26 February 2010, 8PM, Book Release Party
28 February 2010, 3-6PM, Book Presentation

Artist Book Presentation

Prinzenallee - A Play without Dialog.
A Book Project by Birgit Szepanski and Regine Rapp

Art Laboratory Berlin is pleased to invite you to a presentation of the recently published artist book "Prinzenallee - Ein Stück ohne Dialoge" ("Prinzenallee - A Play without Dialog").

In 2008 Birgit Szepanski created a complex site specific installation at Art Laboratory Berlin, which referred to the street Prinzenallee in Berlin-Wedding as part of the exhibition series Art and Text. Over a number of weeks the artist recorded traces of the street in her films, photographs and texts. In decidedly minimal formal language she was able to unfurl the street into the exhibition space by means of language, image and sound. In this newly released publication this is further expressed in the form of an artist book.

"The graphic and spatial transformation of the urban theme in the exhibition space resembles Gaston Bachelard's description of topo-analysis as the 'study of the locality in our inner life'. This publication shows excerpts of artistic work - photography as well as five fictive texts - that formed the exhibition, and mirrors, in their formal composition, Birgit Szepanski's special aesthetic of text and image installations. The chosen bibliophile medium accommodates the artists formal language especially well."
Regine Rapp, from the essay "Vom Oszillieren urbaner Zeichen" ("On the oscillation of urban signs"), taken from the publication.

"When I take photographs it's not enough for me, and it doesn't really reflect what I really mean: the narration in image and text and the location, the city. Therefore I choose different media: text, film, photography, the publication and the sound piece. I enjoy writing as much as I do photography, and I equally like other medium such as […] - the booklet or book, or installations. Sound is also important for my work, because sound describes a place and evokes images. For me it is the diversity and the fragmentary shards, which produce the whole. The interaction of the different media, for me, produce the possibility of a narrative."
Birgit Szepanski, from the interview "Schauen, Gehen, Schreiben - zur Ästhetik der Straße" ("Gazing, Walking, Writing - on the aesthetics of the street") taken from the publication.

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