations, as well as his concert works and radio play-like sound walks, he challenges, in an irritating manner, his public’s perception of the border between art and reality. He plays with trans-border, audio-visual communication spaces using techniques such as the artistic fake, which lead the recipient into an uncertain terrain, to question identities, and, in a provocative fashion, forces the visitor to engage in critical reflection. In recent years, the artistic debate on societal power relations in politics and the economy has been the focus of his artistic as well as curatorial work. His interventions in both physical space and the public media have at times provoked strong reactions from the public and press, as his work has often made use of a subversive-affirmative strategy and has thereby abandoned the safe and secure framework of art.

"Georg Klein’s work is an anomaly in both sound and new media art. In sound art there is no other artistic position that deals so intensively and rigorously with social reality and public urban space. While these themes are more widespread in new media art, one finds no other artists in that field who have given the musical and the auditory the same precedence, nor is there the same kind of connection to place that Klein has developed. These two aspects constitute the unique quality of this artist’s aesthetic thinking: The precision and sensitivity with which he chooses sounds, noises, images, poems and text compositions for a given project are as unusual as the site-specificity that forms the core of his aesthetic." (Prof. Sabine Sanio, UdK Berlin[1]).

Education & Career

Georg Klein was born in 1964 in Germany. He began his studies in sound engineering and communication studies first at the Technical University of Munich, and later at the Technical University of Berlin. He then studied the philosophy of religion, psychoanalysis, and music ethnology at the Freie Universität Berlin. He worked for three years as a research assistant for a project on the visualization of sound for deaf people and was also a lecturer at the FU Berlin. In 1996, he first emerged as a composer (Berlin International Film Festival) and worked in the following years in the Electronic Studio of the TU Berlin on live electronic and computer music. In 2001, he turned to installation as his artistic form and public space as his performance site (transition 2001, Ortsklang Marl Mitte German Sound Art Award 2002). From 2001 to 2005, he was chairman of the Berlin Society of New Music (bgnm). He later began to incorporate the medium of video in his work (Imperial News 2003).

In 2003, he founded KlangQuadrat (Sound Square), an office for sound and media art, with Julia Gerlach. Their projects received support from the Capital Cultural Fund in Berlin, the Goethe-Institute, the German Foreign Office, the German-Polish Foundation, and the Schering Foundation. With his project TRASA (2004/2006) he received international attention: he extended public space by connecting two cities for two months ("Bi-medial Space of Contact" in six cities of Europe). Therefore, he developed a concept of interactive media art at certain urban places (subway entrance halls). With the suisse performance artist Steffi Weismann he created dialogical, interactive installations (pickup 2005, takeaway 2006, venture doll 2008, UNorJUSTNESS A+B 2013). In his installation turmlaute.2: watch tower (2007 / 2014) he worked with a fake by founding a new political organisation which provoked strong reactions in public (http://www.europeanborderwatch.org).

Interactive Sound-Video-Installation turmlaute.2 in a watch tower at the former Berlin Wall

In 2009 two of his most delicate works were realized: Sprich mit mir in the Red-Light-District of Braunschweig and RamallahTours in Israel, this work dealing again with a fake in public space and the internet (http://www.ramallahtours.info). In 2010 he showed a dual audio-visual installation on oriental and occidental assassins: gunmen and martyrs ("Cuts and Creeds") in Berlin and Istanbul, using the self-manifestations of young, male assassins. Borders and their violation – politically and mentally – are the central topic in his exhibition “borderlines” (European Media Art Festival EMAF 2011) including his ongoing work tracing Godwin with an illegal immigrant from Nigeria appearing in the streets of different European cities (http://godwin.georgklein.de/). With his work GNADE / MERCY (Mannheim, 2012), installed in front of banks and job centers, the work UNzuRECHT / UNorJUSTICE (Switzerland, 2013) and toposonie::spree (Berlin, 2013, see http://www.toposonie.info) he takes up current social themes in order to expand on them in a confusing and ambivalent manner, challenging the viewer/listener to confrontational examination.

In 2014 Georg Klein also appeared as curator with the international exhibition Post Colonial Flagship Store (PCFS) at MuseumsQuartier Wien, dealing with the global neo colonialism in a fake flagship store (see http://www.pcfs-vienna.com). In 2015 he got the Dialogue Award of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Germany, for his project European Border Watch Organisation at the European Media Art Festival EMAF in Osnabrueck. The jury (Abina Manning, Olaf Stüber, Peter Zorn) said: "Passing by an official looking office on a local side street, it may happen that a middle-aged person seduces us to engage in a Mephisto like debate. “The European Border Watch” encourages us to police the borders ourselves from the comfort of our own homes. This convincing creepy fake project finally forces us to strengthen our own arguments and be continually vigilant against the slippery slide of fanatical ideas."[2]

Georg Klein organized and curated various events and exhibitions, as well in his role as chair of the bgnm (staatsbank berlin, 2001-2005), as co-founder of the errant bodies group berlin (since 2013), and as curator at the MuseumsQuartier Vienna ("Post Colonial Flagship Store" PCFS). Since 1998, he has held many lectures in Germany and abroad, published numerous essays dealing with sound and media art, as well as art in public space, and he has given workshops, including at the Berlin University of Arts (UdK / Sound Studies) and the Istanbul Bilgi University. Since 2013, he has been a lecturer in General Studies at the UdK Berlin and since 2015 at the Hochschule für Gestaltung HfG Karlsruhe too.

Awards & Grants

Works (Selection)

Interactive sound installation transition in the sculpture berlin junction by Richard Serra

Catalogs/Reviews

References

  1. ↑ Sanio, Sabine: Die Wirklichkeit als Ort der Kunst / Reality as a Site for Art. In: borderlines - Auf der Grenze, Ed. Sanio, Sabine, Heidelberg 2014, p. 80.
  2. ↑ Peter Zorn, EMAF Award http://www.emaf.de/english/festival/preisverleihung.html

External links

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