Exhibition: The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel

Opening: 12.05.2015, 7 pm
The artist will be present.
Exhibition: 13.05. – 20.06.2015
Curated by: Nicoló Degiorgis

ass 17, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

Kurt Caviezel has been strolling around the networked world via webcams in public and private spaces for fifteen years now, selecting still images from the incessant data stream with a mouse click. Caviezel’s archive today contains more than three million photographs covering all aspects of life.

insects 23, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

In ‘The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel,’ all series that emerged during those years are put into alphabetical order.

bird 13, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

The exhibition is accompied by the book „The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel“ in collaboration with Rorhof.

insects 17, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

From the foreword by Joachim Schmid:

Through years of camera surveillance the artist has compiled a virtually unreal amount of images, which have all been harvested from webcams. The quantity of images is of crucial import here, because quantity (as is the case with many collections of things) at some point turns into quality. Only abundance enables the detection of recurring patterns. May the single image be just funny or banal or vacuous,―in a series of similar ones it becomes a building block of knowledge. By sequencing kindred images, Caviezel makes order emerge from the torrent of images.

monobloc 10, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

monobloc 13, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

His typological arrays structure events in front of the camera. Patterns start looming in the continuous, amorphous stream of single images,―in the events before a single camera as much as in those before multiple cameras, which are operated independently and no one had thought of bringing together. No camera operator had ever intended something like this. For that, creatures of a different intelligence were required.

bather 21, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

Spiders, for example, have a different relation to webcams than humans have. Cameras are simply parts of their environments like everything else upon which one can fix a web. The spider thus incidentally and unintentionally stages a piece of reality before the camera, which is automatically broadcasted to our monitors. Whether the camera had originally been installed at a national park for the observance of elephants, or at a parking garage to overlook the staircase, it’s all the same to the spider.

tails 17, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

tails 28, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

Birds, in turn, roam around in search for food, and occasionally they rest, preferably in a secure spot. The bird may land on a webcam,―and when roosting in a certain way, its tail will be hanging before the lens. This was neither intended nor anticipated by the webcam’s developers, but it became a common use of that technology. Now we just need someone who happens to be watching, seizes the moment and picks up the image.

errors 13, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

errors 31, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

Kurt Caviezel is that somebody: all this and much more can be found in his archive. Here, one may study what rain, snow, ice and condensed water do to the lens exposed to the elements, as well as learn about the behavior of pubescent vacationers in the public swimming pool, or urbanites lonesomely awaiting the bus.

bus stop 5, Kurt Caviezel “The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviezel” exhibition at foto forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) 13.5.-20.6.2015

Every webcam was installed based on an idea, following an intention; and some cameras even serve a purpose. But all those ideas, intentions and purposes become secondary once one takes a look at the synopsis of all the images produced. Carefully selected and arranged, the encyclopedia of automated vision unveils the unforeseen visual surplus drawn by Caviezel from the endless stream of images, which constantly emerge and immediately vanish.