Bärbel Möllmann - VISIONS NYC - afterthoughts
10 September - 16 October, 2011

Bärbel Möllmann, View over NYC, 2002

Opening: 9 September, 2011 8PM
Opening hours: Fri -Sun 2-6PM and by appointment.
Book Release Party - VISIONS NYC by Bärbel Möllmann: 30 September, 2011, 8PM

Exhibition intro and podium discussion: Sunday, September 11, 2011
5PM: Exhibition Introduction
The artist Bärbel Möllmann and Regine Rapp (Art Laboratory Berlin) will give a tour of the exhibition

6PM: Podium discussion "9/11… Ten Years Later"
Participants: Mark Donfried (director of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy), Howard McCalebb (artist and director of Dada Post), Bärbel Möllmann (artist and photographer); moderation: Christian de Lutz (Art Laboratory Berlin).

Anyone who has lived in New York and witnessed as I did the terrorist
attack on the city will never be the same. Our view of ourselves, our view of
the city, all of this has changed. This whole year has been one in which
many different feelings and thoughts and perspectives on ourselves as well
as our future have been required.
Estelle Ellis, New York, 2002

September 11, 2011, marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks on The World Trade Center. In VISIONS NYC - afterthoughts the Berlin-based artist and photographer Bärbel Möllmann has gathered a series of amazing portraits and interviews with New Yorkers from Summer 2001, recording their individual plans, goals and dreams, and from Summer 2002 recording their reactions to the events of the previous year.

When she began her unique artistic project in July 2001, Möllmann could not have imagined the attacks on the Twin Towers that would occur only two months later. The actual events of 9/11 are not directly seen in the images, but rather felt as a historic turning point in the interviews and photos taken both before and after September 11. The project is rather about individual New Yorkers and their respective fates, which are brought convincingly near in these artistic photographs and authentic interviews, which shows just how strongly the city of New York and its residents changed in the aftermath of September 11.

Bärbel Möllmann has chosen different ways of presenting her unique project. First, she presents it in the exhibition VISIONS NYC - afterthoughts at Art Laboratory Berlin in late summer 2011, in the form of an audiovisual installation. In the exhibition space the portraits can be studied side by side as large format C-prints. By means of headphones it is possible for the visitors to hear the original voices describe their visions for the future as one stands before each image. In a constructive way, looking and listening are staged. Image and text are combined to create a visual-acoustic portrait, by means of the digital perfection of the sound recording the viewer moves closer to the portrayed.

Then the artist has designed the photo book VISIONS NYC. Portraits and Interviews from New York. The portraits from New York are collected in a volume as large format color photographs. Sometimes the wide-format images extend over double pages. The photo book is able, as a special bibliophile medium, to give space to individual life concepts. The pages constitute a central moment in the reception process, sequentiality and seriality by the ordering of book pages, to meet the heart of urban agglomeration and diversity of urban life. Not least through its archival nature the artist's book provides an ideal format for this unusual and material rich project.

The Inner Eye and Extended Time. Reflecting upon Bärbel Möllman’s Project VISIONS NYC An essay by Regine Rapp

Articlel in TIP

Article in Sugar High

Video reportage from DAPD

Radio report on RadioEins

Cooperation partner:

With the generous support of: