2001

Dialogue in between / Dialog dazwischen.
A Research between Indoors and Outdoors.

Fotorecherche
Scottland / GB – Tirol / A

„´Dialogue in between` ... tried to find out and to show transitions and overlaps between the private and the public sphere of living. You can see in the pictures I took how subtle and yet evident the border lines between these areas might be drawn."

Vier Fünftel unserer Zeit verbringen wir im Durchschnitt mit Wohnen. Das Zuhause ist unser Stützpunkt, von dem aus wir in die Welt agieren. Im Zwischenraum zwischen dem Zuhause und dem Öffentlichen beginnen die sichtbaren Überschneidungen. „Dialog dazwischen“ begibt sich auf die Suche nach diesen Schwellenbereichen zwischen dem privaten und dem öffentlichen Bereich in Schottland und Tirol.

C. Angelmaier in conversation with Claudia Zeiske, Duff House / Banff (excerpt):

C. A.: „Dialogue in between“ is part of a bigger project on housing – „Zuhause / At Home“ – and it works in the fields of art as well as in the fields of research. One aspect of housing are the transition spaces between indoors and outdoors, between beeing at home and beeing outside, in public. Our living takes place not only within the „four walls“ of our home. moreover, „home“ spreads beyond: to the open spaces, to our contacts with the neighbours, to the infrastructure of our residential area, to the view through the window, the air quality and the noise level of the place where we live.
Claudia Zeiske: So your tried to figure out the balance between privat and public in the field of housing. As far as I know you took pictures of the front gardens and the front doors. What did you find out?
C. A.: „Dialogue in between“ is not only about the front gardens and the front doors. I tried to find out and to show transitions and overlaps between the private and the public sphere of living. You can see in the pictures I took how subtle and yet evident the border lines between these areas might be drawn. Normally one immediatly realises the codes and symboles, with which a privat sphere is marked. All the same if it is the border line between the front garden and the back garden of one’s home or if it is a bench in a residential street, standing in front of an entrance door, which obviously belongs to the people living behind. Another aspect of „Dialogue in-between“ is, that I did the same research in Tyrol, Austria, in a small town in the Alps. So this work also might be a dialogue between two different housing cultures. One might see the overlaps and the shifts in this respect too.
Claudia Zeiske: So what are your findings between Tyrol and Scottland?
C. A.: I would not call them „findings“. It is one of the differences between a scientistic and an artistic research, that findings are not necessarily a final product of my work. My aim is to show what I see as an artist, so that somebody being interested can create his or her own findings. That is what – in my opinion – art can do: to show possibilities. And I do my art work with some methods of a scientist.
But to answer your question: I indeed found some differences between Tyrol and Scottland. The contact with the surrounding public area and also with the neighbours is organised in different ways. What I noticed at first were the front gardens in Huntly and Banff. Here, on the front side of the homes, the border line between privat and public is drawn more strictly than I know it from Austria. The front gardens I saw in Huntly and Banff are mostly a space which is put inbetween public and privat. A very pretty but neutral space in fact. Like a very luxurious carpet, but one usually would not step on that carpet. Living is something that takes place in the back gardens, often surrounded by a high fence or a hedge to the neighbours. But I found homes which have a low or almost no fence around their back gardens too.
In Tyrol however a lot of houses have a small terrace or an open veranda next to the entrance, with tabels, chairs and benches. You can see there people sitting in front of their homes. And almost each house has one or more balconies, sometimes along two or three sides. A balcony is a good example for a transition space between privat and public: one still is „at home“, but yet outdoors, in public.
Claudia Zeiske: One question which you already mentioned but which in my opinion is still not quite answered: where do you draw the line between art and science in your work? Do you see yourself more as a kind of ethnologist or as an artist?
C. A.: Art has always been interested in „life”, how things are and what is behind them. I see myself as an artist, who offers a certain view and who also offers possible views to the complexity of – also social – structures.

Zuhause (Forschung)